Republicans in the Iowa Legislature forwarded a bill to Gov. Kim Reynolds that would limit the state auditor’s power to request personal information during audits and establish an arbitration mechanism that would hinder the auditor’s investigations.
After being reelected last November, Iowa state auditor Rob Sand is the only Democrat in statewide office. Despite expanding Brenna Bird’s powers, Republicans say this isn’t political.
Their claims stink.
This is a politically motivated attempt to limit auditor powers. Reynolds should veto Senate File 478 for Iowans.
It’s bad enough that lawmakers seek to prevent the auditor from getting taxpayers’ watchdog information. Republicans also want a three-person arbitration body to address auditor-government agency disputes. It forbade litigation.
The panel would include an auditor, a representative of the agency under investigation, and a governor-appointed member. Such a body would thwart an auditor’s investigation.
“It remains the greatest pro-corruption bill in state history, and the worst perversion of checks and balances in Iowa history,” Sand stated at a recent news conference.
“To take an independently elected office in the Iowa Constitution and subject its work to the approval of the very same entity that it is attempting to audit, perverts checks and balances, plain and simple.”
We concur.
This bill seems designed to avoid embarrassing agency misconduct in the Republican-controlled executive branch.
The non-partisan Legislative Services Agency warns that removing auditory powers might imperil $12 billion in federal financing for various programs if the bill passes. Federal grants may be withheld if Sand cannot independently audit the entities receiving them.
Iowa law and federal law require the state auditor to handle personal information confidentially. State auditors and accountants from both parties have asked lawmakers to drop the bill.
India’s defense minister has accused China of eroding the “entire basis” of bilateral ties by violating bilateral agreements, referring to a nearly three-year standoff involving thousands of soldiers stationed along their disputed frontier in the eastern Ladakh region.
The Indian Defense Ministry announced on Thursday that Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh met with visiting Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu and “had frank discussions about the developments in the India-China border areas as well as bilateral relations.”
Singh told Li that “development of relations between India and China is contingent on the prevalence of peace and tranquility at the borders” and that all border issues must be resolved in accordance with existing agreements and commitments, according to a statement released by the Indian foreign ministry.
The Chinese side did not immediately comment on the meetings.
According to India, the deployment of a large number of Chinese personnel, their aggressive behavior, and their attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo along the border violate international agreements. Singh stated that the violations have “eroded the entire foundation of bilateral relations.”
Three years ago, a conflict in the Ladakh region claimed the lives of twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese. In the rugged mountainous region, each party has stationed tens of thousands of military personnel supported by artillery, tanks, and fighter aircraft.
Top Indian and Chinese army commanders met for the eighteenth time in an attempt to negotiate a withdrawal of forces from tense areas days before Li’s visit.
India and China have withdrawn troops from certain areas on the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso, Gogra, and Galwan Valley, but continue to maintain additional personnel as part of a multi-tiered deployment.
A Line of Actual Control divides Chinese and Indian-held territory from Ladakh in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east, which China claims in its totality. In 1962, India and China waged a war over their border.
Friday, Defense Minister Li will attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s defense ministers in New Delhi. China, India, Pakistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan make up the coalition.
The truth—value, concept, and reality—couldn’t be taken.
Trump lost. Truth required fact from want. Their professional value—to seize and report the news—meant conceding their candidate’s defeat.
Instead, Fox News reported that voting machines were rigged for Joe Biden, a fabrication that Fox News employees knew was false but nevertheless published. Thus, news was corrupted to serve the lie and worse.
Tucker Carlson texted: “Please get her fired… immediately, like tonight” after a reporter said there was no foul play. The firm is suffering. Stocks are falling. No joke.”
The Hebrew adage “one sin leads to another” loomed: reject truth, sell it for money, and plunder its bearer.
The American network’s guilt was revealed last week when it agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle its defamation claim, followed by Carlson’s apparent resignation.
Fox News, which faces an even larger complaint from another election technology company, is less noteworthy.
More importantly, this saga is part of the War on Truth, and Fox’s Israeli versions have shown a similar inability to accept facts and face the truth.
Two renowned writers died this month.
Novelist Meir Shalev and poet, singer, and satire Yehonatan Geffen died last month at 74 and 76, respectively, from terminal illnesses.
