Please tell me why an authoritarian highly ambitious arrogant Christian nationalist racist bigot who has already threatened BLM protestors and has been documented as abusing helpless prisoners want with his own military force with the power to arrest people? Considering the hate that the Governor and his supporters have for the LGBTQ+ will they use this new military police force against that community? What about drag queens? Hugs
The Florida State Guard’s (FSG) budget will grow to 10 times its current level, nearly quadruple in personnel, and become a permanent part of state government under legislation Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed.
The measure (HB 1285), promulgated by Republican Rep. Mike Giallombardo, creates a Division of the State Guard within the Department of Military Affairs as a separate budget entity headed by a Governor-appointed director, who will be confirmed by the Senate.
ACLU Florida said this expansion moves Florida closer to a police state. The new law expands the scope of its mission from being ready for activation in emergencies to also “protect and defend the people of Florida from threats to public safety.” Its members also have arresting powers.
The sweeping nature of this bill is astounding: it would divert nearly $100 million in taxpayer funding to build, arm, clothe, equip, and train a volunteer armed guard of 1,500 people to assume the duties of the National Guard.
These volunteers would have access to weapons, ammunition, planes, helicopters, boats, and surveillance technology, and would, unique among states with a State Guard, create a special unit within the State Guard with authority to make arrests.
What makes this even more troubling is that the newly-envisioned State Guard will only be accountable to the Governor and can be activated not just in a state of emergency, but any time the Governor deems necessary to broadly protect ‘from threats to public safety.’
This broad language fails to provide guardrails to ensure this special unit could not be deployed to crack down on activities that this Legislature is in the process of criminalizing.
Under the bill, the Governor will appoint the director of the state guard who serves at the pleasure of the Governor – meaning there will be no checks and balances on when and how this force is used.
Additionally, the Governor can order his State Guard to take action in other states. This is a terrifying bill that puts Floridians’ privacy, security, and safety in grave danger.
“Florida is the most military and veteran friendly state in the nation and through this legislation, we are further supporting our military, veterans and their families with the resources they need while they are serving and after they have fulfilled their duty,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.
HB 1285 establishes the Florida State Guard as a permanent component in Florida’s state militia and creates the Division of the State Guard within the Department of Military Affairs. The Florida State Guard has been appropriated $108 million in the General Appropriations Act.
HB 1285 increases the Florida State Guard from 400 to 1,500 volunteers, creates a specialist unit to act as law enforcement when necessary, and makes the force permanent, all of which enhance its capacity to defend and protect Floridians. pic.twitter.com/j3Y3FMllNX
So the 1500 members of this security Force are all volunteers? Can you imagine the type of person that will sign up for this? You’re going to have your Proud Boy types, KKK, and just your general bigoted rednecks who love guns and authoritarianism. What could go wrong?
Not really. Cubans loved fascist dictator Batista; they only hated Castro because he confiscated their property and money, not because he was also an evil fascist dictator. They love fascism and want it in the US.
Ooh, the “Gator Guard”! Next you’ll have them dig a moat around the state, and install a drawbridge.
Y’see Ron, people with the support of the populace don’t need to go into battle against them. This little historical note apparently slipped your notice.
Note: Foreign-born describes adults born outside the U.S., where neither parent is a U.S. citizen, and includes legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents and undocumented immigrants; Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Chart: Axios Visuals
The share of foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor force reached a record high last year, per new data from the Labor Department.
Why it matters: With more Americans aging out of the workforce than entering into it — and at a time of labor shortages —immigrants are playing an increasingly crucial role in the labor market.
State of play: The share of foreign-born people in the workforce has been steadily rising for decades, but dipped during the pandemic — making last year’s uptick look a bit more striking than it is, said Abraham Mosisa, a senior economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Still, this is a trend that isn’t going anywhere. The U.S. labor force participation rate of native born men has been consistently decreasing, he pointed out. And the rate for women has stagnated.
The number of foreign-born workers in the U.S. increased to 29.8 million in 2022, from 27.9 million the previous year — a jump of about 6%.
The number of native-born workers went from 133.2 million to 134.5 million — up barely 1%.
One key factor is that a bigger share of the immigrant population is of working age (18-64), at 77%, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI). That compares with about 59% of the native-born population.
Meanwhile: The relative size of the immigrant population has stayed flat over the past two decades — comprising 13.6% of the total U.S. population in 2021, according to the most recently available data from MPI — just below where it was before the pandemic.
Zoom in:Foreign-born workers tend to take different jobs than the native-born (see the chart below), and they typically earn less money.
In 2022, median weekly earnings for foreign-born full-time workers was $945, or 87% of their native-born counterparts.
Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Chart: Rahul Mukherjee/Axios
Worth noting:Immigration opponents might see the record number of foreign-born workers and argue that foreign born workers are somehow stealing jobs from Americans — but that’s not what’s happening.
Although was a big increase in net immigration in 2022 — essentially catching up from the COVID slump — there were plenty of jobs to go around.
At times last year there were actually two jobs available for every job-seeker. And this year, the unemployment rate has continued to hover around a record low.
Zoom out: As wealthier nations contend with shrinking workforces, many are crafting new immigration policies to find more workers — and combat inflation, as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
Policies that encourage immigration “will determine the extent and persistence of labor supply challenges,” as a note from Moody’s Investors Service pointed out a few weeks ago.
Immigration law in the U.S., meanwhile, remains a contentious and fairly intractable political issue.
What they’re saying: “If you want a growing workforce, without immigration, that isn’t going to happen,” said Phillip Connor, a senior demographer at FWD.US, an immigration advocacy group.
Former president Donald Trump announces his 2024 presidential bid at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
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Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before an early June visit byFBI agents and a prosecutor to the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump and his aides also allegedly carried out a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers even before his office received the May 2022 subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive ongoing investigation.
Prosecutors in addition have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others, these people said.
Taken together, the new details of the classified-documents investigation suggest a greater breadth and specificity to the instances of possible obstruction found by the FBI and Justice Department than have been previously reported. It also broadens the timeline of possible obstruction episodes that investigators are examining — a period stretching from events at Mar-a-Lago before the subpoena to the periodafter the FBI search there on Aug. 8.
Classified 101: How sensitive information should be handled
4:03
Presidents and vice presidents routinely deal with classified documents, but strict guidelines from a variety of statutes have clear guidelines on the subject. (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
That timeline may prove crucial as prosecutors seek to determine Trump’s intent in keeping hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House, a key factor in deciding whether to file charges, possibly for obstruction, mishandling national security secrets or both. The Washington Post has previously reported that the boxes were moved out of the storage area after Trump’s office received a subpoena. But the precise timing of that activity is a significant element in the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.
Grand jury activity in the case has slowed in recent weeks, and Trump’s attorneys have taken steps — including outlining his potential defense to members of Congress and seeking a meeting with the attorney general —that suggest they believe a charging decision is getting closer. The grand jury working on the investigation apparently has not met since May 5, after months of frenetic activity at the federal courthouse in Washington. That is the panel’s longest hiatus since December, shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead the probe and coinciding with the year-end holidays.
Donald Trump is facing historic legal scrutiny for a former president, under investigation by the Justice Department, district attorneys in Manhattan and Fulton County, Ga., and a state attorney general. He denies wrongdoing. Here is a list of the key investigations and where they stand.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) is investigating whether Trump and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia. A Georgia judge on Feb. 15 released parts of a report produced by a special-purpose grand jury, and authorities who are privy to the report will decide whether to ask a new grand jury to vote on criminal charges.
Attorney General Letitia James (D) filed a lawsuit Sept. 21 against Trump, three of his children and the Trump Organization, accusing them of flagrantly manipulating the valuations of their properties to get better terms on loans and insurance policies, and to get tax breaks. The litigation is pending.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in each case. “This is nothing more than a targeted, politically motivated witch hunt against President Trump that is concocted to meddle in an election and prevent the American people from returning him to the White House,” Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, wrote in a statement. “Just like all the other fake hoaxes thrown at President Trump, this corrupt effort will also fail.”
Cheung accused prosecutors of showing “no regard for common decency or key rules that govern the legal system,” and he claimed that investigators have “harassed anyone and everyone who works [for], has worked [for], or supports Donald Trump.”
“In the course of negotiations over the return of documents, President Trump told the lead DOJ official, ‘anything you need from us, just let us know,’” he continued. “That DOJ rejected this offer of cooperation and conducted a raid on Mar-a-Lago proves that the Biden regime has weaponized the DOJ and FBI.”
A spokesman for Smith declined to comment. Justice Department officials have previously said they conducted the search only after months of efforts to retrieve all classified documents at Mar-a-Lago were unsuccessful.
Of particular importance to investigators in the classified-documents case, according to people familiar with the probe, is evidence showing that boxes of documents were moved into a storage area on June 2, just before senior Justice Department lawyer Jay Bratt arrived at Mar-a-Lago with agents. The June 3 visit by law enforcement officialswas to collect material in response to the May 2022grand jury subpoena demanding the return of all documents with classified markings.
John Irving, a lawyer representing one of the two employees who moved the boxes, said the worker did not know what was in them and was only trying to help Trump valet Walt Nauta, who was using a dolly or hand truck to move a number of boxes.
