For decades, the liberal-leaning state Supreme Court kept Florida's Republican governors in check -- until Ron DeSantis came alone. He gerrymandered a majority-black congressional district out of existence, making it easier to get his way on extremist legislation. Via the Washington Post:
The hard-right turn was by design. DeSantis seized on the unusual retirement of three liberal justices at once to quickly remake the court. He did so with the help of a secretive panel led by Leonard Leo — the key architect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority — that quietly vetted judicial nominees in an Orlando conference room three weeks before the governor’s inauguration.
“So what I do is I convene a group of people that I trust — some people in Florida, some people outside of the state who you would know, who I’m not going to say, because you know, it’s private,” DeSantis later said on a conservative podcast. “Then they put these candidates through the wringer.”
After taking office in January 2019, DeSantis appointed three new justices in two weeks, flipping the court from what he described as a 4-3 liberal majority to a 6-1 conservative advantage.
Why do Republicans hate democracy?
The governor is battling to keep private the names of the other advisers who worked with Leo in a court case that could have sweeping ramifications for access to government records in Florida. But people familiar with the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential panel, confirmed several participants to The Washington Post. The elite group of conservatives included a former U.S. senator from Florida and Chris Kise, now a top member of Trump’s defense team in his classified records case. The panel grilled the judicial nominees about whether their principles matched those of the Federalist Society, which has pushed conservative and libertarian judges onto the nation’s courts through multimillion-dollar influence campaigns fueled by secret donors.
“That panel was truly unprecedented when you consider Florida’s tradition of government in the sunshine,” said Craig Waters, a lawyer who was the state Supreme Court’s spokesman for 35 years. “The result is a court that lacks diversity of viewpoints, and that’s very troubling in terms of checks and balances.”
Remember, DeSantis says his overhaul of the state court as an example of how he would change the federal judiciary. And what a lot of people don't understand is, DeSantis isn't doing this to win votes. HE IS A TRUE BELIEVER. When he was a congressional backbencher, he was one of the founders of the extremist Republican Study Committee.
And if there's one thing we know about extremist Republicans, they are very, very patient. They play the long game.