Both were Left-wing provocateurs. Both came from Nahalal, the Jezreel Valley’s round settlement, where the farmers who created it 102 years ago were rough.
Shalev wrote, “This unbelievable funeral looked like an exceptionally fictional Monty Python skit, yet it was totally real” after former chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren retrieved ancient Jewish warriors’ bones from a cliffside cave where he emerged hanging by a helicopter’s winch and cable.
Geffen was removed off the platform after urging forces not to enter Beirut during the First Lebanon War. His career was plagued by similar provocations.
Right-wingers disliked both writers. Unfairly,
Channel 14, Israel’s Fox News, didn’t report Geffen’s death, the man who wrote “The Prettiest Girl in Kindergarten,” “How is a Song Born?” and “A Kindergarten Closed,” magical songs that millions of Israelis have sung with their parents and now with their children.
Likud lawmaker Tally Gotliv believes Geffen “represented drinking, drugs, licentiousness and bohemianism.” Shimon Riklin of Channel 14 declared, “I never read one book of Meir Shalev,” because “whoever detests what I represent is not worthy of my attention.”
That’s acceptable for a private person but unethical for a journalist. Like him or not, Shalev was one of Israel’s most notable and popular novelists, a lover of this land who sculpted in exceptionally rich Hebrew some of the Zionist project’s most proverbial heroes of innocence and idealism, from A Pigeon and a Boy’s pair of teenagers who fall in love while cultivating homing pigeons, before the boy is killed in the War of Independence, to The Blue Mountain’s Baruch Pines, a village teacher whose dedication to, and understanding of, the Zionist
What is the reality about Geffen and Shalev, and why were their adversaries so frightened?
Combatants Geffen and Shalev
Geffen and Shalev participated in the 1967 Battle of Tel Faher under the Golan Heights, unlike MK Gotliv, who did not serve in the IDF. Their friends were among the 34 Israeli soldiers killed there. They collected their pals’ and 50 Syrian bodies after the hand-to-hand struggle. Some were headless.
Five months later, Shalev’s platoon was accidentally shot by an Israeli unit while crossing the Jordan River at night. Shalev was shot four times: above the knee, under it, above the thigh, and in the back, an inch from the spine. Others died nearby.
Shalev was hospitalized and unfit for the Yom Kippur War. Geffen crossed the Suez Canal with Ariel Sharon and fought in Africa, witnessing more violence and suffering. As Gotliv said, he became an alcoholic, but he overcame it.
War disillusioned and bitterened Shalev and Geffen. However, decent opponents would admit that they gave us more than most others, on and off the battlefield. That’s the reality, which some can’t stand, so they lie as Tucker Carlson did when his idol fell.
After a health scandal at a US zoo, giant panda Ya Ya returned to China.
Ya Ya landed in Shanghai Thursday afternoon amid a social media frenzy. Panda fans who couldn’t go to the airport organized an online Ya Ya pick-up.
Before her 16-hour flight from Memphis, Tennessee, Sina Weibo’s “We welcome Ya Ya’s return online” had 340 million reads.
After 20 years at the Memphis Zoo, Ya Ya returns to China amid health debate.
By Thursday evening, the Sina Weibo hashtag “Ya Ya has landed in Shanghai” had 430 million views.
A year after news of her and Memphis Zoo’s male panda Le Le’s bad health, Ya Ya returned to China on a special trip.
Panda fans in China, the US, and others were alarmed by Le Le’s February death and Ya Ya’s thin, bony photos online.
As US-China relations deteriorated over Taiwan, Xinjiang, and human rights, some critics accused the US of neglecting the pandas.
After Ya Ya returned home, most are focused on her health.
“We need to find out the real reason why Ya Ya is sick now,” a Beijing resident named only as Ms Shi told Al Jazeera. Experts must be heard. If someone erred, we must be more logical. Perhaps the American zoo failed. The Sino-American connection is unrelated. We must rationalize.”
As a sign of friendship, China lends pandas to zoos across the world. To match Beijing’s criteria, many zoos spend millions on panda habitats, including Malaysia’s air-conditioned enclosure.
In 2003, Beijing Zoo’s 2000-born Ya Ya was sent to Memphis Zoo for conservation.
According to last month’s Global Times story, the zoo paid $16m to establish a giant panda facility with traditional Chinese cultural aspects, put up a breeding management and veterinary team, and cultivate 4 hectares (10 acres) of bamboo before Ya Ya’s arrival.
