Ron DeSantis, open fascist
By 
Luckily this guy has as much chance of being the GOP nominee as I have of displacing Nikola Jokic as Denver’s starting center next season. Still this is a chilling reminder of which way the wind is blowng:
Florida GOP governor Ron DeSantis has plans to tear down and rebuild the Department of Justice and the FBI, even removing large parts of them and relocating FBI headquarters out of Washington D.C.
DeSantis has stated he will replace much of the personnel at the DOJ and its subsidiaries, and implement a “disciplined” and “relentless” strategy so the Justice Department resembles what the “Founding Fathers envisioned.” . . .
“We’ve seen throughout this country that the DOJ and the FBI are controlled by one faction of our society,” DeSantis said, noting that the federal agencies were “going after pro-life activists,” investigating parents at school board meetings “who are concerned about things like critical race theory and forcing kids to wear masks,” and “colluding with tech companies to censor information such as what they did with the 2020 election.”
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Chip Roy (R-TX), both staunch conservatives, have discussed with DeSantis changes that need to be made, along with former assistant attorney general Steven Bradbury and Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution. Bradbury has urged DeSantis to use his prospective executive power to implement changes without waiting for Congress. He asserted that DeSantis could “relocate the FBI headquarters” himself and then consolidate the FBI’s general counsel, public affairs, and government relations offices with the DOJ, so the FBI’s capacity to interfere political affairs would be limited while it would “beef up and emphasize the field offices.”
“If you’re performing poorly, you should be fired,” DeSantis said, limning his perspective that it didn’t matter what the level of the position was when firing someone. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a bureaucrat, or if you’re a political appointee.” He stated he would fire any DOJ employee working on a grand jury investigation leaking information to the press. “If they’re leaking,” DeSantis said, “we’re going to fire people.”
DeSantis has said he would fire FBI director Christopher Wray if elected. He also said he would direct the DOJ to target and hold “accountable” progressive prosecutors around the country who “are not prosecuting cases against violent criminals.” He has not been reticent to implement a high-level firing; last year he sent law enforcement officials to remove woke State Attorney Andrew Warren of the 13th Judicial Circuit, who was backed by Democrat mega donor George Soros, from office. . .
DeSantis would revoke the security clearances of some former intelligence officials, mentioning the scores of former senior intelligence officials who signed a public letter saying the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. He called the letter “a lie.”
Disciplined coherent fascism is to some extent a contradiction in terms, but it would be extremely easy to be a more pragmatically effective authoritarian than Donald Trump.