Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
There may or may not be a stretch of pavement in the Everglades that exposes an alleged lie about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” detention camp.
Florida attorney general James Uthmeier, who was previously DeSantis’ chief of staff and the manager of the governor’s unsuccessful White House bid last year, announced the project late last month. Since then, there has been a flurry of activity at the site, which is located on an old airport within the Big Cypress National Preserve — home to a slew of endangered and threatened species. There’s also been a whirlwind of controversy surrounding the detention center, with a lawsuit filed by environmental activists, claims of high heat and overcrowding, concerns from attorneys about a lack of due process, and opposition from tribal groups.
DeSantis and other Republicans have reveled in the idea the camp has harsh conditions by giving it a gruesome nickname and even launching a merch line. While the governor has seemingly brushed off human rights issues, he has tried to respond to the environmental concerns — by insisting there aren’t any at all. DeSantis has said the camp will have “zero impact” on the Everglades. That claim, which multiple fact checkers have noted is almost certainly false, relies on the idea the camp will be built on the existing airport.
However, in court, environmental activists have presented a declaration from an ecologist and a private pilot who flew over the site. That statement included photos that appeared to show multiple areas of “new road and asphalting.”
TPM also spotted indications of planning for road building and paving in our own analysis of more than a dozen contracts for products and services related to the project. On Wednesday, we published an exclusive report that used documents that were obtained and analyzed via the Florida Accountability Contract Tracking System (FACTS) to show that DeSantis’ office spent billions of dollars and diverted “disaster preparedness” resources to build the detention camp.
One contract we looked at was a $36,848,875 agreement with the firm LTS, Inc. for “initial TNT site preparation.” The camp’s location at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport has been referred to as the “TNT Site.” LTS’ contract, which was billed to Florida’s Department of Emergency Management, also listed an address adjacent to the airport as the “mission location.” Within the contract there was one line item that is particularly interesting in light of the alleged new roads and DeSantis’ claim there will be “zero” environmental impact.
The contract with LTS included $11,000,000 that was identified as being for “roadway construction.” That charge came with a “rate” of $55 “per SY.” Assuming that means square yard, that would indicate the plan called for 200,000 square yards of “roadway construction.”
As of this writing, the FACTS system lists the status of the LTS contract as “terminated,” so it is unclear whether these plans are still on the table. It is also unclear whether the “roadway construction” would have involved “new road” and “asphalting” of the sort that environmental groups say they have observed. LTS did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
In fact, it’s unclear what has happened with a lot of the contracts related to the “TNT” site. During the course of our reporting on the prior story, over a dozen contracts related to the camp were removed from the FACTS system. We reported on this mysterious disappearance in our piece that was published Wednesday.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D) has criticized the heavy spending on the project, including what she has called the “NEW ROAD in the middle of the EVERGLADES for this detention center currently caging hundreds of immigrants with NO criminal charge” Shortly after our story was published, she also took note of the missing contracts and suggested it was a violation of state law for them to be taken out of the FACTS system.
“If that state has nothing to hide and is proud of this excessive spending, then we should expect ALL contracts to be shared online and made available immediately,” Eskamani wrote on Twitter.
TPM reached out to DeSantis’ office and the Florida Department of Emergency Management to ask why the contracts seem to have been removed from FACTS, why the LTS contract was terminated, and how the plans and photos seemingly showing new paving at the site square with the governor’s claim of “zero” environmental impact. As of this writing, they have not offered any response.
For now, it’s a road to nowhere.
— Hunter Walker
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:
- Congressional Republicans just rubber-stamped the rescissions package the White House sent over to pretend like they’re playing by separation-of-powers rules. What’s next on the legislative (aka Trump-loyalty-test) agenda? Funding the government. More on that.
- White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought unveiled his movie-villain persona this week in remarks during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, during which he pontificated on his plans to further expand the executive branch’s power.
Let’s dig in.
Up Next: Try to Fund the Government
Congressional Republicans managed to approve President Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package before the deadline, which clawed back federal spending that Congress had already authorized. Next on the legislative agenda is an attempt to fund the government for the next fiscal year. But how exactly that process will work during a time when the executive branch has repeatedly disrespected Congress’ authority to allocate federal spending and fund the government remains an open question.
Senate Republican leadership has said they plan to put the first government spending bills on the floor as soon as next week. Republican appropriators are planning on packaging up to four bills, likely ones that were already approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee, into one, per Politico.
The package, of course, may shrink if there is significant pushback on parts of it, as intraparty tensions have been high on the GOP side for some time.
Senate GOP leadership and top appropriators want to make a dent in the appropriations process before Congress leaves town for their lengthy August recess.
“I hope we get a four-bill package pulled together and get to the floor next week,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), a member of the Appropriations Committee, said.
