Ron DeSantis - latest: Campaign fires staffer over Nazi meme as animal blamed for motorcade crash

The floundering campaign of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was on its way to scramble for more cash all over Tennessee when the journey came to an abrupt stop.

The motorcade transporting the governor and presidential candidate was involved in a crash on Tuesday morning, leaving one staffer with a minor injury. The governor was uninjured.

Here’s everything we know so far:

lorida Gov Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign laid off a third of its campaign staff as it continues to tighten its belt amid numerous negative news stories and lacklustre fundraising numbers, Politico reported.

The campaign will cut a total of 38 jobs, advisers told Politico, including ten event planning positions the campaign announced weeks ago as well as that of top DeSantis advisers Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain.

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“Following a top-to-bottom review of our organization, we have taken additional, aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden,” campaign manager Generra Peck said in a statement. “Gov DeSantis is going to lead the Great American Comeback and we’re ready to hit the ground running as we head into an important month of the campaign.”

The slim-down comes after the DeSantis campaign announced it had raised $20m in the governor’s first quarter as a candidate. But the campaign had also spent $7.8m in its first quarter, an incredibly high burn rate and many of the donors who had contributed had given the maximum legal limit, meaning they cannot donate again.

The dramatic staffing cuts include the “less than 10” employees that the DeSantis team revealed letting go earlier in the month just as federal filings showed that his campaign was burning through cash at an unsustainable rate, even before launching a substantial paid advertising campaign.

DeSantis’ team has quietly expressed confidence for months that voters would eventually tire of Trump’s escalating legal troubles and personal baggage. But that same baggage, playing out in the U.S. legal system just as the GOP primary intensifies, is leaving precious little oxygen for him and his rivals to break through. And Trump’s standing with Republican primary voters seems to be growing stronger with every new legal challenge.

Still, DeSantis’ team has raised a stunning $150 million for his presidential ambitions so far. The vast majority, $130 million, has gone to a super PAC run by allies who cannot legally coordinate with the campaign.

The DeSantis campaign itself raised more than $20 million in the first six weeks he was in the race, though federal filings released over the weekend revealed that he and his team had burned through more than $8 million in a spending spree that included more than 100 paid staffers, a large security detail and luxury travel.

A campaign staffer for Ron DeSantis who shared an online video using Nazi imagery with the Florida governor’s face has been fired.

Nate Hochman, a 25-year-old campaign communications staff member who has written for The National Review and The New York Times, shared a video over the weekend to an anonymous pro-DeSantis Twitter account featuring a meme template that has been adopted by far-right and neo-fascist creators.

The video shows a “wojack” character, unhappy with news footage of Donald Trump, watching the Florida seal turn into the Nazi-appropriated Sonnenrad symbol. Mr DeSantis is then seen superimposed on the icon in front of soldiers marching in formation.

Alex Woodward reports forThe Independent.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis defended a hard-right school curriculum that went into effect in his state this week while on the campaign trail for the Republican presidential nomination.

At an event in Utah, Governor DeSantis defended how slavery will now be taught in Florida middle schools. Children will now be taught that enslaved persons picked up skills that they later “parlayed” into profitable crafts after slavery was abolished.

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A trial to determine if a new Florida law targeting drag shows is constitutional won’t start until next spring.

A filing posted in federal court in Tallahassee late last week shows that the trial won’t start until the beginning of June 2024. It is scheduled to last two days and will be decided by a judge instead of a jury.

The law, championed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is on hold for now. A federal judge last month issued a temporary injunction preventing it from being enforced until the trial is held. The state of Florida has appealed that decision.

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Set aside the polls, the fundraising numbers or Donald Trump’s name recognition as metrics of his early dominance of the Republican presidential contest. He has what could prove to be the most important advantage in the race: a leg up in winning the delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination.

While the delegate count won’t begin taking shape until voting begins next January, Trump’s edge in the race to win their votes is years in the making. Many state Republican parties made changes to their rules ahead of the 2020 election by adding more winner-take-all contests and requiring candidates to earn higher percentages of the vote to claim any delegates. Those changes all benefit a frontrunner, a position Trump has held despite his mounting legal peril, blame for his party’s lackluster performance in the 2022 elections and the turbulent years of his presidency.

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