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DeSantis’ Rubio Replacement Seen as Trump Loyalist and MAGA Culture Warrior
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has selected Attorney General Ashley Moody to succeed U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, should Rubio be confirmed as Secretary of State. Moody, 49, has served under Governor DeSantis for five years. If she chooses to remain in the Senate, she would need to run in a special election in 2026.
Both Lara Trump and Matt Gaetz had been rumored at one time to be interested in consideration. DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis, had also been rumored as a possible replacement. Lara Trump announced she would not seek the appointment. Some political observers suggested DeSantis, who is term limited and cannot run for a third term in 2026, could appoint himself to the role, but he announced he would not.
As Florida’s Attorney General, Moody has taken an aggressive, right-wing stance on key cultural issues.
In 2023, Moody appeared to compare a popular LGBTQ children’s book about gay penguins to “Nazi propaganda.”
After citing “a new ruling in Russia that bans the LGBTQ movement,” MSNBC‘s Ja’han Jones wrote: “In Putinesque fashion, the Florida AG argued that because schools are able to ban Nazi propaganda under ‘value-based judgments,’ they should be allowed to make similar decisions about LGBTQ content.”
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“In a legal brief filed over the summer,” Jones noted, Moody had “argued that schools’ homophobic book bans are constitutional because ‘public-school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message, and, when the government speaks, it may ‘regulate the content of … its own message.’ ‘”
Moody “once sued Donald Trump for alleged fraud,” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reports.
She is currently suing Starbucks, CBS News reported, over alleged “racial quotas” that an investigative agency denies are quotas.
“Moody in May filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations alleging that Starbucks had policies that ‘appear on their face to be racial quotas.’ But after an investigation, the commission’s executive director in November issued a determination that there was ‘no reasonable cause’ to believe that the Seattle-based coffee company violated a state anti-discrimination law,” CBS reported.
Moody’s appointment was quickly met with strong criticism.
“Ashley Moody has a long record of opposing abortion rights and even sought to keep an abortion rights amendment off of Florida’s ballot. She went further and supported threatening TV stations who played ads advocating for abortion rights,” according to Nico Delgado, the spokesperson for the liberal Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. “Moody also sought to get the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional, which would hurt over 4.6 million Floridians. Moody also abused her elected position and took a lead role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election and joined the lawsuit seeking to invalidate the results. Moody supported book bans and is in the pocket of Big Oil – while ignoring climate change.”
The Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried declared Moody has “ignored the growing property insurance crisis and let wealthy corporations rip off Floridians. Instead, she spent her time chasing political attention and currying favor with the far right. She worked for over a year to silence the voices of Floridians who wanted Amendment 4 on the ballot, weaponizing state law and the Florida Constitution to score the political points that got her this appointment.”
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DeSantis used the opportunity of announcing Moody’s appointment to hold a press conference to say she will “work with President Trump to deliver on the mandate he earned,” is “willing to shut the border” and will “make sure any legal immigration to this country is putting Americans first,” as CBS News reported.
He also, according to the nonprofit and nonpartisan news outlet NOTUS, said Moody has pledged that, as a Senator, she will “defund” the United Nations “once and for all.”
Moody told DeSantis she is “ready to show up and fight for this nation and fight for President Trump to deliver the ‘America First’ agenda on Day One.”
NOTUS justice reporter Jose Pagliery, in a social media thread, called Moody a “close DeSantis ally who keeps filing lawsuits for the MAGA cause.”
He adds that Moody “fought mask mandates during COVID,” has “claimed that FEMA was discriminating against Trump supporters,” and “accused the Biden administration of ‘flat out refusing to secure the border.'”
READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene Targets Former Biden Official’s Religious Faith in House Hearing
Image via Reuters
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
