DeSantis convened his allies this week in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to press them to raise money to support Trump, making the case over a seafood and steak dinner that they need to work together to prevent Democratic President Joe Biden from winning a second term. The governor and about 30 people then spent Thursday morning in a hotel conference room raising money for an outside group that supports the former president’s 2024 White House campaign.

Trump called into the gathering to thank members of the group for their work, according to four people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to publicly discuss the private session and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In what three people present described as a warm and gracious call to the group that was heard over speakerphone, Trump praised DeSantis and the effort, saying “Ron, I love that you’re back.”

A reconciliation helps both of them. Trump is trying to make up fundraising ground against Biden while DeSantis hopes to preserve a potential future White House run for which Trump’s supporters could be key.

DeSantis and his top donors raised more than $3 million on Thursday for the super political action committee Right for America, backed by big Republican donors such as Ike Perlmutter, who has agreed to match at least a portion of the DeSantis team’s fundraising rather than funneling money directly to Trump’s campaign.

That arrangement, reached after talks between the Trump and DeSantis camps, is designed to address concerns among DeSantis supporters about their money going to pay the former president’s legal bills, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss the private talks. Trump notably blessed the structure when he called into the group’s meeting Thursday.

“This is where I want you to focus,” Trump said in a roughly 15-minute call, according to a senior political adviser to DeSantis who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity.

DeSantis’ decision to push money to the PAC instead of giving directly to Trump’s campaign has raised eyebrows among some Trump campaign officials, according to a person familiar with the former president’s campaign thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the arrangement.

Right for America is competing for donors with MAGA Inc., the chief super PAC backing Trump. Such groups are prohibited from directly coordinating with a presidential campaign, something that hamstrung DeSantis during his presidential run due to conflicts between his campaign and his support of Never Back Down, the largest super PAC backing DeSantis’ candidacy.

Other supporters of both men support the arrangement. Right for America is run by Sergio Gor, a longtime Trump ally who is close to the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. The two run Winning Team Publishing, which published two of the former president’s books.

“We are thrilled by the support we are receiving from Governor DeSantis,” Gor said in a statement. “We look forward to ensuring President Donald Trump is elected in November.”

Some DeSantis donors had been reluctant to give to Trump because they worried their money would help pay Trump’s lawyers in his criminal cases instead of being used directly to focus on beating Biden.

A number of big-name Florida contributors who have given to DeSantis remain hesitant about contributing to efforts to support Trump, said Al Hoffman, a Palm Beach County Republican donor and former Republican National Committee finance chair.

“I know that there are Republican conservative, big-money donors that are very reluctant to endorse Trump,” said Hoffman, who was also chairman of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s 2002 reelection campaign.

DeSantis endorsed Trump when he dropped out of the race and promised in a face-to-face meeting with the former president in April to work for his campaign. The 45-year-old governor, who has won two terms and pushed a longtime swing state increasingly to the right, may run for the White House again and would need the backing of Trump voters in a future Republican primary.

DeSantis called his allies to Fort Lauderdale this week to raise money for Trump, telling them on Wednesday night that they needed to work to prevent a second Biden term.

The meeting was the kickoff for what is expected to be a coast-to-coast fundraising effort by DeSantis allies, with upcoming events likely in Texas, California, Washington state and perhaps New York.

Trump and DeSantis have also discussed a role for the governor at the Republican National Convention. Aides to DeSantis said it was Trump’s suggestion and was not contingent on any fundraising effort on DeSantis’ part.

Donors who discussed the Thursday event were struck by the collegiality between Trump and DeSantis during the call. One person who spoke on condition of anonymity about the closed-door gathering called the conversation “very gracious” and noted that Trump and DeSantis talked about golf, a favorite Trump pastime.

The post ‘Ron, I love that you’re back’: Trump and DeSantis put an often personal primary fight behind them appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The Washington state attorney general announced a $149.5 million settlement Wednesday with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, more than four years after the state sued the company over its role fueling the opioid addiction crisis.

“They knew what the harm was. They did it anyway,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson told reporters Wednesday.

The attorney general’s announcement came as opioid overdose deaths more than doubled from 2019 to 2022, with 2,048 deaths recorded in 2022, according to the most recent numbers from the Washington State Department of Health.

Under the deal, the state and local governments would have to spend $123.3 million to address the opioid crisis, including on substance abuse treatment, expanded access to overdose-reversal drugs and services that support pregnant women on substances. The rest of the money would go toward litigation costs.

The harm is “left now to policymakers to grapple with,” the attorney general said, “or families and individuals who grapple in a very different way with the real tragedy of addiction.”

The settlement agreement still requires approval from a judge. If approved, the deal would send over $20 million more to respond to the opioid crisis than if the state had signed onto a national settlement in 2021 involving Johnson & Johnson, the attorney general’s office said.

Since the 2000s, drugmakers, wholesalers, pharmacy chains and consultants have agreed to pay more than $50 billion to state and local governments to settle claims that they played a part in creating the opioid crisis.

