Has Ron DeSantis Eaten Pizza Before?

On Thursday, Ron DeSantis joined Fox News for a slice of pizza in New York City.

The Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate joined Fox’s ladder-climbing wonder boy Jesse Watters to shoot a segment in response to the city considering a rule that would encourage pizza shops to cut emissions from outdated coal-fired ovens.

Of course, analogous to the whipped-up backlash to the Consumer Product Safety Commission expressing concern for the health effects of gas stoves, the right has turned this into a cultural panic: The left wants to ban pizza. Enter Ron DeSantis, who has tried to make himself the poster boy of every ginned-up moral panic on the right.

Some quipped that it looked like the first time the 2024 candidate has eaten a slice of pizza.

“[The left] just wanna control.… They just don’t want people to be happy and be able to make their own decisions” DeSantis said, as if he hasn’t launched an all-out crusade against students and teachers, LGBTQ people’s civil rights, or people’s freedom to choose after signing one of the strictest abortion bans in the country.

“They were going after gas stoves. In Florida we made them tax-free, we may have to do some incentives for coal-fired pizza, because you know what, we’ll take it,” he continued before taking another face-scrunching bite.

The segment appeared as millions across the country were re-enveloped in wildfire-induced smog worsened by climate change. It also came months after twice-impeached and twice-indicted former President Donald Trump said DeSantis would have been working in a “pizza parlor” or “law firm” without his help.

The Supreme Court voted to overturn President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan 6–3.

The pause on student loan payments was already set to expire at the end of August, and Biden’s ability to extend the pause was foreclosed through debt ceiling negotiations. But the court’s decision on Friday hurts about 43 million people who were expected to see some relief from the burden of America’s crippling student debt regime.

On Thursday, the court ruled that affirmative action was a discriminatory mechanism. A day later, it ruled that people can openly discriminate against gay people, or anyone they see as “illegitimate” (in a case that didn’t even involve any gay people). And now the court has ruled against debt forgiveness, in a case based on harm toward a loan servicer that actually didn’t want to be involved in the case at all.

Justice Elena Kagan captured the madness in her dissent. “Wielding its judicially manufactured heightened-specificity requirement, the Court … does not let the political system, with its mechanisms of accountability, operate as normal. It makes itself the decisionmaker on, of all things, federal student-loan policy. And then, perchance, it wonders why it has only compounded the ‘sharp debates’ in the country?”

Estimates show that 87 percent of the relief from Biden’s plan was to go to individuals earning less than $75,000 a year, while none would have gone to those earning more than $125,000. Ninety-five percent of the total benefits were set for households making less than $150,000.

It remains unclear what the administration now plans to do to remain committed to its promises to these millions of people, but there still are options. One potential pathway proposed by the People’s Policy Project involves using the Higher Education Act to instate already authorized income-driven repayment programs that could potentially have debtors save even more than in Biden’s original plan.

The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in favor of a Colorado web designer’s crusade to make exemptions from anti-discrimination laws so she can refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings.

“Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation’s answer is tolerance, not coercion. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands,” the court wrote in an opinion led by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is among the most peculiar cases to reach the highest court of the land. Since 2016, web designer Lorie Smith had been appealing courts to outright make exceptions to Colorado anti-discrimination laws, so she could provide wedding website design services to straight couples only. Smith’s initial suit with a Colorado district court failed in 2019, and her subsequent appeal to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals failed as well. The Supreme Court took up her case in February 2022.

Puzzlingly, before she actually filed the first suit in 2016, Smith had apparently never designed a wedding website. Even weirder: She had never apparently been asked to provide services to a same-sex couple up to that point either.

Enter supposed couple “Stewart and Mike,” who apparently submitted a request to Smith for her services one day after she filed her case in Colorado’s U.S district court in 2016. Stewart apparently wanted to plan some design work for his wedding with Mike “early next year.”

But after The New Republic reached out to Stewart directly—his contact information was readily accessible in court documents—the story fell apart: He said he had never submitted the form; he said TNR’s call was “the very first time I’ve heard of it.”

“It looks like Smith and her attorneys have, perhaps unwittingly, invented a gay couple in need of a wedding website in a case in which they argue that same-sex marriages are ‘false,’” TNR’s Melissa Gira Grant writes.

