Alternate headline: Florida State GOPers Are Legislating DeSantis’ 2024 Bid Into Existence

As I was editing my colleague Kaila Philo’s piece here today on the College Board’s biting response to the DeSantis administration’s “PR stunt,” this bit struck me:

“They provided these AP courses for a long time, but you know, there are probably some other vendors who may be able to do that job as good or even a lot better,” the governor said at a news conference in Naples, Florida. He also said that he’s spoken with Florida House Speaker Paul Renner about potential legislation to “re-evaluate how Florida’s doing that.”

It’s been clear for some time that Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his constituents as pawns and his gubernatorial powers as props to prep his national image for a 2024 bid.

While each of his various policy proposals and attacks on public education, people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, the media, etc. have been projected as the hardline governor’s humble war on woke-ism in his state, he knows quite well how to appeal to the MAGA crowd. And he’s been using his tenure as governor to boost his national relevance ahead of what is shaping up to be a nasty GOP primary.

And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is following his lead.

I will preface this by saying that it appears the issue has been resolved BUT for at least a few of the last 24 hours, Democrats held a supermajority on the subcommittee that Jim Jordan created to, essentially, find out what dirt the DOJ has on him.

That’s a bit reductive but not untrue. Here’s what happened:

Late last year we reported on a few surprising developments in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s inquiry into Donald Trump — developments that signaled Bragg was breathing new life into his office’s criminal probe of Trump that, up until that point, appeared to have stalled out.

Would love to be a fly on the wall for this bro-fest.

The one attention-seeker who debased himself on the House floor for an entire week in order to get his new job wanted to show the other attention-seeker, who pretended to want to buy Twitter to own the libs and then actually had to buy it, his new office.

According to several reports from the Hill it seems that Elon Musk met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) today. McCarthy claims that the meeting was just a couple of old pals broing out on his birthday.

Mother Jones just reported that the new guy that the George Santos campaign listed as its new treasurer on FEC filings Wednesday is not actually his campaign’s new treasurer.

Their headline is 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 George Santos’ New Treasurer Wants You to Know He’s Not George Santos’ Treasurer.

Mother Jones called the attorney for Thomas Datwyler, a campaign finance consultant who was listed on a handful of FEC docs filed by campaign committees affiliated with George Santos as the Santos campaign’s new treasurer today, replacing Nancy Marks. Datwyler’s attorney told the publication that he never agreed to be treasurer and even told the campaign straight up that he wasn’t interested in the gig.

Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro’s contempt trial for defying the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena is coming up in less than a week. And Trump’s lawyers are asserting once more, in a last-ditch effort at proving something, that Navarro was right to have blown off the congressional subpoena because he was protected by executive privilege.

A jury convicted four more members of the far-right Oath Keepers group of seditious conspiracy today, bringing to a close one the highest-profile prosecutions to be brought thus far in response to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. It also leaves us with the question: will that be it when it comes to accountability for the attack?

In closing arguments on Monday, some of the Oath Keepers’ lawyers were not subtle in outlining where they believe the real blame for the attack should lie.

“Responsibility really rests at our politicians’ feet,” Scott Weinberg, the attorney for Oath Keeper David Moerschel said on Monday, per the Washington Post. “The president and Stewart Rhodes were claiming that the world is coming to an end even before the election.”

The glitch was only temporary, but, man, it’s gold. You really can’t make this stuff up (unless you are George Santos).

Long Island news outlet Newsday has the goods.

The Jewish Daily Forward, the same news outlet that broke the story that Rep. George Santos (R-NY) lied about his heritage, has now seemingly confirmed another suspected Santos fib — that his mother was in the vicinity of World Trade Center on 9/11 and survived the attack.