DeSantis continues broadsides against the media ahead of likely 2024 run

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is signaling plans to ramp up his attack on the news industry ahead of his likely 2024 run for president.

DeSantis on Tuesday held a roundtable discussion with media libel law experts and critics on a stage mirroring a typical cable-news show, with the GOP governor setting behind a desk with a screen behind him with the word “truth” displayed prominently.

Among those with him were a conservative lawyer who represents Dominion Voting Systems Inc. in a defamation suit against former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani and former President Donald Trump’s attorney Sidney Powell. Others on the panel include Nick Sandmann, a former Kentucky high school student who sued media companies over a viral social media video and a libertarian journalist.

“The idea that they would create narratives that are contrary to discovering facts, I don’t know that was the standard,” DeSantis said. “Now it seems you pursue the narrative, you’re trying to advance the narrative and trying to get the clicks, and the fact checking and contrary facts has just fallen by the wayside.”

DeSantis has long had a contentious relationship with the media since he became Florida governor in 2019. He rarely gives interviews to major media outlets and regularly criticizes outlets like CNN and his former press secretary, Christina Pushaw, was well-known for singling out reporters on Twitter for ridicule. The Republican governor, who’s widely believed to be staging a campaign to unseat Democrat President Joe Biden in 2024, even unsuccessfully pushed the Legislature to approve a law challenging First Amendment protections during last year’s legislative session, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

DeSantis’ criticism of the media is similar to those of former President Donald Trump, who regularly condemned media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times. In 2018, Trump also suggested that he’d try to change libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations.

During Tuesday’s discussion, DeSantis didn’t detail any specific laws he wanted enacted but pressed Florida legislators to “protect” Floridians.

“When the media attacks me, I have a platform to fight back. When they attack everyday citizens, these individuals don’t have the adequate recourses to fight back,” he said. “It would contribute to an increase in ethics in the media and everything if they knew that if you smeared somebody, it’s false and you didn’t do your homework then you have to be held accountable for that.”

Carson Holloway, a scholar from the conservative think tank the Claremont Institute, also said during the discussion that the Supreme Court’s legal precedents that govern most defamation lawsuits makes libel claims against media companies by public figures nearly impossible to win.

“This is distorting our politics in fundamental ways,” Holloway said. “It really discombobulates our ability to govern ourselves.”

Sandmann, who became embroiled in a social media firestorm after a video was posted of him smiling in front of a Native American beating a drum at the National Mall, said he thought nothing of the video until he saw it on social media as he boarded a bus back to Kentucky. National media outlets reported that the video showed Sandmann blocking the path of Native American, but Sandmann, who was wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, claimed he was trying to stay motionless to calm the situation at the event.

“In my case I didn’t have a reputation to ruin — I hadn't started any sort of professional career and I haven’t even started my life,” Sandmann said. “But they predetermined how that would happen.”

Libertarian journalist Michael C. Moynihan told Sandmann his “death sentence” was because he wore a MAGA hat indicating his support for Trump.

Barbara Petersen, executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, said during a phone interview that the Ivy League-educated DeSantis is smart enough to understand why the country’s forefathers believed the press was so important.

“It’s the only profession protected by the Constitution,” Petersen said. “Why is he so hot and bothered over this?”

Libby Locke, who was one of the lawyers representing Dominion Voting Systems, said the media is no longer doing the job that the public expects of it, especially with the growing use of anonymous sources. The voting systems company sued some of Trump's biggest supporters, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, for defamation after the defendants allegedly made false statements about Dominion.

“The thumb is on the scale in favor of the press,” Locke said. “Media defense lawyers come in and say First Amendment, and judges get very nervous about applying the law in a way that is favorable or even handed to a defamation plaintiff, and lives are ruined as a result.”

