Ron desantis

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, pictured here on April 21, 2023, signed a slate of bills Monday, one of which bans DEI initiatives in his state's universities. Alex Brandon/AP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis "If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination," DeSantis said during a news conference at New College of Florida in Sarasota. "And that has no place in our public institutions." Many institutions across the U.S. have DEI offices aimed at diversifying staff and to promote inclusivity for faculty and students. The location of the bill signing is notable as DeSantis has targeted New College of Florida to put it in a more conservative direction. Earlier this year, DeSantis said Monday that he's viewed DEI initiatives as a discriminatory practice. "This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida. We are eliminating the DEI programs." The new law also bans what can be taught in the state's higher education institutions. General education courses can't "distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics," This effort is part of DeSantis' larger work to crack down on what he Texas has "When you see elected leaders demonizing educators and weaponizing education, it's a five-alarm fire for democracy," Irene Mulvey, president of The American Association of University Professors, Nature. "It impor...

LACONIA, N.H. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lashed out at a reporter — twice barking “Are you blind?” — at the end of his first campaign event in New Hampshire on Thursday. DeSantis, who delivered his stock stump speech to an audience of more than 100 people at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Laconia, became noticeably agitated when Steve Peoples of The Associated Press asked why he wasn’t taking questions from the audience like most presidential candidates do in this state. “People are coming up to me, talking to me,” DeSantis said. “What are you talking about? Are you blind? Are you blind? People are coming up to me, talking to me whatever they want to talk to me about.” At the time, DeSantis was shaking hands and taking pictures with individual members of the crowd on his way out of the VFW hall. But he did not answer questions from his lectern so that voters could all hear his answers at once.

Media coverage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s all-but-announced candidacy for president is already in full frenzy, and so far the script is exactly as his handlers would like it to be. The governor regularly opens up new fronts in the culture wars, sowing alarm over critical race theory, transgender rights, or border policies. In response, liberal pundits fall into the trap of accentuating the very issues DeSantis has chosen to fire up his base. Omitted from the public debate about DeSantis’s policies is almost any discussion of his actual record of governance—what exactly he has delivered to the citizens of his state, especially those without seven-figure incomes and lush investment portfolios. Even a cursory dip into the statistics of social and economic well-being reveals that Florida falls short in almost any measure that matters to the lives of its citizens. More than four years into the DeSantis governorship, Florida continues to languish toward the bottom of state rankings assessing the quality of Florida may be the place where “woke goes to die”—as DeSantis is fond of saying—but it is also where teachers’ salaries are Read More: DeSantis weaponizes the cultural wars to distract attention from the core missions of his governorship, which is to starve programs geared toward bettering the lives of ordinary citizens so he can maintain low taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Florida is the ideal haven for privileged Americans who don’t want to pay their fair share of...