Florida Democrats Have Already Notched a Historic Election Win

Florida Democrats secured a candidate in every House and Senate district race in the state by the end of the electoral qualifying deadline Friday, a rare feat for any party but even rarer for one whose efforts in the Sunshine State were deemed to be a lost cause, following an abysmal performance in the 2022 midterms.

The achievement is actually historic: It’s the first time in the last 30 years that Democrats have fielded candidates in all 140 legislative seats up for election this year, reported the Tampa Bay Times.

Party leaders were quick to celebrate the “unprecedented” milestone.

“Democrats made history in Florida today,” party chair Nikki Fried said in a statement. “Since control of Florida flipped in the mid-90s, no party has contested every seat in both chambers of the legislature.”

Florida Democratic Party candidates and campaigns director Danielle Hawk underscored the significance of contesting every race, describing the unified, comprehensive effort as “critical.”

“By contesting every race and competing everywhere, Republicans will have to spend more defending their position and unpopular policies,” Hawk said. “We are not going to just let Republicans walk into office without being held accountable.”

Ten of those candidates ran unopposed in their districts, guaranteeing automatic wins in November. And while all of those districts were already blue, Democrats did flip a district in January, hinting at voter dissatisfaction with the reigning conservative party and foreshadowing Friday’s win.

“What actually clinched the win for Democrats was this massive margin with [nonpartisan voters] and perhaps some Republican moderates, as well,” Democratic elections analyst Matt Isbell told the Orlando Sentinel at the time. “If anything, this should be concerning for the GOP because it indicates a voter anger that maybe they have not understood.”

New York Mayor Eric Adams is advocating for a ban on wearing masks on public transit in New York City, jumping on the bandwagon of New York State’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul.

Hochul argued Thursday that face masks, once touted as lifesaving tools by the government, are now the illicit tools of protesters.

Hours later, during a radio interview on 77 WABC’s Cats & Cosby, host Rita Cosby reiterated Hochul’s comment that protesters might be using masks to hide their identities, and asked Adams what he thought about a mask ban on New York City’s subways.

“First of all, that’s what cowards do. Cowards hide their face. Dr. King did not hide his face when he marched and for the things he thought were wrong in the country. Those civil rights leaders did not hide their faces. They stood up. In contrast to that, the Klan hid their faces. Cowards hide their faces when they want to do something disgraceful,” said Adams. It’s probably worth noting that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated for his advocacy.

“In our transit system, people have hid under the guise of wearing a mask for Covid to commit criminal acts and vile acts. I think now is the time to go back to the way it was pre-Covid, where you should not be able to wear a mask at protests and our subway systems and other places,” Adams continued.

Prohibiting pro-Palestininan protesters from wearing masks on public transit will make it significantly easier for them to be targeted and tracked by the New York Police Department, which has shown a distinctly violent and outsize reaction to organizing efforts over the past few months.

What was once a mandated safety precaution has become a roadblock to police surveillance, and for that reason alone, it has to go—sending a clear message to the many immunocompromised New Yorkers who would be directly affected that their wellbeing is less important than a well-functioning police state. The NYPD and Adams have already moved to prohibit NYC residents from wearing masks in stores.

Hochul’s and Adams’s insistence on equating pro-Palestinian protesters, and their safety precautions, with violent antisemitic rhetoric could also have incredibly dangerous repercussions to those who wish to safely and peacefully oppose Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza.

Donald Trump doesn’t think he is a racist, and the fact that he has Black friends (the classic denial) proves it.

In a Semafor profile, Trump was asked about his relationship with Black professional athletes like Daryl Strawberry, Lawrence Taylor, Mike Tyson, and boxing promoter Don King.

“I have so many Black friends that if I were a racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anybody, and fast,” Trump said. “They would not be with me for two minutes if they thought I was racist—and I’m not racist!”

Trump has often used appearances with Black supporters to demonstrate that he isn’t a racist, both in the early days of his presidency and well before that, as the article shows. But even recently, his actions undercut his efforts, whether it’s his vow to fight “anti-white” racism, his pledge to “indemnify all police officers and law enforcement officials” if he’s reelected, or his attacks on Black prosecutors.

His record before becoming president doesn’t look so good, either, once one gets past his appearances with Black celebrities. When Trump was a casino owner, Black employees were ushered off the floors whenever he and his wife paid a visit. Trump has allegedly remarked that he prefers “short guys that wear yarmulkes” counting his money instead of Black people. In the 1970s he was sued, along with his father, by the federal government for housing discrimination. And his time helming The Apprentice was marked by racism behind the scenes, with Trump dropping the n-word and refusing to hire Kwame Jackson, the Black finalist on the show’s first season.

