Ron DeSantis Ousts Campaign Manager in Flailing Attempt to “Reset”

Ron DeSantis is trying to invigorate his flailing campaign by reshuffling staffing for a third time.

Campaign manager Generra Peck will now become chief strategist. She will be replaced by James Uthmeier, who served as DeSantis’s gubernatorial chief of staff. The changes will take place “ASAP,” Uthmeier told Politico Tuesday.

The move comes just a few weeks after DeSantis cut more than a third of campaign staff, including two senior-level advisers and about 10 people on the event-planning team. No word on whether he kept the staffers who made a video of DeSantis with a Nazi symbol in the background or an aggressively homophobic and transphobic ad attacking Donald Trump.

Peck and Uthmeier’s moves mark the third time DeSantis has tried to “reset” his struggling campaign. Before he announced he was running for president, DeSantis had positioned himself as the natural successor to Trump. But his campaign started on a whimper, not a bang, and has yet to pick up.

DeSantis is second to Trump in the polls, but by a massive margin. All of his attempts to galvanize his campaign have failed to pay off—literally. His super PAC is burning through cash, scaring off major donors, and yet he continues to slip in the polls.

Things aren’t helped by the fact that DeSantis himself is awkward and terrible at small talk. It remains to be seen whether the third time is truly the charm, but it’s not looking good so far for Team DeSantis.

Republicans are planning to begin an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in the fall, despite there being no proof of any wrongdoing on his part.

The GOP has for months accused the president and his son Hunter Biden of corruption, although they have yet to produce any actual evidence of their claims. While the farthest-right Republicans have long been clamoring to impeach Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy previously hedged, saying they did not have a strong enough case yet.

But many House Republicans say that the inquiry will definitely happen in the fall, and could begin as soon as next month, CNN reported Tuesday. They are worried that if they don’t try to impeach him now, it will make it look like they have cleared him and Hunter of wrongdoing.

McCarthy has begun to compare Biden to Nixon, arguing that his actions alone merit an impeachment inquiry. He says that an inquiry is different from voting on articles of impeachment, because it would merely give House Republicans greater power to get access to documents or witnesses that could prove their case. (Although if they haven’t proven their case by now, the bigger question might be whether there is anything to prove.)

“That’s exactly what was played out during the Nixon administration in Congress. They voted to have an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy told Fox News’s Sean Hannity Monday night. “I’ve raised it on this show not long ago, that because the actions of the Biden administration, withholding information, that that would rise to the level where we would need impeachment inquiry.”

“We will continue to follow the information and provide it to the American public,” McCarthy insisted. “The difference here is we don’t do it for political purposes. We follow the Constitution.”

Except, of course, all of the investigations into Biden are absolutely for political purposes. House Republicans have mobilized multiple committees to go after the Biden family. There has yet to be any proof of wrongdoing, but Republicans have used the investigations as excuses to trash Biden, attack policies they don’t like such as immigration, and share his son’s nude photos.

Supercharging those investigations via impeachment inquiry would be nothing more than Republican retaliation for Donald Trump’s two impeachments. But the move also could be highly unpopular—especially for those 18 Republicans representing districts Biden won in 2020. Several Republicans have expressed skepticism at the idea of impeachment, and CNN reported that some Republican donors are worried that an impeachment inquiry would not be a smart move.

There’s also the risk that impeachment proceedings would backfire completely. Republicans would be forced to lay out everything they have—which is really not that much.

A Trump-appointed Texas judge has ordered three senior Southwest Airlines lawyers to take eight hours of “religious-liberty training” from the far-right Christian hate group Alliance Defending Freedom.

In his late Monday ruling, U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr specifically mandated the lawyers take the training as part of court-ordered sanctions for religious discrimination. He described ADF as one of several “esteemed non-profit organizations that are dedicated to preserving free speech and religious freedom.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated ADF as an extremist hate group.

The mandated hate-group training is the latest phase of a lawsuit brought by flight attendant Charlene Carter, who sued Southwest for firing her in 2017 after she sent confrontational anti-abortion messages to her union’s former president. Carter argued she had been discriminated against based on her religious beliefs, and U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr sided with her in December, ordering she be reinstated.

Starr, who was appointed by Donald Trump in 2019, also ordered Southwest to issue a statement telling its employees that the airline “may not” engage in religious discrimination against them. Instead, Southwest said that it “does not” do so, prompting Carter to demand additional sanctions against the company.

Carter had made no request for Southwest to undergo religious liberty training. ADF is not representing Carter, nor is it otherwise related to the case at all, so it’s unclear why Starr felt the need to involve the group.

It’s hard to overstate ADF’s role in rolling back civil liberties. One of its lead lawyers is Erin Hawley, who is married to far-right Senator Josh Hawley. ADF helped overturn Roe v. Wade and then sued to remove mifepristone, one of the drugs used in medication abortions, from the national market. That case is still in limbo, as the Fifth Circuit Court has yet to issue a ruling.

ADF also represented the plaintiff in the recent Supreme Court case 303 Creative v. Elenis. Web designer Lorie Smith was suing to have the right to refuse services to LGBTQ people. The design request she claims she received that prompted her suit appears to have been entirely fabricated.

Andrew Cuomo’s sister helped coordinate a campaign attacking the women who accused the former New York governor of sexual misconduct.

