A protest against the state’s decision to reject the AP black history course: “I’m sorry, I can’t do that”
A group of demonstrators led by the Rev. Al Sharpton held a protest outside of the state Capitol on Wednesday to demand that the governor reverse his decision to block the new African American studies course.
The College Board insisted that they were not pressured to eliminate edgier topics from the AP African American History curriculum. But the mechanisms of censorship are insidious – threats and intimidation cause people to shift their views, choose their words and stay away from certain topics without even recognizing that they are doing so.
The US has always involved education, from slavery through Jim Crow, to the civil rights movement, according to Sharpton.
We need to know the whole story, not just how bad you were but how strong we are. They come from a people that fought from the back of the bus to the front of the White House.”
The crowd includes members of the gay, lesbian, Native American, and Latinx communities according to Sharpton. You should have left us alone. You have brought all of us together.
The marchers shouted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Ron DeSantis has got to go!” and “I’m Black and I’m proud!” There were signs that said “Save our history” and “We will not be silenced.”
Shaia Simmons, a former teacher at the march, called the state’s rejection of the new course a “gross injustice” and a “slap in the face to all Americans.”
“Black history isn’t important to just Black people, it is important to everyone,” Simmons said. “It is the fabric of the country … It causes angst in the community if we try to wipe that away or diminish its importance. It isn’t just the AP course. This country has a whitewashing of African American history. It is the inequitable treatment of African Americans right down to the funding in our educational institutions.”
Her daughter says it is ridiculous that the class is not being thought of. “It affects us directly. It’ll change our future if we can’t learn about the past.”
The Florida Department of Education informed the College Board of its decision to reject the new course in a January 12 letter that later became public and drew widespread criticism from Black leaders in Florida as well as the White House.
The cure that is favored by his supporters is intrusive legislation to muzzle the opposite set of views. State-ordered legal bans based on viewpoint – whether ideas on critical race theory, books depicting LGBTQ families or diversity programs – strike at the heart of what the First Amendment protects. Bans tend to make the ideas being cast off limits more visible. The backlash against DeSantis stems from his handling of the feelings of librarians, teachers, professors and students, prompting allegations of racism and authoritarianism.
The testing organization behind the new course last weekend accused the state Education Department of “slander” and spreading misinformation about it for political gain.
The College Board earlier this month released the official framework of the new Advanced Placement course on African American studies with many of the topics DeSantis objected to removed.
How DeSantis and Trump have Changed Their Political View of the State and Their Influence on Education: A Lesson Disney Learned
DeSantis as governor, though, has often eschewed public opinion when taking actions and has proudly declared, “I’m not going to lead based on polls.” For example, DeSantis signed the most restrictive abortion law in Florida’s modern history despite consistent support for making the procedure accessible to women.
DeSantis is so far drawing the most support from Republicans looking to move on from former President Donald Trump, according to recent polls. Some have suggested DeSantis could be Trump without the baggage of his first term, his two campaigns and his post-presidency obsession with the 2020 election. For his part, the man is telling supporters he believes Trump’s divisiveness and addiction to politics distracts from his agenda. Trump but more effective, is how some around the governor have outlined his path to defeating the former president in a primary.
It’s a lesson Disney certainly learned. Disney was opposed to a state measure that limited certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation. The government that controls Disney’s theme parks in the area will be given new powers by state lawmakers.
“I’m a principled free-market conservative,” said Sununu, who is also weighing a bid for president. For others that think the government should punish your business because they disagree with you politically is not very conservative.
The last three years have seen him turn his back on free speech, in the hopes of being against ideas he finds contemptible. He has railed against progressive curricula and academic theories as “an attempt to really delegitimize our history and delegitimize our institutions” and urged his supporters to “think deeply about if we are a disfavored class based on our principles, based on having conservative views,”
The legal director ofFIRE said that you cannot censor your way to freedom of expression. “You cannot trade one orthodoxy for another. What we’ve seen recently in Florida is a troubling willingness to do just that.”
“Corporatism is not the same as free enterprise, and I think too many Republicans have viewed limited government to basically mean whatever is best for corporate America is how we want to do the economy,” the Florida governor said at a speech last year at the National Conservatism Conference. The best economic system is free enterprise, but it is a means to an end.
Donald DeSantis and the Rise of Social Insensitivity: “It’s a Good Idea to Shut Down, But It’s Not Enough”
“Being perceived as racially insensitive is not a good place for him to be in the long term,” a Republican supporter of DeSantis said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about an area of rising worry.
A supporter of the governor pointed to the college board fight and the Advanced Placement course on African American studies, saying the governor could lose some voters.
