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      A once or future king? Floridians ask if DeSantis is looking forward or back

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      Two weeks have passed since Ron DeSantis crashed out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but many in Florida are questioning if the rightwing governor is still auditioning.On his return to Tallahassee following his national humiliation there was no period of quiet contemplation, or pause to refocus on his day job. Instead, DeSantis got straight down to business, little of it having immediate consequence to Florida or its voters.This week, insisting that the US looked to Florida for “leadership”, he called for constitutional reforms in Washington, including term limits for elected officials. Days later, he announced he was sending the Florida state guard to Texas to “fortify” its battle with the Biden administration over border security.And anybody in his home state figuring DeSantis was ready to move on from his obsession with the culture war issues that helped bring down his White House run was quickly disabused. One month into the year, Florida Republicans’ priorities have included banning Pride flags and stopping transgender drivers from changing their sex on licenses.Prominent questions circulating in the state are, now he is back to serve his final three years as governor: what are DeSantis’s intentions? And what is his ultimate goal?There is no shortage of theories. Some suggest he is ostensibly still in the race for the 2024 nomination, running a shadow campaign that would leave him ready to step in if legal troubles or other factors force Donald Trump out of contention.Others think he’s plotting further ahead. “He’s still running for president, just changed the timeline from 2024 to 2028,” Bob Jarvis, a constitutional law professor at Nova University, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.Another possibility is gaining traction among those who have studied DeSantis since he evolved from a nondescript and aloof US congressman to the helm of the third largest state: that he simply wants to be remembered for something when he’s termed out of office in January 2027.Such a hypothesis has plausibility if, as some observers believe, his future political career was mortally wounded by the implosion of a profligate presidential campaign that blew through $160m to garner barely 23,000 votes in Iowa, the only state he competed in.“My personal opinion is that he’s finished, that he’s going to go the way of Rick Perry in Texas, Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, all of these great governors who were going to be president, who were like shooting stars and then disappeared into the darkness,” said the political analyst Mac Stipanovich, a former Republican strategist.“If he were to resign today, he would have a legacy in Florida unlike almost any governor in my lifetime. It would be a legacy of anger, outrage and highly centralized top-down vitriol.“He can’t turn on a dime and sprint left because that would make him seem even more inauthentic than he normally does. But if he’s patient, if he takes time, he can move to the center and become, I shouldn’t say more likable, but likable at all since he has been a black hole of anti-charisma.”The “legacy” theory resonates with Susan MacManus, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida. “He’s still got a good while in office, and right now he’s carrying on with points he was making on the campaign trail, but this happens with governors that run and come back home after having not done well, governors are always thinking about their legacy,” she said.“Some want to be known as the education governor, the tax relief or tax reform governor, the environmental governor. There’s that possibility, but if he’s going to take that direction it is probably best to just get through this legislative session being consistent with what you’ve been on the campaign trail.“Maybe he’s comfortable with his legacy being the ‘anti-wokeism’ governor, we will see. Some Republicans say they see the environment as a possibility for him, making inroads and having a good legacy because he’s been fairly proactive spending a lot of money on water issues and so forth, but it looks right now there’s been no break in his commitment to anti-wokeism.”To that end, on Wednesday, DeSantis celebrated a ruling by a Trump-appointed district court judge dismissing Disney’s lawsuit against the state for “political retaliation”, the stripping of powers from Florida’s largest private employer for opposing his “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation.His backing of the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, by sending state and national guard personnel, and law enforcement officers paid by Florida taxpayers, to bolster his fellow Republican’s fight with federal authorities over immigration is to critics another example of DeSantis placing his political agenda above the needs of his own state.There’s also growing evidence it could backfire. A survey by Mi Vecino, a grassroots voter registration and advocacy group, found 58% of Republican respondents rated as “very poor”, and an additional 18% as “poor”, the effectiveness of Florida’s political leaders to handle issues that mattered most to them: in order, the cost of living, healthcare and gun violence.“People are feeling the squeeze. They are struggling with real world issues, and they feel like the governor and the legislature are spending their time on manufactured outrage, and not legislating or improving their lives in any tangible way,” said Alex Berrios, the group’s co-founder.“Ron DeSantis has created an engaged segment of the Republican party that will vote, is involved, and is also incredibly unhappy with him and the Republican legislature. They have become exhausted by this firehose of outrage and legislation and policy.” More

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      Florida’s new anti-gay bill aims to limit and punish protected free speech

