Broadway Actress Compares Ron DeSantis to KKK “Grand Wizard” at Tony Awards

Actor Denée Benton compared Ron DeSantis to the leader of the KKK while she presented an award at the Tony’s, a clear jab at the Florida governor’s recent attacks on human rights.

Benton presented an award for theater education to a school in Florida. The actor, known for shows including Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, noted that she is also from Florida.

“I’m certain that the current Grand Wizard—I’m sorry, excuse me, governor of my home state of Florida,” Benton said during her presentation speech. She was cut off by cheers.

“I am sure that he will be changing the name of this following town immediately.”

Benton then presented the award to the South Plantation High School in Plantation, Florida.

While Benton did not elaborate on her remark, it was a clear comment on the recent policies that DeSantis has passed or pushed in Florida. He defunded diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, helped gut the A.P. African American Studies course, and backed measures to ban books in public schools. In May, the NAACP issued a travel advisory for Florida, calling the state “openly hostile towards African Americans and other communities of color.”

DeSantis’s attacks on civil rights also include a “Don’t Say Gay” law, banning classroom discussion of gender or sexuality in all grades, and a six-week abortion ban. He has enacted multiple laws targeting LGBTQ people, particularly drag queens and transgender children. A recently signed law banning gender-affirming care for minors has been partially blocked by a judge.

DeSantis has also gone to war with two major Florida institutions: the liberally minded New College and Disney. DeSantis installed a board packed with allies at the New College, who then ousted the school’s president. Students across the state have repeatedly protested DeSantis’s actions.

He tried a similar move with Disney, also installing an ally-packed governing board. But Disney fought back, and DeSantis is now locked into the weirdest legal battle ever.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Friday that he was resigning as a British lawmaker, after learning he would be sanctioned for misleading Parliament.

Johnson stepped down as prime minister in July, following the bombshell revelations that he and members of his Cabinet had violated U.K. Covid-19 protocols multiple times with wild parties at his office at 10 Downing Street. Johnson admitted in March that he misled Parliament about the so-called “Partygate,” but he denied doing so intentionally. Now he is resigning from his role as Conservative member of Parliament, effective immediately.

Here’s a look back at some of the worst things Johnson has said and done as a public servant.

1. No plan for Brexit

Johnson was one of the key campaigners for Brexit, which he ultimately oversaw during his premiership. But he never expected it to actually happen, according to a biography of him published in May.

“What the hell is happening?” Johnson kept saying after the vote results came in. “Oh shit, we’ve got no plan. We haven’t thought about it.”

The U.K. did finally leave the European Union under Johnson’s leadership. But Brexit, and the deal Johnson negotiated, were a total flop, sticking the U.K. with the lowest economic growth rate of all G7 nations. The International Monetary Fund expects it to be the only leading global economy to shrink this year.

2. Burqas look like “letter boxes”

Johnson compared women wearing burqas to “letter boxes” in a 2018 column for The Telegraph. In his opinion, it was “absolutely ridiculous” that people “choose to go around looking like letter boxes.”

He felt that people should be “fully entitled” to ask a woman to remove her burqa so that they can “talk to her properly.”

3. Bashar Al Assad should “keep going”

In a 2016 column for The Telegraph, Johnson said that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad should be allowed to keep doing his thing because he saved Palmyra from ISIS.

“Hooray, I say. Bravo—and keep going,” Johnson wrote. “Yes, I know. Assad is a monster, a dictator. He barrel-bombs his own people. His jails are full of tortured opponents. He and his father ruled for generations by the application of terror and violence—and yet there are at least two reasons why any sane person should feel a sense of satisfaction at what Assad’s troops have accomplished.” (The two reasons were ISIS and archaeology.)

4. The Holocaust was an attempt to recreate the “golden age” of Europe

Also in 2016, Johnson said the Roman Empire had been a “golden age” that saw Europe unified under a single government. The continent’s past 2,000 years were filled with attempts to recreate that political system.

“Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically,” Johnson told The Telegraph. “The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.”

5. Black people have “watermelon smiles”

In 2002, Johnson wrote in The Telegraph about a visit then–Prime Minister Tony Blair made to Africa. “What a relief it must be for Blair to get out of England,” Johnson said.

“It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies,” he wrote. He also described African people as having “watermelon smiles.”

6. Colonialism in Africa should never have ended

Johnson was editor of the conservative magazine The Spectator from 1999 to 2005. In 2002, he wrote an article arguing that Africa would be in better shape if British colonialism had never ended.

“The continent may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience,” he wrote in the piece. “The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more.”

In the same article, Johnson downplayed Britain’s role in the slave trade and suggested that Ugandans would never have been able to grow a variety of crops. He also managed to blame Vietnam for low coffee prices.

Idaho and Mississippi have zero openly LGBTQ elected officials, despite major advances in queer representation in U.S. politics, a new report found.

The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, an organization that works to get LGBTQ people into public office, found that the number of openly queer elected officials increased by 13.6 percent from June 2022 to May 2023.