This flimsy story befits a complaint with little to no substance. No one has caused actual, material harm to Smith that may prompt legal action at all. Colorado’s anti-discrimination law is the supposed villain here, according to Smith’s legal team. Such a law apparently prevents Smith from being able “to bring glory to God by creating unique expression that shares her religious beliefs of creating wedding websites,” her lawyers argue. “She only wants to make websites that comport with her values that same-sex marriage is illegitimate.”

And now, with the Supreme Court’s blessing, people like Smith can openly discriminate against anyone they see as “illegitimate.”

On Thursday, Dylan Mulvaney—the actress and influencer who has been viciously attacked by the angriest forces in society for simply being transgender and promoting Bud Light on Instagram—released a video revealing that Bud Light never reached out to her as she faced a relentless, bigoted backlash.

“I should have made this video months ago, but I didn’t. And I was scared. And I was scared of more backlash. And I felt personally guilty for what transpired,” Mulvaney said. “So I patiently waited for things to get better. But surprise: They haven’t really. And I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did,” she revealed.

“And for months now I’ve been scared to leave my house. I have been ridiculed, in public,” she continued. “I’ve been followed. And I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. And I’m not telling you this because I want your pity. I am telling you this because if this is my experience, from a very privileged perspective, know that it is much, much worse for other trans people.”

Indeed, approval for LGBTQ rights in America has slipped after years of progress. Ultimately, there’s a ferocious minority of individuals in society making their livings off of targeting people like Mulvaney. The campaign against her was deeply cynical, but it was successful: Bud Light has seen its market share dip after right-wingers made the company the latest target in their war on gay and trans rights.

The Trump Train is more of a clown car.

In the latest episode of Trump-adjacent criminality, three top-line investors have been charged with insider trading relating to a proposed merger with the company that owns twice-impeached and twice-indicted former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social social media platform.

The Floridian trio allegedly got away with over $22 million by illegally trading shares in Digital World Acquisition Corp, or DWAC, a shell company that was set to merge with Trump Media Technology Group, or TMTG. The three men, Michael Shvartsman, Gerald Shvartsman, and Bruce Garelick made the trades based on nonpublic information.

DWAC is what is known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, a tool that allows companies to merge with other entities and go public, all without having to formally file for IPOs. It is essentially a shell company that allows financiers to avoid finicky things like paperwork and rules—which are usually required when companies go public—in search of a quick payday.

According to the Securities and Exchanges Commission court filing, Garelick and both Shvartsmans had signed investor confidentiality agreements with DWAC in June 2021; after signing, the duo were first told about the company’s plans to merge with Trump’s media company.

Garelick had then joined the DWAC board of directors in July 2021. With his newfound position, he had come to learn of more details about DWAC’s plan to acquire Trump’s media company and also voted on actions related to the merger. The merger was officially announced on October 20, 2021.

Yet according to the complaint, Garelick had repeatedly purchased DWAC securities prior to that announcement date, didn’t complete required forms for directors who engage in securities trading of the companies they serve as director for, and shared additional nonpublic information about the merger with his boss at Rocket One Capital—Michael Shvartsman—who then tipped off his brother, Gerald.

After the merger announcement, the trio sold their DWAC holdings and pocketed almost $23 million.

Trump himself has not been named in the complaint. Meanwhile, the merger still has not happened, thanks in large part to numerous legal complaints. If DWAC and TMTG do not merge by September 8, the former is required to return $300 million to investors.

Days after the deal was first announced, The New York Times reported that DWAC may have violated securities laws that hold SPACs are not supposed to have a merger pre-planned prior to going public. Trump had reportedly been in talks with DWAC founder Patrick Orlando since at least March 2021.

In December 2021, it was revealed that the SEC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority were looking into the company’s stock trading and communications with Trump’s media company before the deal was announced. Then, in June 2022, the SEC was reported to have expanded its inquiry. Days later, the Southern District of New York subpoenaed DWAC and each member of its board—with a special focus on communications with Rocket One Capital. Amid the chaos, Garelick had resigned from the board of directors. And now we know why.