Such a small, sad, man. One would hope that a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law would show more imagination, that he'd have something better to do, than merely demagogue.
Considering who's paying not only for that crap, but also the million$ of dollar$ DeFascist and his fellow super-majority republican fascists have spent/appropriated for going to Texas...(I know, right? ____ing Texas!), to kidnap undocumented immigrants and engage in fraud to get them to agree to be transported to Vice President Harris' home or NYC or Chicago or Martha's Vineyard or wherever they're compelled to
own the libs, I wish you wouldn't mention it.
tia
Pro tip Floreduh fascists: If you have to travel half-way across the country to find enough immigrants to make it worth your while to kidnap so you can demagogue about it, maybe it means you don't have
"standing", should go back to victimizing the undocumented immigrants in your own state, or mind your own ____ing business?
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Ron DeSantis has some real problems. No, we are not referring to the fact that he trails Donald Trump in the polls or to his awkwardness as a retail politician. Far more concerning are the criminal referrals and investigations surrounding the DeSantis administration's relocation of migrants from Texas to Massachusetts and California—criminal investigations in which the Florida governor may have, through his own boasts, implicated himself.
Last September, a group of 48 mostly Venezuelan migrants who had surrendered themselves to immigration officials upon crossing the border—many reportedly seeking asylum—were put on planes and flown from Texas to Martha's Vineyard at the behest and expense of the DeSantis administration. It is alleged that the migrants were lured onto the flights with false promises of employment, housing, educational opportunities and other assistance. They were apparently provided with official-looking materials such as a fake agency brochure that created the false impression that the trip was part of the normal immigration process.
Of course, it was no such thing. To the contrary, it was a part of a political stunt engineered by Florida officials, evidently so that DeSantis could demagogue on immigration policy, which remains red meat for the MAGA base. We can infer that from the fact that DeSantis has repeatedly bragged about these events, making them a staple of his stump speeches, and has tried to justify the $1.5 million price tag paid by Florida taxpayers for the migrant flights and the $12 million line item in Florida's 2023 budget.
...Let's set aside the cruelty of exploiting vulnerable immigrants for political purposes. Worse still, the stunt was arguably criminal, and at least some of those involved appear to have been referred for prosecution by Texas law enforcement.
As one author of this article noted when the story first broke, Texas law criminalizes "unlawful restraint:" intentionally restricting a person's movement or moving them from one place to another without consent. The law expressly says that there is no consent where there was deception (as well as force or intimidation). DeSantis has said that the migrants went voluntarily, but this is hardly a defense if they were deceived in any significant way—such as about where they were going, by whom, for what purpose, and what would be awaiting them.
Texas also criminalizes the exploitation of children and the elderly, defined as illegal or improperly using someone for monetary or personal benefit. Children and elderly people were reportedly on board the flight to Martha's Vineyard, and the stunt certainly benefited DeSantis by gaining him media exposure...
