Florida governor’s moves spur Trump to lash out at him during low-key events over the weekend in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Plus, Sarah Michelle Gellar makes a comeback
Good morning.
The 2024 presidential race is showing signs of kicking into gear amid reports that Florida’s rightwing Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is laying the groundwork for a White House run as Donald Trump finally hit the campaign trail.
DeSantis’s moves even spurred Trump to lash out at him as the former US president held relatively low-key events over the weekend in the early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“Ron would have not been governor if it wasn’t for me … when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal,” Trump said, before criticising DeSantis’s actions on fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, a far-right project that has helped spread Trump’s false claims about voting fraud in 2020, and misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, is trying to expand its mission, while facing new criticism from scholars and religious leaders about its incendiary political and Christian nationalist messages.
Why is New College of Florida in the news? The tiny Florida university finds itself in the crosshairs of DeSantis’s latest culture wars crusade, in this instance to destroy its unofficial reputation as a haven for approximately 650 generally progressive-leaning students, about half of whom identify themselves as non-heterosexual.
Dangote Group has dismissed as false and malicious a publication alleging that its President, Aliko Dangote, distanced himself from Tony Elumelu, describing the report as entirely baseless. In a s...