In its annual Out for America report, the group also found that the number of queer people of color elected jumped by 23.2 percent in the past year. But while this progress is heartening, LGBTQ elected officials still only make up less than a quarter of a percent of all U.S. officials.

That discrepancy is particularly noticeable in Idaho and Mississippi, which have no LGBTQ elected officials. Those two states, along with Louisiana and West Virginia, also have zero LGBTQ state legislators.

The situation in Idaho and Mississippi should come as no surprise, though. Both states have been aggressive in pushing legislation to curb LGBTQ rights since the start of the year. Mississippi lawmakers introduced at least 31 anti-LGBTQ bills at the start of the session alone.

Both states have banned gender-affirming care for transgender minors, with Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signing the measure in February and Idaho Governor Brad Little following suit in April.

The Idaho House also passed two bills in February targeting drag performances. One bill banned drag in public, and the other prohibited state agencies from sponsoring nongovernmental organizations and events such as Pride celebrations. Both those measures stalled in the state Senate.

Donald Trump, whose trademark 2016 motif was demanding Hillary Clinton be locked up for deleting emails, apparently admires that the emails were deleted, and wishes his legal team was up to snuff to do that kind of thing.

The former president has been impeached twice, criminally indicted, and found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. And now, as he faces 37 criminal counts for mishandling classified government documents, absurd details of his behavior reveal both how tough a case this will be for him to crack and how almost too hypocritical he is.

“He said, he said that it—that it was him. That he was the one who deleted all of her emails, the 30,000 emails, because they basically dealt with her scheduling and her going to the gym and her having beauty appointments,” Trump said to his lawyers, an unnamed lawyer (widely assumed to be Evan Corcoran) told the special counsel. “And he was great. And he, so she didn’t get in any trouble because he said that he was the one who deleted them.”

Trump shared the story on May 23, in the immediate aftermath of being issued a subpoena for the trove of classified documents he had taken from the White House. He apparently reiterated the story more than once, perhaps insinuating to the lawyers that they ought to be prepared to participate in some covering up themselves.

The difference between what Trump says in public versus what he says in private echoes the broader contradiction of him, for years, repeatedly calling for the lengthy imprisonment of those who mishandle classified information. Meanwhile, he had conceded he could not declassify things after leaving office (while sharing classified documents with people without security clearances).

The absurdity is embodied just as well by him sharing the classified documents with someone from his super PAC and hiding the documents in his shower, a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, and a bathroom with a signature Trump-style chandelier.

Donald Trump allegedly kept hundreds of classified documents, including on how best to attack the United States, from seven different government agencies, the indictment against him reveals.

Trump is now the first former president ever to be federally charged. Of the 37 total charges against him, which were unsealed Friday, 31 are for willful retention of national defense information. He is accused of keeping an array of classified national security material after leaving the White House, despite being unauthorized to do so.

The documents had come from the CIA, the Defense Department, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Department of Energy, and the State Department and its Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

And a look at what was in the classified documents is quite damning.

The materials Trump kept included information on “potential vulnerabilities” to military attack for the United States and its allies, as well as details on the U.S. nuclear program. “The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods,” the indictment said.

The documents also contained plans for possible retaliatory attacks on foreign nations. One such document detailed a plan to attack Iran. Prosecutors obtained recordings of Trump admitting he had the document and that he knew he couldn’t declassify it because he was no longer president. That document has not yet been recovered.

Donald Trump was so loose with secret government documents, he was showing them to someone from his super PAC and hiding them in his shower.

After being impeached twice, criminally indicted, and found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, the former president has now received 37 criminal counts for mishandling classified government documents.

The indictment, released Friday, lays out wild details about how Trump handled the documents, even being “personally involved” in packing up the boxes full of the classified information as he left the White House.

After transporting the classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, Trump apparently hid the boxes in a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, bathroom and shower, an office, his bedroom, and a storage room.

At the Bedminster Club in New Jersey, in August or September 2021, Trump allegedly showed a representative of his PAC—who did not have security clearance—“a classified map related to a military operation and told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close.”

All told, Trump allegedly retained classified documents from seven agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, National Security Agency, and State Department.

Also at the Bedminster club, Trump showed a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff—none with security clearance—a “plan of attack” that was apparently prepared for him by the DOD and a senior military official. He called it “highly confidential” and “secret,” adding, “As president I could have declassified it,” and, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.” Previous reporting indicates this may have been a Pentagon document on a plan to attack Iran.

In the August Mar-a-Lago FBI search alone, out of the 102 documents recovered, 17 were classified as “Top Secret,” 54 were “Secret,” and 31 were “Confidential.”

Before said raid, and after Trump was issued a subpoena in May, one of Trump’s attorneys had recounted that Trump apparently said, “I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t,” and “Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” and even “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

Note, again, while others, including Joe Biden and Mike Pence, have been found to have possessed classified documents from previous administrations, each have complied with inquiries and in returning documents expeditiously, something Trump demonstrably did not do and has actively obstructed.