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      By day two of Florida’s legislative session, which started last month, lawmakers had introduced nearly 20 anti-gay or anti-trans bills. One such bill, SB 1780, would make accusing someone of being homophobic, transphobic, racist or sexist, even if the accusation is true, equivalent to defamation, and punishable by a fine of at least $35,000. If passed, the bill would severely limit and punish constitutionally protected free speech in the state.Though SB 1780 is not likely to survive past higher courts, its introduction is indicative of a wider conservative strategy to stifle criticism of racist, sexist and homophobic behavior. The bill, critics argue, is being introduced to test the waters and see how far, legally, lawmakers can go until they are able to silence detractors.“That’s the pattern here in Florida,” said Sharon Austin, a professor of political science at the University of Florida. “They introduce a bill that many of us find to be really extreme. When we start to protest, eventually they take out some of the provisions and sort of water it down a little bit, but in the end it ends up getting passed.”Austin notes that similar bills, such as SB 266, which severely limits diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and HB7, “the stop woke act”, which regulates how race and race issues can be taught in schools, were ultimately passed after lawmakers made the bills slightly less extreme.Understanding the landscape that legislators in the state are attempting to construct is crucial, said Howard Simon, the executive director of the ACLU of Florida. “This session is probably going to be known as the ‘gay bigotry legislative session’,” he said. “They’re on track to spend the [two-month legislative session] exercising their bigotry and hostility to the gay community in Florida.”During last year’s legislative session, multiple anti-gay bills were introduced, including the infamous “don’t say gay” bill, which has been challenged multiple times since it was signed into law. Florida taxpayers have footed the costs for a number of lawsuits in the last several years, totaling well into the millions.Simon and Austin both argue that by crafting bills that specifically target LGBTQ+ people, DEI efforts and free speech, conservative legislators are trying to push those who do not fit the mold of what they believe Florida should look like out of the state.“Whether you like it or not, if someone wants to accuse you of being racist or sexist or homophobic, they have a right to do that,” said Austin. “It’s protected speech. There are attempts to intimidate and bully educators and individuals by letting them know that if you say something that’s unpopular, that offends conservatives, then we will come after you, then we will punish you.”‘It’s a frightening time’The passage of SB 1780 would have sweeping implications for free speech, as the bill’s restrictions apply to everything from print and television to online social media posts. The bill would not only make it virtually impossible to prove accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia, but it would also make it so that the victim of discriminatory statements is responsible for damages to the offender. If enough people were charged under the bill, Simon said, it would likely intimidate others from coming forward about discrimination, effectively silencing victims of hate crimes or other forms of bigotry. Austin likens the bill and others like it to McCarthyism.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s the level of paranoia we’re coming to. It’s a frightening time,” she said. “It makes you wonder if we’re going back to … that type of society in which you’re almost afraid to say anything for fear of offending conservatives who are really trying to destroy you if you say something that they don’t like.”SB 1780 also would have implications for journalists: if passed, the bill would remove the ability for reporters to keep sources anonymous. Journalists who report on discrimination would be particularly vulnerable to lawsuits, as the bill stipulates that “a statement by an anonymous source is presumptively false for purposes of a defamation action”. Austin believes that this is a further attempt to control the media.A similar, more sweeping bill, HB 991, explicitly made it easier to sue journalists and passed the civil justice subcommittee last year. Though it died in the judiciary committee, SB 1780 is a second attempt to get the law through.“I have to hope that members of the Florida legislature will have enough sense not to pass this,” Simon said. “But, if it does, I don’t think the courts will have a hard time seeing the unconstitutional restrictions on free speech that are throughout.” More

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      ‘We can lose more freedoms’: Florida braces for Ron DeSantis’s wrath after national rout

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      Ron DeSantis has fallen off the national stage and the US will not, after all, become Florida like he once envisaged. But back in his home state, opponents are bracing for the return of the Republican to serve the remainder of his final term as governor following the implosion of his presidential campaign.Florida is where DeSantis honed his extremist attacks on a wide range of targets from the transgender community to immigrants and Black voters. Although he will no longer be carrying them to the White House, critics here say there’s probably plenty more to come.“He’s gonna come home with a vengeance. He’s going to try to regain the mantle that he had after [his re-election in] November 2022. And he’s going to try to bring everybody back together and continue on this anti-woke, anti-democratic, anti-freedom platform,” Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic party, said.“The question will be: ‘What do the Republicans do?’ Rank-and-file Republicans in Florida, elected as well as grassroots, are not having any of it. But there are those in higher-up elected positions that still have to reckon with the fact that he’s going to be governor for the next few years and are going to have to play ball in order to get their priorities accomplished.”Fried was referencing the Republican supermajority in both houses of the Florida legislature, which acted as little more than a rubber stamp for DeSantis’s culture war policies that also included the near dismantling of the state’s higher education system and banning face mask and vaccine mandates as the Covid-19 pandemic still raged.Some analysts questioned if DeSantis would return to Tallahassee chastened by his national humiliation, weaker in the eyes of legislators and unable to replicate the swagger or command the same authority as he did following his 19-point re-election.Fried, who saw DeSantis in action first-hand when she served in his cabinet as agriculture commissioner, and the only statewide elected Democrat, from 2019 to 2023, has no such doubt.“We can lose more freedoms,” she said, noting that DeSantis will likely remain in office until he is termed out in January 2027.“I don’t know what his agenda is for this session, he didn’t lay that out in his state of the state address, which was entirely for Iowa, so we don’t have his legislative priorities. But if he continues to try to rule with an iron fist here in Florida, we’re going to have a lot more of these misogynistic, homophobic policies that are going to come out of this administration.“And unfortunately, Floridians are going to continue to feel the impact of his wrath and his extreme agenda. That doesn’t work across the country [but] he’s going to take no learning lessons from what he just experienced, that his agenda and his policies don’t work. But he’s going to try to prove otherwise.”Other senior Democrats share her concern.Val Demings, the former US congresswoman who lost to Republican incumbent Marco Rubio in the 2022 Senate election, warns the governor will remain “dangerous” with a free rein at home.“Ron DeSantis is out. All that damage to Florida through bizarre policies, for nothing. Ambition at any costs, with no guardrails, is dangerous,” she said in a tweet.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSo it falls to Florida’s Democratic party, written off by DeSantis a year ago as “a dead, rotten carcass”, to form the resistance, Fried says. Buoyed by a string of successes at the ballot box, including Donna Deegan’s victory in Jacksonville’s mayoral race last May, and new state congressman Tom Keen’s ousting of a Republican incumbent earlier this month, Democrats see a momentum shift fueled by anger at DeSantis they hope will carry through to November.“The balance is making sure we’re holding Republicans accountable for their votes for the policies that were, and are, rejected by Floridians, and by the same respect talking about what we are going to do when we get out of the super-minority and start picking up seats,” Fried said.“I mean not just in the legislature, but good Democrats elected all the way down to school boards, and city and county commission seats.“What policies are we looking to reverse or to move forward on? People are tired of the divisiveness. People are tired of the anger and they just want their government to get back to work.”Ultimately, Fried believes, Republican voters nationwide rejected DeSantis because they saw the same traits, she says, that have become familiar to Floridians.“There’s nothing there. There’s no soul. There’s no charisma. There’s no ability to connect to a voter or to show true empathy,” she said.“It turned voters off. They didn’t like his personality and then they didn’t like his policies, so combine the two of them and this is the result, a disaster of a presidential campaign and from all calculations, the most expensive presidential primary bid in American history.“Americans don’t want to be Florida. They see what’s happened here in our state. And so voters now are going to be walking away, especially independent voters, from a very authoritarian overreaching of Ron DeSantis and this Florida Republican party.” More

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      Ron DeSantis failed because Trump’s base wants the man himself, not an imitation | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      So long, Ron. After a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican presidential primary and endorsed Donald Trump. This outcome has looked inevitable ever since the campaign’s botched launch announcement on Twitter, but it was surprising how quickly and totally DeSantis surrendered after losing just a single contest. Many people had heralded DeSantis as the man who could take down Trump, but it was not to be. His campaign began with a whimper – then ended with one too.The political flaws of DeSantis and his campaign have been so numerous that it’s amazing the Florida governor ever generated so much buzz. He looked politically impressive operating in the safely conservative state of Florida, but he was completely unprepared for the intensity of competitive national politics. He lacked the empathy and personal warmth necessary to connect with voters and donors alike. He proved a poor administrator. He tried to run on his management of the Covid-19 pandemic when voters had moved on. Worst of all, he could offer no plausible reason why Trump voters should opt for him rather than for the real thing.Despite all of this, DeSantis found huge success among a certain class of Republican pundits and donors. At one point he was hailed by the Murdoch press as “DeFuture”, and conservative writers fell over one another to praise him as the Trump who “gets things done”. When someone so flawed has so many boosters, it’s worth asking about the motivation of the boosters.In this case, the DeSantis campaign was promoted by a set of conservative elites who saw the opportunity for a kind of “Trumpism without Trump”. DeSantis drew support from people who were happy with the broad direction of the Republican party under Trump, but had doubts about the former president’s competence. Since his victory in 2016, Trump has been a serial loser of elections who invests little time in trying to implement policies, preferring to focus instead on the melodrama of his own political and legal struggles. DeSantis, by contrast, exudes the kind of grim, thuggish determination of Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister whose policies have made him a hero of the American nationalist