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Governor Ron DeSantis on Friday directed the Florida Department of Education to suspend four schools from the state’s school-choice scholarship program because of their alleged “direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party.” “Through a thorough investigation, FDOE has determined that Lower and Upper Sagemont Preparatory Schools in Weston, Parke House Academy in Winter Park, and Park Maitland School in Winter Park have direct ties to the CCP and their connections constitute an imminent threat to the health, safety, and welfare of these school’s students and the public,” the DeSantis administration said in a statement. The Florida DOE is working with...

I was not going to write about Oliver Anthony’s brilliant song, Rich Men North of Richmond, because I have nothing worthy to add. The video puts all other commentary to shame. North of Richmond refers to the federal government, which is too large, too powerful and too uncaring. But Mark Antonio Wright, executive editor of the Never Trump National Review, butted in with a Learn-to-Code column attacking Anthony for daring to complain about DC’s treatment of the working class. It lectured Anthony to be more like Woody Guthrie, the Nazi apologist and communist. Anthony’s song says: I’ve been sellin’ my...

John Davidson asks at the Federalist, “Does DeSantis Know What Time It Is? Didn’t Sound Like It In That NBC Interview.” Responding to DeSantis’s assertion that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and was in large part responsible for allowing Covid-driven rules changes that helped Democrats collect a lot of mail-in votes, this is Davidson’s thesis: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to have lost his way, unable to articulate a clear position on the most important issue of the primaries, which is what happened in 2020. . . . No issue is more important for DeSantis (and the entire GOP...

A new poll conducted for the Wall Street Journal by the polling firm run by Tony Fabrizio, the pollster for Donald Trump, finds Ron DeSantis leading Joe Biden by three points but Trump trailing Biden by three points: 🇺🇲 2024 Presidential Election Poll (D) Biden: 48% (+3) (R) Trump: 45% . (R) DeSantis: 48% (+3) (D) Biden: 45% Wall Street Journal | Apr 11-17 | 1,740 RV — InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 21, 2023 The good news for Trump is that the same poll finds Trump regaining his lead over DeSantis in a head-to-head GOP primary matchup. After the midterm elections,...

I know, I know; National Review is still the outfit that published the infamous “Against Trump” issue as a last ditch effort to foil the successful 2016 candidacy that led to four years of peace, prosperity, low inflation, and disproportionate gains for the lower end of the income scale under President Trump. But still, it comes as a bit of a shock that the publication I must credit for opening my eyes to the virtues of conservativism seems to be throwing in with Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and the rest of the J6 kangaroo court crowd that censored...

We are only 20 months away from the next Presidential election, and at this stage, the Republican party should be starting to whittle down its field of contenders. Yet here we are with most of the people expected to run still sitting it out, silent. It’s true that Nikki Haley has started her campaign, as have a few outriders like Vivek Ramaswamy, to whom I wish much luck. But the serving or former officials who should have started their campaigns by now are still sitting it out. Leaving the ground open for Trump to do stunts like his Ohio trip...

Once again, Donald Trump has proposed dismantling the United States Constitution. “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump asked on TruthSocial Saturday. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” The answer to Trump’s question is “neither.” The response to his declaration is, “No, it does not.” The conclusion one must draw is that the 45th president of the United States has lost whatever was left of his...

In the Sunshine State, the voting is easy and the results are quick.The day after the 2020 general election, Florida governor Ron DeSantis crowed about his state’s performance. While vote-counting in other states was slow going and the results in several key races were still in doubt, Florida’s elections had seemingly gone off without a hitch. Of course, it wasn’t always that way. Two decades earlier, Florida had become the national poster child for mismanaged elections. In the razor-thin race between George W. Bush and Al Gore, images of Florida vote-counters with magnifying glasses eyeing so-called pregnant, dimpled, and hanging...

The increasing ridiculousness of the stance of the supervisors in Cochise County, Ariz., appears to be another hard lesson of, “Don’t elect lunatics to positions of serious public responsibility”: Cochise County officials may go to court Thursday without an attorney to represent them against charges that they broke the law by failing to certify the results of the Nov. 8 election. County supervisors on Tuesday voted to hire attorney Bryan Blehm to defend them and the county government against two lawsuits, even though they had not discussed the matter with him. On Wednesday, they were caught flat-footed when Blehm declined...

Florida governor Ron DeSantis led former president Donald Trump by eleven points in a new poll of likely Republican primary voters by the Republican Party of Texas. The survey, conducted by CWS Research on November 12 and 13 among likely GOP voters statewide, asked respondents, “If the upcoming 2024 Republican Primary for president were held today, and the candidates were Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, for whom would you vote?” Forty-three percent of respondents said they would support DeSantis, while Trump followed in second with 32 percent of the vote. Thirteen percent...

