This might not be the most important headline to break news today, but longtime readers of Where Things Stand may know that this author enjoys reveling in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ humiliation — at Trump’s hands.
The Florida governor is reaching the end of his current gig as the conduit for the MAGA agenda in the state of Florida. DeSantis will have to leave office in January when his second term is up and he is reportedly “begging” President Trump for a job in his administration. Specifically, DeSantis wants the open attorney general position, the job his state’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi, once held until Trump lost patience with what he apparently felt was her sluggish pace in investigating and prosecuting his political foes.
DeSantis is reportedly also interested in the Defense Department’s top job — watch out Pete Hegseth — and he’d even take a spot on the Supreme Court if the opportunity arises! But attorney general would do just fine, too, Axios reported in a new piece out this afternoon, citing six anonymous sources who were “briefed on the discussions.”
“Ron was begging me to be AG,” Trump reportedly told an unnamed “confidant” recently, in Axios’ words. The two reportedly met at Trump’s National Doral Golf Club in Miami two Sundays ago. During the lunch, the longtime frenemies discussed what might be next for the Florida governor — whose political career Trump has long taken credit for and whose once-presumed takeover of the MAGA mantle Trump ensured would not come to fruition when he emerged as the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination again in 2024.
DeSantis announced his candidacy for president long before Trump officially announced he was running for a second term and there was a brief but comedic period of time during which pundits openly speculated whether DeSantis would take the MAGA movement off of Trump’s hands after Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020. DeSantis spent his first term and the beginning of his second term as governor making his own spin on anti-woke ideology synonymous with Florida Republican politics and many saw the policies of his time as governor as a test run for where MAGA could go next.
DeSantis did ultimately help write the blueprint for what the most bombastic bits of Trump’s agenda could look like at the state level — his state legislature emerged as pioneers in writing anti-DEI policy into state law and he was responsible for manufacturing outrage about LGBTQ indoctrination in our nation’s schools, while helping to usher in a whole new era of anti-trans sentiment among Republican voters. But he was humiliated out of becoming MAGA’s heir apparent during the 2024 Republican primaries and its been unclear what terms the two were on ever since.
Until now, per Axios:
Said another source: “There was a conversation at that lunch. I don’t think AG is real. But he’s gonna be looking for work and Trump likes him.”
— Nicole LaFond
Senate Budget Comm Republicans Kick Off the Reconciliation Process
Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday unveiled Senate Republicans’ budget resolution — the blueprint and the first step to officially start completing the budget reconciliation process that congressional Republicans believe will get Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) even more funding.
Republicans’ push to fund ICE and CBP through the party-line process comes as Senate Democrats have been refusing to provide their votes to give more money to those agencies without the implementation of serious and meaningful reforms to the practices of federal law enforcement agents under those agencies. That demand came after the recent spate of killings carried out by immigration enforcement agents.
“Republicans rejected any commonsense reforms for these agencies such as wearing identification or getting a warrant before breaking into homes,” Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said in a statement in reaction to the budget resolution. “Instead, the Republican plan is more money for more secret police tactics that are terrorizing communities across America.”
The budget resolution text tasks the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with drafting the party line bill and sets a ceiling of $70 billion for each committee.
Though that’s a $140 billion ceiling for the total of the bill, Republicans expect the final reconciliation package to be around $70 billion.
Senate Republicans are aiming to adopt the budget resolution this week. A procedural vote to start considering the budget resolution passed on a party-line 52-46 vote Tuesday afternoon. The upper chamber could start the vote-a-rama as soon as Wednesday though many senators believe it will come on Thursday.
— Emine Yücel
Nine Accused of Sexual Misconduct Still in Office
The National Women’s Defense League — a nonprofit group that is dedicated to fighting sexual misconduct in state level politics — put out a new report in light of recent sexual misconduct-related resignations from Congress. The report focuses on instances of sexual misconduct that have been reported against members of Congress since 2006. At least 30 members of Congress from 13 states and Guam have been accused publicly of sexual misconduct in the workplace while in office, it said.
“When you include accusations of sexual misconduct outside of the workplace and instances that took place prior to serving in Congress, there are 49 members that have been accused publicly that include 137 accusations overall,” the NWDL’s report said, suggesting that the actual amount of sexual misconduct incidents may be three times as high because only 30% of survivors tend to report the incidents. The House Ethics Committee put out a rare public statement on Monday, asking “anyone who may have experienced sexual misconduct by a House Member or staffer, or who has knowledge of such conduct” to report it to the panel.
The NWDL also found that 77 percent of sexual misconduct accusations against members involve legislative staffers and “97 percent of those accused are men targeting women.”
“While some have left office, across all of our data sets in this report, nine of the accused members remain in Congress. Over the last 20 years in the instances reported here, 20 accused members resigned,” the report said. “Taken together, these findings demonstrate that sexual harassment and misconduct in Congress is prevalent, targeted and underaddressed. It spans professional and non-professional contexts, often persists across career stages, and is reinforced by inconsistent accountability mechanisms.”
You can read more from the report here.
— Nicole LaFond
Warsh Won’t Say Trump Lost 2020 Election
TPM reporter Layla A. Jones is out with an insightful analysis of today’s confirmation hearing for Trump’s Federal Reserve Chair nominee Kevin Warsh, which you can read here. In one memorable exchange, Warsh appeared to suggest that Federal Reserve independence must be “earned.”
When it came time for her to ask questions, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) dug in on that point, emphasizing that allowing the Fed to run independent of outside influence from Trump takes courage; “independence takes courage,” she said.
“Let’s check out your independence and your courage,” Warren continued. “We’ll start easy. Mr. Warsh, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”
He would not answer the question directly.
— Nicole LaFond
In Case You Missed It
Just published, from Josh Kovensky: Far-right Exults at Brief Amazon ‘Suppression’ of Favorite Racist Book
Layla A. Jones: Warsh Hearing Reveals How Tightly Trump Has Tied Himself in a Knot on Fed Control
Morning Memo: EXPOSED: 2 CIA Officers Die After Anti-Drug Op in Mexico
Josh Marshall: Personalist Rule and Cash Payoffs: Notes on Trump’s House of Corruption
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
Kash Patel Quickly Sues Over Devastating Story
What We Are Reading
U.S. Abruptly Rescinds Subpoenas It Had Just Issued in John Brennan Inquiry
Trump’s approval on economy falls in AP-NORC poll, showing new warning signs for president
This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men
Trump fought to keep the ballroom fundraising contract secret. Here’s what’s in it.
The Trump administration’s contract governing hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations to build President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom shields donors’ identities, excludes the White House from conflict of interest protections and was disclosed only after a lawsuit and a judge’s order, records obtained by The Washington Post show.
It was a surprise, a surprise it was.
Archive: https://archive.is/Yqc5f
The Trump DoJ just indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on bank fraud for their insertion on undercover reporters into racist and fascist organizations such as the KKK. You have to ask which side of righteousness is the DoJ on here.
The SPLC “defrauded” criminals or worse. These people were not innocent victims. These people have a habit of hanging innocent people from trees and getting away with it. SPLC’s undercover approach to outing these people is fully justified by the DoJ’s complete dereliction of duty in not doing it themselves.
I hope this immoral and unjustified prosecution goes nowhere.
It’ll make good press for a while until boredom sets in and it quietly goes away.
Imagine looking at Trump’s poll numbers and shoving people aside to board the sinking ship.
The SPLC “defrauded” Pale criminals…
FIFY