DeSantis Faces More Trouble in Court Over Shady Orders on Protesters

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s authoritarian deeds have resulted in a lawsuit from a former top employee in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who says he was forced to resign for whistleblowing.

Shane Desguin, the agency’s former chief of staff, said in his filing that he was forced to retire in November after he wouldn’t carry out illegal or inappropriate orders, such as violating the state’s public records laws, arresting protesters without probable cause, and obtaining the photos and personal information of migrants who were transported to Florida without legal justification.

Desguin “was subjected to disparate treatment, different terms and conditions of employment, and held to a different standard because he reported Defendants’ malfeasance, gross misconduct and unlawful employment activities and was subject to retaliation thereafter,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed against DeSantis and the FDLE.

Not long after Desguin’s retirement, his deputy, Patricia Carpenter, was also fired. The lawsuit claims that Desguin and Carpenter faced an internal investigation that was a “thinly veiled attempt at character assassination” because of their whistleblowing.

A spokesperson for DeSantis didn’t comment on the lawsuit, according to ABC News, but cited that investigation as well as comments from the FDLE’s communications director, Gretl Plessinger: “Shane Desguin and Patricia Carpenter created workplace chaos, endangered the safety of other employees, and acted dishonestly and unprofessionally.”

The lawsuit says in late 2021, Desguin had to deal with the arrival of migrants being flown by the federal government to Florida in his position with the FDLE’s Office of Statewide Intelligence.

In his lawsuit, Desguin says that he was ordered by DeSantis, through another official, to get “photographs, biometric data, and any other pertinent information by engaging with migrants at the airport. As these requests escalated, (Desguin) objected, and emphasized, on multiple occasions … FDLE could not legally conduct name checks, capture photographs, or compile intelligence files without a criminal predicate or reasonable suspicion, as those actions would be unlawful.”

Later, when Florida officials suggested that migrants should be transported by bus out of the state (which was later attempted), Desguin said he told his superiors that this could constitute “false imprisonment or kidnapping,” the lawsuit said.

Once, in September 2023, Desguin said he was told by a DeSantis aide to arrest neo-Nazi demonstrators at an Orlando event to benefit the governor politically. He said that he couldn’t arrest protesters simply for their views, to which the aide told him, “I don’t think you understand. If you look hard enough, you can find a way. The governor wants someone arrested today. He will stand by you in any arrest.”

DeSantis has recently been experiencing long-overdue pushback for his hard-line actions, whether it’s having his signature anti-trans law being struck down in court, a failed attempt to invoke executive privilege, or having to back away from his infamous book bans. His culture-war laws have cost Florida millions of dollars and made him unpopular in the state, and unsurprisingly, he’s now working with the more popular, if not more authoritarian, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene went ballistic Thursday over a new poll from Fox News that saw President Joe Biden take the lead from Donald Trump, even if by only a couple points.

Clearly confusing the poll’s agreeableness with its accuracy, the Georgia Republican found herself in lock-goose-step with the meme-loving fascist Charlie Kirk, who also took issue with the results.

“Okay, I’ve been studying this new FOX NEWS poll, and I have concluded it’s a complete outlier,” Kirk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “They have Joe Biden winning rural voters 50-48% over Trump. There is no way that’s possible. Zero.”

Kirk recently announced that his conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA, would be partnering with the Trump campaign, and invited Trump to speak at its convention in Milwaukee last weekend.

Kirk didn’t provide any evidence for this claim, but Greene, who is no stranger to pushing conspiracy theories, reposted his so-called analysis in total agreement.

“100% correct!! This Fox News poll is WRONG!” she wrote. “My district is in rural northwest Georgia and it is SOLIDLY supporting Trump! Same with most of rural America! Smart people!”

Greene’s factless freak-out comes just hours after a tantrum from Trump himself, who went off about the poll on Truth Social, claiming that Fox News is regularly unreliable, even though the outlet pretty consistently backs the former president in its coverage.

Losing it over one poll is certainly not normal but goes to show the fealty Trump imagines conservative news networks should have for him. And wherever Trump goes, Greene is always sure to follow.

The U.S. Supreme Court just shot down a case that conservative lawyers hoped would kill any future proposals of a wealth tax. 

The court ruled Thursday on Moore v. United States, a case that challenged an obscure section of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was passed by a Republican-led Congress and signed into law by former President Donald Trump. 

The law massively overhauled the federal tax code, but this particular case was about a one-time tax called the Mandatory Repatriation Tax, or MRT, which targeted people who owned more than 10 percent of a foreign company. The MRT made a lot of rich people mad because companies will often avoid actually paying out dividends to their shareholders, in an attempt to shield them from being taxed.

Before the court, the plaintiffs, Charles and Kathleen Moore, were portrayed as some of the few investors unfairly affected by the one-time tax. As investors in the Indian farm equipment manufacturer KisanKraft, the couple paid up a $15,000 tax and then promptly sued to get their money back, arguing that the tax violated the Sixteenth Amendment, which forbids Congress from taxing “unrealized income” (income that has not passed directly into a taxpayer’s hands).