The Semafor profile shows that Trump has a very small following among older Black men, partially thanks to his relationships with Black celebrities in the 1980s and 1990s. He’ll need a lot more than that if he hopes to overcome his record and convince voters that his relationship with Black Americans isn’t transactional.

A federal judge ruled Friday that conspiracy theory—and supplement—hawker Alex Jones can liquidate his assets in order to pay the $1.5 billion he owes the families of the children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Jones originally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2022, which would allow him to retain operations of his business and use reorganization to scrape together the cash. But it wasn’t enough to pay off what he owed.

Last week, Jones’s lawyers wrote in a filing that there was “no reasonable prospect for a successful reorganization,” and that filing for liquidation under Chapter 7 was the massacre denier’s only option.

On Friday, a bankruptcy judge ruled that Jones would be able to convert that Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing into a Chapter 7 liquidation, according to NBC News. Judge Christopher Lopez of the Southern District of Texas ordered that Jones be assigned an interim trustee to help him through the process and oversee the sale of Jones’s personal assets.

With this newest ruling, Jones inches closer to losing everything, including his stake in InfoWars, the pulpit from which the podcaster has continued to spew misinformation.

The ruling came as Lopez was weighing arguments to liquidate Jones’s media company, Free Speech Systems, in addition to his personal assets.

Ahead of Friday’s hearing, the families of Sandy Hook victims accused Jones of intentionally lowering the value of Free Speech Systems by attempting to siphon funds from the company to his father’s supplement business. They alleged that Jones was saving the money to go toward his future business operations instead of paying them what he owes.

But a unique detail of Jones’s case is that he can’t skirt payments even by declaring bankruptcy. When Lopez presided over Jones’s bankruptcy filing last year, the judge made his debt “non-dischargeable” through bankruptcy, meaning Jones has to continue paying the families until he has fully settled the $1.5 billion debt.

In a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Friday morning, the once Twitter-banned Jones warned that the decision to liquidate Free Speech Systems would be a “canary in the coal mine,” as he continued to whine that losing InfoWars as a result of lying about murdered children was a symbol that “the globalists are turning America into a giant prison.”

This story has been updated.

There are endless possibilities for the creative uses of artificial intelligence—but recreating the voice of a civil rights icon for your own political benefit is definitely not one of them.

Republican congressional candidate Anthony Hudson did just that, releasing possibly the most distasteful, cringe-worthy political ad of 2024 to date by using A.I. to resurrect Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice to urge people to vote for him in the House race for Michigan 8th district.

“I have another dream!” begins the skin-crawling video, which was posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Friday. “Yes, it is me, Martin Luther King. I came back from the dead to say something, as I was saying, I have another dream—that Anthony Hudson will be Michigan 8th district’s next congressman. Yes I have a dream, again.”

Then, in a nearly equally bizarre decision, Hudson’s campaign decided to force the voice to return to the dead.

“OK, now I am going back to where I came from,” King’s cheaply manipulated voice says. “Goodbye.”

At the end of the clip, Hudson can be heard approving the message. But whoever pitched the clip and told Hudson that fabricating the approval of a racial justice legend would make voters like him rather than be utterly repulsed by the vile postmortem should probably be fired.

They can’t be the only one to blame, though—everyone involved in the production of the ad must be completely removed from contemporary American culture for making such an unnerving gaffe, since just weeks earlier, multi-platinum pop singer Drake earned the ire of the entire West Coast for using A.I. sorcery to recreate Tupac Shakur in a diss track against rapper and poet laureate Kendrick Lamar.

Hudson deleted the video off of his TikTok account, and hours later, he claimed that he had nothing to do with the disturbing ad. Instead, he blamed a volunteer’s friend for making the post, though just how or why an unpaid staffer got Hudson’s social media credentials is still unclear.

“A volunteer gave my social media credentials to one of his friends who then posted an AI video without my knowledge. It appears that they not only used AI for MLKjr’s voice but also with my voice to make it appear more authentic,” Hudson wrote on X. “The volunteer has been released and all my social media credentials have been updated. I would have NEVER approved such a STUPID and DISRESPECTFUL video!”

“I sincerely apologize that all of you have seen this and I’m extremely furious about this situation. This could happen to any of us so please be cautious and aware of who has your person information,” he added.

Listen to Hudson’s ad below, if you dare.

This story has been updated with Hudson’s statement.