Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pitched an idea to reboot a World War II civilian military force that only he would control, putting it out of the chain of command of the Pentagon, CNN reports.
To be called the Florida State Guard, the force would assist in disaster preparation and recovery, according to DeSantis. In the new iteration, the state guard would consist of 200 volunteers and cost $3.5 million. It is unclear at the moment if their uniform shirts would be brown.
Democrats quickly reacted to the proposal. Congressman Charlie Crist, a Democrat running for governor in 2022, tweeted, “No Governor should have his own handpicked secret police.” State Sen. Annette Taddeo, another gubernatorial candidate, wrote on Twitter that DeSantis was a “wannabe dictator trying to make his move for his own vigilante militia like we’ve seen in Cuba.”