#dump desantis

[tomorrowusa]

Hitler burned books. Florida's Ron DeSantis saves on lighter fluid by just tossing books into the dumpster.

Specifically, DeSanctimonius (as Weird Donald calls him) had state run New College of Florida (NCF) throw out thousands of LGBTQ+ books. The "don't say gay" governor continues his homophobic rampage of state censorship.

Thousands of books were dumped into the trash by the New College of Florida in Sarasota, including the library for the defunct Gender and Diversity Center inside the Hamilton building for student services. That has some students outraged over why it would throw away books they say could have been donated, a move that is part of a year-long transformation for the small public college in Governor Ron DeSantis’s “war on woke.” Last October, the school said it was getting rid of its gender studies department. Thursday, the school cleared out the Gender and Diversity Center, or GDC, tossing decades of accumulated books. Incoming senior Natalia Benavides couldn’t believe her eyes when stacks of books were tossed into a large dumpster outside NCF’s library. “I saw that dumpster full of books from the library,” she says. “And I said, ‘This is horrendous.’ Plenty of people could re-home those books and take care of them, and they're just sitting there.” New College says most of the books were from its library and were tossed because they are no longer serving the needs of the college, adding “gender studies has been discontinued as an area of concentration at New College and the books are not part of any official college collection or inventory.” Some of the books ended up at the Social Equity Through Education Alliance, known as SEE, which rushed to recover a few hundred books left on the ground.

“This is just a new low,” says SEE executive director Zander Moricz. “It also, beyond being evil, beyond being stupid, is wasteful and does not make sense.”

Ron DeSantis is not up for election this year. But all members of the lower house of the Florida legislature and half of the upper house of the legislature are up for election in November. Floridians should express their displeasure with bigoted GOP legislators by tossing them out of office the way the DeSantis-run NCF tossed out LGBTQ+ related books.

[angelx1992]

[rigil-kentauris]

i hate this thing thats going on where everyone blames allowing trump to take hold of the republican party for all Americas Current Right Wing problems. it allows republicans to so neatly dodge the majority of blame by making their actions out to be a single mistake, that of supporting a single person. in reality, trump is a symptom of republicans numerous actions and beliefs for *decades*, and i cant believe we are letting them off the hook for those hateful deliberate steps just because they are finally deciding to vaguely say trump might maybe has issues

[kaydub80]

Fascism 2024 is an apt description because we keep on having horrible choices on the fucking ballot.

The oligarchs decided that Biden was going to run for reelection especially because they saw how many wanted to avoid a potential 2020 rematch and said "fuck y'all, we're running Biden and Trump again because we can."

[freepassbound]

3. The person you would never want to meet?

11. Favorite age you’ve been so far?

17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?

19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do?

28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place? 

34. What was your last dream about?

3. My late uncle's ex-wife.

11. Oif... I don't know that any of them have been winners for the full year, honestly. 37, I guess? Things were pretty decent then.

17. Only one? Well, presuming it will definitively look like an accident... I guess the most useful person to explode right now would be Musk. The companies might start doing some actual good, and it would free the Bird.

19. I have no idea who (I'm not even comfortable with the idea)... I guess I'd have them do all the stuff I can't seem to - some lawn stuff, some house stuff, some paperwork, some confrontation.

28. Treat every human being like a human being - no meaningless differences justify anything else.

34. I actually remember this for once (maybe because I slept horribly last night) - I dreamt that Putin had been forced to step down and the new Russian leadership (a triad, I believe?) was opening negotiations to withdraw from Ukraine.

What a damn shame that wasn't real.

[internettoday]

Today's Episode of News Dump, this time covering

The Weirdo trying to be 18 forever

George Santos getting in trouble again

Updates on the Trump indictments

Documents on Ron Desantis coming out

An update on the illegal police raid of a Kansas newspaper

[mariacallous]

Two things happened this week that got me really worried about AI’s role in the US election:

First, WIRED published a massive story on how voters in India have received over 50 million deepfaked voice calls imitating candidates and political figures. That’s a lot of deepfakes, and voters are confusing them for the real thing.