April ended the deal.
Memphis Zoo announced on Facebook that the panda was returning to China to live out her golden years. After 20 years, Ya Ya has become like family, and the Memphis Zoo employees and community will miss her.”
The Chinese authorities acknowledged the US’s panda care.
On Wednesday, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Mao Ning said the Memphis Zoo gave the giant pandas good care and the American public loved them.
Ya Ya started shedding fur in 2006 and intensified in 2014. According to the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens, Memphis Zoo and Chinese experts tried several therapies but failed.
The organization reported heart disease killed Le Le. Ya Ya and his remains flew to China.
Beijing-based China researcher Einar Tangen accused Western media for creating a Chinese uproar over Ya Ya’s health.
“She’s a Western symbol. They claim state-owned media is inciting the Chinese population. He told Al Jazeera, “No.”
State media claims she’s fine and we’re just bringing her back. It shows how far US and Chinese perceptions have diverged.”
China lends 60 gigantic pandas to other nations, according to the Global Times.
Mr. Su, a Beijinger, said the panda is a national treasure. “It’s good that foreigners can learn about pandas.”
Ya Ya will quarantine for 30 days before going to Beijing Zoo.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has been polarizing since her 2020 political debut. In 2021, the Democratic-led House barred her from committees due to her social media posts praising QAnon and threatening Democrats with violence. As they sought reelection, some Republicans distanced themselves from Greene.
Greene is not an outcast a few years later. Instead, she’s a Republican powerbroker. Greene supported Kevin McCarthy’s speakership campaign in January. Former president Donald Trump called Greene on the House floor during a crucial vote, proving her relevance. Her fundraising benefits even moderate Republicans.
House Republicans gave Greene seats on the Homeland Security and Oversight committees, where she can criticize the Biden family and administration as corrupt and soft on immigration. McCarthy told a buddy, “I will never leave that woman.”
Greene’s influence shows how much politics has evolved since Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Ga.) represented much of her territory in the late 1970s and early 1980s. McDonald liked Greene’s bogus claims of perfidy, isolationism, cultural warfare, intolerance, and violent, apocalyptic politics.
McDonald wasn’t a celebrity, but the contrast shows the far right’s rising power.
McDonald, unlike Greene, was politically isolated during his almost decade-long legislative career. Their heights show how powerful the far right is in American politics.
McDonald was mainstream for a political extreme. His father and brother ran a successful urology practice after he graduated from Emory University medical school.
McDonald was an ultraconservative Southern Democrat. He was a spokesman for the John Birch Society, a covert far-right organization founded in 1958 that swept across the country at the grassroots level but lost acceptability in mainstream politics due to its baseless charges of plots against America.
McDonald’s politics reached a crossroads in the 1970s. The Birch Society weakened. During the civil rights revolution, several White southerners left the Democratic Party for the more conservative, anti-big-government GOP.
He sought Congress in 1972. McDonald received support from 100 Birchers, with one society leader calling his campaign a protest against “the phony national campaign [Nixon-McGovern], both sides of which are controlled, as usual, by the conspiracy.”
McDonald lost that race.
Two years later, he ran on an anti-busing, pro-prayer-in-schools ticket. “Even a messy dispute over alimony that briefly landed McDonald in jail” didn’t stop him this time, according to author John Lawrence.
McDonald was “a loner” in a liberalizing party. He was the only first-term politician to apply for the House Internal Security Committee, which was known for “red-baiting” and was soon dissolved. He lost committee assignments in 1982 after opposing Democrat Tip O’Neill’s reelection as speaker.
McDonald had “little influence in either party” due to his fanaticism and iconoclasm, according to The Washington Post. McDonald owned over 200 guns and fetishized gun rights. He wrongly labeled Martin Luther King Jr. a communist who was “wedded to violence” and posted a portrait of Francisco Franco on his office wall.
McDonald told a Birch Society meeting in the 1980s that gay men should pay a “user fee” to fund medical research. HIV/AIDS was a public health emergency. The House overwhelmingly rejected McDonald’s motion to restrict all trade with the Soviet Union. The Georgian was one of two members to vote against federal funding for a flu vaccination.
McDonald incorrectly claimed that “an elitist core” that “has seen value in subsidizing communism” and desired “the dissolution of national sovereignty on the road to world government” had “dominated the State Department for 40 years” on an early CNN “Crossfire” in 1983.