In reality, their lawyers completely misrepresented the extent of the couple’s financial involvement in KisanKraft, in a blatant attempt to devise a case that, if things went their way, could prevent a similar tax from being levied against the wealthy in the future. It wouldn’t be the first time a case heard before the Supreme Court was crafted on lies. 

Either way, the justices didn’t buy it, and overwhelmingly rejected the bid 7–2. 

“The precise and narrow question that the Court addresses today is whether Congress may attribute an entity’s realized and undistributed income to the entity’s shareholders or partners, and then tax the shareholders or partners on their portions of that income,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority ruling. “This Court’s longstanding precedents, reflected in and reinforced by Congress’s longstanding practice, establish that the answer is yes.”

Kavanaugh stated that “the MRT does tax realized income—namely, income realized by the corporation, KisanKraft. The MRT attributes the income of the corporation to the shareholders, and then taxes the shareholders (including the Moores) on their share of that undistributed corporate income.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented, which shouldn’t be too surprising given Thomas’s questionable financial ethics and close ties to rich and powerful conservatives. 

Kavanaugh insisted that the ruling did not resolve questions surrounding a tax based on holdings, wealth, or net worth. “Those are potential issues for another day, and we do not address or resolve any of those issues here,” he wrote. 

With this ruling, the court has left a door open for congressional Democrats to install a tax on the nation’s highest earners, a plan that stands in stark contrast to Trump’s efforts to grant tax cuts to the rich and install trickle-down economic policy. Ironically (and shortsightedly), his platform has sent billionaires flocking to support the former president, a decision that may ultimately doom them.  

After a Fox News poll showed Joe Biden polling better than him, Donald Trump lost it on Truth Social Thursday morning.

“FoxNews Polls are always the worst for me. They have been from the beginning, and always will be!” Trump posted.

The poll shows Biden ahead of Trump by two points, 50–48 percent. It’s a change from last month’s Fox News poll, which had Trump ahead by one point.

The convicted felon and presumptive Republican presidential nominee has not been happy with Fox News in the last few days. On Wednesday, Trump bashed the network and called for Paul Ryan to be removed from its board of directors.

“Nobody can ever trust Fox News, and I am one of them, with the weak and ineffective RINO, Paul Ryan, on its Board of Directors,” Trump posted on Truth Social, clearly still smarting over the former House speaker calling him “unfit for office” on the network last week. 

Trump doesn’t seem to be able to handle any criticism from the right-wing outlet, and it’s puzzling because it’s so rare. The network has been caught airing poorly edited interviews to make him look better, helped push his lie about an FBI assassination plot, and regularly covers up stories that make him look bad. That doesn’t even include its long history of Republican partisanship in favor of Trump, particularly in this coming election.  

Maybe Trump was actually rattled by the poll. It’s not the only recent one with bad news from him: A Politico poll came out earlier this week showing that his felony conviction actually matters to Americans and makes it less likely that they would vote for him. If that is the case, bashing the network that has tirelessly been working to get him back in office won’t help him.

An expert political commentator provided a rare window into what Donald Trump’s debate strategy might be, and it looks like it’s going to get nasty.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night to discuss her predictions for Trump’s talking points during the network’s upcoming presidential debate next week.

Haberman noted that Trump has been visited by a “rotating cast of characters,” including Senators Bill Hagerty and Marco Rubio, in an effort to prepare him for the big day.

“It is interesting that he’s, you know, having all these people come and talk policy, because policy is obviously not something that’s front and center when you think of Donald Trump, or even in his long rambling rallies,” said Cooper.

During Trump’s rallies, the former president usually breathlessly rattles off lies at a breakneck pace. He very rarely puts forward any actual ideas, except to seal the southern border and, recently, to eliminate taxes on tips. But two bad ideas do not a policy platform make.

Haberman explained that Trump “has a series of agenda items that he can point to from when he was president, and that’s what they’re trying to focus his mind on.”

“A lot of what he has talked about over the last two years has been grievances, his court cases. I think he has been so singular and was during the Manhattan trial so singularly focused on what was taking place there that they’re trying to get his mind back to what he can talk about, about what he did,” she continued.

Haberman said that while Trump may have some policy points he will be able to talk about, he has several obvious obstacles as well, including answering questions about his role in the January 6 insurrection, presidential pardons, and his numerous threats of retribution against his enemies.

“And I anticipate President Biden will reference his criminal conviction,” she said. “Now, I’m quite confident, based on my reporting, that Donald Trump will then point to Hunter Biden’s criminal conviction. And this could be an uglier debate than we have seen in a very long time.”

Should Biden bring up the presumptive Republican nominee’s guilty verdict, he can expect to have his son’s new criminal record thrown back in his face.