The national news media seems to have lost interest entirely in the story of the Venezuelan immigrants shipped off to Martha’s Vineyard as part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s reelection campaign. The meta-story of course continues to get some attention — how it plays into the midterm, who it helps or hurts as a political story, etc. But I mean what actually happened. That’s unfortunate both in journalistic and political terms because even the barest look at the details we know make it very unlikely this was an official or on-the-books government operation. And yet it’s one Gov. Desantis has publicly taken credit for and said was paid for with taxpayer funds from Florida.

In the absence of any national press interest the search for answers has been left to a few local news outlets and LULAC, the Latino civil rights organization. Representatives of LULAC, including national president Domingo Garcia, went to Martha’s Vineyard on Friday to talk to the asylum-seekers and get more details about what happened. They were able to flesh out the story about “Perla” and her team in San Antonio. Basically all the stories matched to a T. LULAC has posted a $5,000 reward for information leading to her identification. LULAC is also canvassing this week in San Antonio trying to find out more information.

Another thing I wanted to flag for you. At his rally in Youngstown, Ohio on Saturday Donald Trump appeared to take a decisive new step in embracing the QAnon conspiracy theory. He’s been dog whistling about it for years. But at this rally there was an especially dark and fetid tone and the rally concluded with what was either the Q movement song or one that was so similar as to be indistinguishable from it. (Yes, there’s a movement song.) The crowd responded with an index finger salute — also a Q movement trademark — as they swayed to the music and Trump’s rhythmic incitement. This comes after various posts on Trump’s “Truth Social” Twitter clone site which now openly embrace Q.

Since I’ve noted the “will the polls be wrong again” debate a few times I wanted to share another article with you. This one is by Nate Silver. He basically argues that the confidence that 2022 is likely to see the same kind of hidden GOP strength is misplaced. He doesn’t prove this idea is wrong. And I don’t think he would say he does. (We can’t ‘prove’ anything about a future we don’t know.) What he does is lay out a series of counter-arguments or rather arguments and evidence that leads to the opposite conclusion.

Most of the news discussion about the DeSantis/Martha’s Vineyard saga appears to have moved on to chin-scratching pieces about what it all means or how the politics might shake out. That’s premature. The fact that DeSantis would pull a stunt like this is entirely unsurprising if also morally obscene. But if it was his work why did he fly migrants from Texas? There’s been no clear or really any explanation for why this would be the case. He’s vaguely suggested that he was flying them from Texas before they could come to Florida. But the details about how the migrants were found in San Antonio doesn’t suggest anything like that. DeSantis won’t discuss it.

It also seems clear that this wasn’t arranged by actual government employees. At a minimum it was delegated to private parties who quite possibly broke a few laws to do it. The woman “Perla” seems to have disappeared and gave one migrant a card with only her first name and a phone number. That’s not a government employee, at least not one working on the books.

Here’s more pieces of the puzzle. We now learn that “Perla,” the woman who coaxed the migrants on to the DeSantis Air flights under false pretenses, paid another migrant, a 27 year old Venezuelan named Emmanuel, for the contact information of the migrants Perla would eventually coax onto the plane. Emmanuel gave her contact info for about 10 migrants he’d met at the migrant center where they were saying.

Important context here from TPM Reader and Alum WT …

Cannon’s order denying the DOJ’s stay request is insane enough that it seems to have overshadowed the other thing she did yesterday: issuing the attached “order appointing a special master.” The actual details of the order are gobsmackingly bad: the order neuters Dearie’s authority before the process begins, boxes in the DOJ, and puts Trump’s counsel in the driver’s seat of the entire process.

Aaron Blake and TPM alum Greg Sargent both had pieces in the Post yesterday looking at whether these immigrant transport stunts might break the law. There are a number of interesting legal complexities. One has to do with whether they’re “illegal” or “undocumented.” There are laws against knowingly transporting such immigrants or doing so to further them committing crimes. But in most cases these are people who have been processed as asylum seekers and are awaiting an asylum hearing. So until that hearing they are in the country legally. So that doesn’t really apply. It’s also unclear what state government authorities might be authorized to do as opposed to federal authorities. But the operative issue seems to be whether people are coerced or deceived into being transported.

I am both aghast and now fascinated by just what Ron DeSantis was doing here. We get the basic idea of shipping immigrants and legal asylum-seekers to liberal cities to own the libs. But DeSantis apparently sent a team to Texas who approached a few dozen Venezuelan immigrants after they emerged from a shelter in San Antonio, Texas. According to one of the migrants, Luis, age 27, they were “promised a flight to Massachusetts, along with shelter, support for 90 days, help with work permits and English lessons.” The woman called herself “Perla” but did not provide any identification or explanation of who she was working for other than having the group sign liability waivers.

The Post now reports that at a GOP donor retreat last weekend DeSantis bragged that he had a pot of money for shipping migrants to liberal parts of the country and that he might go to Texas to find immigrants to send. “I do have this money. I want to be helpful. Maybe we will go to Texas and help. Maybe we’ll send to Chicago, Hollywood, Martha’s Vineyard. Who knows?”

Gov. DeSantis got a state law passed in Florida to ship migrants out of Florida and send them to high profile liberal parts of the country as a sort of performative cruelty. So far so good. But The Miami Herald now reports that those Venezuelan migrants don’t appear to have started off in Florida. They appear to have been brought from Texas. At least that’s what a number of them say. And flight records show the flights did originate in Texas.

There were two flights and they made stops in Crestview, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina. Both started in Texas. Florida picked up the tab.