A federal judge will allow the names of people cosigning Rep. George Santos’ (R-NY) $500,000 bond to be made public. Facing 13 criminal charges, Santos was released from jail before the trial because of the bond. The media asked to unseal the identities and relevant information which can now also be shared with the House Ethics Committee. Santos said he would go to jail rather than disclose his “confidential arrangements” for a bond. His next scheduled court appearance is June 30.
A Reagan-appointed judge rejected a request to block Washington state’s new law banning the sale of over 50 types of guns, including AR- and AK-style rifles. People who have them can continue to possess them. The ruling determined that the ban fits the long tradition in the U.S. of regulating dangerous weapons, including colonial-era bans on “trap guns,” long-bladed Bowie knives, and the Thompson submachine (aka Tommy) gun popular with gangsters after World War I.
Florida officials stay silent after a second plane of 20 migrants from Texas since last Friday landed in Sacramento, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to investigate the source of the flights with the possibility of Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis responsible. The arrivals on both flights had documents indicating Florida’s involvement. The GOP legislators gave DeSantis $12 million to fly migrants never in Florida to blue states.
Selective in prosecuting people for what officials call voter fraud, DeSantis arrested 20 former felons who had been told they could vote for casting improper votes, turning their rehabilitated lives upside down. Yet last month, a GOP state attorney refused to prosecute six voter fraud cases in five GOP counties, including sex offenders, who voted in the 2020 general election while DeSantis assured the public that the other 20 former felons would be prosecuted by his special election crimes office.
GOP presidential candidates have been vigorously debating the RNC debates’ rules. Beyond opposition to the requirement that participation requires support of the primary winner, they are fighting about which network will host the debates. Unhappy with the Fox network not being 100 percent on his side, Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) refuses to debate on that network. DeSantis, however, wants Fox and won’t debate on either CNN or MSNBC because he thinks they are hostile to Republicans.
DeSantis has a reputation for being hostile to the press. Stories have circulated that his wife, former TV host Casey DeSantis, is working on a positive image for him, but he’s a slow learner. On the campaign trail in New Hampshire, a reporter asked DeSanti why he wasn’t taking questions from his voters, he said he was talking to “people” and snapped, “Are you blind?” In the past, he confined himself to Fox and conservative talk radio, but that tactic doesn’t work outside Florida in a presidential campaign.
Casey DeSantis may not be much more successful than her husband. Several articles pointed out how she’s appears to copy Jackie Kennedy’s fashions from the 60s, and she wore a leather jacket in the Iowa heat with the slogan “where woke goes to die” over a Florida map and alligator, reminiscent of Melania Trump’s jacket sporting “I don’t really care. Do you?” while her husband separated immigrant families at the border. DeSantis garb earned her the moniker “Walmart Melania.” The account Tea Pain tweeted:
“Behind every Republican man, there’s a Republican woman selling out her sisterhood.”
Florida taxpayers are also paying millions of dollars for DeSantis’ culture (aka religious) wars. The GOP legislature gave him a blank check to attack anyone he wishes in retaliation for anything and anyone he doesn’t like—minorities, students, teachers, authors, Disney, etc. Six months ago, legal costs were at least $16.7 million and growing. DeSantis is paying almost $1,300 an hour in legal fees just searching into how Disney found a loophole blocking his plan to govern Disney World. A Washington, D.C. law firm charges $725 hourly to defend him against his “anti-woke” laws. The state authorized almost $2.8 million for legal services from just that one firm. Medicaid iBudget Florida, a waiver providing disabled Floridians with access to certain services, has a waitlist of more than 22,000 residents because the state underfunds the program at $2 million for the year, compared to the almost $20 million, or more, spent for DeSantis’ “anti-woke” needs.
Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, said DeSantis litigious behavior matches that of DDT, that they are cut “from the same cloth.” In talking about who is benefiting, Jarvis said, “DeSantis has been God’s gift to lawyers.”
Recognizing its current lack of leverage, the House Freedom Caucus has given up deposing Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)—for now—but 11 conservatives are sabotaging GOP leadership, much to their surprise, by voting against the advancement of two bills blocking prevention of gas stoves. The 206-220 vote was the first time the House rejected a rule in 21 years. Scheduled for five minutes, the rule vote lasted almost an hour. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), one of the dissidents, also got into an argument with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) when he accused him of blocking his pistol stabilizing brace bill after Clyde opposed the rule on the debt ceiling bill.
MAGAs have turned on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her devotion to McCarthy and her vote for his debt ceiling bill: they’re calling for her to be primaried by a real MAGA. Another of her offenses was opposition to releasing insurrection footage to the conspiracy-ridden media. DDT ally Laura Loomer, loonier than Greene, is threatening a move to Georgia to primary Greene from Florida where she repeatedly lost congressional primaries. In Greene’s comparing Steve Bannon turning on her with a divorce, she said:
“Steve and I aren’t getting back together. And if he keeps it up, I’ll take the house and kids. I hope you send it to Steve. Because I’m done.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is trying to intimidate academics studying misinformation by accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress right-wing speech. The House Judiciary Committee Chair is demanding records from Stanford University and threatens subpoenas because they withheld some disinformation complaints filed by students. Research includes falsehoods by DDT and other GOP politicians. Jordan claims that the government has suppressed legitimate vaccine risk theories and Covid origins.
Jordan also demands that AG Merrick Garland give him documents from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of DDT—the unredacted memo of authorization and all supporting documentation.
In his determination to prove unsubstantiated rumors about President Joe Biden’s “bribery,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer still wants to pillory FBI Director Christopher Wray for not giving him a document, instead requiring Comer to read it in a confidential setting. Committee top Democrat Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) asserted the secondhand information didn’t need further assessment after a team assigned by former DDT-appointed AG Bill Barr stated the accusation didn’t warrant followup. The paid “source” was reporting a conversation with someone else. The investigation, finding no criminal activity, was led by DDT-appointed former AG Scott Brady for Pennsylvania. In a first against an FBI director, Comer plans to hold Wray in contempt if he won’t give him the document.
Comer’s next project is a probe into a supposed coverup of UFOs, aka Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. He claims to have a “whistleblower,” an intelligence officer claiming to have classified information about “retrieved intact and intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin.”
Joseph Cuffari, responsible for the Secret Service’s mass deletion of texts including those surrounding the insurrection, declared he regularly deletes texts because he doesn’t consider them federal records. He added that he uses his government phone to “to conduct business” but “not federal business.” Intentional deletions of federal records violate the law.
According to Nikki Haley’s little-publicized CNN town hall on June 5, transgender issues form the centerpiece of her campaign. Asked to define “woke,” a Black term for social justice, the presidential candidate focused on “biological boys playing in girl sports” and linked it to one-third of teenage girls contemplating suicide last year—with no evidence. The report she cited didn’t list fear of transgenders as a factor but gave these reasons: more sleep deprivation, less face-to-face social interaction, societal polarization, pessimism about the future connected to global warming, and increasing availability of firearms. Of 73 million youth, only 46,000 may be transgender, 0.06 percent. Haley waffled by saying “we wonder,” but Glenn Kessler gave her four Pinocchios for her lie.
Haley bewailed that “the national media” made the shooting at Mother Emanuel church, when a white supremacist killed nine Black people at a Bible study, “about race.” She did promise, however that she would not execute women who have abortions. Her home state of South Carolina puts women who have in prison, and attempts are being made to charge them with murder.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-NC) is the only current congressional member backing Haley for president, but he’s a devoted ally of DDT. Every time he stumps for Haley he praises DDT.
CNN’s town hall for Mike Pence is June 7.