McDonald rejected Republican icon Ronald Reagan. “A man who campaigned against elitism,” Reagan promised “that he would not be having the Council on Foreign Relations, trilateral types dominating his Cabinet.” “[Reagan’s] got about 250 members of such in his administration,” the Georgia representative lamented.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when pragmatism ruled politics and policymaking, McDonald presented a radical alternative to both main parties.
There was bipartisan support for legalizing undocumented immigrants, accepting civil rights and voting rights as settled law, supporting international alliances and military intervention, free trade, and the U.S. obligation to spread democracy abroad.
Both parties avoided outrageous claims about opponents. Culture wars and partisanship were weaker. Reagan, a conservative, supported several of these.
McDonald was on a Seoul-bound plane that unintentionally entered Soviet airspace a few months after his “Crossfire” interview. McDonald and 268 civilians died when a Soviet fighter jet shot it down.
McDonald died a communist martyr to his admirers. McDonald’s allies, including his widow, said Reagan’s reluctance to punish the Soviet Union’s mass murder was “typical” of his weakness. Hustler magazine published a ludicrous claim that Reagan assassinated McDonald because he had dirt on the president.
Complex combination of forces has brought McDonald’s ideas to the forefront of the GOP.
Several political savvy Bircher successors have woven their ideas and style into the Republican Party. Presidential candidates like the Rev. Pat Robertson in 1988, Pat Buchanan in 1992, 1996, and 2000, and Ron Paul in 2008 advocated isolationism, nativism, and seeing intentional sabotage everywhere, assuring that the GOP paid attention to far-right views, principles, and people.
The NRA, Conservative Political Action Coalition, and Charles and David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity have pushed extremist beliefs into the Republican conservative mainstream.
Republican leaders often promised to implement some of the far right’s agenda but failed to do so in office.
Reagan never banned abortion, reinstated school prayer, or drastically cut government. Instead, he signed compromise immigration and Voting Rights Act extensions and negotiated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union. These perceived betrayals left McDonald’s far-right ideological descendants dissatisfied and determined to move the party rightward.
After President George W. Bush’s second-term popularity plummeted, a more militant conservative coalition overtook the GOP. First Sarah Palin, then the tea party, and eventually Trump’s MAGA support rose. McDonald’s viewpoint, once marginalized 50 years ago, is now popular in the GOP.
This political environment has benefited Greene and her friends. McDonald’s anti-American conspiracies, in-your-face methods, culture-war politics, and skepticism of international institutions have shaped Greene’s political career.
Ideas and tactics permeate a society, creating a blueprint that future generations might modify. McDonald is more influential in 2023 than he was in Congress.
Europe is undergoing a paradigm transition as more EU countries include people with disabilities in politics. But some are lagging behind.
Fintan Bray and his sibling visited Brussels a few years ago.
Fintan’s attention was drawn to the European Parliament while they were touring the metropolis.
“Eventually, I will be in,” he told his sibling.
In October 2022, he became the first person with Down Syndrome to be elected to a senior position within an Irish political party, thanks to his ambition and hard work.
“I am extremely proud to be able to represent people with disabilities and to ensure that our voices are heard,” he told Euronews.
“And I have no plans to stop.”
Since he has been a member of Fianna Fáil for nearly two decades, he has been actively engaged in his party’s politics, using his voice at conferences and events to empower people with disabilities. He is overjoyed to have been elected to the party’s National Executive, or “Committee of 15.”
“It has been an incredible experience thus far,” he says.
Fintan’s story has been made possible by his family and Irish society in general, who have always supported his ambition.
As the party’s Equality Officer, his primary goals are to increase his community’s access to paid employment and higher education.
In Ireland, not only is it possible for individuals with disabilities to hold political office, but beginning this week, they will receive additional assistance when they vote.
In 2015, Ireland passed the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act, which enables those who may have trouble making decisions, such as those with intellectual disabilities, to exercise their democratic rights as citizens more effectively.
Since March 26th, this act expressly supports decision-making for people with disabilities, making Ireland’s voting system one of the most inclusive in the European Union.
Because this is not true in all EU member states.
No consensus on politics and disability
Fintan Bray’s tale is inconceivable in other EU nations.
