DeSantis: The Authoritarian

Cuddles · Aug 20, 2023

gwb-trading said:
Florida prosecutor warns about the wanna-be authoritarian dictator.

Ron DeSantis Is About To Run For President. Andrew Warren Has A Warning.
The Democratic prosecutor for a Florida county was suspended by DeSantis, a move he believes has been chilling for democracy. "No one else should have to adjust their behavior to the whims of the dictator," he said.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-desantis-president-andrew-warren_n_6464326fe4b056fd46d639f9

Of all the places Andrew Warren imagined his career would take him, it was never here: the lobby of an upscale chain hotel in downtown Montgomery, huddling with his legal team and preparing for a hearing that — maybe within a year if he’s lucky — will result in him getting his job back.

“I didn’t ask to be the tip of the spear in this fight for freedom and democracy,” Warren said, settling into a tall wingback chair on the morning of May 2, several hours before he was due in a federal appellate court just down the street. “But the governor picked a fight with me, so I’m fighting on behalf of everyone who cares about these issues.”

It has been over nine months since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Warren, accusing the twice-elected Democratic prosecutor for Hillsborough County of “incompetence” and “neglect of duty” in a scathing 29-page executive order last August. The Florida Constitution gives the governor the power to remove elected officials in cases of extreme misconduct. But those powers have rarely, if ever, been used in a case like Warren’s.

“This is something you’d expect to see happen in Turkey or North Korea or China. This is not something you’d ever expect to see happen in the United States,” said Warren, whose general measured demeanor during our interview sometimes gave way to a quiet rage about the whole episode.

“The governor is the one who did wrong here,” Warren told me, “and no one else should have to adjust their behavior to the whims of the dictator.”

Frothing with the polite but pointed anger of a clean-cut attorney, Warren described the surreal events of the past year, which has included: Learning of his suspension in the middle of grand jury proceedings for a decades-old cold case. Being escorted from his office with his belongings by armed sheriff’s deputies. Watching the governor brag about his suspension on Fox News. Reading about his suspension in the governor’s book. Hearing about his suspension in the governor’s stump speeches. Reliving this episode of his life over and over again — in court, in interviews, in conversations with friends and strangers. Having his career and life essentially frozen. Receiving death threats against his family because of the bright spotlight that DeSantis put him under.

“This has been very difficult for me professionally,” said Warren, who is still living with his family in Tampa, “because I care so much about the office. It’s been very difficult for me politically, because the most powerful Republican in the country is targeting me specifically, as an individual. And it’s been very difficult for me personally ― everything from just the huge disruption it’s had on my life with my family, to getting death threats from people who tell me that my children deserve to die for the things I’ve done.”

In his lawsuit, now winding its way through federal courts and currently being heard by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here in Montgomery, Warren argues that DeSantis violated his constitutional right to free speech and removed him without cause. It will likely be decided as DeSantis is running for president on his record of governing “the free state of Florida.”

DeSantis is expected to announce his campaign for the Republican nomination in the coming days. He has already made Warren’s firing a staple of his stump speech, using the episode to show how he’s crushed foes using his executive fist. “[These state attorneys] want to weaponize the power of their office to target people they don’t like,” DeSantis said last month in Manchester, New Hampshire. “And when we had an attorney like that, a district attorney in Tampa who had been funded by [George] Soros and said he would not uphold the laws of the state, I removed him from his post. He’s gone.”

Warren was never bankrolled by Soros, the Democratic mega-donor who is a perennial target of conspiracies and hate on the right — but he likely benefited from contributions Soros made to the Florida Democratic Party at one point or another. DeSantis, perhaps projecting, also misrepresented the argument he used to fire Warren, who has never been accused, in either the executive order suspending him or in subsequent court filings, of going after people he didn’t like.

The governor’s office, which generally only interacts with certain friendly news outlets, never responded to a request from HuffPost to provide a comment for this article.

Although it’s easier to describe Warren as having been removed or fired, he’s technically in a state of suspension that could be reversed — or made permanent — pending a hearing by the Florida Senate. But given the heavy Republican makeup of that body, Warren is exploring other remedies.

Warren’s suspension came two months after he co-signed a letter with more than 80 other progressive prosecutors opposing the criminalization of abortion and transgender health care, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal on abortion rights. In his executive order, DeSantis cited both the letter and what he characterized as a “blanket refusal” to prosecute some low-level crimes, such as the aggressive ticketing of Tampa bicyclists, most of whom were Black. Warren disputes that his office had “blanket” policies that endangered public safety, as DeSantis tried to argue in his order — and his case hinges on whether a panel of majority-conservative appellate judges see it the same way.