Second, the Federal Communications Commission announced this week that it’s considering new AI ad rules only a few months after it banned synthetic robocalls. (Synthetic ads are ads that are created or altered with AI.) Excuse me, but why is the FCC the only government entity that’s approved new AI and elections rules this year? The Indian election should be a warning sign for the US to get busy regulating, but the FCC is the only one picking up the phone.

Let’s talk about it.

The US Is Running Out of Time to Stamp Out Deepfake Political Ads

Remember when the Republican National Committee put out an AI-generated ad attacking Biden? Or when Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ super PAC released an AI ad that mimicked former president Donald Trump? It’s almost been a year since both these ads came out, and there aren't any new laws governing AI ads, despite all the outrage at the time.

Last year, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer started holding meetings with a rotating set of stakeholders and AI industry leaders to develop solutions to issues raised by generative AI. One of the leader’s priorities was to protect US elections from whatever mess the tech may create ahead of November. He has issued a report and pushed senators to turn that guidance into law, but that’s about all that’s happened.

The FCC can’t do as much as Congress can, but it’s done the most out of the two. In February, the agency outlawed using generative AI in robocalls in response to the New Hampshire call impersonating President Joe Biden. On Wednesday, chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel went further, proposing that broadcast television, radio, and some cable political ads disclose when synthetic material is used.

“As artificial intelligence tools become more accessible, the Commission wants to make sure consumers are fully informed when the technology is used,” Rosenworcel said in a statement. “Today, I’ve shared with my colleagues a proposal that makes clear consumers have a right to know when AI tools are being used in the political ads they see, and I hope they swiftly act on this issue.”

This is all great, but voters are probably going to encounter more digital fakes online than over broadcast. And for digital ads, the government hasn’t issued any solutions.

The Federal Election Commission was petitioned by the advocacy group Public Citizen to create rules requiring FCC-like disclosures for all political ads, regardless of the medium, but the agency has yet to act. A January Washington Post report said that the FEC plans to make some decision by early summer. But summer is around the corner, and we haven’t heard much. The Senate Rules Committee passed three bills to regulate the use of AI in elections, including disclosures, earlier this month, but there’s no promise it will hit the floor in time to make a difference.

If you really want to get scared, there are only 166 days until the presidential election. That’s not many days to get something related to AI disclosures over the finish line, especially before the Biden and Trump campaigns, and all the downballot politicians, start dumping even more cash into ads on social platforms.

Without regulations, tech companies will carry much of the responsibility for protecting our elections from disinformation. If it doesn’t sound that different from 2020, I feel the same way! It’s a new issue, but with the same companies leading the charge. In November, Meta said that political ads must include disclaimers when they contain AI-generated content. TikTok doesn’t allow political ads, but it does require creators to label AI content when they share synthetic content depicting realistic images, audio, and video.

It’s something, but what happens if they make a huge mistake? Sure, Mark Zuckerberg and every other tech CEO may get hauled in by Congress for a hearing or two, but it’s unlikely they’d face regulatory consequences before the election takes place.

There’s a lot at stake here, and we’re running out of time. If Congress or an agency were to issue some guidance, they’d need to do it in the next few months. Otherwise, it might not be worth the effort.

[cleoselene]

I could cry.

New College was a true gem once. An elite, small, prestigious university that provided an Ivy League-like experience with a major major difference: it's a public school. It was proof that public education can be as good as anything private education can cough up.

Ron Desantis (graduate of Harvard) has destroyed this university. And it's now literally dumping books from its library. What service to knowledge is this? How does this educate anyone? I guess Ron thinks only people like him are deserving of the education he got from Harvard.

[tomorrowusa]

Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are transporting migrants to other states to boost their standings with the far right and to draw attention away from festering problems in their own states.

