- Via CBS News: Homan says Trump administration has “no intention to arrest” Newsom — after Trump says “I’d do it”.
- Via MSNBC: ICE agents mistakenly detain U.S. marshal in Arizona.
- Via NPR: From 1,300 to 81 workers: Trump official plans to cut Voice of America to the bone. Who needs soft power anyway?
- Via Local12: ‘I made the promise’: 80-year-old bagger works to pay off late wife’s medical debt.
- Via the NYT‘s Editorial Board comes a list worth reading, A Comprehensive Accounting of Trump’s Culture of Corruption. I will highlight this, which feels like a too-on-the-nose element from a mediocre TV show.
During his first term, those currying favor with Mr. Trump bought drinks and dinner or spent the night at his Washington hotel. Now they can spend half a million dollars to join the private club Donald Trump Jr. is opening in Georgetown. It is called Executive Branch. The club’s founding members include Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, twin brothers whose cryptocurrency company was being sued by the S.E.C. — until Mr. Trump’s administration put a hold on the lawsuit.
- Via Raw Story: ‘Desist’: Dept run by DeSantis orders reporter to stop probing wife’s charity
“The DeSantis administration is refusing to turn over public records about Hope Florida and now threatening reporters who are trying to know more about it,” wrote Lawrence Mower of the Tampa Bay Times.
Hope Florida, a pet project of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his wife to connect low-income families to private and faith-based sources of assistance and reduce government dependency, has been increasingly mired in scandal since it was revealed the DeSantis administration diverted $10 million from a Medicaid settlement into the charity. That money then went to a pair of “dark money” groups that later gave $8.5 million to a political committee run by DeSantis’ chief of staff.
Republicans in the legislature have condemned this arrangement as possibly illegal, and state prosecutors have opened an investigation. The governor, for his part, has blasted the scrutiny into Hope Florida, saying he continues to stand behind the program and calling the scandal “manufactured.”
- Xenophobia on display. The politics of us and them.
- Gleeful thuggery on display. And really, more of us and them.
- And now for something completely unexpected (Bret Baier of Fox News rapping or thereabouts).