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Michael Cohen to meet with Manhattan DA amidst Trump grand jury

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen said he will be meeting with the Manhattan District Attorney Wednesday as a grand jury hears testimony regarding the former president’s involvement in a hush-money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

“It’s now the 15th time that I'm heading in to discuss this and several matters with the DA’s team and I am looking forward to it,” Cohen said Tuesday on his podcast Political Beatdown.

Cohen said he will be meeting with District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Wednesday.

“When it comes to whether it's the district attorney, the AG’s office … they all have people inside that office that leak information out. And so I feel it's fair that our Political Beatdown family should know it as well,” Cohen said, referring to Bragg and Attorney General Tish James who is investigating Trump for civil financial fraud.

Former President Donald Trump could face minor criminal charges for trying to hide money paid to Daniels during his 2016 presidential run to keep her quiet about an earlier alleged affair, The New York Times reported last month. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels in 2006.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to evading campaign contributions in connection with the Daniels payment. Two years earlier, he’d sent $130,000 to Daniels, which he said was “at the direction of” Trump. The Trump Organization paid Cohen back, but falsely listed the payment as a legal cost, according to documents in his earlier case.

Cohen made the announcement as former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz is shopping his new book saying his former boss Bragg shouldn’t have stopped an earlier grand jury from investigating Trump last year.

“I do believe that Alvin Bragg is serious,” Cohen said Tuesday. “I believe that whatever occurred in the past is the past and I think he legitimately believes that there is a case to be made against Donald Trump.”

“Now, of course we’ll see. I’ll let everyone know at our next live event how everything went,“ he said. "Obviously I'm just speculating at this moment.“

A spokesperson for Bragg declined to comment.

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‘Wake-up call’: Top Republicans sound alarm over China’s nuclear expansion

Top Republicans on Capitol Hill are raising alarms over news that China has surpassed the U.S. in its number of launchers for land-based nuclear missiles — and arguing for the U.S. to expand its own arsenal to keep pace.

Four GOP leaders on the House and Senate Armed Services committees said the revelation about China's nuclear capability, made in a Jan. 26 letter from the top commander of U.S. nuclear forces, is a warning that Beijing's arsenal is expanding faster than anticipated, though the U.S. still has more warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“This should serve as a wake-up call for the United States," said House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Senate Armed Services ranking member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo) and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) in a joint statement. "It is not an understatement to say that the Chinese nuclear modernization program is advancing faster than most believed possible.

"We have no time to waste in adjusting our nuclear force posture to deter both Russia and China," the lawmakers said. "This will have to mean higher numbers and new capabilities."

Lamborn and Fischer are the top Republicans on the Armed Services subcommittees that oversee nuclear weapons programs.

The head of U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Anthony Cotton, told lawmakers in a letter dated Jan. 26 that the U.S. retains a larger inventory of ICBMs and nuclear warheads, but that China has exceeded the U.S. in the number of fixed and mobile land-based launchers for those missiles. The Wall Street Journal first reported the letter.

The information came in response to a December letter from Republicans Rogers, Lamborn, Fischer and then-Senate Armed Services ranking member Jim Inhofe.

The revelation is likely to only further fuel uproar in Washington over Beijing, after a Chinese surveillance balloon traversed the U.S. before it was shot down last week.

Biden administration officials are set to brief the full Senate on the balloon on Thursday. The House is also likely to soon get briefed, leaders say. And House Republicans are weighing a resolution condemning China for the flap.

China's military modernization, including its nuclear capabilities and a potential invasion of Taiwan, have been an early focus for Republicans.

House Armed Services held its first hearing Tuesday on the threat posed by China. During the session, Rogers broached the ICBM launcher news and warned of China's nuclear expansion, urging the U.S. to act immediately to deter Beijing.

"The [Chinese Communist Party] is rapidly expanding its nuclear capability. They have doubled their number of warheads in just 2 years," Rogers said at the outset of Tuesday's hearing. "We estimated it would take them a decade to do that."

The U.S. is undertaking a long-term overhaul of all three legs of its nuclear arsenal as well as fielding new weapons introduced under the Trump administration's 2018 nuclear blueprint.