DeSantis is governor of a state which doesn't even have a border with a foreign country, but he's been scooping migrants up in other states and dumping them in California, Massachusetts, and elsewhere.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is now threatening criminal charges against DeSantis. THIS is what needs to be done. Other blue state governors and attorneys general, please take note!

For the second time in four days, Florida picked up people seeking asylum and took them by private jet to Sacramento at taxpayer expense, California officials said on Monday after another flight arrived at a local airport.

California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, on Monday branded his rightwing Republican Florida counterpart, Ron DeSantis, a “small, pathetic man”, and appeared to threaten kidnapping charges after the first incident in which a group of migrants was dumped at a Sacramento church.

Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, said in a statement that 16 South Americans abandoned outside the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento on Friday were “in possession of documentation purporting to be from the state of Florida”, and may have been duped into boarding charter flights via New Mexico after entering the US in Texas. On Monday morning, a second flight of 20 migrants arrived in the state’s capital.

DeSantis is using Florida taxpayer money to conduct these stunts. His rubber stamp legislature lets him get away with stuff like this.

The episode has parallels to what critics called a similar “soulless” stunt orchestrated by DeSantis last year in which his administration abandoned several dozen mostly Venezuelan migrants in Martha’s Vineyard.

Newsom, in a tweet posted Monday lunchtime directed at DeSantis, said: “You small, pathetic man. This isn’t Martha’s Vineyard. Kidnapping charges?” and linked to a section of California’s penal code stating anybody who “abducts or takes by force or fraud” a person found within the state “is guilty of kidnapping”.

Republican governors should not be allowed to conduct kidnappings at taxpayer expense. And their accomplices need to be penalized as well.

“While we continue to collect evidence, I want to say this very clearly: state-sanctioned kidnapping is not a public policy choice, it is immoral and disgusting,” Bonta said in the statement.

The flight was operated by Berry Aviation, an active US defense contractor, according to flight tracking data on FlightRadar24. When reached on the phone, the company declined to comment. Acorn Growth Companies, an aerospace investment firm, which owns Berry Aviation, did not answer calls.

Acorn’s managing partner, Rick Nagel of Oklahoma, is a major Republican fundraiser. He was the campaign treasurer for congressman Tom Cole, who chairs the House rules committee. Cole is a former head of the Republican National Congressional Committee and a fervent backer of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies.

Planes and buses used to transport migrants under such circumstances should be impounded as evidence and the companies which own them should be indicted.

Given the disproportionate number of mass shootings in Florida and Texas, DeSantis and Abbott are trying to deflect attention from their failure to keep assault weapons out of the hands of extremists and criminals.

If California and other states issue warrants for the arrest of Ron DeSantis, that might make his campaigning a little more difficult.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jason Wilson at The Guardian:

New College of Florida, which has been the subject of a rightwing takeover that has reversed its previous reputation as a liberal arts school, has hired ideologically aligned rightwing faculty and staff for a range of positions, in a process that an internal open letter said “often replaced faculty expertise with administrative fiat”. New College of Florida (NCF) was targeted by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who made transforming the liberal institution into a conservative one a centerpiece of his ill-fated presidential campaign that sought to take on liberal causes. Its board of trustees is now dominated by DeSantis allies, triggering campus turmoil and the exodus of some staff.

Some in the Republican party see the effort to transform New College as a model in a wider battle to take on American higher education, which the rightwing sees as dominated by left-leaning institutions and leaders. With Donald Trump returning to power after winning the presidential election last week, many rightwing activists could seek to replicate what has happened to New College across the US.

The Guardian has identified several faculty members who have a history of connections with rightwing media, far-right thinktanks and the so-called “New Right”. The hires are of a piece with the hard-right drift at the college since DeSantis appointed new members to the governing board of trustees including the culture warrior Christopher Rufo, which in turn appointed a new administration led by Richard Corcoran, a longtime Republican activist and former political candidate in Florida. In an internally circulated open letter to Corcoran written by the chairs of a key committee, staff members have complained that hiring processes now involved the “arbitrary replacement of searches in specific fields with open-field searches, searches with no requirement for a PhD in the field, insertion of candidates with no rationale, and job offers made without a recommendation from the search committee”. The Guardian emailed NCF for comment but received no response.