Donald Trump received 37 criminal counts in the special counsel’s investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Trump became the first former president ever to be federally indicted late Thursday. He was also previously impeached twice, criminally indicted, and found liable of sexual abuse and defamation. He is still under investigation for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has unilaterally rejected every accusation leveled against him, including in the special counsel investigation—and before it was even announced what those charges would be.

The charges were unsealed Friday afternoon. Trump was charged with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, for keeping classified documents related to national security despite being unauthorized to do so. He was also charged with one count of making false statements and representations, for claiming he had returned all the documents.

Trump and his body man, Walt Nauta, were both charged with one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice for moving boxes of classified documents and hiding them from Trump’s legal team. They were charged with one count of withholding a document or record, one count of corruptly concealing a document or record, one count of concealing a document in a federal investigation, and one count of a scheme to conceal.

Nauta was also charged with one count of making false statements and representations, separate from the claims Trump made. Nauta had helped move boxes of classified material from a storage room. He told investigators he did not know what was in the boxes or how they had gotten there in the first place.

Read through the 49-page indictment here.

They say that misery loves company, and Donald Trump is no longer alone in being indicted for allegedly mishandling classified documents. And he may get more company soon.

Trump and his body man Walt Nauta have both been charged in the investigation into the former president’s handling of classified material. Nauta’s charging caught many people off guard, as special counsel Jack Smith, who leads the investigation, has played his cards close to his chest.

But it shows that Smith’s investigation is more far-reaching than initially expected.

As now twice-indicted former President Donald Trump confronts yet another legal battle, he is shaking up his legal team for the umpteenth time.

Trump announced on Truth Social Friday that he is calling up Todd Blanche “and a firm to be named later” to represent him as he faces charges for mishandling and refusing to return classified government information after leaving the White House.

With the call-up, the twice-impeached and liable-for-sexual-abuse former president is saying bye-bye to lawyers Jim Trusty and John Rowley. The departure was unexpected, as Trusty had been on CNN just hours earlier going to bat to defend Trump.

Blanche is an elite white-collar criminal defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor. Previously, he has represented former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and Igor Fruman, a former Rudy Giuliani associate who allegedly helped scour Ukraine for damaging information on Trump’s rivals. Fruman was sentenced to a one-year prison term for a campaign finance violation.

Manafort was able to evade mortgage fraud and other charges with the help of Blanche—charges Blanche had called “politically motivated,” just as Trump’s team calls the ones he faces now.

For their part, Trusty and Rowley claim to be resigning because it is “a logical moment” to step aside since the case has been filed in Miami. It is unclear why exactly it’s a “logical moment” for someone’s two defense lawyers to “resign” just because it’s in Miami (unless they personally felt victimized by Ron DeSantis’s war on civil rights or something).

Perhaps Trump fired them to shake up his legal defenses, given how poor his track record in the courts has been up to this point. But Trump recruited Blanche before his Manhattan arraignment too, and well, we saw how that went. Perhaps the lawyers did leave of their own volition, but to jump from a sinking ship. Either way, the shake-up doesn’t necessarily bode strongly for the serial criminal.

Donald Trump’s aide Walt Nauta has been charged as part of the investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Trump on Thursday became the first former president to be federally indicted when he was charged with seven counts, which reportedly include violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction, and making false statements. Other charges are expected against some of his allies, but it is not yet known what those charges might include.

The charges against Nauta have not yet been revealed, but he has been a particular focus of special counsel Jack Smith’s team. Investigators suspected Nauta had helped move and possibly hide classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago.

Nauta joined Trump’s team as a military valet at the White House, and he is one of the few remaining staffers from Trump’s time in office. After Trump lost the presidency, Nauta went to work for him at Mar-a-Lago, eventually leaving the military to stay on as a civilian aide. Nauta has quickly become Trump’s right-hand man: At the White House, he would reportedly stand nearby, ready with whatever Trump needed, be it a coat, a drink, or a piece of paper. Now he shadows Trump on all of his campaign appearances.

He also moves boxes at Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors obtained notes from one of Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran, which revealed that Trump and Nauta knew exactly where and when Corcoran was planning to search for the documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Nauta had previously testified that Trump asked him to move boxes out of the storage room both before and after the subpoena was issued. The Guardian reported that prosecutors could be investigating whether Nauta knew exactly what was in the boxes he was moving.

At one point, another Mar-a-Lago employee helped Nauta move some of the boxes. That second employee, while draining the resort pool in October, flooded a room full of computer services used to store surveillance footage from around the property. It is unclear whether the flood was accidental or intentional.

According to Corcoran’s notes, Nauta had also offered to help him look through the boxes in the storage room, which Corcoran declined. But he took breaks during the multiday search, leaving the storage room unattended multiple times.

Trump lashed out Friday at the Department of Justice over Nauta’s indictment, calling the department employees “thugs” on Truth Social. “They are trying to destroy his life, like the lives of so many others, hoping that he will say bad things about ‘Trump,’” he wrote. “The FBI and DOJ are CORRUPT!”

This story has been updated.