The long-running spat between California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reached unprecedented levels on Friday, with the Democrat challenging his Republican counterpart to a debate on CNN.
Newsom went on Twitter to call out DeSantis for “playing politics with people’s lives”, and suggested they “take this up”.
“I’ll bring my hair gel. You bring your hairspray. Name the time before Election Day," Newsom tweeted.
The escalation in their war of words, raging for months now, came after DeSantis boasted about flying two plane-loads of migrants to the affluent Massachusetts resort of Martha's Vineyard in frustration over the unmitigated US border crisis, saying that, "every community in America should be sharing in the burdens. It shouldn't all fall on a handful of red [Republican] states."
Newsom penned a letter to the United States Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling on the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into the incident. He called DeSantis’ actions “morally reprehensible” and suggested that they might even be illegal. During a press conference on Friday, the Democrat governor continued to up the ante, branding DeSantis “a disgrace".
DeSantis used his own Friday press conference to retaliate.
"So the Governor of California sent a letter to the Department of Justice saying, ‘You need to prosecute Texas and Florida Governors.’ And all I can say is, I think his hair gel is interfering with his brain function," DeSantis said.
16 September 2022, 05:18 GMT
Newsom and DeSantis have been taking swipes at each other for months. The California governor has torched the policies and laws enacted by his Florida colleague and has unleashed a barrage of criticism on other GOP targets. Migrant policies have been just one of the topics.
DeSantis has been sending migrants to different states, as has Texas Governor Greg Abbott who on Thursday sent two buses containing more than 100 migrants to a location near the residence of Vice-President Kamala Harris in Washington, DC.
DeSantis said that Florida isn't a sanctuary state.
"We are not a sanctuary state... but we will help facilitate that transport for you to be able to go to greener pastures," DeSantis said during an event on Thursday in Florida.
The Republican governors have been lambasting the Biden administration for continuing to turn a blind eye to the continuing crisis at the US southern border.
Fellow Republican, Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona, has also adopted the approach started by Abbott in April, sending busloads of immigrants to the nation's capital, and saying in a news release that the trips, which are voluntary, are the result of “little action or assistance from the federal government”.
Since Biden took office, more than a million migrants have entered the country, according to figures cited by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Republicans have blamed the border crisis on President Joe Biden’s determination to “undo everything former President Donald Trump did” by implementing “open border policies” and scrapping a number of restrictive measures against illegal migrants that had been set in place by the former president.