Rightwing hires

New College has appointed a raft of faculty and staff with a history in rightwing politics since Corcoran assumed control. The most prominent appointments – previously reported on by local news media and the college’s Catalyst student newspaper – are the new presidential scholars in residence, which are visiting appointments made at Corcoran’s direct discretion.

[...]

Pushback

Inside New College, faculty have pushed back on hiring processes for new faculty, which they allege have been subject to undue interference from Corcoran and his administration. The Guardian obtained a 31 May open letter from David Gillman and Nova Myhill, co-chairs of New College’s education committee, which relayed the faculty’s “deep concerns over changes at New College in the conduct of faculty searches”, which they say has “resulted in some hires that negatively affect the ability of programs, including interdisciplinary programs which depend on faculty hired into various disciplines, to fill the needs of students”. Without naming any specific hires, the letter said: “We see a breakdown of established processes with no new processes to take their place.”

The letter further alleges: “This has resulted in insertion of new lines with no rationale, arbitrary replacement of searches in specific fields with open-field searches, searches with no requirement for a PhD in the field, insertion of candidates with no rationale, and job offers made without a recommendation from the search committee.” Since Corcoran assumed control of New College, it has plummeted in national rankings of liberal arts schools; attracted controversy for dumping library books and materials from a gender and diversity center that the administration closed; and invited controversial speakers to campus. Last week, Inside Higher Ed reported on a brewing clash over changes to the core curriculum, which critics say is being “driven by conservative ideologues”.

The Guardian has an insightful report on how a former left-wing college campus turned sharply to the right under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

That college is New College of Florida, and DeSantis helped turned the college far to the right as a linchpin on the war on all things “woke”.

[angelx1992]

[qqueenofhades]

i truly can't decide whether i want orange fuckface to be locked up (or dead. dead works too) and not be able to get the nomination so it, presumably, goes to florida hitler (who hopefully loses anyway because people hate him and/or they write dump truck's name in anyway) or if it would be better if orange guy gets the nomination and dems can use that as fuel to get people out to vote. do we think if the nominee is anyone other than the big orange felon, this will have any effect on the fascist turnout? or will they just fall in line for the next dictator no matter who he is?

Honestly, I don't know. Either way, the GOP nominee will be Trump or DeSantis, and it is absolutely CRAZYMAKING to me that the choices will literally be "solid, competent, and incredibly experienced Democratic president who has presided over unprecedented job growth and infrastructure investment, most progressive since FDR, nominated a ton of judges to reverse Trump court-packing, but is admittedly an old white guy" vs "literal deranged racist fascist authoritarian traitor charged with 60+ different felonies who probably couldn't even hold a security clearance if he was elected and a lifetime cheater, sexual abuser, business fraud, and cult leader" AND IT WILL BE A VERY CLOSE RACE DECIDED BY A HANDFUL OF STATES IN THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE. Like. I can't. That is boggling. This country is so beyond fucked up in so many ways.

Unlikely as the possibility may be, the idea of either Trump or DeSantis actually becoming president (in Trump's case, again) is so existentially terrifying to me that I don't let myself think about it or picture a future where it happens, because it is so utterly devastating. If Trump goes to jail and/or is somehow disqualified from running, DeSantis will be the nominee, but Trump's cultists will hate him for not being their felonious orange messiah. That might hurt him, sure. But even with Trump (who is still far and away the likely nominee), there are still 75 million Americans who voted for him last time, and we don't know what the impact will be, even after all of this. Cultists won't change their minds due to logic and/or facts. Indeed, the narrative from the right wing and compliant mainstream media has so overwhelmingly been "poor innocent Trump being persecuted unlike the evil Biden crime family" that it could shore up his support from wavering Republicans who hate him but hate any conservative accountability via the legal system more. We just don't know.