There are many Republicans who have yet to meet potential candidates for the party nomination. The Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity have signaled they will be involved in the primary.
Frayda Levin, a member of the Club for Growth’s board of directors, said there is great interest in DeSantis but she is increasingly concerned that he has become “too heavy-handed” in his pursuit of hot-button social issues. DeSantis is one of six Republicans invited to a Club for Growth donor summit in Florida as the conservative organization distances itself further from Trump. Former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are also invited.
“I’m a genuine libertarian; I’m kind of a live-and-let-live kind of girl,” Levin told CNN. She said she has no problem with candidates espousing strongly held personal beliefs on social issues but said she objects to DeSantis “putting the power of his state behind his socially conservative views.”
Last year Larry Hogan said that DeSantis had told the cruise lines what they needed to do. Hogan has remained critical of the Florida governor as he weighs entering the mix for the Republican nomination.
There are rumors that Gov. Noem is considering running for the GOP nomination in South Dakota and that she compared her opponent’s record to Florida’s for ideological reasons. Noem said Friday it was her state, not Florida, that “set an example of freedom” by refusing to shut down at all. Florida, which DeSantis has called a Citadel of Freedom, closed schools, bars and theme parks and restricted other economic activity early in the pandemic.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/19/politics/ron-desantis-conservatives-florida-2024/index.html
The gov. Eric DeSantis, the governor, and the press: how our university presidents must stand up against the challenge of libel
But his approach has often included more government programs (creating an office to pursue voter fraud and a new program to conduct missions to surveil, house and transport migrants from border states to Democratic jurisdictions), more regulation (dictating bank lending practices) or flexing government power in unprecedented manners (ousting an elected state prosecutor).
DeSantis’ allies have pushed back against the growing chatter. Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, claimed that the governor used his power as an elected leader, after he was reelected with a 19-point victory in November.
DeSantis last month appointed Rufo to the board of New College, a small liberal arts school that the governor has targeted for a drastic overhaul to become a more conservative university.
“The complaint about using ‘state power,’ meaning constitutionally-mandated democratic governance, to correct the ideological corruption of public universities, i.e., state institutions funded by taxpayers, is ridiculous,” Rufo tweeted. “Amounts to ‘the people can’t regulate the state.’”
And even where there is apprehension among allies, DeSantis has not necessarily lost support. Ken Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund owner of Citadel and a major DeSantis donor, said he was “troubled” last year by the governor’s move against Disney.
A recent national poll shows that Donald Trump is not the best candidate to run in the GOP race for governor of Florida in twenty four years, but that he is a close second behind Ron DeSantis among candidates in a field of seven. A near even race was found between Biden and Trump with half of the vote going to Biden and the other half going to Trump, which is similar to a poll from earlier in the year.
A 1947 legal precedent banned men from pretending to be women, and that’s what DeSantis seeks to shut down. He has proposed to challenge the landmark Supreme Court decision on libel, narrowing the scope of press freedom.
To escape this battle of assaults on speech will require leadership. University presidents need to stand up and insist, and ensure, that all viewpoints – left and right alike – get a fair hearing on campus. They also need to resist intrusive legislation that micromanages curriculum and undercuts academic freedom.
It is not wrong for DeSantis to mention that progressive orthodoxies sometimes stifle opposing views. The principle of a principle is not a principle unless it includes all ideas, and that is how DeSantis seems to be bent on applying free speech protections only to the ideas he supports.
The new visibility and appreciation of transgender and non-binary identities and rights has raised important questions about pronouns, bathrooms, sports and the autonomy of adolescents. The 2020 murder of George Floyd spurred schools, colleges and companies to take new steps aimed to root out the entrenched, stubborn legacy of racism in their institutions. Positive developments are crucial to bringing about a more equal society.
In a number of cases efforts to promote Equity cross over into censoriousness. Just last week Roald Dahl’s publisher announced plans to scrub beloved works like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Matilda” of references that could be construed as offensive to the overweight, wig-wearers or people with horse-like features. A student performance of “The Vagina Monologues” was canceled because the script did not acknowledge that not all women have vaginas.
Some curricula and programs offer simplistic, monolithic or flat-out illiberal ideas about racial issues, dismissing challenging questions or alternative perspectives as rooted in racism, reeking of undeserved privilege or otherwise beyond the pale.
Charles Negy was fired from his job at the University of Centralflorida after he said that “Black privilege” caused a lot of protests. While the university claimed he was guilty of misconduct, an arbitrator found no just cause for his determination and ordered him reinstated. The incident seemed to form part of a broader pattern at the University.
