Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has still not officially announced his 2024 presidential campaign, but that hasn’t stopped him from humiliating himself before he can hit the trail. 
 

• A new CBS News-YouGov poll shows that disgraced former president Donald Trump leads DeSantis by a staggering 36 points in a hypothetical GOP primary. Among those who say they’ll be voting for The Don again, some three-quarters of them cite “he actually won in 2020” as a reason for supporting him. Oh good! Everything’s fine!
   

• But today, we’re talking about Ron, not Don. In absence of any policy that would actually improve people’s lives, DeSantis has gone all in on culture-war issues, a gamble that may be winning him support in his native Florida among frothing conservative partisans, but is not paying off nationally. Even a recent Fox News poll had DeSantis polling at just 21 percent, about as well as anti-vaxx freak Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., (whose name, we note, is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) is polling among Democrats.
   

• But DeSantis is not fit to flop domestically, no, he has taken his act abroad as well. Last Friday, the Republican presidential hopeful failed to impress British business executives at a high-profile London financial event where his performance was described by attendees as “horrendous,” “low-wattage,” and “like the end of an overseas trip.” Ouch. The trip was officially sold as an olive branch to “build Florida’s economic relationships with the U.K., Israel, South Korea, and Japan,” but uh, yeah, we all know what’s going on here. One attendee said “It felt really a bit like we were watching a state-level politician. I wouldn’t be surprised if [people in attendance] came out thinking ‘that’s not the guy,’...nobody in the room was left thinking, ‘this man’s going places’.” Wow, we really could read quotes of British people insulting Ron DeSantis all day.

We’ve seen unexpected come-from behind primary wins before, but DeSantis will have to answer for the chaos he has sown in his own state first. 
 

• DeSantis has attracted some support from more traditional old-guard Republican establishment figures, and those who seek a “less controversial” alternative to Trump. But of course, “controversial” is subjective. Yes, DeSantis won his re-election by a landslide in the Sunshine State, where the GOP has gerrymandered itself chokehold on all three branches of the state government and have used it to horrifying ends. DeSantis has overseen and signed into law a six-week abortion ban, the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, and a host of nationalist changes to the state’s History and Civics curriculum. 
   

• Then there’s DeSantis’s bizarre fight with one of his state’s biggest money-makers, tourist attractions, and beloved worldwide brand: Disney. Disney has sued the state of Florida alleging that the myriad DeSantis measures singling the company out represent a politically motivated, vengeful reaction to the company’s opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” law. Disney has consistently been able to legally outmaneuver DeSantis, and even giant-headed monster Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) questioned DeSantis’s motives in the fight, tacitly accusing him of hollow “virtue signaling.” Gaetz is a Trump sycophant to his core, of course, but his views reflect many Republican voters and officials who think DeSantis is all hot fascist air and no substance. 

Ron DeSantis likely (and blessedly) will not get to the White House, but the damage he has done in Florida will take decades to unravel, and there will be more little authoritarian Republican governors who spring up in his image. (Maybe even some tall ones, too!) It is important to understand that the rising tide GOP fascism did not begin and will not end with DeSantis and Trump, and we will have to continue fighting against them at every turn.

The board of directors for the Writers Guild of America voted unanimously to strike last night after studios refused to budge on the most basic terms of union negotiations. The WGA released data last month showing that about half of all TV-series writers were paid the basic minimum rate, regardless of experience, and median pay has declined 23 percent when adjusted for inflation in the past decade, all while studio executives are making money hand over fist. The landscape of television has changed irrevocably since the last writers strike in 2007. Studios have maintained profits thanks to huge deals with streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu, while writers have received pennies on the dollar in residuals, a far cry from what they could earn decades ago in syndication or through DVD sales. 

Negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, came to a halt when the AMPTP not only rejected almost all of the WGA proposals, but refused to provide counter-offers. Now the studios are crying poor, despite their aforementioned profits and CEO compensation ranging from $30-300 million per year. The WGA said in a statement that the current structure imposed by studios has “created a gig economy inside a union workforce.” Many of the guild’s almost 12,000 writers can barely afford rent. A writer for FX's hit show The Bear went to the Writers Guild of America Awards, where he won for Best Comedy Series, while he had a negative bank balance. The WGA also asked for clear-cut A.I. regulations, and assurances that it will not be used to write or rewrite literary material, a request the AMPTP also rejected and refused to counter. Television would not exist without writers, and the WGA is simply asking for a tiny fraction of the industry’s huge profits to be shared with the people who help make its products profitable.

House Democrats have initiated a procedural maneuver to force a vote on a clean debt-limit increase because Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a clown taking our national economy to the edge of default. 

The White House is weighing whether or not to invoke the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which states that the “validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned,” to avert defaulting. 

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could overturn 40 years of precedent that has allowed the executive branch of the federal government to interpret ambiguous statutes when issuing regulations. Anything to let industry destroy the environment, the economy, access to health care…

A Montana judge ruled that state-Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D-MT) cannot return to the House floor after being barred from the chamber for discussion and debate by her ghoulish Republican colleagues in response to her criticism of anti-trans legislation. 

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) announced he will not seek re-election in 2024, leaving a rare opening for new Democratic blood in the upper chamber. 

Russia released another concentrated missile attack in Ukraine on Monday, damaging buildings, killing two people, and wounding 40 in the eastern city of Pavlohrad.

Joe Tacopina, who’s leading disgraced former president Donald Trump’s defense against rape allegations, has seemingly bungled his own cross-examination in the case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. 

After turning a blind eye to its presence in their ranks for many years, Germany is taking on Russian espionage in the country head-on as Russian assets continue to hack channels of German politicians and Parliament. 

The White House announced it will send 1,500 troops to the United States-Mexico border ahead of an expected surge in migrants following the end of COVID-era restrictions. 

A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice predicts that there will be a significant turnover in local election officials before the 2024 elections, up to  20 percent of all election workers. Thirty percent of election workers have reported being personally harassed, abused, or threatened since 2020. Hmmm…I wonder who caused that? 

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Tuesday debating renewed calls for increased ethics standards for the Supreme Court amid discovery of buckets of money flowing into individual Justices in the form of undisclosed gifts and the like. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who chairs the committee, addressed Chief Justice John Roberts’ refusal to testify for the committee, saying that the move “raises more questions than it resolves,” and shows that the justices on the highest court in the land do not feel “bound” by any authority to address ethical transgressions. The debate fell as expected along party lines, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) accusing the “Democratic Left” of attempting to “destroy the legitimacy of the Roberts court.” Lindsey, I speak for all of us on the Democratic Left when I say we could never destroy the legitimacy of the Roberts court better than the Roberts court is doing themselves. Graham said he does not believe that Congress should take over the Court’s ability to self-police, which is obviously going great for everyone, nor does he support legislative proposals that would require a SCOTUS code of conduct. Wow, would be pretty nice if all of the Democrats on the Judiciary were present at a time like this, right, Sen. Feinstein?

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) has joined a growing chorus of officials calling on Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to resign. 

A Florida woman threw a glass of wine at Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) at a wine festival. She was arrested but we think she’s innocent!