right.As an electoral proposition, this vision was flawed from the get-go. The idea of “Trumpism without Trump” was to take Maga content and present it in some more palatable form. But this ignores the fact that for many grassroots Republicans, Trump’s form is his content. They support him not because of the concrete policies he will implement but because of who he is and what he represents. The unhinged style of communication, the self-pitying beefs with “the establishment”, the unfiltered racism and bigotry – these are the essence of Trumpism, not paraphernalia which can be discarded.For decades, Republican elites have believed they could channel and control the populism and bigotry of their party’s base. A video from the 2008 election which periodically goes viral of John McCain defending Barack Obama in the face of a racist question from a voter, represents the exception in this history rather than the norm. As a rule, Republican donors and politicians have winked at or actively encouraged the worst instincts of their base, believing they could be harnessed and ridden to victory. The DeSantis candidacy was just the latest example of this. But now the base is in the saddle, and what it wants is Trumpism red in tooth and claw – not some bloodless imitation.However doomed it was at the polls, there might have been some redemptive quality in the DeSantis project if it had offered a challenge to the yawning ethical chasm at the heart of the Republican party. But rather than denouncing the cruelty towards immigrants, women and trans people that pervades the modern conservative movement, DeSantis merely promised to pursue it with more ruthless efficiency. He showed indifference to the suffering of the people who got in his way, such as the migrants he transported to Martha’s Vineyard and then abandoned for the purposes of a political stunt. The experience made them feel, one said, “like cattle” – yet DeSantis defends the action to this day.The fact that supporters of the DeSantis project were not actually trying to challenge the core premises and practices of Trumpism will make it easier for them to take the next step: reverting to support for Trump. After he dropped out, DeSantis endorsed Trump with unseemly speed and it may take some of his backers a little longer to come around. But just as in 2016, Republican politicians and media figures will inevitably follow their base and resume backing the former president, even as he engages in Hitlerian rhetoric about migrants “poisoning the blood” of America and promises to be a dictator “on day one”.As John McCain showed in 2008, there is an alternative course available to former DeSantis backers, if they wanted to take it. They could say publicly what many of them know privately – that while Trump poses a unique danger to the republic, Joe Biden is a decent, patriotic man with whom they happen to have some policy disagreements. They could lament the grip that a racist and authoritarian figure has on such a large segment of their party, and even try to challenge it. But they will not, because that’s never what the DeSantis candidacy was really about it. Instead, they’ll get in line behind Trump – and march themselves and everyone else closer and closer to disaster.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a podcast and newsletter More

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      Biden campaign calls for investigation of New Hampshire robocalls impersonating US president – as it happened

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      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has called on New Hampshire authorities to investigate a spate of robocalls to voters in which a voice that sounds like the president encourages them not to participate in Tuesday’s primary.Biden’s name is not appearing on the primary ballot, since Democrats have decided to hold their first nominating contest in South Carolina next month. But some in the party are encouraging their voters to write in the president’s name, both as a show of support and to pressure the Democratic National Committee to give New Hampshire, which has historically been the second state to vote, a more prominent role in the nominating process.In a statement, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
      This matter has already been referred to the New Hampshire Attorney General, and the campaign is actively discussing additional actions to take immediately. Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.
      Nikki Haley made the most of the hours remaining before tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire, crisscrossing the Granite state alongside governor Chris Sununu in a bid to lure votes away from Donald Trump. But polls continue to show the former president with a big lead, underscoring the difficulty Haley will have in overcoming his status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.Trump is expected in New Hampshire later today, after appearing this morning in a New York City courtroom for a hearing in author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, where he was set to testify. The session was unexpectedly adjourned after a juror felt ill, and one of Trump’s lawyers was exposed to Covid-19.Here’s what else happened today:
      Kamala Harris assailed Trump for his role in overturning Roe v Wade on the 51st anniversary of the supreme court decision that allowed abortion access nationwide.
      Nikki Haley has avoided talking much about abortion, even though she has signalled she would be fine with restricting the procedure federally. Some voters who support abortion rights are fine with that.
      Judge Judy delivered her verdict on the presidential race by stumping for Haley in New Hampshire.
      Elise Stefanik, who is seen as potential running mate for Trump, said the adjournment of his defamation trial was “blatant election interference”. In reality, it was requested by the former president’s legal team.
      Someone is making robocalls to New Hampshire voters that sound like Joe Biden and encourage them not to vote in Tuesday’s primary, prompting the president’s re-election campaign to call for an investigation.