Meanwhile, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-ME), who recently broke with her caucus on two major Trump priorities, wants to focus on moving bipartisan funding bills forward, which is how the process typically goes.
Though, apparently, she is the odd man out in her party.
— Emine Yücel
Vought’s Movie Villain Speech
As the White House’s rescissions package approached the finish line in Congress this week, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, like a villain at the climax of a 1960s spy thriller, laid out his plan in full, reveling in the control the White House had achieved over the budgeting process, despite the fact that the Constitution places it solidly under the authority of Congress.
The revealing moment came during a Q&A hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday morning. I’ll quote a significant chunk of his remarks first, then explain why they caught my attention (and that of many other journalists and lawmakers).
Omnibus bills are a feature, not a bug, of the Impoundment Control Act. So, if you only need the president’s signature once, and then he doesn’t have a view on the management of the money for the rest of the calendar year, you’re going to put everything through on that omnibus bill and jam it through, get his signature — probably when five foreign affairs crises are happening, and he can’t afford to have that particular fight. So, I know that’s the argument. I actually think that, over time, if we have a more partisan appropriations process for a time, it will lead to more bipartisanship. So if the only game in town — because of rescissions, pocket rescissions, potentially impoundments are on the table — the only game in town is the actual budget process working? If I propose to eliminate community development block grants, go to zero, and the appropriators [in Congress] want to go and cut it by half, and that’s the meeting in the middle, then we have improved the process, we’ve gone back to the way it used to work, and we have restored budgeting. We don’t have any of that right now, and I think we can actually get that. We get that because you have the executive branch ensuring that it is not cowing to a legislative branch’s understanding of its own authorities and powers. We are not saying that the power of the purse does not belong with Congress. It absolutely does. It is one of the most constitutional, foundational principles. But that power of the purse does not mean the ability — it’s a ceiling. It is not a floor.
To understand the moment requires some unpacking. First, rescissions: Maybe you’ve been following TPM’s Emine Yücel and Nicole Lafond as they cover this topic. For those who haven’t: The rescissions package that passed this week was the bill that defunded NPR, PBS and some foreign aid. Rescission packages are a way for the White House to ask for permission to not spend funds Congress has allocated. This rescissions package made a joke of that process: the White House had already made clear it would not spend the funds. It treated Congress’ sign-off on that decision as a formality — a chance for members to save face, not a chance for them to grant permission. Even as the bill passed, a number of senators complained that they had no idea what cuts they were greenlighting; Vought’s office, they said, had refused to tell them.
“OMB is the problem,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Thursday. “They won’t tell us how they’re going to apply the cut. I want to make it clear I don’t have any problem with reducing spending. … They would like a blank check is what they would like, and I don’t think that’s appropriate.” (McConnell ultimately voted for the bill anyway, as did all the other Senate Republicans who expressed similar concerns, except for Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the only ones who typically, actually follow through with bucking the party.)
Vought, in his Thursday remarks, previewed that another rescissions package was coming. But he also, in his remarks, suggested that if Congress refused to go along with it or with other, future rescissions packages, the White House would sidestep the legislature entirely. He alluded to a kind of hostage-taking — zeroing out congressionally approved funding senators care about (“community development block grants,” for example), forcing them to come to the table and negotiate cuts. They would have to, he reasoned, because doing so was now the “only game in town” due to a series of maneuvers the White House could use to go around Congress. He alluded to them — “impoundments” and “pocket rescissions,” the latter of which is a term for a loophole the administration believes it has found in the timing of the budget process that, it thinks, will let it create a rescissions package that will become law without Congress ever voting on it.
Pocket rescissions are the kind of thing that experts and Congress’ Government Accountability Office understand to be a violation of both the Constitution and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. But the Trump administration appears to believe that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional — and as Vought said Thursday, the administration’s stance is that Congress sets a “ceiling” for spending, not a “floor.” (Given his whole spiel, Vought’s contention that the administration is “not saying that the power of the purse does not belong with Congress” is a head-scratcher.)
That gets to where this is all headed.
Vought’s remarks were a nod to the reality that the administration has enough fealty in Congress to force through whatever budgeting decisions it wants via rescissions. The moment Congress shows signs of resistance, Vought explained, the administration has a few tricks (impoundments, pocket rescissions) that it can use to remind Congress that the legislature no longer has any real control here. Those tricks may well prompt legal fights that the administration is eager to have, believing, perhaps correctly, that it has the majority on the Supreme Court it needs to enshrine a further, massive expansion of executive power into an area that the Constitution gives to Congress.
In movies, these kinds of speeches are usually made just before the villain’s audience makes their dramatic escape. If congressional Republicans are the audience here, I’m not sure they’ve got much hope of escape left in them.
— John Light
