DeSantis has turned Florida into a Banana Republic. No wonder the whole Trump family lives there now. The biggest donors in Republican politics largely shunned Ron DeSantis after his presidential campaign began to falter last summer. So his allies turned to donors the Florida governor still held sway over because of his day job. A state coronavirus response contractor, CDR Enterprises, gave $1 million to his aligned super PAC Fight Right in the final weeks of the campaign. The DeSantis administration has issued purchase orders to the company worth $158 million to help distribute vaccines, treat patients and provide other services,sometimes through no-bid contracts, according to state records. Herzog Railroad Services — a Missouri company the DeSantis’s team hired to build a $35 million Orlando commuter rail extension — gave $250,000 around the same time to Never Back Down, another aligned super PAC. And a casino magnate, Jeffrey Soffer, gave $1 million in late July — on the same day that the campaign announced massive layoffs.
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No? Then you need not apply to the RNC Trump is making “You can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes” a litmus test to work at the Republican Party.” Those seeking employment at the Republican National Committee after a Trump-backed purge of the committee this month have been asked in job interviews if they believe the 2020 election was stolen, according to people familiar with the interviews, making the false claim a litmus test of sorts for hiring. In recent days, Trump advisers have quizzed multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states about their views on the last presidential election, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interviews and discussions. The interviews have been conducted mostly virtually, as the prospective future employees are based in key swing states. “Was the 2020 election stolen?” one prospective employee recalled being asked in a room with two top Trump advisers.
What BS Former White House counsel Pat Philbin testified at Jeffrey Clark’s disbarment hearing and talked about the chaotic post-election period at the White House: “I tried to explain to him that it was a bad idea for multiple reasons,” Philbin recalled Tuesday at a long-delayed disbarment hearing for Clark. “He would be starting down a path of assured failure … If by some miracle somehow, it worked, there’d be riots in every major city in the country and it was not an outcome the country would accept.” It was Philbin’s first public testimony about the chaotic final days of the Trump presidency since he left the White House. Though Philbin has spoken to both the Jan. 6 select committee and the federal grand jury that indicted Trump for his effort to seize a second term, no transcript or recording of his remarks has even been released.
TNR’s Michael Tomasky with the word: I’m going to tell you something that I’m pretty sure you don’t know—and that you probably won’t even believe. Ready? Real wages are now growing in the United States at a pace faster than the spike in the cost of living since the pandemic. More than that: For the first time in decades, wage growth is consistently stronger in the middle and at the bottom than at the top. See, I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. But it’s right there in a recent study by David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew, three well-known economists. Dube just wrote up the results at Project Syndicate, emphasizing: “Importantly, the real wages of the middle quintile are not only higher today than they were before the pandemic, but slightly higher than we would expect based on 2015-19 trends.
SCOTUS could make bad worse across the U.S. You’ve heard by now that a container ship leaving Baltimore harbor struck and collapsed the Key Bridge at 1:28 a.m. Rescue operations are underway. A few people have been rescued from the water; others are believed missing. The FBI’s Baltimore field office declared it saw “no specific and credible information to suggest any ties to terrorism at this time.” That did not prevent X shitposters from suggesting it. Sure, 1:28 a.m. would be the perfect time for a mass-casualty attack. Morons. CNN (about 9:20 a.m. ET): Frightening video: Stay tuned. Just now, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in a case brought to roll back FDA access to pharmaceutical abortion via widely used mifepristone, first approved in 2000 (Washington Post): The justices will examine rule changes in 2016 and 2021 that, among other things, made the drug available by mail and from a medical provider other than a doctor. Their eventual ruling won’t remove mifepristone from the market but could make it harder to obtain.
He’s actually selling Bibles. Did someone say Christian nationalism? Update:
He’s got problems. Big ones. Rudy Giuliani is trapped in a living “nightmare,” and the former New York City Mayor can’t believe it’s real, he was overheard telling pals at Donald Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago last week. Source exclusively tell Page Six that Giuliani was spotted at the Palm Beach club as he’s facing bankruptcy stemming from a spate of debts. An attendee told us they heard the former Trump attorney saying he’s in a “nightmare world,” and “he wakes up everyday and can’t believe it’s real.” The onetime pol was hit with a whopping $148 million claim after being found guilty by a Georgia court of falsely accusing two poll workers of committing voter in Fulton County during the 2020 election. Feds are also reportedly targeting Giuliani’s own $3.5 million Florida condominium, as Giuliani contends he lacks the finances to settle his debts. Giuliani was at Mar-a-Lago attending an event in support of Arizona Republican congressional hopeful Abe Hamadeh, we hear.
There are rules here? The Biden-Harris campaign has taken off the gloves. That was clear from Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. But that night was not a one-off. Donald “91 Counts” Trump is overwhelmed with so many legal fights and threats to his liquidity (and freedom) that he has nearly run out of bandwidth for campaigning for president. Biden-Harris means to increase the pressure and prod Trump’s delicate ego at every opportunity. “This is the campaign I’ve been waiting for,” Ron Filipkowski posted in response to a bruising press statement from the Biden-Harris campaign (CNBC): A court ruling that slashed Donald Trump’s civil fraud appeal bond was a financial win for the former president. But the campaign of his rival, President Joe Biden, found a way to capitalize on the news. “Donald Trump is weak and desperate – both as a man and a candidate for President,” the Biden campaign said in a searing statement Monday afternoon.
[C]onservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family winin a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for five decades made amockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unbornchildren. But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the statesand in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, shouldpush as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. Inparticular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact themost robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deployingexisting federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying withstatutory bans on the federal funding of abortion. Conservatives should ardentlypursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many womenwho find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the heroism of every choice to become a mother. Alternative options to abortion, especiallyadoption, should receive federal and state support.