If the Florida governor can get past Donald Trump in 2024, he will prove something important about himself. Ron DeSantis has a Donald Trump problem. How he solves it -- if he can -- will be the first test of an important aspect of presidential character. Let us assume -- as is widely assumed, but as yet unannounced -- that DeSantis would like to run for president in 2024. Many across the Republican spectrum would like to see him do so. The trick is that DeSantis needs to wrest the Republican nomination away from Trump, either by defeating him or,...

On the homepage today, Rich writes that “for the good of the country, Biden shouldn’t run again.” The same is true of Donald Trump. In my view, there are many, many reasons for this — not least that Trump permanently disqualified himself from consideration with his behavior after the 2020 election. But, whether or not you agree with me about that, you can surely grasp that, as a political matter, Donald Trump is a spent force? Yesterday’s New York Times poll sent shockwaves through the political world. It found that President Biden’s approval rating is at 33 percent; that “more...

It seems to me that the Secret Service and the commentariat are misfiring in their claimed contradictions of Cassidy Hutchinson. If there is a proper target of criticism (and that’s not clear at this point), it is the House January 6 committee, not the witness. In the course of her riveting testimony Tuesday (which I described in a column posted last night), [cut] We shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that anyone is lying. But we should be provided with all of the relevant testimony. And, contrary to the committee’s practice, there should be probing cross-examination so we can get to...

It’s understandable that Democrats would want to constantly revisit Jan. 6 — to invoke it, investigate it and sacralize it even. It’s a mystery, at least from a certain level of abstraction, why Republicans would want to have anything to do with that day or want to fixate on the 2020 election. The party is on the cusp of a midterm triumph, has enormous openings on the economy and education thanks to Biden administration stumbles and left-wing overreach, is making inroads among Hispanic voters and has a well-stocked political bench that Democrats should envy. Yet the GOP is stuck litigating...

The crux of Robinson’s post: “On Primary Day in Georgia, Kemp gets 74% and Perdue gets 22%. Nobody in any election in America gets 74% of the votes. Ever. It doesn’t happen. Obvious fraud.” But the thing that Robinson claims never happens actually happens with regularity. Aaron Blake points to a 2009 study that “found that about 1 in 10 Senate incumbents took less than 75 percent of the vote in their primaries. Many faced token or no opposition, but it does happen — very regularly.” . . . Marjorie Taylor Greene carried 70 percent of her district at the...

I would oppose Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson because of her judicial philosophy, for the reasons outlined by Ed Whelan last week. I address that in a separate post. For now, I want to discuss the claim by Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) that Judge Jackson is appallingly soft on child-pornography offenders. The allegation appears meritless to the point of demagoguery. Senator Hawley is a bright guy, but if he ever handled a child-pornography case in the brief time he spent as a practicing lawyer before he sought public office, that is not apparent. Nor does it appear, from the admittedly...

Two new polls show Florida governor Ron DeSantis with a realistic shot of defeating Donald Trump in a 2024 primary. The former president remains the strong favorite, but he’s under 50 percent in the latest YouGov survey:GOP Presidential Polling:Trump: 46%DeSantis: 21%Pence: 6%Haley: 6%Carlson: 2%YouGov / January 24, 2022 / n=1568 / Onlinehttps://t.co/axPvpnEU7N— Polling USA (@USA_Polling) January 28, 2022A new poll by Echelon Insights shows that DeSantis’s position has improved in the last few months in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup:TRUMP v. DESANTIS two-way GOP primary:Trump 57%DeSantis 32%In October, this was Trump +40. Today, it's Trump +25. pic.twitter.com/1vYJYby3EN— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) January...

Dear Never Trumpers: The Cruise Is Over How a generation of "conservative" intellectuals finally turned into Democrats A lot has happened since my well known essay "The Collapse of the Never Trumpers" appeared in 2018 — and none of it has been good for that tribe of pundits or their garden gnome leader, Bill Kristol. In fact, most of them have seen their careers collapse so spectacularly that only Michael Avenatti could really understand. George Will has semi-retired to a life of boring students to death as a commencement speaker at small colleges. Jonah Goldberg and Steven Hayes used to...

As cable television broadcast the scenes of Trump supporters breaking past police lines and even smashing their way into the Capitol on January 6, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., texted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff: “He’s got to condemn this sh** ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.” A little later, Don Jr. texted again: “We need an Oval office address. He [then-president Trump] has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.” It’s that last statement that reveals the whole truth of January 6 for Trump’s supporters. Donald Trump’s...

Former President Trump is urging Republicans not to vote in upcoming elections unless the “fraud” of the 2020 elections is uncovered. “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 and ’24,” Trump said in a statement released Wednesday. “It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.” Trump’s claims of a “rigged” election also depressed voter turnout during the Georgia Senate runoff elections on January 5. Georgians elected two Democratic senators as a result, giving the party 50 total Senate seats. Trump...