Under the agreements, most of the money is to be used to combat the nation’s addiction and overdose crisis.

Drug overdoses caused more than 1 million deaths in the U.S. from 1999 through 2021, and the majority of those involved opioids. At first, the crisis centered on prescription painkillers that gained more acceptance in the 1990s, and later heroin. Over the past decade, the death toll has reached an all-time high, and the biggest killers have been synthetic opioids such as fentanyl that are in the supply of many street drugs.

Washington state’s Democratic attorney general sued Johnson & Johnson in 2020, alleging that it helped drive the pharmaceutical industry’s expansion of prescription opioids. He also claimed that the company made a distinct mark on Washington’s opioid crisis by deceiving doctors and the public about the effectiveness of opioids for chronic pain and the risk of addiction.

The attorney general’s office noted that in 2015 the company was the largest supplier in the country of the active pharmaceutical ingredients that go into opioid drugs.

Johnson & Johnson said in a written statement Monday that Duragesic, its fentanyl patch, and its Nucynta opioid accounted for less than 1% of opioid prescriptions in the state and the U.S., adding that it has not sold prescription opioid medications in the country in years.

“The Company’s actions relating to the marketing and promotion of important prescription opioid medications were appropriate and responsible,” according to the statement.

Funds will be awarded by the end of this fiscal year, which means that the Legislature can earmark the money during the current legislative session. Half of the money will go to a state account, while the other half will go to an account for local governments, according to the attorney general’s office.

Democratic Sen. June Robinson said Wednesday that her children have lost friends to addiction and that she has known parents who have lost children in similar ways.

“The fact that these lawsuits have played out since then, they can’t unfortunately bring back the lives that we lost,” she said. “But they are bringing resources to our communities and to our state that we are able to invest in ways that will help people recover and hopefully help to prevent future addiction and future crises like the one that we’re seeing right now.”

The deal comes about two years after the nation’s three largest opioid distributors agreed to pay the state $518 million, with the vast majority being directed toward easing the addiction epidemic.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Washington state reaches a nearly $150 million settlement with Johnson & Johnson over opioid crisis appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington state is embarking on a massive experiment in police reform and accountability following the racial justice protests that erupted after George Floyd’s murder last year, as nearly a dozen laws took effect Sunday.

But two months after Gov. Jay Inslee signed the bills, law enforcement officials remain uncertain about what they require, leading to discrepancies around the state in how officers might respond — or not respond — to certain situations, including active crime scenes, welfare checks and mental health crises.

“When you take the legislation and apply it, that’s when you really learn how effective it’s going to be,” said Rafael Padilla, the police chief in Kent, a south Seattle suburb. “The challenge is — I’m going to be very frank — the laws were written very poorly, and the combination of them all at the same time has led to there being conflicts in clarity and in what was intended versus what was written.”

The laws, passed by a Legislature controlled by Democrats and signed by a Democratic governor, constitute what is likely the nation’s most ambitious police reform legislation. They cover virtually all aspects of policing, including the background checks officers undergo before they’re hired; when they are authorized to use force and how they collect data about it; and the establishment of an entirely new state agency to review police use of deadly force.

Supporters said they would create the nation’s strongest police accountability and help undo racial inequity in the justice system — “a mandate from the people to stop cops from violating our rights and killing people,” said Sakara Remmu, of the Washington Black Lives Matter Alliance. According to the advocacy group Moms Demand Action, police have killed 260 people in Washington state since 2013. Disproportionately, they were Black — including Manuel Ellis, whose death in Tacoma last year led to murder or manslaughter charges against three officers and spurred some of the legislation.

Rep. Jesse Johnson, the first-term Federal Way Democrat who sponsored bills on police tactics and use of force, acknowledged some clarifications are necessary — but said that’s not uncommon in complex legislation.

“We have to create new policies, because what we were doing before was not working,” Johnson said. “What we wanted to do with these bills is set an expectation that officers de-escalate and that there’s less lethal enforcement of the law. A lot of the pushback we’re getting is because it’s a paradigm shift.”

The measures ban chokeholds, neck restraints and no-knock warrants, and limit the use of tear gas and military equipment. Inspired by the officers who stood by in Minneapolis as their colleague Derek Chauvin pressed a knee to Floyd’s neck, they require officers to intervene when a colleague engages in excessive force and to report misconduct by other officers.

They restrict when officers can engage in car chases; make it easier to decertify police for bad acts; make it easier to sue individual officers; and require police to use “reasonable care” in carrying out their duties, including exhausting appropriate de-escalation tactics before using force.

Law enforcement officials have embraced some of the changes and said they share the lawmakers’ goals.

But uncertainty about how to comply, combined with a greater possibility of being decertified or held personally liable in court, puts officers in a tough position, they say.

“The policing reforms may have the positive impact of reducing the number of violent interactions between law enforcement and the public,” Steve Strachan, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, said in a statement. “However, we owe it to the public we serve to be candid and share that we are deeply concerned that some policing reforms may have unintended outcomes that result in increased levels of confusion, frustration, victimization, and increased crime within our communities.”

