Daily Archives: June 6, 2023

Today’s News Bits: Republican Follies

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So what’s with the merger of the PGA and the LIV? Not that I pay any attention to golf, but I thought they were bitter enemies. I bet golf fans are not going to be happy.

There’s a lot of speculation that Jack Smith will bring indictments this week on the documents case. One complication is that he’s had a Florida grand jury looking at the  case as well, it was revealed in the past several hours. I understand some of Trump’s Secret Service detail have testified.

Trump’s lawyers met with Jack Smith yesterday. I wonder how that went?

And then there’s the one about how water from the Mar-a-Lago swimming pool was accidentally drained into the room where the surveillance videos were stored. Sure.

Mark Meadows testified to one of Jack Smith’s grand juries, the New York Times is reporting, but which grand jury and when isn’t clear.

Ron DeSantis’s Florida is still flying migrants to blue states, most recently to California.At least two chartered jets carrying migrants from Florida landed in Sacramento recently. And Gavin Newsom isn’t having it. Newsom is threatening to bring kidnapping charges against DeSantis. From the Los Angeles Times:

Documents carried by the migrants appear to show that the weekend flight was arranged through the Florida Division of Emergency Management and that it was part of the state’s program to relocate migrants, mostly from Texas, to other states, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said.

He doesn’t have enough migrants in Florida so he’s still borrowing them from Texas?

Sixteen migrants from Venezuela and Colombia were transported from Texas to New Mexico and flown on a chartered jet to Sacramento, where they were dropped off Friday at a church, Newsom said.

On Monday, a plane carrying 20 migrants arrived in Sacramento. Both groups were flown by the same contractor and were carrying documents indicating that their transportation involved the state of Florida, according to officials with the California Department of Justice.

Florida’s anti-migrant efforts have had several unintended consequences. Recently Florida passed a law intended to make it harder for undocumented people to remain in Florida without getting caught. Then some Republicans realized that might be a bad idea. 

“This bill is 100 percent supposed to scare you,” said Roth. “I’m a farmer, and the farmers are mad as hell. We are losing employees. They’re already starting to move to Georgia and other states. It’s urgent that you talk to all your people and convince them that you have resources, state representatives, and other people that can explain the bill to you,” he added, essentially begging Florida’s labor force to not leave the state that cares little for them.

Yeah, who’s going to pick the oranges? Whose going to clean all those luxury resort beachfront hotel rooms? The article goes on to say that Farmer Roth is a big-time Trump supporter who also loves Ron DeSantis. But this new bill intended to drive undocumented migrants out of Florida is just to scare people, Roth says. Nobody means it.

The pleading by Republicans who are reaping what they sowed comes after Latin American truck drivers began rallying behind calls to strike and not enter Florida, while thousands of workers and families have marched across the state protesting the bill and threatening to leave the state.

Oh, and remember the flight that was arranged by Florida that took migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vinyard? A Texas sheriff wants to file criminal charges about that.

I agree with Charles Pierce that these little stunts cry out for federal intervention. We really shouldn’t have the governor of one state filing charges against the governor of another state.