      As she blitzes the state, Nikki Haley talks about keeping taxes low, the military strong and the border secure. One issue she does not mention: abortion.On the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, Joe Biden and Democrats across the country are railing against Republicans, calling them “anti-abortion extremists” who would impose a federal ban on the procedure if they win back power this fall.Haley calls herself “pro-life” but has promised to seek consensus as president. In Iowa, where evangelical Christians dominate the caucuses, Haley signaled her willingness, if elected, to sign any restrictions that reached her desk.But in comparatively moderate New Hampshire, she has mostly shut down inquiries about what kind of federal limit she would support, insisting that any legislation is purely theoretical without 60 votes in the Senate – as she told one curious onlooker at a stop in Epping on Sunday.Across the state, several pro-choice independent voters said the risk of a Trump presidency worried them more than Haley’s views on abortion.“I’ve long ago accepted that I can’t agree with a candidate on everything,” said Carole Alfano, an independent who met Haley at the campaign stop in the town of Epping. “We’ll part ways on that.”Alfano backed Biden in 2020, but plans to support Haley in Tuesday’s primary.In Derry, Marie Mulroy is ecstatic about the prospect of a Haley nomination even though she believes abortion should remain legal.“We’ll agree to disagree on that,” she said.Can Nikki Haley pull a shock win in New Hampshire out of the bag?She’s the last candidate standing against Donald Trump, after Florida governor Ron DeSantis exited the race and endorsed the former president on Sunday. Host of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast Jonathan Freedland headed out on the campaign trail in the Granite state to find out the answer:Joe Biden’s re-election campaign marked Roe v Wade’s 51st anniversary by debuting an advertisement in which Texas obstetrician-gynecologist Austin Dennard discusses how she had to leave the state to get an abortion after finding out that her fetus would not survive.Who’s to blame? Donald Trump, as Dennard makes clear. Expect to see tons of this sort of messaging coming from the campaigns of the president and other Democrats over the coming months:On the 51st anniversary of the supreme court’s Roe v Wade decision, Kamala Harris attacked Donald Trump for his role in appointing justices who overturned the precedent and allowed states to ban abortion.The vice-president spoke during a visit today to Wisconsin, a battleground state that will be crucial to deciding the outcome of the November election. Democrats plan to campaign on restoring access to abortion, after the 2022 decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that curtailed abortion access in many states.Harris did not hold back from assailing the former president, citing his comments that he was “proud” of his role in getting three justices confirmed to the court, all of whom voted to overturn Roe. Here’s what she had to say:Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has called on New Hampshire authorities to investigate a spate of robocalls to voters in which a voice that sounds like the president encourages them not to participate in Tuesday’s primary.Biden’s name is not appearing on the primary ballot, since Democrats have decided to hold their first nominating contest in South Carolina next month. But some in the party are encouraging their voters to write in the president’s name, both as a show of support and to pressure the Democratic National Committee to give New Hampshire, which has historically been the second state to vote, a more prominent role in the nominating process.In a statement, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
      This matter has already been referred to the New Hampshire Attorney General, and the campaign is actively discussing additional actions to take immediately. Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.
      David Scanlan, the New Hampshire secretary of state, predicted Republican voter participation in the primaries will reach 322,000, eclipsing 2016’s total, when Republicans set a record of 287,652 votes. In 2020, it was Democrats who saw record turnout for their competitive primary, with 300,368 votes cast.Before a deadline in October, as many as 4,000 registered Democrats changed their party affiliation to “undeclared,” suggesting some plan to vote in the Republican primary.A Monmouth University Poll-Washington Post poll released today found that the number of registered New Hampshire independents who plan to vote in the Republican primary increased from 52% in November to 63%.More than a third of these voters said they voted for Biden in 2020, suggesting there could be a “measurable influx of Democratic-leaning independents” who will participate in Tuesday’s primary.In a conversation on Friday, Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire GOP chairman and prominent Trump opponent, said he did not see evidence that Haley had “lit a spark” among these voters in the way that might foretell “some kind of surge coming her way.”“People turn out when they are inspired, or they’re pissed off,” said Cullen, who had seen Haley on the campaign trail four times. “What we’re seeing is that people are not inspired, and they’re apathetic. And that means that they don’t show up.”New Hampshire’s secretary of state David Scanlan is predicting record turnout in the Republican primary, while governor Chris Sununu is joking that he is cashing in all of his political capital to ensure balmy weather for voters headed to the polls on Tuesday.That would be a stark contrast from Iowa, where arctic temperatures were blamed for the low turnout last week. Recent polling has shown Trump with a double digit lead in the state. But New Hampshire has a record of unpredictability, thanks to the large number of voters who proudly belong to neither party. They are not a monolith, but analysts believe that the more of them who choose to vote in the Republican primary, the better for Haley.