Low-yield warheads have been deployed aboard ballistic missile-carrying submarines. Congress has also preserved funding to develop a new sea-launched nuclear cruise missile that the Biden administration sought to cancel.

Nancy Vu contributed to this report.

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Top general says Trump-era spy balloons flew over the U.S. undetected

The military did not detect previous flights of Chinese spy balloons over the U.S. that took place during the Trump administration, a top general said Monday, due to a "gap" in the Defense Department's ability to track certain airborne objects.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command, cited the issue as the reason that at least three spy balloon flights were not briefed to senior Trump officials at the time.

"So those balloons, so every day as a NORAD commander it's my responsibility to detect threats to North America," he told reporters at the Pentagon. "I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. But I don't want to go into further detail."

He added that the intelligence community later determined the flights had occurred using "additional means of collection."

The Defense Department first brought up the Trump-era flights on Saturday, not long after an F-22 fighter shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina. Republicans had for several days blamed the Biden administration for its handling of the incident, but a senior DoD official on Saturday noted that flights had also occurred during the previous administration.

The remark caused an uproar in Republican circles, with several former Trump officials denying the incidents on Sunday, saying they never received any briefings from the military.

"We were never briefed, we never heard any of it," former national security adviser Robert O'Brien told POLITICO.

During his meetings with reporters, VanHerck also addressed why the military didn't shoot down the balloon last week before it began its seven-day journey over the U.S. and Canada.

"It was my assessment that this balloon did not present a physical military threat to North America, this is under my NORAD hat," he said. "And therefore, I could not take immediate action because it was not demonstrating hostile act or hostile intent."

The news from VanHerck comes as members of Congress demand further briefings from the Pentagon, both on the previous balloon incursions and on the current administration's handling of the newest flight.

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) said in an interview Monday that the Pentagon told him the military had actually tracked eight such incidents, although the timeframe of those flights was unclear.

“I had a conversation with someone at the Joint Staff that used the number eight,” said Waltz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, in a Monday interview.

Two of the Trump-era incidents occurred over Florida, and one over Texas, Defense Department officials told Waltz separately by phone on Sunday. Officials declined to provide details about the other incidents, he said, including under whose administration they occurred.

Since last week, administration officials have conducted a series of briefings for members of Congress and staff. On Thursday, the staff of the "Gang of Eight" lawmakers received a classified briefing, followed by a briefing for national security committee staffs on Friday.

Before the balloon was shot down on Saturday, the Pentagon notified the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees and the defense panels of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, and followed up with a briefing after the operation, a White House spokesperson said.

During a separate Sunday briefing, representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense read an opening statement about the three incidents over Florida and Texas but did not take questions, Waltz said. They also did not disclose details about the nature or size of the balloons, or whether the incidents were reported up the chain of command.

Waltz said he spoke separately with a member of the Joint Staff, who told him similar incidents had occurred eight times.

Senior Biden administration officials have since said the information was discovered after the previous administration had left office, and have offered to brief former officials on the new intelligence.

However, O'Brien said that as of Monday afternoon, he had not been contacted about any potential briefings.

Waltz said he was not satisfied with the briefing he received on Sunday and is asking for additional information from the Pentagon.

“You can’t just put that out there that our airspace was violated multiple times and not give us any details,” he said.

The developments come as the military begins the work of recovering debris from the balloon in the waters off the East Coast.

A Navy dock landing ship, the USS Carter Hall, is near where the balloon splashed down off of South Carolina and is collecting and categorizing debris, VanHerck said. The USNS Pathfinder, an oceanographic survey ship, is also working to produce a map of the balloon’s debris field. He noted that rough seas hampered recovery operations on Sunday.

Meanwhile, forces trained in removing unexploded ordnance went out to the site in a rigid-hull inflatable boat this morning, and will deploy unmanned underwater vehicles equipped with side-scan sonar to locate debris.

