Good morning and Happy Thursday, C&C! I am writing you from the car, toodling along Florida’s most mind-numbing stretch of highway, Interstate 10 in the state’s “pan handle.” Today’s briefing runs a little shorter and a little later thanks to a combination of my attendance at an off-the-chain land planning committee meeting that ended around 11:00pm last night, combined with having to get on the road early this morning for Destin, where I’ll be speaking this afternoon. Whew!

🗞 THE C&C ARMY POST 🗞

🪖 Yesterday, a federal judge entered an order dismissing former woke school board member Diyonne McGraw’s lawsuit against me and Governor DeSantis for allegedly conspiring to remove her from her unlawfully-occupied school board seat. The judge wrote, “As currently pleaded, McGraw did not allege any … facts plausibly showing a conspiracy between the Governor and the other Defendants [including Childers and his law firm.]”

While the judge gave McGraw a chance to amend her complaint to plead a legal claim, if she can, his order seemed skeptical she could truthfully do it. So it looks like she’s about out of runway and the legal plane is going into the ditch. Unfortunately, these types of lawsuits are part of a standard playbook designed to punish successful litigation and threaten lawyers; the message to the lawyers is, if you win, you’ll become a defendant in the next lawsuit, even if it’s completely frivolous.

This kind of thing can be very punishing for small law firms like mine. It takes time away from working for paying clients and the best practice is to get your own counsel (“a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client”). So if you don’t have good insurance, you’ll be forced to pay for your own defense, which is especially challenging if you were working for free in the lawsuit that got you sued.

In other words, litigating political cases is risky. For this reason, combined with the risk of cancellation, lawyers taking these political cases are VERY courageous.

In recognition of that, and to encourage other lawyers to get in the game, tomorrow we’ll be multiplying the activist group and the courageous lawyers who got our masks off airplanes.

🗞COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🗞

✈️ After pivoting, pivoting back, and re-pivoting, the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice appealed Monday’s decision lifting the transportation mandate. However, DOJ has not (yet) sought an emergency stay, so TSA is still not enforcing the CDC’s mask mandate on airplanes. The government’s prospects for an emergency stay aren’t good anyway, especially in light of the pending expiration of the mandate in a couple weeks.

The official explanation from the Biden Administration is that the appeal seeks to preserve the CDC’s authority to re-impose masks in the future, and have not mentioned enforcing the current mandate. So, tentatively, for now, planes remain mask-free. I’ll keep you posted as things develop.

🔥 What’s a police state again? I can never remember. Anyway, the Daily Mail UK reported a breaking story yesterday headlined, “USPS Admits it IS Spying on Americans: Law Enforcement Arm Is Snooping on Social Media Posts and ‘Working With Other Agencies’ in Covert Operation.”

That’s the UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE, the guys with the tall socks and funny shorts who deliver the mail. Like Newman. According to new disclosures, for some reason, they have an “intelligence arm” called iCOP, or the Internet Covert Operations Program. Covert operations. The POST OFFICE? Does the Post Office REALLY need a “Covert Operations” branch? Does every big federal agency have a covert ops team now? What on Earth is going on up there?

I suppose, if you’re going to staff a dark department to spy on Americans, at least you want a cute, harmless-sounding name for it. They’re just iCOPs. They probably thought that was cute, harkening back to 2003 with its iPods, iToasters, iCarly, and so on. Well, this IS the Postal Service we’re talking about. They’re USUALLY running behind.

The Daily Mail reported that Yahoo News got hold of some documents about iCOP, including a description of an operation where iCOPs searched social media sites for ‘inflammatory’ posts, including posts about planned protests. You might be thinking they’re looking for people dropping off pallets of bricks and plotting to take over downtown Portland and stuff. But no.

The newly-disclosed iCOP bulletin, which describes just ONE operation, focuses on a March 20, 2021 protest: the World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy, protesting COVID LOCKDOWNS. Maybe the USPS needs to spend less time on the computer and more time on reliably and quickly delivering the mail? Is that unreasonable?

Here’s a hot take for you: if the USPS has enough extra money to create covert ops teams to monitor peaceful conservatives protesting the government, its budget might be too high. Just saying.

🔥 Florida Agriculture Commissioner and lockdown advocate Nikki Fried, who must have just relaxed with an especially gnarly strain, posted two tweets yesterday that set the lefty world on FIRE, and which tell you everything you need to know about where the politicians think things are headed in this country. Tell me if you think Fried was copus mentis when she tweeted these. The first post was about the lifting of the airplane mask mandate:

Nikki Fried @NikkiFried

Peace out to the TSA mask mandate, but also peace and respect to others, whether wearing a mask or not.

For Facebook users, it’s a selfie of Fried in a plane, maskless, grinning like a rhesus monkey bargaining for a banana, and saying, “Peace out to the TSA mask mandate, but also peace and respect to others, whether wearing a mask or not.”

In other words, Fried, who’s running against Governor DeSantis this year, was CELEBRATING the lifting of the mask mandate.

Hahahaha! You should see the comments from the lefty pro-maskers. They aren’t too happy with Fried, not at all. The betrayal! The ingratitude! The arrogance! The unsympathy! Doesn’t she know people are DYING IN DROVES?? What about all the newly-immuno-compromised folks, like the ones who had a bad dental cleaning last year??

