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Most readers probably don't know who James Uthmeier is, but he's doing his best to change that. He is the state AG in Florida, appointed to that position by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) after having previously served as the Governor's chief-of-staff.
State AGs, particularly in a big state like Florida, have the opportunity to make a lot of headlines, if that is what they want to do. And Uthmeier definitely does want that; he's already been in the news a whole lot in the last 3 months—for trying to build "Alligator Alcatraz," for battling with the Tate brothers, for investigating JPMorgan Chase due to their releasing records to then-special-counsel Jack Smith, for forcing a women's Irish step dancing competition to deny access to a teenage trans girl, for lashing out against surrogacy as "modern-day" slavery, and for trying to indict Raul Castro, among others. Does that say "show horse" to you? Because it sure does to us.
Yesterday, Uthmeier hit the rare daily double, and managed to make headlines across the land for two different stunts. The first is that he is going after one of the very favorite bugaboos of the right (and of Donald Trump), namely The New York Times. The AG sent that newspaper a 28-page letter raising questions about the process by which editorials are written.
Uthmeier's approach is creative; we'll give him that. He is presumably familiar with a little document called the Constitution, which includes something called the First Amendment. This gives government authorities rather limited authority to regulate newspapers, particularly when it is a state-level government, and particularly when the newspaper is in an entirely different state. The AG's workaround is that he claims to be asking questions as the guardian of Florida's pension fund, which has some stock in the company that owns the Times (The New York Times Company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange as "NYT").
The potential lawsuit that Uthmeier is threatening is not going to go anywhere, since the Times has the very best First Amendment lawyers on retainer, and since any judge in the land is going to recognize this is really an attempt to score cheap political points, and maybe to try to bully the newspaper into going the CBS route. We tend to doubt that Uthmeier is even going to move forward; he got his headline and managed to signal to anyone who is paying attention that he's working hard to own the libs.
The AG's second stunt yesterday involved WNBA player Sophie Cunningham, who is actually the focal point of two different items from us today. A couple of weeks ago, Cunningham was asked about trans athletes, and offered an answer that was either naive or disingenuous. In short, she said she supports everyone, but that she also doesn't want women and girls to have to face men and boys on the field of play. Her framing of the issue was very Fox-like, despite her pretensions of neutrality, and after there was blowback, Cunningham doubled and then tripled down. Eventually, she said that she thinks reporters should stick to sports, which is usually an encoded way of saying, "I want to be able to express my opinions, but I don't want to hear those that I disagree with."
Over the weekend, Cunningham's Indiana Fever played the Chicago Sky. During the first quarter, the Fever stole the ball and commenced a fast break. Cunningham, who is white, was headed for a layup when the Sky's DiJonai Carrington, who is Black, came from behind and knocked her over. You can watch the foul here, if you wish (it's about 20 seconds in). The foul was originally called a Flagrant 1, then was upgraded to a Flagrant 2 on review, which results in an automatic ejection. Carrington got on Threads and posted the message "WHITE PRIVILEGE @indianafever." Note also that Cunningham is a wear-your-religion-on-your-sleeve Christian who wears a cross even while playing.
In short, the incident quickly became the culture wars, battle #278. Although there's no evidence that Carrington was motivated by Cunningham's stance on trans athletes, Carrington IS lesbian, so it was white vs. Black, straight vs. LGBTQ, Christian vs. religion-not-clear, anti-woke vs. woke, etc. You know, all the greatest hits.
And that is where Uthmeier, who clearly knows an opportunity when he sees one, enters the picture. He has no real power over WNBA games played over 1,000 miles from Florida, but he did get on eX-Twitter to advise: "The WNBA knows better than to play games down here in Florida, because I'll be charging people with assault." That's a pretty toothless threat, though. First, because while it is technically possible for an athlete to be charged with a crime for on-field/on-ice/on-court violence, it's very rare, and usually involves the use of a weapon (e.g., Marty McSorley and a hockey stick; Juan Marichal and a baseball bat).
The second reason it's a meaningless warning, and this is somewhat implied by Uthmeier's tweet, is that there is no WNBA team in Florida. The reason for that is that the league tried it out with the Orlando Miracle (1999-2002), and Floridians weren't interested, causing the team to move to Connecticut. The lack of a WNBA team in Florida thus has absolutely nothing to do with the league being afraid of the big, bad AG.
We are clearly in the middle of silly stunt season (see also the MAHA item above, and the second WNBA item below). What we aren't entirely clear about is the motivations of Uthmeier, who is working awfully hard to secure as much earned media as is possible. He is running for election to his current job in his own right, and polls suggest it's a toss up, so he could just be using his powers as part of his current campaign. But usually, when someone works this hard to earn this many headlines, they have larger fish to fry. We wonder if Uthmeier is performing for an audience of one; a Florida resident who often needs new people for high-profile legal roles, and who likes to poach legal "talent" from the Sunshine State (e.g., former Florida AG Pam Bondi). (Z)