“The only big X factor I see: how big is turnout?” said Dante Scala, a professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of New Hampshire.According to Scala, Haley is attempting something novel in New Hampshire. Republican presidential candidates who have pulled off wins in New Hampshire – such as John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 – managed to appeal to the state’s independents while still pulling in a sizable chunk of the party faithful. (Independents, called “undeclared” voters in New Hampshire, can vote in either party’s primary.)This year, Trump has a lock on Republican base voters. To win, or even to come within striking distance of Trump, Scala said Haley will need to run up the score with these independent voters, some of whom could choose to vote in the sleepy Democratic primary or not at all if they feel the contest is a foregone conclusion.Scala said Haley’s test is whether she “inspired enough people to show up, who don’t normally show up, to get a turnout big enough that it swamps the Trump people and your mainstream Republican in New Hampshire.”Joe Biden spoke to UK prime minister Rishi Sunak on Monday about Gaza, Ukraine, and the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, White House spokesperson John Kirby said, AFP reported.From White House correspondent for AFP Danny Kemp:Judy Sheindlin, widely known as Judge Judy, told CNN on Monday that she would endorse Nikki Haley if she “were a frog”.During the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Judge Judy was asked if the reason she endorsed Haley was because Haley is a woman.“No, I would support her if she were a frog,” said the ever-colorful Sheindlin.“She’s capable. She’s poised,” Sheindlin added.Sheindlin said that neither Trump nor Biden have the “intellectual gravitas” to be US president.According to Sheindlin, she has only endorsed one presidential candidate before –the former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, during the 2020 presidential election.Sheindlin has campaigned for Haley ahead of the highly watched New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.Nikki Haley is making the most of the hours remaining before tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire, crisscrossing the Granite state alongside governor Chris Sununu in a bid to lure votes away from Donald Trump. But polls continue to show the former president with a big lead, underscoring the difficulty Haley will have in overcoming his status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is expected in New Hampshire later today, after appearing this morning in a New York City courtroom for a hearing in author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, where he was set to testify. The session was abruptly adjourned after a juror felt ill, and one of Trump’s lawyers was exposed to Covid-19.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Judge Judy delivered her verdict on the presidential race by stumping for Haley in New Hampshire.
      Elise Stefanik, who is seen as potential running mate for Trump, said the adjournment of his defamation trial was “blatant election interference”. In reality, it was requested by the former president’s legal team.
      Someone is reportedly making robocalls to New Hampshire voters that sound like Joe Biden and encourage them not to vote in Tuesday’s primary. Supporters of a campaign to write in his name – he is not appearing on the ballot, in line with Democratic National Committee rules – say the calls are meant to undermine them.
      Donald Trump is clearly smarting from the ongoing defamation lawsuit against him by author E Jean Carroll, and a jury’s verdict last year that he sexually abused her. As the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports, his campaign yesterday barred a NBC News reporter who had pressed his ally Elise Stefanik for her thoughts on the verdict:Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reportedly blocked an NBC News journalist from covering campaign events in New Hampshire on Sunday.Sunday’s exclusion of NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard came when he was set to serve as a pool reporter. Instead of having a pack of reporters follow a candidate everywhere, campaigns will often allow television, print, and radio news organizations to send a single pool reporter to travel with them – and those reporters in turn then send a readout to other news outlets.But on Sunday, Hillyard wrote in an email to the pool: “Your pooler was told that if he was the designated pooler by NBC News that the pool would be cut off for the day.”The email, which was subsequently published by several news organizations, added: “After affirming to the campaign that your pooler would attend the events, NBC News was informed at about 2.20pm that the pool would not be allowed to travel with Trump today.”Hillyard a day earlier had pressed New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik – said to be a potential Trump running mate – on whether she believed the ex-president had sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll.NBC News and Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, did not immediately return a request for comment.You don’t have to be Joe Biden for someone to make a robot of your likeness. As the Guardian’s Dan Milmo reports, Democratic congressman and presidential candidate Dean Phillips has his own AI impersonator:OpenAI has removed the account of the developer behind an artificial intelligence-powered bot impersonating the US presidential candidate Dean Phillips, saying it violated company policy.Phillips, who is challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic party candidacy, was impersonated by a ChatGPT-powered bot on the dean.bot site.The bot was backed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Matt Krisiloff and Jed Somers, who have started a Super Pac – a body that funds and supports political candidates – named We Deserve Better, supporting Phillips.San Francisco-based OpenAI said it had removed a developer account that violated its policies on political campaigning and impersonation.