Cuomo resigned in August 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment. A report by New York State Attorney General Letitia James found that Cuomo sexually harassed nearly a dozen women, including current and former government workers, through unwanted touching and inappropriate comments. Cuomo and his aides also allegedly unlawfully retaliated against at least one of his accusers for going public with her complaints.

Many of Cuomo’s accusers faced vicious abuse online. Much of that abuse was due to Cuomo’s sister Madeline Cuomo, working in coordination with a pro-Cuomo grassroots group, The New York Times reported Monday.

Madeline Cuomo worked with a group called We Decide New York, whose members mostly consisted of women in their fifties, sixties, and seventies. The group rallied behind Andrew Cuomo, galvanized to loyalty by how he had handled the Covid pandemic, in the spring of 2021 as more accounts of his sexual misconduct came to light.

More than 4,000 texts, emails, and voice memos acquired by the Times show just how much influence Madeline Cuomo wielded over the group and its social media presence. She helped WDNY plan social media posts and fed group members talking points for when reporters asked questions, but she insisted that her involvement be kept secret.

Madeline Cuomo regularly bashed her brother’s accusers, slut-shaming them and describing them as “despicable” and “unsophisticated.” Other choice words she used included “home wrecker,” “unauthentic,” and “bimbo photos.” The group followed her cues, often repeating her attacks word for word publicly. Last August, she told the group that two of Andrew Cuomo’s accusers “need to be frightened into shutting up right now.”

The group began to grow uncomfortable with Madeline Cuomo’s aggressive tactics, which would eventually lead to an irreparable rift. Members started to push back in September, after one of Andrew Cuomo’s accusers, Charlotte Bennett, sued him. “Even a slut has right to not be sexually harassed,” WDNY founding president Sandy Behan texted Madeline Cuomo.

The women compromised by sharing a photo of Bennett wearing lingerie at a bar. “No respectable woman would EVER pose like that,” Madeline Cuomo said over text.

Also in the spring of 2021, Madeline Cuomo got WDNY to hype up her younger brother Chris Cuomo when he filed an arbitration demand against CNN. Chris Cuomo was fired from the network for helping Andrew navigate the sexual harassment accusations, a violation of journalistic ethics.

Madeline Cuomo said she had worked with WDNY, but not recently, and that Andrew Cuomo was not involved at all. But the messages shared with the Times show Madeline Cuomo repeatedly said she kept her brother updated on the group’s work and that he appreciated all their efforts.

Andrew Cuomo gained national attention and praise for how he handled the Covid pandemic. But as the sexual harassment allegations came to light, it was also revealed that he had suppressed the number of Covid-related deaths in New York to make himself look better. He resigned in disgrace.

A judge on Monday dismissed Donald Trump’s defamation countersuit against E. Jean Carroll because her allegations that the former president raped her are “substantially true.”

Trump was unanimously found liable in May for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her in 2022 while denying the assault. He was ordered to pay her about $5 million in damages. A few days later, Carroll gave an interview on CNN during which she said, “Oh yes he did, oh yes he did” when asked about the jury’s finding that Trump had not raped her.

Almost two months after that, Trump sued Carroll for her comments. His counterclaim alleged that she had defamed him by saying he raped her when the jury had found he only sexually abused her (which is so much better).

“Ms. Carroll’s statements were substantially true,” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his ruling Monday dismissing Trump’s countersuit. “Unlike the jury’s finding on the Penal Law ‘rape’ question, its finding on the sexual abuse question—and specifically its implicit determination that Mr. Trump digitally raped her—is conclusive with respect to this case.”

Kaplan has made clear he will suffer no foolishness from Trump. In mid-July, he rejected Trump’s demand for a new trial. Trump’s lawyers had argued in court documents that the awarded damages were “excessive” because the jury determined Carroll had not been raped and that his assault had not caused her any mental injury.

But Kaplan called Trump’s argument “entirely unpersuasive” and noted that the New York penal law definition of rape is “far narrower” than in common understanding. As a result, not only would Trump not get a new trial, but he is definitely a rapist.

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” Kaplan said in his ruling.

Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) lauded Monday’s ruling. “We are pleased that the Court dismissed Donald Trump’s counterclaim. That means that the January 15th jury trial will be limited to a narrow set of issues and shouldn’t take very long to complete,” she said in a statement, referring to Carroll’s second defamation lawsuit against Trump.

“E. Jean Carroll looks forward to obtaining additional compensatory and punitive damages based on the original defamatory statements Donald Trump made in 2019.”

Carroll accused Trump in her 2019 memoir of raping her in the Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. She initially sued him twice for defamation: first in 2019, when he said she made up the rape allegation to promote her book, and again in November for posts he made about her on social media. Carroll is not the only woman to accuse Trump of sexual assault, but her first case was the first to make it to a courtroom.

Trump continues to vehemently deny all of the allegations and launched fresh vitriol at Carroll during the disastrous CNN town hall. She amended her second lawsuit, which is still pending, to include those comments.

Trump and his allies have repeatedly tried to thwart Carroll’s lawsuits, but he has been denied at every turn. And he will go into the second trial, which is scheduled to start in January, having lost a major asset: The Justice Department no longer considers him immune.