Last year a federal appeals court struck down the campus’ discriminatory harassment policy, citing its “astonishing breadth—and slipperiness.” The court found it “clear that a reasonable student could fear that his speech would get him crossways with the university and that he’d be better off just keeping his mouth shut.”
So, if “The Courage to Be Free” is a sign of things to come, DeSantis will likely hang his presidential campaign on efforts to find what he calls the “pressure points” in the system, finding ways to “leverage” his authority to advance his agenda. He’s a lawyer, as he reminds us, educated at the famous Harvard Law School. He is going to use his legal skill to dismantle our heritage and he is going to proclaim that he is freeing us by doing so.
This orthodoxy is built on the fact that the federal government has a limited power over the states. Is this a sign that he would take a new path as president? Does he believe the presidency he was so derided for has made the office better for him in ways he intends to follow? Maybe his next book will hold some of these answers.
In his book, DeSantis argued that the Constitution’s creators expected representatives to be responsive – though not beholden – to public opinion, especially when pursuing far-reaching pieces of legislation. As it is, Obama and his allies should have looked at the decades of opposition to health care reform as a sign not to mess with it.
One of the things that DeSantis didn’t like about the descriptions of Obama was the way in which he was portrayed as a messianic figure. But his own closing message to Florida voters last fall came in a 90-second video that suggested he was made by God on the eighth day to be a “fighter.”
A theme that Republicans in Washington fail to represent the values of the people who vote for them is what led Donald Trump to become the Republican Party’s nominee in 2016, according to a new book authored by former White House Chief of Staff Ron Paul.
Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice of the US Supreme Court, was affected by this criticism of slavery and its perversions. The Framers had a problem with the government they created from the beginning, according to DeSantis.
DeSantis went on to argue in his book that Obama’s views were more closely aligned with the slavery defender Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, who lost the 1860 presidential election to Abraham Lincoln, than the great emancipator.
DeSantis would use this rhetorical trick again in the book to accuse Obama of ascribing to “the same doctrine that Chief Justice Taney invoked in Dred Scott” – the Supreme Court case that found enslaved African Americans could not claim citizenship and didn’t enjoy the rights ascribed by the Constitution.
At the time DeSantis published his book, few topics animated voters like the 2010 passage of Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act.
DeSantis’ opposition to “ObamaCare” isn’t surprising on its face. As a lawmaker, he voted often with his Republican colleagues to repeal the Affordable Care Act and he was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, which helped orchestrate a federal government shutdown aimed at defunding the law. The law’s more popular provisions, like the requirement for insurers to cover children until age 26, were opposed by the congressman.
The redistribution of wealth was a more controversial explanation for the federal reform of the health care system than the rising health care costs that hurt members of the middle class.
The requirement of insurance companies to cover adults with pre-existing conditions appeared problematic to DeSantis because it could lead to higher insurance costs.
Though this sounded nice, the law had the effect of messing with insurance coverage for children. Insurers were forced to either absorb financial losses or increase premiums as a result of the mandating of more risk.
Murdoch’s legacy as a politician: To be or not to be. What to do with when you want to make a difference
The plan for leadership was laid out in the book by DeSantis, who wanted leadership to be limited to a strict read of the Constitution and adherence to fundamental law. It includes the limits on the executive branch’s abilities and adherence to separation of powers.
If you are in one of these companies, you want to get involved in our legislative business, look, it’s a free country, I think that’s why he said that. “But understand, if you do that, I’m fighting back against you. And I’m going to make sure that people understand your business practices, and anything I don’t like about what you’re doing.”
But the ex-president’s entire political career, the modern Republican Party and a vast conservative media empire are based on the exact opposite premise of the Rolling Stones’ song: giving the party base exactly what it wants to hear – whether it is true or not.
Trump never did, that is the key to his appeal. The ex-president’s tearing at democratic norms after the election in 2020 was his version of telling voters what they, and he, wanted to hear. He let millions of Americans believe he had not lost to President Biden even though there was no basis for his claims. The Fox News opinion hosts who amplified his falsehoods were guilty of exactly the same transgression – not to protect political careers but apparently to save their lucrative livelihoods.
The new details underscored how key players on the right feel they have no choice but to appease, satisfy and further inflame the voters and viewers on whom their profits or hopes of political power depend.
The GOP’s most fervent, constantly self-radicalizing voters have long led its leaders. GOP luminaries who resist the tide, like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, ex-Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, see their careers expire. Those that buy into it can get high up, like the Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida or New York Rep. Laurens wants to be.
Murdoch’s business model has evolved over time from feeding political anger to using television and tabloid newspapers in his native Australia and Britain. And while he’s more known for backing conservatives, Murdoch has switched sides when business demands – for instance, when The Sun endorsed the British Labour Party’s Tony Blair over the fading Conservative Party in a 1997 general election.
