Gov. Ron DeSantis has been using his position of power to make as many “culture wars” headlines as possible over the past couple of years. Besides ripping off Donald Trump’s mannerisms and even trying to figure out ways to boost the Donald’s worst tendencies in himself. Being a cruel narcissist in search of power while also hating oneself is probably an exhausting bit of business. It’s also an expensive one. Of course, like Trump, DeSantis doesn’t pay for anything—the taxpayers do that for him.
Last year, DeSantis got his minions to write and pass legislation that was tossed out of court because of how blatantly unconstitutional and transparently corrupt it was. The hearings on the unconstitutional law was were farcical, but included DeSantis’ taxpayer-funded lawyers billing a lot of hours spent (further) embarrassing Florida. This one political stunt cost Florida taxpayers approximately $700,000. But isn’t almost a million dollars of taxpayer money worth trying to destroy the First Amendment?
If you say Floridians got off cheap considering what a corrupt individual Ron DeSantis is, you would be wrong. DeSantis continues to drain Florida’s coffers to pay for his political theater.
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According to Techdirt, that $700,000 number is last year’s news. According to filings, the new number is well over $1 million, and so far, Floridians have paid out about “$848,000 to have multiple courts explain to them how DeSantis and the Florida legislature is violating the 1st Amendment rights of everyone with this law.”
Whether that number will remain just north of one million or go into the plural “millions,” remains to be seen. Gov. DeSantis still wants to be president, even if Donald Trump does too. As an Orlando Sentinel story put it a couple of weeks ago, DeSantis’ laws attacking LGBTQ+ students and children (“Don’t Say Gay”), his laws attacking protests (through an anti-riot act), and his laws attacking immigration are all likely unconstitutional. As such, they are being fought out on appeals in court. As a result, a law professor told the Sentinel that DeSantis is “God’s gift to lawyers.”
To put this into a historical perspective, the Florida budget had earmarked $80,000 for DeSantis’ legal needs. Techdirt reports that in order to reach the current number of more than a million dollars, it had to be amended three times.
Donald Trump is rumored to be milling around an announcement of his intentions to run to become emperor of America, in Florida. The move is believed to work on two levels: Trump is lazy and lives most of the time in Florida so he can sort of just walk onto his lawn and announce his intentions; it sticks it to DeSantis whom he doesn’t like. Why don’t DeSantis and Trump dislike one another? It’s probably because looking in the mirror reminds them of how miserable they really are.
We talk to gun control advocate and executive director of Guns Down America, Igor Volsky on Daily Kos' The Brief podcast