Ron DeSantis

Former President Donald Trump accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of engaging in "grooming" behavior in his latest attack against his top rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

The former president on Truth Social Tuesday reposted a post accusing DeSantis of drinking alcohol with minors when he was a high school teacher.

Although Democrats generally performed much better than expected in the 2022 midterms, Florida was the one state where the red wave that Fox News pundits were predicting really did materialize. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis campaigned from the far right and was reelected by 19 percent; Sen. Marco Rubio, another Republican, defeated Democratic challenger Val Demings by 16 percent.

There was plenty of good news for Democrats in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, all of which found them winning gubernatorial races. Centrist Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly was reelected in deep red Kansas, and even though Democrats narrowly lost the U.S. House of Representatives, they slightly increased their effective majority in the U.S. Senate when Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia was reelected. But the midterms brought Democrats plenty of bad news in Florida, which some Democratic strategists believe is no longer a swing state, but a full-fledged red state that now has 30 electoral votes.

Arkansas Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered the Republican Party's official response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address and was panned from all sides.

Many on the left were angered and outraged as she attacked LGBTQ and Black Americans in a lengthy speech that was tall on culture war rhetoric and extremism and short on policy or vision.

Entertainment giant Disney said Wednesday it was laying off 7,000 employees, in CEO Bob Iger's first major decision since he was asked back to lead the company late last year.

The layoffs follow similar moves by the US tech giants that have laid off thousands of workers as the economy sours and companies dial back a hiring spurt that began during the height of the pandemic.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday hit back at former President Donald Trump, a day after Trump promoted a social media post accusing DeSantis of "grooming" teenage girls.

While speaking with reporters, DeSantis was asked about Trump's decision to amplify a Truth Social post that accused DeSantis of plying teen girls with alcohol while he was a high school teacher.

Charlie Kirk, the longtime director of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA, is facing a schism as his years-long relationship with "Students for Trump" is falling apart, reported The Washington Post on Wednesday.

When former President Donald Trump was in power, the two groups worked hand in hand, with Students for Trump leasing its web domains to TPUSA, and the two groups amplifying each other's messages to boost the fundraising and organizing for each. But that partnership is crumbling over disagreements about how to run their operation.

In a memo written Monday and obtained by The Texas Tribune, Abbott’s chief of staff Gardner Pate told agency leaders that using DEI policies violates federal and state employment laws, and hiring cannot be based on factors “other than merit.”

Pate said DEI initiatives illegally discriminate against certain demographic groups — though he did not specify which ones he was talking about.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) founded the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security and their first act was to arrest 20 people who voted because they thought that the new law allowing almost all felons to vote gave them the right to cast a ballot. Most of the charges against those people didn't stick because the crime is "knowingly" casting a ballot when you know you can't.

But one person that was caught during the DeSantis crackdown was Republican Nathan Hart. His trial unfolded last week, but not for voter fraud charges, said the Tampa Bay Times.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) held a "roundtable" in Hialeah Gardens, in which he proposed new laws should be introduced making it easier to sue media companies for what they publish, reported the Miami Herald on Tuesday.

"In a roundtable discussion that featured complaints about the unfair 'narrative' of the news media, DeSantis sat behind a desk similar to one of a news anchor with the backdrop of the word 'Truth' on a screen," reported Emily L. Mahoney and Kirby Watson. "DeSantis spoke with six panelists including attorneys who litigate libel cases, libertarian journalist Michael Moynihan and Nicholas Sandmann, a conservative activist who has spoken extensively about his mistreatment by mainstream media outlets."

One of the former Memphis police officers charged in the beating death of Tyre Nichols texted a picture of him beaten and dazed on the pavement to "at least five people," The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

"As Tyre Nichols sat propped against a police car, bloodied, dazed and handcuffed after being beaten by a group of Memphis police officers, one of those officers took a picture of him and sent it to at least five people, the Memphis Police Department said in a document released by the state on Tuesday," reported Jessica Jaglois, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, and Mitch Smith. "The document was sent to the Tennessee Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission as part of a request last month for the regulatory agency to decertify five officers involved in the beating. Those officers have since been fired and charged with second-degree murder in Mr. Nichols’s death."

Former President Donald Trump shared a post on his Truth Social platform that insinuated, without evidence, that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) groomed underage girls while he was a high school teacher, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

"The post linked to a Truth Social Account that grabbed a digital image of a young man with a bowl haircut who appears to be DeSantis surrounded by three young women," reported Geoff Earle. "One of them, who has her arm around the now-Florida governor, is smiling and appears to be holding a brown glass bottle."