In many other European nations, the movement of Irish society to better include people with disabilities in politics has not yet taken hold.
Pat Clarke, a representative of the European Down Syndrome Association, states that there are no expectations for the participation of individuals with Down syndrome in politics.
“Yet, this is changing,” he continues.
According to him, we are living in prosperous times for people with disabilities, as a paradigm shift is occurring and higher expectations are being set for them.
Clarke told Euronews that an increasing number of nations are working on the presumption of possibilities for these individuals.
However, the procedure is sluggish.
According to Alejandro Moledo, coordinator of EU Policy for the European Disability Forum (EDF), there are legal barriers in the EU that prevent people with disabilities from running for office or voting.
Disability rights and political equality?
In its 2022 centerpiece report, the EDF examined EU citizens with disabilities’ rights to vote and run for political office.
During the 2019 European Parliament elections, it was determined that approximately 400 000 people with disabilities in 14 countries were denied the right to vote due to their disability.
Moledo told Euronews that some nations view people with disabilities as second-class citizens.
For the freedom to run for office, the situation is deteriorating.
Only seven nations (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Croatia, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden) recognize the right of people with disabilities to run for office.
“We are striving for greater representation. Only five members of the EU Parliament have declared a visible disability, so we are not even discussing persons with invisible disabilities. This is far below the 15 percent of the EU population that has a disability, according to Moledo.
Fintan commented on this issue by stating that EU elections are in the back of his mind, but he wishes to focus on more local concerns.
“Perhaps in the future I will contemplate running [for the EU elections]. I want to be a voice for my community for the time being so that they can have what I have.”
Currently, one of Fintan’s primary goals is to defend the right to work for persons with disabilities. He is presently attempting to increase accountability in the hiring of disabled individuals.
“Many of my friends with Down syndrome receive a few hours of unpaid work per week,” he said. He is resolute to continue his fight.
After a trial that included testimony from Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeff Sessions, a Fugees rapper was convicted Wednesday of multimillion-dollar political plots spanning two presidencies.
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel was accused of funneling money from a now-fugitive Malaysian financier through straw donors to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, then trying to squelch a Justice Department investigation and influence an extradition case for China under the Trump administration.
A federal jury found him guilty of all 10 counts, including conspiracy and unregistered foreign agent.
The defense claimed the Grammy-winning rapper from the 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees sought to earn money and received inadequate legal counsel as he reinvented himself in politics.
Michel declined to speak after the judgment, but his attorney said he was “extremely disappointed” and will appeal.
“This is not over,” attorney David Kenner warned. “I’m sure we’ll win.”
In 2006, Michel met Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, who was spending millions and partying with Paris Hilton. Low financed “The Wolf of Wall Street.” DiCaprio said Low was a respectable businessman who wanted to donate to Obama’s campaign.
Michel defended himself. He stated Low would pay millions for a 2012 Obama photo. Michel helped and paid friends to attend fundraising events. He says nobody warned him that was illegal.
Prosecutors said Michel donated the money on Low’s behalf and tried to lean on straw donors using burner phone texts to dissuade them from talking to investigators.
After Donald Trump’s election, prosecutors believe Michel again collected millions to stop an inquiry into Low’s alleged money laundering and bribery plot to steal billions from 1MDB. Low, a worldwide fugitive, claims innocence.
Prosecutors alleged Michel was paid to push the U.S. to extradite a government critic accused of crimes in China without registering as a foreign agent.
Sessions, Trump’s top law enforcement official until 2018, testified for the defense on that claim. Sessions said he knew the Chinese government sought the extradition but not Michel. The former attorney general concluded the rapper’s failed attempts to organize a meeting on the matter weren’t unlawful.
On Thursday, Haredi rabbis, legislators, and commentators debated whether to attend the right-wing rally outside the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem on Thursday evening.
Yated Ne’eman’s editor, Yisrael Friedman, penned a critical editorial against protesting.
Friedman claims that engaging in such a protest shows a conviction in “the power and the strength of my hands” (Deuteronomy, 8,17),
Which contradicts the party’s claim that only its top rabbis can discuss politics. Unlike mass rallies, which act on “outburst of emotion,” these rabbis make choices based on decades of Torah study and are the party’s final authority.
Friedman stated that the haredi parties are aligned with the right because the rabbis told them to since they represent the majority of traditional and religious citizens. He argued that haredim are neither right nor left, and that Thursday night’s right-wing protests do not require them to join.