“The governor has his talking points, which are divorced from reality. From the day I was suspended, I said this was a publicity stunt, the allegations are false, this is un-American,” said Warren, on the edge of his seat, his legal team hovering nearby.

A trim 46-year-old with light salt-and-pepper hair, Warren sometimes doesn’t blink when he’s talking. During an interview, he comes off as a deeply focused person who has spent the last nine months of his life consumed by two overlapping objectives — getting his job back and sounding the alarm on DeSantis, whom he sees as a threat to democracy. “Powerful people without a moral compass are dangerous,” Warren said. “Politicians who are willing to break the law to get votes or to get applause are dangerous.”

Politics aside, however, the two men have, if not a lot, at least some major things in common. They are both Florida natives in their mid-40s. They followed similar paths into public service after graduating from elite law schools (Warren from Columbia, DeSantis from Harvard). As young lawyers, they both worked for the Justice Department as federal prosecutors. And they’ve both confronted family tragedies in recent years ― Warren, after his pregnant wife was involved in a car crash and the couple lost their baby, and DeSantis, after his wife was diagnosed and underwent treatment for breast cancer.

Their paths diverged dramatically once DeSantis became a congressman and joined the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, and Warren, having moved from Washington to Tampa to raise his family, decided to challenge a longtime GOP incumbent for state attorney.

The job of chief law enforcement officer, by its very nature, relies heavily on the discretion of the individuals doing the job to determine how crimes are prosecuted and sentenced. That’s why Warren’s case is so tricky and precedent-setting. It’s also why, in nearly every state, prosecutors are locally elected and therefore not subject to the political whims of a faraway official — the same principle behind a governor not picking the members of your city council or school board.

DeSantis isn’t the only Florida governor who has kneecapped a prosecutor. Sen. Rick Scott, the Republican who preceded DeSantis, got a judge to allow him to reassign murder cases from an Orlando prosecutor who was opposed to using the death penalty. But Scott didn’t try to get that prosecutor fired. “When I was there I was very clear — you have to prosecute your cases,” Scott told HuffPost, declining to comment on what’s happening now between DeSantis and Warren.

Warren came into office in 2016 after upsetting a longtime Republican in the purple west-central Florida county that encompasses Tampa, the state’s third-largest city. He says his backers were both Republicans and Democrats drawn to his mission of more equitable criminal justice outcomes amid a national reckoning over police brutality. Accusing his opponent of being too heavy-handed when the times demanded the opposite, Warren won a surprise victory followed four years later by his reelection to a second term.

At a time when Florida Democrats are desperately trying to build their bench, Warren has been floated as a possible U.S. Senate candidate against Scott in 2024. His close friend Nikki Fried, the newly elected chair of the Florida Democratic Party, told HuffPost that Warren would make a great candidate for any number of Republican-held positions that Democrats are hoping to contest. “He’s a true leader with a big heart, and unfortunately in politics right now you don’t find a lot of those,” Fried said.

Warren can also raise money. While he declined to give an exact figure, he said he’s brought in “several hundred thousand” dollars through a nonprofit for his legal defense.

But Warren isn’t interested in another office, at least not right now. “It’s wonderful to have people who are so confident in your leadership to encourage you to run for different positions,” he said. “But my focus is on the state attorney’s job.”

Running statewide in Florida won’t be easy for any Democrat. So far, no serious candidates have emerged to challenge Scott in what was once a Senate battleground. A bellwether for these times, Warren’s own swing county, Hillsborough, lurched to the right in the last election, shedding several Democratic officeholders.

DeSantis cites his own blowout reelection last year to justify the heavy leverage of his executive powers. The governor has single-handedly spearheaded measures such as banning transgender medical therapy for minors and expanding the state’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law into high schools. He also amped up his feud with a beloved American corporation that happens to be one of his state’s largest taxpayers. DeSantis wears these battles as a badge of honor. “My view is simple,” he told an audience last month at Liberty University, uttering a line that’s become a staple of his speeches and the overriding ethos of his governorship. “I may have earned 50% of the vote, but that entitled me to wield 100% of the executive power.”

DeSantis might even be going after another Democratic prosecutor. Monique Worrell, Orlando’s state attorney, said this month that she believes DeSantis is building a case to target her next, accusing the governor of seeking to “exploit his political agenda against me.”

Fried, Florida’s former agriculture commissioner and the last Democrat elected statewide, said DeSantis has created a climate of fear in Florida.