The military is concerned the remnants of balloon’s payload could contain explosives or hazardous material, and wants to ensure the safety of the site, VanHerck said. The balloon was as much as 200 feet tall, with a payload the size of a jetliner that weighed "in excess of a couple thousand pounds.”

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GOP leaders push bipartisan resolution about China balloon incursion

House GOP leaders are moving ahead with plans to pass a symbolic measure this week condemning a Chinese surveillance balloon. And it may even be bipartisan.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his deputies were in talks Monday with top Democrats about a bipartisan resolution to denounce the spy balloon that drifted across much of the nation last week.

“I think you could see that this week,” McCarthy told reporters, noting it would be focused on China. “I think our greatest strength is when we speak with one voice to China.”

House Republicans had previously discussed a resolution aimed squarely at President Joe Biden and his handling of the balloon — which POLITICO first reported — as they aimed to put it to a vote perhaps on Tuesday, the same day as his annual State of the Union.

But several members, including Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), privately lobbied GOP leaders to pivot toward a bipartisan censure of the Chinese spy tactics — a rare issue that both sides unite behind. Since then, the GOP’s draft has changed substantially, according to multiple Democrats, and may now receive agreement from across the aisle.

“My strong recommendation was … This is one of the things you want as a country to appear to be coming together. You don't want a partisan resolution,” McCaul said. “I think that's more important than our petty partisan politics.”

The Texas Republican has spoken not just to McCarthy: He’s also in conversations with his counterpart on the Foreign Affairs panel, Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.). He planned to review the language with Meeks later in the evening.

Meeks did not rule out possible Democratic cooperation, depending on the language of the measure — as well as its timing. Few Democrats were interested in a high-profile resolution to land the same day as Biden’s biggest address of the year. That now appears unlikely.

“We're looking at it. They've got something, and there's dialogue going on. So, we'll see what happens,” Meeks said, adding that the final resolution could go through the House Armed Services Committee, instead of the Foreign Affairs panel. “Depends upon what it says. Depends upon what the timing is.”

McCarthy and his team are also in the process of setting up a briefing for all members on the Chinese balloon, according to three GOP lawmakers. That briefing is likely to be Thursday, the same day the Senate will receive its briefing, according to a leadership aide.

Lawmakers have also received some information to review in advance in the Capitol’s sensitive compartmented information facility.

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

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Disney drops ‘Simpsons’ episode in Hong Kong that mentions forced labor in China

Episode in question is no longer available on Disney+ platform.

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Zeldin dumps campaign treasurer he shared with Santos

NEW YORK — Former Rep. Lee Zeldin is forming a new federal fundraising PAC, without his longtime campaign treasurer.

Nancy Marks, the political accountant embattled Rep. George Santos also used for his congressional runs, won’t be a part of the PAC, Zeldin said Monday at the New York State Conservative Party Political Action Conference in Albany.

"We will be announcing a new federal PAC that is being stood up right now utilizing a different treasurer," Zeldin said.

The former Republican congressman, who stepped down to run for governor, would not confirm reports he's interested in challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Instead he said he simply wants to reenter politics.

Zeldin seemed eager to distance himself Santos and Marks, who are mired in allegations of campaign finance irregularities.

“The treasurer has something like close to 200 different accounts,” Zeldin said.

As for Santos, Zeldin said, “I don't see how he is possibly going to regain the trust of his constituents."

He stopped short of calling for the Long Island congressman's resignation.

"Whether or not whatever his expiration date is as a member of the House, I don't have that answer. He is seated."

Marks has served as a campaign treasurer for Zeldin since his time in the state Senate over a decade ago.

She resigned from Santos' campaign and affiliated committees late last month. The Federal Election Commission, along with federal and local law enforcement, is probing allegations of financial impropriety in Santos' campaign.

Zeldin acknowledged he had a personal connection to Marks because their children go to school together on Long Island.

“Our interaction has been through Marks’ daughters,” he said, without elaborating.

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