A haredi newspaper editor sharply denounced demonstrations.
Our rabbis ordered us to join the Right, yet we don’t belong and aren’t fighting together. We support the government’s judicial reform and oppose liberal terrorism’s dictatorship over people’s lives. Haredi people cannot enter.
“When acting beyond the Torah arena, it must be lit, like a flashlight, by the guidance of the rabbis, shepherds of Israel… Right-wing protesters are not our neighborhood. Nobody here. Period. “His citizenship in God’s house is revoked,” Friedman wrote.
Friedman’s opponents are haredi.
Hassidic “Agudat Yisrael” is the other UTJ faction. Aryeh Erlich edits Mishpacha, the Jewish Family Weekly, for Agudat Yisrael.
Erlich chastised Yated Ne’eman for representing all haredim.
Yated Ne’eman and Yisrael Friedman will not withdraw haredi citizenship. “Everyone should decide whether to go to the protests,” Erlich said, adding that “the warped culture of selectors sitting at the gates of haredi society and deciding who is legitimate and who is not” has ended.
Haredi automobiles with megaphones broadcast pro- and anti-protest messages. A Jerusalem video urged listeners to protest the “destroyers of religion,” while a Bnei Brak video advised listeners to avoid “licentious” protests “against the way of Torah.”
James Cleverly indicated that he does not mind Foreign Office employees working from home during the Sudan crisis “as long as they’re working.”
When asked if it was unreasonable to expect civil servants to be in the office, especially during a crisis, Mr. Cleverly stated on Times Radio, “My organization works remotely, and always has… they are working hard, every minute of the day, in time zones all over the world. It’s our specialty.”
The Foreign Secretary said, “As long as they’re working, that’s what I’m focused on.” We’ve used tech… “I don’t mind if someone works hard, late, and long hours from the crisis response center in the bowels of our Westminster office or from a satellite phone in the desert.”
During Sudan conflict, Foreign Secretary protects home-based civil servants
The government has advocated for the return of civil servants to Whitehall in the years following the coronavirus pandemic.
As a minister in the Cabinet Office last year, Jacob Rees-Mogg conducted a highly publicized campaign to get civil servants back to work.
As prime minister, Boris Johnson pledged to take “whatever measures are necessary” to prevent delays in public services and criticized the “post-Covid manana culture.”
On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dismissed Disney’s lawsuit against him as politically motivated and said the iconic company should stop receiving privileged treatment in his state.
Disney sued DeSantis on Wednesday over the Republican’s selection of a board of supervisors in its self-governed theme park district, citing a “targeted campaign of government retaliation” for opposing “Don’t Say Gay.”
The legal filing is the latest in a more than-year-old spat between Disney and DeSantis
They’re upset because they have to follow everyone else’s rules. “They don’t want to pay the same taxes as everybody else and they want to control things without proper oversight,” DeSantis stated in Israel. “Florida no longer elevates one company without accountability.”
DeSantis was on the third round of an international trip to boost his foreign policy credentials ahead of a possible Republican presidential run against former President Donald Trump.
As business leaders and White House opponents have criticized DeSantis’s stance as a rejection of small-government conservatism, he has jumped into the Disney dispute, a major tourism and employment engine in Florida.
Disney publicly opposed “Don’t Say Gay,” a state law banning early-grade classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity.
DeSantis took over Disney World’s self-governing area and created a new board of supervisors to manage municipal services in the huge theme parks. Before the new board took office, the corporation forced through an 11th-hour arrangement that limited their power.
Disney’s complaint seeks a federal judge to overturn the governor’s seizure of the theme park district and the DeSantis oversight board’s actions as free speech violations.
DeSantis outlined his Middle East policy at a symposium at Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance, emphasizing the U.S.-Israel partnership.
He said Israel was the only authority that could safeguard freedom of worship for all in combustible Jerusalem and that the Trump administration correctly transferred the embassy there despite Palestinian resistance.
He continued to oppose the Iran nuclear deal, saying it emboldened the country’s leaders. Obama’s Iran nuclear deal passed. Trump rescinded it.
DeSantis also criticized President Joe Biden for his concerns over an Israeli government plan to restructure the courts.
DeSantis visited South Korea after Japan. Britain follows Israel.
