DeSantis’ Rubio replacement seen as Trump loyalist and MAGA culture warrior

16 January

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has selected Attorney General Ashley Moody to succeed U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, should Rubio be confirmed as Secretary of State. Moody, 49, has served under Governor DeSantis for five years. If she chooses to remain in the Senate, she would need to run in a special election in 2026.

Both Lara Trump and Matt Gaetz had been rumored at one time to be interested in consideration. DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis, had also been rumored as a possible replacement. Lara Trump announced she would not seek the appointment. Some political observers suggested DeSantis, who is term limited and cannot run for a third term in 2026, could appoint himself to the role, but he announced he would not.

As Florida’s Attorney General, Moody has taken an aggressive, right-wing stance on key cultural issues.

In 2023, Moody appeared to compare a popular LGBTQ children’s book about gay penguins to “Nazi propaganda.”

After citing “a new ruling in Russia that bans the LGBTQ movement,” MSNBC‘s Ja’han Jones wrote: “In Putinesque fashion, the Florida AG argued that because schools are able to ban Nazi propaganda under ‘value-based judgments,’ they should be allowed to make similar decisions about LGBTQ content.”

“In a legal brief filed over the summer,” Jones noted, Moody had “argued that schools’ homophobic book bans are constitutional because ‘public-school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message, and, when the government speaks, it may ‘regulate the content of … its own message.’ ‘”

Moody “once sued Donald Trump for alleged fraud,” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reports.

She is currently suing Starbucks, CBS News reported, over alleged “racial quotas” that an investigative agency denies are quotas.

“Moody in May filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations alleging that Starbucks had policies that ‘appear on their face to be racial quotas.’ But after an investigation, the commission’s executive director in November issued a determination that there was ‘no reasonable cause’ to believe that the Seattle-based coffee company violated a state anti-discrimination law,” CBS reported.

Moody’s appointment was quickly met with strong criticism.

“Ashley Moody has a long record of opposing abortion rights and even sought to keep an abortion rights amendment off of Florida’s ballot. She went further and supported threatening TV stations who played ads advocating for abortion rights,” according to Nico Delgado, the spokesperson for the liberal Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. “Moody also sought to get the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional, which would hurt over 4.6 million Floridians. Moody also abused her elected position and took a lead role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election and joined the lawsuit seeking to invalidate the results. Moody supported book bans and is in the pocket of Big Oil – while ignoring climate change.”

The Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried declared Moody has “ignored the growing property insurance crisis and let wealthy corporations rip off Floridians. Instead, she spent her time chasing political attention and currying favor with the far right. She worked for over a year to silence the voices of Floridians who wanted Amendment 4 on the ballot, weaponizing state law and the Florida Constitution to score the political points that got her this appointment.”

DeSantis used the opportunity of announcing Moody’s appointment to hold a press conference to say she will “work with President Trump to deliver on the mandate he earned,” is “willing to shut the border” and will “make sure any legal immigration to this country is putting Americans first,” as CBS News reported.

He also, according to the nonprofit and nonpartisan news outlet NOTUS, said Moody has pledged that, as a Senator, she will “defund” the United Nations “once and for all.”

Moody told DeSantis she is “ready to show up and fight for this nation and fight for President Trump to deliver the ‘America First’ agenda on Day One.”

NOTUS justice reporter Jose Pagliery, in a social media thread, called Moody a “close DeSantis ally who keeps filing lawsuits for the MAGA cause.”

He adds that Moody “fought mask mandates during COVID,” has “claimed that FEMA was discriminating against Trump supporters,” and “accused the Biden administration of ‘flat out refusing to secure the border.'”

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