“We’ve got a governor who believes he’s the ultimate ruler of the state. He’s taking away people’s freedom of speech and he’s removing officers who have been elected by their constituents at the local level,” she said.

Warren’s best shot at reversing his suspension lies with the appellate court, which is reviewing his challenge to an earlier ruling from a federal judge in Florida. This ruling was both good and bad for Warren — good in that it seemed to generally side with Warren that DeSantis violated his free speech and removed him from office without citing “even a hint of misconduct”; bad because despite all that, the judge still found he didn’t have the constitutional authority to restore Warren as a local prosecutor.

Documents unearthed in discovery support the argument that DeSantis doled out a punishment driven overwhelmingly by his political agenda. An early version of the executive order made numerous references to Soros, the political lightning rod, which DeSantis ultimately struck out with a blue marker. Beyond that, the governor’s attorney struggled to build a case showing that Warren had undermined public safety, according to a New York Times analysis of the discovery documents.

That didn’t stop DeSantis from declaring, in an Aug. 4 press conference announcing the suspension, that Warren’s tenure had been “devastating to the rule of law.” He made similar comments that night to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“Tucker, you’ve documented the destruction that we’ve seen with these Soros prosecutors around the county, where they basically take it upon themselves to determine which laws should be followed and which laws should not be followed,” a grinning DeSantis said, with photos of Warren proceeding to flash across the screen.

Warren disputes that his policies had any negative impact on crime, noting that, by the state of Florida’s own crime reporting metrics, overall crime declined in Hillsborough County under his watch. “This isn’t a Portland or San Francisco scenario,” he said.

Republicans blame soft-on-crime policies, and the “woke” district attorneys they say promote them, for the visible homelessness and addiction in places like Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, an idea that’s been relentlessly reinforced by conservative media. I asked Warren to define a “woke prosecutor,” and he didn’t know where to begin. In general, the term has become a catchall on the right for anything deemed too liberal or politically correct. “You have to ask the people on Fox News [what it means],” Warren said. “I’m a moderate prosecutor from a moderate county. I have done things that have frustrated the far left as much as the far right.”

Warren’s suspension was a direct result of DeSantis’ war on “woke,” his attorneys argue, a pretext the governor has used to go after schools, government agencies and businesses in a way that Democrats, at least, find chilling.

“The animus here toward woke ideas and woke viewpoints was a motivating factor,” Warren’s attorney David O’Neill argued to the appellate panel. Republicans have made the word so pervasive that it’s being used now in a deadly serious manner in federal courts.

DeSantis was represented in Montgomery by two young attorneys for the state of Florida who returned to a single, much-examined line in the abortion rights letter that Warren signed last June. The sentence in question seems to signal, beyond just the general opposition to the criminalization of abortion, that the co-signers would go a step further and refuse to prosecute abortion crimes altogether. Warren, as far as he knows, is the only prosecutor from the letter who lost his job over this single sentence.

In the chaotic and emotional days that followed the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling and the letter’s release, Warren said he attempted to clarify that he didn’t mean he would disregard abortion law in its entirety. At the time, Florida lawmakers had just passed a 15-week abortion ban. Since then, they’ve passed a six-week ban, which DeSantis put his signature on last month but hasn’t said much about since.

Warren can expect a ruling sometime within the next year. It may not be the ruling he’s hoping for.

The appellate panel is composed of three judges: one Democratic appointee and two Republicans, including a Trump nominee. And beyond this panel of judges in Alabama, there are only dead ends — the Republican-controlled Florida Senate and equally conservative Florida Supreme Court — underscoring how entrenched Republicans have become in Florida under DeSantis and throughout the age of Donald Trump.

Warren, who might violate the terms of his suspension if he were to take another legal job, has had a lot of downtime to reflect on this battle and what it all means. For himself and his future. For Florida. For the country, if DeSantis beats both Trump and Joe Biden and tries to run the federal government like the state of Florida — which he’s promised to do.

“The governor has made it clear that if he disagrees with who you are or what you said or what you stand for, then you’re at risk for being attacked,” Warren said. “I mean, look at the people he’s gone after. Disney, obviously. The Special Olympics. He’s attacked businesses. He’s attacked teachers. He’s attacking the LGBTQ community. He’s attacked universities and professors and boards of regents. He’s attacked elected officials. If you don’t say what he wants you to say, then you are at risk.”

My final question for Warren was whether he regrets signing the abortion letter — after all, had he not, he might still be employed. Would he risk this all over again? Or would he try to find another, less out-there way to signal his opposition to the abortion climate? Warren shifted uncomfortably in his seat. For the first time in our conversation he became a little less lawyerly and a little more pissed, channeling, in a certain sense, his nemesis.