For example, the restriction on military-grade weaponry would inadvertently ban some less-lethal impact weapons, including the shotguns police use to fire beanbag rounds.

Johnson said the context makes clear the intent was to embrace, not ban, less-lethal weapons. He expected the state attorney general to clarify that until the Legislature can fix the wording next year.

But in the meantime, some departments, including Spokane police and the King County Sheriff’s Office, have hung up their beanbag weapons, while others, including Kent and Auburn south of Seattle, will continue using them.

Even more significant is a change in when officers can use “physical force” — a term that isn’t defined in the new law, but which is typically interpreted to mean force as minor as handcuffing someone. The attorney general has been tasked with developing a model policy on using force by next July, but for now, agencies have been consulting with lawyers to determine what the new law means.

Historically, police have been authorized to use force to briefly detain someone if they have reasonable suspicion — a commonsense notion, based on specific facts, that someone might be involved in a crime. They could then conduct further investigation to see if there is probable cause for an arrest.

But under one of the new laws, police now need probable cause — a higher standard, based on evidence that the person committed or was about to commit the crime — before they use force. They can also use force if there’s an imminent threat of injury; they can use deadly force only to protect against an imminent threat of serious injury or death.

The higher standard is designed to keep police from using force against the wrong person — something that happens too often, especially in communities of color, Johnson said.

But it also means police might sometimes have to let the bad guy go, at least temporarily.

If officers show up at a burglary scene, for example, and they see someone partially matching the description of the suspect — but don’t have confirmation it’s the same person — they can ask that person to stop voluntarily. If the person leaves, officers can’t use force to detain them while figuring out if they have the right suspect, they say. An arrest would have to come later, once probable cause is established.

The Criminal Justice Training Commission, which operates the state’s police academy, already emphasizes de-escalation tactics and began training on the duty to intervene last year even before the law was adopted. But it has had to modify its teaching to cover the probable cause requirement for using force.

During a recent training scenario, instructor Ken Westphal encouraged recruits taking statements from a convenience store owner who had been threatened by a customer to ask, “How did that make you feel?”

The officers needed to show that the owner felt fear — an element of the crime of felony harassment — to develop probable cause, Westphal said. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have authority to detain the suspect loitering around the corner if he ran.

“There is nobody else in the country having to do this,” Westphal said afterward. “We have always worked in reasonable suspicion. Now, those force options aren’t there unless you have probable cause.”

But even that approach is not universal. Some departments, including Kent, say in cases of violent crimes or residential burglary, they will arrest suspects for obstruction if they flee, even if they don’t yet have probable cause for the underlying crime.

“I’m not letting violent felons take off,” Padilla said. “I understand why the Criminal Justice Training Commission is doing what it’s doing, but you can see how even experts who have decades in the field do not agree on what these laws mean.”

Other departments, including the King County Sheriff’s Office, won’t arrest people in such circumstances. Obstruction — or “contempt of cop” — is sometimes considered a frivolous charge, filed when officers lack evidence of other crimes, and it’s unclear if prosecutors will pursue it.

Similar concerns abound regarding mental health calls. Police often respond to people in crisis who are not committing crimes, sometimes in the company of a “designated crisis responder.” Under existing law, the crisis responder can order the person to be involuntarily taken into custody for psychiatric care, but according to the advocacy group Disability Rights Washington, police are increasingly refusing to show up.

That’s because officers aren’t sure they still have the authority to use force to detain or transport those subjects, absent imminent harm or probable cause, officials say. Further, police are now required to exhaust appropriate de-escalation tactics; that can include simply leaving the scene.

These laws are taking effect as police have left the state or the profession in droves. Seattle is down hundreds of officers following clashes with protesters, criticism and talk of “defunding” last year. With a huge increase in early retirements and officers leaving for jobs in Idaho, Montana and elsewhere, the Kent Police Department is losing 21 of its 70 uniformed patrol officers this year, Padilla said. He blamed anti-police sentiment and the new laws.

Given limited resources, departments must decide whether it’s worth responding to such noncriminal mental health calls when officers might only leave anyway.

Several law enforcement agencies in Thurston County said Monday they intend to largely stop handling “community care” situations such as suicidal people, welfare checks and drug overdoses, instead letting crisis responders, firefighters or emergency medics handle such calls.

Such statements drew criticism. In a blog post, Kim Mosolf of Disability Rights Washington and Enoka Herat of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington accused some departments of “dangerously misinterpreting” the law.

Nothing in the measure overrules the ability of police to assist on mental health calls, they said. In fact, police continue to have strong liability protections under the Involuntary Treatment Act.

Sgt. Tim Meyer, a spokesman for the King County Sheriff’s Office, noted that responding to new laws or court rulings is nothing new for law enforcement.

“As we get more familiar with the application of these bills, we’re going to adapt and continue to serve the community,” Meyer said.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Confusion besets new police reform laws in Washington state appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.