“He was seen on Mar-a-Lago security video helping Walt Nauta move boxes into a storage area on June 2, 2022. My client saw Mr. Nauta moving the boxes and volunteered to help him,” Irving said. The next day, he added, the employee helped Nauta pack an SUV “when former president Trump left for Bedminster for the summer.”
The lawyer said his client, a longtime Mar-a-Lago employee whom he declined to identify, has cooperated with the government and did not have “any reason to think that helping to move boxes was at all significant.” Other people familiar with the investigation confirmed the employee’s role and said he has been questioned multiple times by authorities.
Irving represents several witnesses in the investigation, and his law firm is being paid by Trump’s Save America PAC, disclosure reports show. A lawyer for Nauta, Stanley Brand, declined to comment.
Investigators have sought to gather any evidence indicating Trump or people close to him deliberately withheld any classified papers from the government.
On the evening of June 2, the same day the two employees moved the boxes, a lawyer for Trump contacted the Justice Department and said officials there were welcome to visit Mar-a-Lago and pick up classified documents related to the subpoena. Bratt and the FBI agents arrived the following day.
Trump’s lawyers gave the officials a sealed envelope containing 38 classified documents and a signed attestation that a “diligent search” had been conducted for the documents sought by the subpoena and that all relevant documents had been turned over.
As part of that visit, Bratt and the agents were invited to visit the storage room where Trump aides said boxes of documents from his time as president were kept. Court papers filed by the Justice Department said the visitors were told by Trump’s lawyers that they could not open any of the boxes in the storage room or look at their contents.
When FBI agents secured a court order to search Mar-a-Lago two months later, they found more than 100 additionalclassified documents, some in Trump’s office and some in the storage area.
In a court filing in August explaining the search, prosecutors wrote that they had developed evidence that “obstructive conduct” took place in connection with the response to the subpoena, including that documents “were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room.”
This image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and partially redacted by the source, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. (Department of Justice/AP)
Prosecutors also have gathered evidence that even before Trump’s office received the subpoena in May, he had what some officials have dubbed a “dress rehearsal” for moving government documents that he did not want to relinquish, people familiar with the investigation said.
The term “dress rehearsal” wasused in a sealed judicial opinion issued earlier this year in one of several legal battles over the government’s access to particular witnesses and evidence, some of the people said.It was used to describe an episode when Trump allegedly reviewed the contents of some, but not all, of the boxes containing classified material, these people said. The New York Times first reported that Trump’s team conducted what was “apparently a dress rehearsal” before the subpoena arrived.
At the time, Trump and his legal team were engaged in a back-and-forth with the National Archives and Records Administration over whether he had taken from the White House records and property that were supposed to stay with the government. That dispute over presidential records is what ultimately led to the discovery of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago — some of them highly sensitive, including information about a foreign country’s nuclear capabilities; Iran’s missile system; and intelligence gathering aimed at China.
The former president, the people familiar with the situation said, told aides he wanted to make sure he could keep papers that he considered his property.
That dress rehearsal episode is one of several instances in which investigators see possible ulterior motives in the actions of Trump and those around him. Lawyers for Trump and some of those witnesses, however, have argued in recent months that prosecutors are viewing the sequence of events in too suspicious a light. They say Smith’s team hasunfairly dismissed claims that people were not trying to hide anything from the government but simply were carrying out what they considered to be routine and innocent tasks of serving their boss.
Prosecutors separately have been told by more than one witness that Trump at times kept classified documents out in the open in his Florida office, where others could see them, people familiar with the matter said,and sometimes showed them to people, including aides and visitors.
Depending on the strength of that evidence, such accounts could severely undercut claims by Trump or his lawyers that he did not know he possessed classified material.
The people familiar with the situation said Smith’s team has concluded the bulk of its investigative work in the documents case and believes it has uncovered a handful of distinct episodes of obstructionist conduct.
One of those suspected instances of obstruction, the people said, occurred after the FBI search on Aug. 8. They did not provide further details, but the Guardian has previously reported that in December, Trump’s lawyers found a box of White House schedules, including some that were marked classified, at Mar-a-Lago. In that instance, a junior aide apparently moved the box from a government-leased office in nearby West Palm Beach.
CNN’s Elle Reeve spoke with Darcy Schoening, the Moms for Liberty chapter chair in El Paso, Colorado. Reeve asked Schoening if she thinks there is a high-level, coordinated effort to make more children become gay or transition, and she said yes. Reeve asked who she thinks is behind that effort. Schoening said, “Teachers’ unions and our president, and a lot of funding sources.” Reeve followed up, “Why would they want more kids to be gay and trans?”
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