The New York Post headline that read “Been there, Don that” after the ex-president’s low energy campaign launch may have been a sign ofbuyer’s remorse from the billionaire publisher.
When Donald Trump Cames to Power: The Rise and Fall of a New Republican Speaker: How the Ruins of the GOP Insurgency Induced the Rise of President Donald Trump
He said in a deposition made public on Monday that it’s green and not red when you use a dollar.
The calculation of what the political market will bear is what influences the Republican politicians who appear on Fox. Their unfiltered adoption of much of the doctrine favored by the conservative grassroots ultimately stretched American democracy to the limit.
Catering to that base helped fuel the rise of Trump in the presidential election. GOP lawmakers who depended on not crossing the reality-star-turned-president then allowed Trump to run riot. In 2021 there was an insurrection in the US Capitol and Republicans acquitting him in two impeachment dramas.
The secret sauce that forced new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to make concessions to the most radical representatives in the conference was the power of the Republican base. McCarthy had seen two predecessors, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, lose their jobs when they tried to resist the GOP’s far right insurgency. As McCarthy showed by handing Fox host Tucker Carlson access to hours of Capitol Hill security footage last week – despite Carlson’s conspiracy theories about January 6, 2021 – his speakership is a totally owned subsidiary of the GOP’s most extreme elements.
Murdoch worried about driving away from the GOP base because of McCarthy’s dominance, one of the reasons why so many financial experts are fretting about a possible default that could rattle the global economy.
The tension between getting votes from base voters for a political party and getting votes from middle America for a political party has always tested the Democratic and Republican nominees. Whoever emerges from the GOP’s “America First” primary is in a good position to take this leap in terms of political skill.
After spending his life in Manhattan and flying around the country on a private Boeing with gold- plated fittings, Donald Trump was the perfect candidate for the moment. He was condemned for his rhetoric by liberals. But for his crowds, Trump’s early rallies were huge fun – more like stand-up comedy shows than conventional presidential events. Someone shouting out loud what millions of Americans had believed for a long time but felt constrained from saying because of social convention. Many commentators decried Trump’s demagoguery but fewer examined the social, economic and political reasons for his rise.
“The chasm between the aspirations of the GOP voter base and the behavior of party leaders in Washington would continue to grow wider in the ensuing years.”
Many politicians face a moment when, for reasons of conscience or political reality, they risk alienating their closest supporters. But sometimes there is no choice but to spend this political capital.
Trump had foreshadowed this marriage of convenience between his presidency and the conservative media infrastructure in an appearance at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City in 2018.
Don’t leave with us. These people are faking the news, so don’t believe them. He said what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what is happening.
Raging on the Scottish Highlands: a book of advocacy for a return to the coal mine: Jay Parini writes about Scotland with an Argentina writer
Editor’s Note: Jay Parini, a poet and novelist, teaches at Middlebury College. His most recent book is a memoir about his travels through the Scottish Highlands of Scotland with an Argentine writer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion articles on CNN.
That’s unlikely. Only fans or parties who want to see a candidate return in 2024 will read the book, and within a few months unsold copies will sit on tables, rubbing shoulders with previous examples of campaign self-advertising.
I have read many of these books that are not very good. Nevertheless, DeSantis takes the usual dullness to a fresh level, redefining what cliched writing can sound like. It’s one thing to offer the public a bit of wooden prose, but DeSantis gives us an entire lumber yard.
And we can be sure the governor read the book and approved of its contents before publication. We have to assume the ideas in this book are his, such as they are.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/opinions/ron-desantis-book-courage-review-parini/index.html
Hard-hearted criticism of Murdoch and the media empire during the Covid-19 pandemic: In response to DeSantis, Fauci and Jefferson
But this hard-heartedness is a core part and parcel of the narrative, which offers a litany of resentfulness. “Before my time at Yale,” DeSantis writes of his undergraduate years studying history at the Ivy League school, “I had never seen a limousine, much less a limousine liberal. Those students who were the most strident in their leftism… came from the most privileged background.” He moved to the right after he experienced “unbridled leftism” on campus.
Everywhere in the book, one senses his rage against political correctness. He rails about the woke agenda that he sees in America, and he views it at every level of life.
In DeSantis’ mind, a dire phalanx of “woke” fanatics is led “by the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci,” who is seen as public enemy #1. He devotes a whole chapter of this book to railing against Dr. Fauci and people who used the powers of the federal government to implement “heavy-handed public health ‘interventions’” during the Covid-19 pandemic. The governor believes that these measures did little to slow the course of the disease, and they hurt children, livelihoods and overall public health.
