DeSantis news – latest: Florida governor most popular with rich Republicans as he defends move to fly migrants to California
DeSantis on campaign trail hoping to raise national profile as 2024 race hots up
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Your support makes all the difference.Florida governor Ron DeSantis appears to be the preferred Republican candidate among right-leaning millionaires, according to the latest CNBC Millionaire Survey, although his arch-rival and front-runner Donald Trump is seemingly also picking up support among wealthy Americans.
The poll shows that 32 per cent of Republicans with qualifying millionaire status currently support Mr DeSantis, a drop from 54 per cent at the end of 2022, while Mr Trump now has the backing of 28 per cent, up from 17 per cent last year.
Meanwhile, the governor has met with sheriffs in Arizona and defended his state’s recent decision to fly migrants from the US-Mexico border to Sacramento, California, a move widely derided as a cruel political stunt but which he insisted was above board because the west coast state had essentially invited them with its liberal immigration policies.
“I think the border should be closed. I don’t think we should have any of this,” Mr DeSantis said. “But if there’s a policy to have an open border, then I think the sanctuary jurisdictions should be the ones that have to bear that.”
Trump reverts to rhetoric about ‘forgotten’ people, echoes ‘silent majority’ phrase popularized by Nixon
First GOP debate next month faces threats of boycott as lower-polling candidates scramble to qualify
Seven weeks before the premiere debate of the 2024 GOP primary, anxiety is building that the event could prove messy and divisive for the party.
Some candidates, like former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, are struggling to meet fundraising and polling requirements to make it on stage. He and others are pushing back on a loyalty pledge the Republican Party is insisting candidates sign to participate. And the race’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, is considering boycotting and holding a competing event instead.
That’s turning what is typically the highly anticipated opener of the election season into a source of uncertainty for the candidates and broader party. The frustration is particularly acute for candidates who hoped to use the forum as a powerful opportunity to confront Trump and try to blunt his momentum.
“If the outcome of all of these machinations is a very limited field and no Trump in the first debate, it’s hard to see how that can be successful,” Hutchinson said in an interview. Still, he said he was confident he will make it to the stage, even though he said he has only received contributions from “over” 5,000 donors.
“We’re not there yet. We’ve got a ways to go. And we fully intend to get there,” he said.
Read more:
First GOP debate next month faces threats of boycott as lower-polling candidates scramble to qualify
Seven weeks before the premiere debate of the 2024 GOP primary, anxiety is building that the event could prove messy and divisive for the party
Trump speaks in Iowa: ‘We must redouble our efforts to ensure anyone who comes to America shares our values'
QAnon’s leader died in a dirt bike crash. Now his followers are pushing conspiracy that he’s still alive
QAnon’s conspiracy theories are both bizarre and baseless: from the claim that Democrats are running a sex-trafficking ring through a pizza parlour, to the theory that Donald Trump is leading the fight against a cabal of paedophiles, and the story that JFK is returning from the dead more than 50 years after his assassination.
Now, the cult’s latest wild conspiracy centres around the death of its own leader.
Michael Protzman, the 60-year-old QAnon leader, died on 30 June after suffering “multiple blunt force injuries” in a dirt bike accident.
Protzman, who was known to his followers as Negative 48, was driving a dirt bike at the Meadow Valley Motocross track in Millville, Minnesota, when he crashed.
Around a week later he died from his injuries at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, the clinic confirmed to VICE News.
Read more:
QAnon leader dies – but followers push conspiracy theory he’s still alive
Michael Protzman told his followers JFK was coming back from the dead. Now they believe his own death is a hoax
VOICES: What putting Trump back in the White House would mean for Ukraine – and conflict in the rest of the world
Joe Biden’s visit to the UK this weekend, when he will meet the prime minister and the King, could serve as a welcome reminder about where political power – and responsibility – currently resides on both sides of the Atlantic.
I say this, because some of the recent running on arguably the most urgent international issue of the day has been made by someone who has no power whatever, but eyes a return. Step forward (as if he needed any invitation to do so) Donald Trump, who spoke at some length this week about wanting a peaceful outcome in Ukraine, even if this entailed territorial concessions on the part of Kyiv.
“I think the biggest thing that the U.S. should be doing right now is making peace,” he said, “getting Russia and Ukraine together and making peace. You can do it.” Suggesting that Russia’s President had been somewhat weakened by the mercenary-led mutiny last month, Trump said: “This is the time to do it, to get the two parties together to force peace.”
Read more:
What bringing Trump back would mean for Ukraine – and the rest of us | Mary Dejevsky
The former president has made his views on Nato clear, writes Mary Dejevsky. So what happens if he wins in 2024 – and the war isn’t over?
Lincoln Project blasts Trump’s promises: ‘Biden’s administration proves they are the antithesis of their predecessors’
AOC endorses Joe Biden ahead of 2024 election
Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the most outspoken progressives within the Democratic Party, announced her support for President Joe Biden’s re-election in 2024.
The self-described democratic socialist supported Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. But in an interview with Pod Save America, a podcast run by former speechwriters and aides to former president Barack Obama, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said she would support Mr Biden, given his competitors in the Democratic primary are vaccine conspiracy theorists Robert F Kennedy Jr and author Marianne Williamson.
Read more:
AOC endorses Joe Biden ahead of 2024 election
‘I think he’s done quite well, given the limitations that we have,’ the progressive says about the president
Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigations involving Trump have cost more than $9 million
Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s investigations of President Donald Trump‘s retention of classified records and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election have cost more than $9 million over the first several months, according to documents released Friday.
The special counsel’s office spent more than $5.4 million on things like employees’ salaries, travel and transportation, rent, supplies and materials from Smith’s appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 through the end of March, Justice Department statement of expenditures show.
Justice Department agencies spent another $3.8 million to support the special counsel. Those expenses include the cost of the protective details for the special counsel’s office as well as hours worked by agents and analysts on the probes.
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Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigations involving Trump have cost more than $9 million
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations of President Donald Trump’s retention of classified records and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election have cost more than $9 million over the first several months
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