“Your question to me is — should I have done something differently and not spoken my mind so as not to annoy the governor of Florida? Should I not have exercised my constitutional right to free speech? So I didn’t run the risk of the governor breaking state and federal law?” he said. “Americans don’t need permission slips to exercise their constitutional rights. No, I wouldn’t change a thing, and I shouldn’t have to change a thing.”
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gwb-trading said:
A typical authoritarian clown. Note the jurisdiction of the two sheriffs DeSantis paraded on stage do not include the area where the DA was let go from. Is DeSantis unable to find a police chief or sheriff from inside the DA's county to support him?

Florida Gov. DeSantis Suspends Official, Smiles Behind 'This Is Fine' Meme
The Florida governor seemed very happy that a sheriff used memes to support anti-democratic actions
https://kotaku.com/ron-desantis-disney-florida-meme-lawyer-removed-sheriff-1850721850

Florida Governor, Disney hater, and high-heeled shoe fan Ron DeSantis announced the immediate suspension of a democratically elected state attorney on August 9 with the help of an online meme. The resulting scene is sad, confusing, and yet another example of how the terminally online politician is just the worst.

If you’ve been reading Kotaku over the last few months, you’ve seen DeSantis’ ongoing legal fight with Disney over its special district, which gave the company unique control over Disney World’s taxes, water, and more before the governor had it removed. The presidential hopeful didn’t like that Disney lightly criticized his 2022 House Bill 1557, referred to by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prevents discussion of sexual identity in Florida’s public schools. His fight against the mouse has gone poorly, costing him and his state $1 billion in the process. But DeSantis isn’t just picking fights with corporations that don’t align with his political views, he’s also going after elected officials in Florida who dare to not worship the ground upon which he walks.

As reported by CNN, on August 9 DeSantis (and his weird face) suspended elected prosecutor Monique Worrell of Florida’s 9th Judicial Circuit citing “neglect of duty and incompetence” as the reasoning for the controversial move. DeSantis believes she hasn’t been tough enough on criminals, ignoring that the voters of her district get to make that decision. The move—one he’s done before—is being criticized by Florida democrats as a “political hit job” and a threat to the state’s crumbling democracy.

Sheriff using memes during an official press event
During the press conference announcing the move, DeSantis was joined by two local sheriffs, who CNN points out don’t serve any county that overlaps with Worrell’s jurisdiction. Both sheriffs criticized Worrell and praised DeSantis. But one of them decided—with I assume DeSantis and his team’s approval—to use the conference to show off printed versions of the “This is fine” meme.

“I want to show you a popular meme,” said Sheriff Grady Judd as he whipped out the image.

“This is fine. As the house is on fire, our little hot dog here says: ‘This is fine.’ He was a dog. Now he’s a hot dog because his house is on fire.”

At this point, the sheriff then swapped the popular meme out for an edited version that features Worrell sitting in the place of the dog, surrounded by flames. During all of this, DeSantis can be seen smiling behind the sheriff and his images.

“Well, I have another one,” said Grady. “Monique Worrell says: ‘This is fine.’ The fact that two police officers were shot in the face, this is fine. Despite criminals not being prosecuted, this is fine.”

The sheriff then proceeded to praise Worrell’s replacement, Judge Andrew Bain, pointing out he was an all-star football player (for some reason) before commending DeSantis on doing what’s “right.”

“I am your duly elected state attorney,” said Worrell in a speech following the suspension. “And nothing done by a weak dictator can change that. This is an outrage.”

Police officers praising a state governor for removing another democratically elected official using online memes. Things are going great in Florida…
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I thought you would be delighted by these gestapo news GWB?

gwb-trading · Aug 21, 2023

This is how authoritarians operate and try to not pay for what they use. Pay up, chump. He couldn't even use a golf course in Florida, eh?

Georgia Golf Course Told DeSantis to Stop Coming for Free
https://www.thedailybeast.com/georgia-golf-course-told-desantis-to-stop-coming-for-free

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took so many trips to a lush Georgia golf course he favored—one that boasts a membership fee in the thousands of dollars—that he was asked by the club to either pay up or stop coming, according to a new Washington Post report that examined how lobbyists curried favor with the politician.

In the first few years of his governorship, aides worked to auction off the governor’s time, including hours-long golf sessions, to secure donor commitments.

“It’s about getting your phone calls returned and having the ability to make asks,” a lobbyist told the Post. “You want to engender access and goodwill with the governor.” A campaign spokesperson told the Post that the governor never dictated policy per a donor’s request. DeSantis did not return to the Georgia golf course.

