What's happened
Ron DeSantis spent up to $12m of Florida taxpayers’ money to fly migrants between two states he’s not governor of, claiming it was to protest Joe Biden’s immigration policy.
Why it matters
The move has been widely condemned as racist and abusive towards those dumped on the upmarket resort island in Massachusetts. The US president’s border policies, the Republican Florida governor insists, left him no alternative but to step in to the immigration fight, which he did by dumping two planeloads of mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, last week with no advance notice. The move has drawn a criminal investigation from a sheriff in Texas and two lawsuits.
What the papers say
The Guardian, The Independent, New York Times, Axios
How we got here
More on these topics
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Florida is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. With a population of over 21 million, Florida is the third-most populous and the 22nd-most extensive of the 50 United States.
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Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is an American politician who is the 46th and current president of the United States. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice president from 2009 to 2017 and represented Delaware in the United States Senate
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Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts in the United States that is known for being a popular summer colony.
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Texas is a state in the South Central Region of the United States. It is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population.
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The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with its main, historic rival, the Democratic Party.
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New York is a state in the Northeastern United States. New York was one of the original thirteen colonies that formed the United States. With more than 19 million residents in 2019, it is the fourth-most-populous state.
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The United States of America, commonly known as the United States or America, is a country mostly located in central North America, between Canada and Mexico.