Again and again, DeSantis shows little interest in the First Amendment — except when his own free speech is concerned. He seems not to have heard the great words of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Jefferson believed that each of us had a right to speak in public without fear of being reprimanded by the authorities.
Instead, DeSantis rails against the “legacy media” — by which he means The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and so forth. The guard of the failed ruling class is running interference for elites who share their vision and making those who oppose them look bad. I am pretty sure he would like to exempt Murdoch’s media empire from this judgement.
Ron DeSantis: When the Florida Pandemic Generated a Storm and When the Public Wore: Educate the Public to Make the Most of America
One of the people who worked for three Republican presidents was a top adviser to former Florida Gov. Bush. Sayfie is the publisher of SayfieReview.com which is a website on Florida politics. The views expressed here are his own. CNN has more opinion.
The 2018 midterm elections were terrible for the Republican Party. The GOP lost 41 seats in the House of Representatives, and Democrats beat GOP candidates by more than 10 million votes — the largest raw vote margin in a House midterm election ever. Democrats gained governorships in the same year.
The Florida governor’s race was the only one in the country that was not hurt by hurricanes and Ron DeSantis beat Andrew Gillum by 0.4%.
His rapid national ascent began during the early pandemic in 2020 when he became a hero to millions for filling a vacuum of leadership at a time of global crisis and uncertainty.
Older adults in Florida were shown how he prioritized their health and safety by prohibiting the transfer of patients with the coronavirus from hospitals to long-term care facilities. He focused on keeping schools open so students would not fall behind in their learning. Small-business owners witnessed how he battled to get and keep businesses open, so they and their employees could continue to feed their families during the pandemic.
Being governor of Florida meant that other people were benefiting from his leadership. Florida counted about 200 million visitors in 2020 and 2021. Millions of domestic tourists experienced Florida as open and welcoming as they did when they were in the state and personally experienced the benefits of DeSantis’ leadership.
DeSantis’ governance style during the epidemic earned him respect from many people in the country, but it became a template for other battles he has fought.
Step 1: Take decisive action. This step follows a political principle that DeSantis believes to be correct, it is more important for a leader to be decisive than it is for the decision to be popular. Voters do not want weathervanes for leaders. They find a leader who takes bold action and knows what to do more rewarding than a leader who always puts a finger in the wind.
In September, DeSantis flew Texans from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard to see the sanctuary policies the town had adopted. While the editorials, local officials, and the whole country were against the decision, it was the national concern about the failure of border enforcement that made it possible for DeSantis to act.
More than half of Americans believe it is completely or somewhat true that the United States is experiencing an invasion at the southern border, with 76% of Republicans and 47% of independents holding this view, according to an NPR/Ipsos poll in August. Meanwhile, 59% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents say border security should be very or somewhat important, and almost 4 of 10 Democrats say that increasing deportations is very or somewhat important, according to a Pew Research poll. The decision to relocate migrants was made with the help of this bipartisan discontent on border enforcement.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/opinions/ron-desantis-florida-recipe-success-sayfie/index.html
The Rise of Dilemma in Florida: Biden, Rondales, and the Resurrection of the Silent Majority
DeSantis also supported a bill that prohibited classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity to kindergarteners and other young students. Disney opposed it and the hosts of the Academy Awards mocked the bill on national television.
A September poll by the New York Times- Siena College found that Republicans were united in opposition of classroom instruction in first through fifth grades, despite the fact that Hollywood stars disapproved of the bill. The poll found that 70% of independent voters strongly or somewhat opposed classroom instruction of gender identity to children.
DeSantis issued a proclamation declaring Florida native Emma Weyant the winner of the NCAA Division I women’s 500-yard freestyle final after the NCAA declared Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, the victor. Just like the other issues DeSantis has taken on, Republicans and independent voters were strongly in favor of DeSantis’ position, while Democrats were split almost evenly, according to a NPR/Ipsos poll.
The former President Richard Nixon called the “silent majority,” and in today’s “cancel culture” he had a particular way of channeling their emotions. Now, even though they are a majority, those voters who consider themselves part of this group feel more silenced than ever.
One may think that a strategy like this has limited appeal, but consider the following: In 2020, Biden beat Trump by 11 points among independent voters, even though he lost in Florida. Within two years of winning back this important group of nonpartisan voters, Rondales became the new leader of the party, beating his opponent by 8 points.
It’s a recipe that has worked brilliantly in Florida – an incredibly diverse, multicultural and fast-growing megastate. Anyone who doesn’t think it can work elsewhere may belatedly regret such skepticism in 2024.