Read it at The Washington Post

gwb-trading · Aug 23, 2023

Looks like DeSantisLand is finding out the definition of FAFO as it applies to tourism & conventions.

Florida's Broward County says losses mount for tourism as more conventions stay away, citing fear for safety of diverse groups
https://news.yahoo.com/floridas-broward-county-says-losses-212500160.html

gwb-trading · Aug 25, 2023

Sounds like actual Navy Seal are sick of Lil' Ron's lies and want to kick his ass.

Actual SEALs Fume at DeSantis’ Navy Service Claims
DeSantis made a point during Wednesday night’s Republican debate to say he was “assigned with” and “deployed alongside” Navy SEALs.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/actual-seals-fume-at-ron-desantis-navy-service-claims

gwb-trading · Aug 26, 2023

So DeSantis promised these Disney district firefighters a large pay raise for supporting him... and he screwed them out of that. Now he is screwing them out of their park passes.

This is what you get for supporting an authoritarian. Were these firefighters stupid enough to think Ron actually cared about them.

Disney Firefighters Who Backed DeSantis’ Takeover of Tax District Shocked and Upset When Board Moves to End Their Park Passes
https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/di...et-when-board-moves-to-end-their-park-passes/

gwb-trading · Aug 28, 2023

The impacted community knows who the right-wing authoritarian politician is who promotes hated towards minorities to further his political career. The end result is this type of violence which DeSantis and other GOPers bear a direct responsibility for.

Jacksonville shooting: DeSantis booed at vigil for victims of racist attack
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66637476

gwb-trading · Aug 29, 2023

COVID lockdowns saved millions of lives — so of course Ron DeSantis is mad about them
The Republican myths about COVID policies
https://www.latimes.com/business/st...aved-lives-and-your-policies-did-the-opposite

gwb-trading · Aug 29, 2023

DeSantis accidentally says the quiet part out loud. Well, Lil' Ron is doing is part to ensure the life expectancy drops in Florida. Just look at his Covid policy and the results -- where Florida ranked number 1 in Covid deaths in both raw and per capita figures after April 2021 when the vaccine was widely available.

Ron DeSantis counts on shorter lifespans to help with senior entitlement crisis
'What we've had in this country is a pretty significant decline in life expectancy.'
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/631089-desantis-life-expectancy/

Gov. Ron DeSantis says people aren’t living as long as they used to, so that should help protect them from losing Social Security and Medicare protections when they get old.

“It should reflect life expectancy and what we’ve had in this country is a pretty significant decline in life expectancy. And so given those circumstances to raise (qualifying ages), it would be cutting against where the demographics are going. So that’s not going to happen,” the Governor said in Iowa Saturday.

DeSantis made the comments during a Never Back Down event in Garner, and it continues a theme of recent vintage in which he has noted people are dying at younger ages than they did years back.

During an interview earlier this month, the Florida Governor told CNBC viewers that “in the last five or six years, life expectancy in the United States has gone down.”

He did not blame it solely on the COVID-19 pandemic, even after his interviewer’s prompting.

“I think it started before COVID and I think it’s continued even here afterwards. I think it’s more than, more than just COVID. I mean, I think that there’s deaths of despair. I think you have (drugs),” DeSantis said.

Life expectancy in the U.S. has decreased to 76.4 years in 2023 from 77.28 in 2020, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

“So, I think it’s hard to say, you know, raise the age (for Social Security eligibility) when the average life expectancy is going down. We used to think that life expectancy was just going to keep going up and that’s just not been the case.”

DeSantis’ position on senior citizen entitlements has been a moving target in recent months, as he has been walking back previous calls for “market forces” and privatization to replace current programs.

DeSantis has said before that changes for younger generations are inevitable, noting he doesn’t expect to draw the entitlement without material changes in federal practices.

“I think a lot of younger people like me are receptive to this because I don’t assume we’re going to get any of this at this point right now,” the 44-year-old Governor said during a May interview with John Stossel.

Anglo_pride · Aug 29, 2023

Desantis will be our next President.

gwb-trading · Aug 30, 2023

Disney continues to pull its money and activities out of DeSantisLand. But still plans to spend 9 figures on lawyers to tell Lil' Ron and his cronies to stuff themselves.

Disney Is Not Even Trying To Hide Its Disfavor Toward Florida With Upcoming Offerings
https://insidethemagic.net/2023/08/disney-shoves-all-new-offerings-out-of-florida-ea1/