“We recently removed a developer account that was knowingly violating our API usage policies which disallow political campaigning, or impersonating an individual without consent,” said the company.The Phillips bot, created by AI firm Delphi, is now disabled. Delphi has been contacted for comment.A factor working against Nikki Haley in her quest to win the New Hampshire Republican primary is Donald Trump’s resounding victory in last week’s Iowa caucus.His triumph in the first state to vote in the GOP’s nomination process confirmed his status as the frontrunner for the nomination. But election turnout was low in the Hawkeye state, a fact Haley was keen to remind voters of in New Hampshire:Nikki Haley is spending the final moments before New Hampshire’s make-or-break primary getting out the vote with the state’s popular Republican governor, Chris Sununu by her side.“This is it. Twenty-four hours to go,” Sununu told the crowd at a packed, dimly lit veteran’s hall in Franklin. “All the momentum is at Nikki Haley’s back.”He told the voters not to pay any mind to the polls – unless it’s the ones showing Haley trouncing Joe Biden in a general election – and reminded them of their fiercely guarded reputation as the state that delivers political upsets.“We always buck the trend in New Hampshire,” he said. “It’s going to start tomorrow.”Haley reminded voters of the stakes of tomorrow’s primary – not that they needed any reminding, since some say they’ve received upwards of 10 campaign mailers a day in recent weeks, in addition to the political ads flooding the airwaves.“Don’t complain about what happens in a general election if you don’t play in this primary tomorrow,” she charged. “It matters.” More

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      How Winston Churchill became a mascot for anti-woke warriors | Zoe Williams

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      ‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts,” Ron DeSantis said, as he pulled out of the race to lead the Republican party. It was a strange way to announce that what counts – the continuing bit – is the thing you don’t have. Also, it is quite contestable, for such a short statement; failure isn’t necessarily fatal, but it does depend on what you have failed at. Still, what set most pedants afire wasn’t the substance but the attribution: DeSantis said it was Winston Churchill; the International Churchill Society disagreed. Meh, let’s not split hairs. It is a sort of obvious notion, made of words, so it is surely the kind of thing Churchill would have said, had he said it.This is my favourite kind of Churchill-eering, where politicians summon his ghost simply by adopting similar rhetoric. Penny Mordaunt’s fabulous “Stand up and fight! Stand up and fight!” before going on to add, “Never forget those who went before us and remember that without a Churchill, you can’t have a Zelenskiy” during her speech to last year’s Tory conference was a classic of the genre: a pitch-perfect throwback to “We shall fight on the beaches”, having first removed the beaches, the landing grounds, the fields, the streets, the hills, any obvious enemy, any clear sense of what was being defended and any endgame. Churchill here stands in as an all-purpose fighty-man, and as such wouldn’t make much of a cultural export, since everyone’s history has those.It took Boris Johnson to repackage Churchill for an international audience, not so much with his book, The Churchill Factor, as in his strategically idiotic attack on Barack Obama in 2016. He was mayor of London then, when the most he could screw up was planning on the Vauxhall gyratory which, to be fair, quickly cohered as a literal and figurative shrine to the emptiness of late capitalism, and is probably the most coherent thing he ever did. But in his downtime, he wrote a column for the Sun, enraged that Obama had moved a bust of Churchill out of the Oval Office (a full seven years previously), contending that the “part-Kenyan president” was motivated by anti-colonialism, “ancestral dislike” of the British empire. To follow the logic, Johnson, having German heritage, would also have reason to dislike Churchill, but he is not doing logic, he is focusing on Obama’s race, which I feel Obama should have met with unending hellfire, rather than a mild: “No, we just moved Churchill to a different corridor.”Too late to worry about that now: Churchill, in Johnson’s new frame, stood not only for nostalgia, a comforting world order with the posh at the top, but also for white supremacy and colonial brutality as an essential part of that past. Winston was now a mascot for the anti-woke warriors, the embodiment of their core principles: the past is better than the present; the world makes more sense with the posh at the top, just listen to their lovely cadence; the dicey bits – racist exploitation and carnage – are expiated by nostalgia (it was all a long time ago) and implicitly celebrated by it (weren’t things better then?), and anyone who disagrees hates their country.It makes no sense as an export, least of all to the US, which had made its feelings plain about the yoke of the British empire 99 years before Churchill was born. It doesn’t even make much sense as a British narrative, which had previously been happy to dial down Churchill’s imperialism, concentrating on its more nuanced expressions, and use him mainly as the totem of Britain’s successful fight against fascism. In Johnson’s revision, Churchill the Coloniser is as valorised as Churchill the anti-Nazi. Its nonsensical nature is why it’s the perfect cultural export: stripped of all meaning, just some loud, posh vibes, caricatured to the point where you can’t remember what the original looks like, political rhetoric’s answer to Saltburn.Loth as I am to get into combat about who knows Churchill the best, between me, Johnson and DeSantis, we all know this, right? He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid; he would have hated this. He would be turning in his grave. More

