Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis picks Ashley Moody to replace Marco Rubio in Senate
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(WASHINGTON) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Thursday that he is replacing Marco Rubio in the Senate with the state’s attorney general, Ashley Moody.
“This is a time for action and a time for Washington D.C. to deliver results to the American people,” DeSantis said at a news conference near Orlando. “There are no more excuses for Republicans.”
Rubio, who has served in the Senate since 2010, has been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be secretary of state. Rubio was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for his confirmation hearing, during which he was pressed on Trump’s foreign policy goals.
DeSantis’ pick will serve the remaining two years of Rubio’s term.
Moody, 49, was a federal prosecutor and circuit court judge before she was elected in 2018 to serve as Florida’s attorney general.
DeSantis praised her as someone who has “stood strong time and time again” on Republican priorities on the economy, immigration and more. He noted her actions against the Biden administration on border policy, specifically, as attorney general.
“She understands the gravity of the moment,” he said. “We may not have an opportunity like this in the near future. This is a once-in-a-decade, maybe even once-in-a-generation opportunity, and this current Congress is ultimately going to determine whether we do usher in that revival of the American experiment or is just going to be status quo, passing the buck and nothing ever changes.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Experts who’ve spent decades studying the assassination of President John F. Kennedy told ABC News Friday they are hopeful that President Donald Trump will see to the disclosure of government documents on the killing that have been withheld from the public.
But despite the president’s order Thursday directing a plan for “full and complete release” of the material, some prominent researchers are not holding their breath.
“This order is a good first step, but it has loopholes in it,” warns author Jefferson Morley, whose website, jfkfacts.org, says it seeks to “abolish the official secrecy” that surrounds the 1963 assassination.
Pointing to language in Trump’s order that calls for a “plan” for the release, Morley fears continued foot-dragging within the intelligence community over some 3,600 documents in the National Archives’ JFK collection that still contain redactions.
“These agencies have not been cooperative with the law, with Congress, or with anybody over the last 60 years,” Morley said. “That resistance to full disclosure is not going to stop because Trump issued an order.”
New York-based attorney Larry Schnapf, who has in the past sued the government to compel the release of JFK documents, says years of experience battling a reluctant national security apparatus inform his skepticism.
“We’re hoping this is going to be a mechanical plan,” Schnapf said. “But if they’re going to do a substantive [document-by-document] review, then it’s going to be a while before the records are released.”
Schnapf also worries that the current lack of confirmed Trump-appointees in key roles at the intelligence agencies could slow the disclosures.
“If [Trump] doesn’t get his people in within 15 days, I think we’re going to have an initial delay, anyway,” Schnapf said.
In 1992, Congress passed a law requiring full disclosure of the JFK documents by 2017. But the law also allowed for exceptions if the president certified that “identifiable harm” to national security would be done if the secrets were revealed. Even as they oversaw the release of tens of thousands of pages, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden yielded to concerns of the CIA, FBI and other agencies, that thousands more documents should remain redacted.
A December 2022 memo to the White House has the CIA’s chief data officer writing that “limited redactions” were still necessary to keep secret the names of CIA employees, intelligence assets, sources and methods still in use, as well as “still-classified covert action programs still in effect.”
Jefferson Morley calls that bunk.
“The fact that they’re using techniques today that they used in an operation involving Oswald — and therefore it should remain secret — that’s absurd,” Morley said.
Author Gerald Posner, who wrote the 1993 book, “Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK,” is less pessimistic than Morley and Schnapf about the timing of the releases.
“[Trump] doesn’t like to be humiliated or made to look as though there’s a limit on his power,” Posner said. “And if [the agencies] come back and want to hold onto stuff this time, they’re going to have a tougher road.”
Posner and the other experts agree that the CIA is likely to be embarrassed by the disclosures, since the redacted documents are expected to shine further light on the spy agency’s tracking of Lee Harvey Oswald as early as 1959 — surveillance that intensified in the months leading to Kennedy’s death as Oswald traveled to Mexico City with a plan to defect to Communist Cuba.
“In an ideal world, we would get to that bottom of that story by finding out more about the officers who had Oswald under surveillance, more about the CIA operations that enveloped Oswald as he made his way towards Dallas,” Morley said, calling the CIA’s files “key to the story.”
One key advocate for release aims to have a seat at Trump’s cabinet table, and is hoping to learn more from government records about the 1968 assassination of his father.
“The 60-year strategy of lies and secrecy, disinformation, censorship, and defamation employed by Intel officials to obscure and suppress troubling facts about JFK’s assassination has provided the playbook for a series of subsequent crises,” Robert F. Kennedy Junior said in a statement, pointing to the killings of RFK and MLK, the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, 9/11 and the government’s handling of Covid-19.
“[E]ach accelerated the subversion of our exemplary democracy by the Military/Medical Industrial Complex and pushed us further down the road toward totalitarianism,” Kennedy said.
(WASHINGTON) — Attorney General Merrick Garland informed Congress in a letter Wednesday that special counsel Jack Smith has concluded his investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
Garland informed members of Congress — as required by internal department regulations — that at no time did he interfere in to overrule Smith during the process of his investigation, according to the letter released by the Department of Justice.
Garland also acknowledged in the letter that at this time he is currently barred by district Judge Aileen Cannon from releasing the report outside of the Justice Department, but intends to make Volume One of the report regarding Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election available to the public once he is “permitted to do so” by the courts.
Garland further confirmed he plans to make available the volume of the report pertaining to Trump’s classified documents case available to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for closed-door review as soon as the 11th Circuit permits him to do so.
Volume Two will not be released as of yet due to ongoing court proceedings against Trump’s co-defendants.
“Consistent with local court rules and Department policy, and to avoid any risk of prejudice to defendants Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, whose criminal cases remain pending, I have determined, at the recommendation of the Special Counsel, that Volume Two should not be made public so long as those defendants’ criminal proceedings are ongoing,” Garland wrote.
He continued, “I have determined that once those criminal proceedings have concluded, releasing Volume Two of the Report to you and to the public would also be in the public interest, consistent with law and Department policy.”
The letter was addressed to Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Monday that SoftBank will make a $100 billion investment in the U.S. that will create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. SoftBank plans to complete the work before Trump leaves office in 2029, according to a person familiar with the matter.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.