Either way, it's not a good situation (understatement of the century, etc) and you'd really fucking HOPE that either way, Team Blue is motivated to get out the vote. If we work hard and we do that, we will win. And yet again, as will be the case until this malignant MAGA cancer is removed from the American body politic, there is really no choice or moral option except to do everything we can to make it so.

[thealogie]

I love being Jewish and professionally studying this stuff bc it's always a good time to point out that the biggest pro-Israel organization in America, Friends of Zion, (donors/members include Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, & Donald Trump) was founded and continues to be run by evangelical Christians, and has 10 million members opposed to the 7.5 million Jewish people living in the US (most of whom are open critics of Israel). There are estimated to be about 30 million Christian Zionists in the States alone, while the worldwide Jewish population is about 16.1 million. It was also primarily the US, Britain, and Russia's idea to dump all their Jewish citizens in the Middle East in the first place; the Holocaust just gave them a convenient excuse to go through with it. Strangely enough, those were the three nations that abstained/voted no to intervening in Gaza right now.

Ofc being Jewish and pointing out that Zionism was founded by Christians (and that the founding of Israel in and of itself was antisemitic) tends to get me accusations of being a "self hating Jew" so. This is fun

Zionists have created this paradigm where no one can be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic not even Jews. Goes to show how little it’s about protecting Jewish people and now much it’s just a flavor of European colonialism

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Color me shocked.

Fox News is hosting the GOP debate in Wisconsin.  During this build up segment, Martha MacCallum introduces the “random Republican voters” in Wisconsin who will watch the debate.  Except, well… there’s a little problem.  MacCallum introduces Chris Lawrence as a “Wisconsin GOP voter” who seemingly supports Ron DeSantis.  However, MacCallum fails to mention that Chris Lawrence actually works for the Koch Network, who have recently pledged to spend $70 million to defeat President Trump.

@RaheemKassam

Hi I looked into “Wisconsin voter” Christopher Lawrence, why didn’t you tell people he’s a paid activist belonging to the open borders network that recently pledged $70M to stop Trump?

‘Globalist’ Koch Network Blows $70M of Donor Cash to ‘Stop Trump’.

From Sundance Treehouse Blog: "The ‘Koch network’ group Americans for Prosperity Action is dropping $70M+ on a bid to stop President Donald J. Trump becoming the 47th President of the United States, according to a new report which suggests the libertarian billionaire backed organization is campaign in the Republican primaries “for the first time in its nearly 20 year history”.

The money is in addition to a $200M+ fund established by corporate backers for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign, and will likely be used for “digital advertising on the issue of electability in the presidential race,” in addition to direct mail. In such scenarios, high percentages of donor cash ends up in the pockets of campaign consultants and vendors.

The Koch network includes groups such as Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together, i360, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, the CATO Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Atlas Network, the Heritage Foundation, the Independent Women’s Forum, the Manhattan Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and many more.

 The organization’s LIBRE initiative even campaigns in favor of amnesty for illegal migrants.

 The co-option of the Tea Party movement was spearheaded by the Kochs, who turned it from a citizen-led organization into a pro-corporate, libertarian shell, before dumping it when press attention became too inconvenient.

“The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade,” Trump tweeted in 2018. “I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas.”

Not only has Chris Lawrence worked for the Koch Network for the past 9 years, he is also the Senior Field Director for the Koch group Americans for Prosperity.  In essence, Lawrence is a political operative planted in the group by Fox News to support Ron DeSantis and make it appear like he is an innocuous voter.  Fox News and Martha MacCallum should be embarrassed, but they won’t be. 

Don’t forget, Ron DeSantis supporters Eric Erickson and Guy Benson sit on the Koch Network AfP Advisory Board (see here).

It’s all one big game of illusion, and Fox News is once again a big part of the Republican fraud.  Proving yet again, that everything in the Ron DeSantis orbit is astroturf, phony, manufactured and made up."