But you have to give her credit. Fried ignored all the hate from her OWN SUPPORTERS and doubled-down in the comments, tweeting later, “I’ll read all your takes, but the mandates are dropped, vaccines are working, things are getting back to normal, and it’s okay for a Democrat to say it — because we made it possible. I love y’all. ❤️”

It’s a pivot; she’s pivoting! Stand back!

Fried is joining all the government-connected corporate doctors who’re newly against masking, further evidencing that the pro-maskers represent a loud but increasingly diminished and ineffective minority.

But then it got even better. Apparently on a roll of some kind, maybe because it was worldwide pot day (4/20), Fried followed her mask post up with another one even FURTHER outraging dems:

Nikki Fried @NikkiFried

I’m suing the Biden Administration because people’s rights are being limited. Medical marijuana is legal. Guns are legal. This is about people’s rights and their freedoms to responsibly have both. nbcnews.to/3MmscsB

In this second tweet, Fried announced, “I’m suing the Biden Administration because people’s rights are being limited. Medical marijuana is legal. Guns are legal. This is about people’s rights and their freedoms to responsibly have both.”

Freedom and guns! And she’s suing JOE BIDEN! What? Is this bizarro world? Are we ACTUALLY living in the simulation like Elon Musk thinks? I had to double-check the date to make sure that it was actually April 20th and not April 1st. And Fried — a Democrat — is suing the Biden Administration! Just like Governor DeSantis!

You can imagine how her dem supporters responded. They were spitting red hot nails like they’d swallowed malfunctioning nail guns. I struggle for words to explain it; the closest I can get is maniacal livid outrage. They’re mad. How dare Nikki think for herself! She canceled!

Oh, man, this is all so fabulously hilarious. You can’t pay for entertainment like this, not these days. At least, not on streaming services.

🔥 Completely unrelated, I’m sure, Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday that she supports Charlie Christ over Nikki Fried in the dems’ Florida gubernatorial primary, which sealed Fried’s fate — she almost certainly couldn’t overcome that political obstacle. That was the day before Nikki’s two tweets yesterday. Totally coincidental. A new centrist strategy for the Ag Commissioner?

🔥 After running a psychotic bit of pedophile eye-candy called “Cuties” and announcing a whole new SERIES about how hard life can be for pregnant MEN, Netflix’s stock crashed yesterday. For some reason. It might also have something to do with the fact you can spend an hour scrolling through the listings without finding anything worth watching.

The Guardian UK ran an article about the streaming company’s problems headlined, “US Hedge Fund Billionaire Sells Netflix Stake at Huge Loss.” The article explains billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman dumped all his shares in Netflix — at a loss of about $400m — after the company reported losing 200,000 subscribers. Apparently, the New York-based investor just bought more than $1 BILLION in Netflix shares in January. Buh bye.

In a memo to fund investors, Ackman explained, “one of our learnings from past mistakes is to act promptly when we discover new information about an investment that is inconsistent with our original thesis. That is why we did so here.”

Get woke … go broke!

I have a serious suggestion for Netflix. Give us a setting called “Woke Filter.” If you turn it on, it filters out all the woke nonsense, like series about trans relationships, gay superheroes, and pregnant men, not to mention softcore porn and stuff like “Cuties,” whatever that category is called. They might also consider making a few movies and series designed to entertain us with what we WANT to watch instead of trying to convince us to endorse loony far-left political social experiments. Is that too crazy of an idea?

Probably!

🐭 Speaking of self-inflicted woke wounds, yesterday during Florida’s special legislative session, the Senate voted 23-16 to dissolve the special taxing district that allows Walt Disney World to self-govern its theme park area and avoid state taxes. There was a lot of drama, of course, and my favorite clip so far recites the following hilarious self-own in the House:

REP JOSEPH (D): We have talked about the permitting process, you talked about how they [Disney] can do their own permitting. Yes. That has resulted in permits being very quickly approved and processed, and projects being immediately given a green light to move forward, with good paying union jobs being immediately deployed into those areas to facilitate those projects. So what is the overall economic impact on this proposal [to end the special Reedy Creek taxing district]?

CHAIR: You’re recognized by [garbled].

REP RANDY FINE (R): Thank you Mr. Chairman. It’s refreshing to hear talk about the value of de-regulation in government, and getting out of the way with red tape might be something that we do in other areas as well, outside of just [Disney’s] Reedy Creek. …

As Representative Fine continued speaking along those lines, putting Rep. Joseph even further into his self-dug grave, Joseph’s face cratered and became more and more crestfallen, as he realized his awful blunder. Meanwhile Representative Fine continued, with a delightful exposition on the value of getting government out of the way, just like in Reedy Creek.

Enjoy it yourself! Here’s the clip, along with fun background music:

Ryan @RationalRyan

@VoteRandyFine @RAlexAndradeFL I don’t think this line of questioning went as well as they thought it would

Have a terrific Thursday! For you Destin folks, I’ll see you at the event. Tomorrow I’ll be speaking in Tallahassee, Jacksonville on Saturday, and Orlando on Sunday.

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☕️ Coffee & Covid 2022 🦠

☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Thursday, April 21, 2022…