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      Trump holds wide lead over Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, polls show

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      The ignominious end of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign is unlikely to boost Donald Trump’s last challenger, Nikki Haley, to the Republican nomination , according to two New Hampshire polls released on the eve of the primary in the north-eastern state.DeSantis also endured a round of scathing critiques of his campaign which started off being seen as a major source of opposition to Trump. But his White House bid never fully took off and fizzled into failure and a major blow to the rightwing Florida governor’s political reputation.In a poll released on Sunday, the day the hard-right Florida governor contradicted his own Super Pac, Never Back Down, and backed down, NBC News, the Boston Globe and Suffolk University put Trump 19 points clear of Haley, at 55% to 36% support.Ending his campaign, DeSantis looked past months of personal attacks from Trump to offer the twice-impeached, 91-times criminally charged former president – whose lie about a stolen 2020 election DeSantis has disowned – his endorsement to face Joe Biden.On Monday, the Washington Post and Monmouth University put Trump at 52% support in New Hampshire, to 34% for Haley.That represented a near-doubling of support for the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador since November. But, the Post said, that was primarily a result of the withdrawal of Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who campaigned as an anti-Trump candidate.DeSantis had 8% support in the Post-Monmouth poll, which was carried out before he ended his campaign.“If DeSantis’s supporters in the poll are allocated based on their second choice,” the Post said, “Trump’s support rises by four points while Haley’s increases by two.”On Sunday, Haley staged a rally in New Hampshire with Judy Sheindlin, better known to millions of Americans as Judge Judy, a former Manhattan family court judge made famous by a small claims, arbitration-based TV show.“What a crowd, Exeter!” she said. “The energy on the ground is electric, and it’s clear Granite Staters are ready to make a difference on Tuesday! An extra special thanks to America’s favorite judge, Judge Judy Sheindlin, for joining us! She gets it: this country needs no drama, no chaos, no nonsense – just results!”But despite such determined boosterism, polling results undeniably show Haley well adrift of Trump in New Hampshire and even further behind in South Carolina, her home state which next month will be the third to vote.According to the polling site FiveThirtyEight.com, Trump leads Haley by 61% to 25% in the southern state.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “I wish I had a dollar for every Republican who’s told me over the last three years, ‘We’ve learned our lesson. No way will Trump be our nominee again.’”Speaking to CNN, Sabato added: “If [Haley] loses on Tuesday, it almost certainly marks the end of her run. She may continue through her home state of South Carolina though I think she’d be hesitant to do it because she wouldn’t want to lose her home state. That’s really difficult to explain to people.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“But for all practical purposes, once DeSantis left and once the other candidates were knocked out of the race, it was Trump’s to lose and Trump has to lose significantly and he’s not going to lose it.”DeSantis exited the race with a statement containing both a Churchill quote it turned out Churchill never said and his endorsement of Trump.Sabato was asked about DeSantis’s decision to back Trump after, only last week, attacking Republicans he said had chosen to “kiss the ring” and endorse the former president.“I guess he saw some good examples of ring kissing and decided to imitate it,” Sabato said.“Look, who knows what was going through his mind other than the fact that he certainly wants to run the next time. Now, whether he’ll be credible as a candidate after this disastrous run? Remember, he was supposed to be Trump’s main challenger and most of the establishment in the Republican party was betting on him. And his campaign crashed and burned.“This was really a disgraceful enterprise in so many different ways. But in [DeSantis’s] mind, at least right now, as he’s coming to terms with the the demise of his dream, he’s thinking about running in 2028. Well, being associated with Nikki Haley is not going to help you, because this party has already become the Donald Trump party or the Maga party and it will be in all likelihood even more so as the years go on.” More

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      ‘May the best woman win’: Haley reacts as DeSantis ends presidential campaign – video

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      Ron DeSantis has ended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and endorsed Donald Trump. The Florida governor’s withdrawal leaves Nikki Haley as the last remaining challenger to Trump for the party’s nomination. ‘He’s been a good governor and I wish him well,’ Haley said of DeSantis at a campaign event on Sunday. ‘Having said that, it’s now one fella and one lady left.’ Trump set aside months of criticism of DeSantis and welcomed his onetime rival as his newest supporter More