Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, is presidential candidate of the United States on an anti-diversity, pro-censorship, white nationalist measures. He has targeted education, LGBTQ rights and access to health care, and if he wins, his anti-science candidacy could harm millions of Americans.
DeSantis has banned books from school libraries, restricted teachers’ classroom discussions of diversity, banned high school classes focused on history and black people, politicized college programs, limited spending on diversity programs, greenhouse gas reduction ignored in politics on climate change, diminishing reproductive rights and banning transgender health care.
The governor has refused any evidence that masks are safe and help prevent COVID, named a surgeon general who advised against vaccines, and continues to portray science and evidence as restrictions on Floridian freedom. Instead of limiting the role of government, as he claimed in his fight against masks, he expands it to selectively promote a special religious program.
THE maternal mortality rate in Florida is on the rise, but DeSantis has signed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, banning it after six weeks of pregnancy and putting people who have life-threatening complications abortion at risk. help. Black women in Florida have the worst maternal mortality rates from any group in the state, and research has shown that people who are denied abortions and forced to give birth suffer mentally, financially and academically. These statistics will surely not improve with these new laws, which push health care providers to get out of state.
By making gender-affirming care for young people illegal and denigrating the use of preferred pronouns and names, the governor and his supporters will no doubt add to the suffering of transgender people. Many studies have looked at the transgender adolescent mental health. Researchers have found that giving puberty blockers to young people who question the sex they were assigned at birth reduces depression, anxiety and anger. In another study, 56% of transgender youth surveyed had attempted suicideand causes included feelings of not belonging, exclusion, and a deep lack of self-esteem.
Despite Florida’s vulnerability to climate change, whether through natural disaster or sea level rise, DeSantis again ignored the scientific evidence, refusing to address the role of greenhouse gas emissions in global warming. He has focused instead on adapting, or resilience measures. he is also canceled sustainable investing efforts like bonds that would fund renewable energy measures in the state. But adaptation and mitigation go hand in hand. Without reducing the cause of climate change, adaptation will only go so far, and under DeSantis, Florida remains at high risk of climate-related disaster.
DeSantis signed bills allowing people to challenge school library books that they consider unsuitable for children. To date, books pulled from the library shelves include a biography of baseball player Roberto Clemente (which was later restored), poetry by amanda gormanby Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale and books on Black, Cuban, and LGBTQ perspectives.
The authors of several books that have been pulled from shelves in Florida have sued the state for violating both their First Amendment rights to free speech and their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law. The teachers’ union and other groups are sue on the grounds that the law extends beyond schools into public libraries.
Its “Don’t Say Gay” law prevents teachers from talking about homosexuality or being transgender through high school. Such rules prevent comprehensive sex education and invalidate LGBTQ students, adding to the mental health burden of a state that has a severe shortage of child psychiatrists.
DeSantis and the the extreme right distorts critical race theory (which examines the role of race in the legal system) and lobbied the College Board to remove references to the theory from the Advanced Placement African American Studies curriculum. The Governor’s actions are part of a large-scale disinformation campaign to stoke white fear and defend white nationalism. Again, racism is realand in our multicultural, multilingual, global society, the promotion of white nationalism will create a generation of students who cannot reason and think as critically as their peers.
The governor also banned efforts by Florida colleges to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity. Bans could affect all aspects of education, including efforts to recruit non-white STEM students and scientists to higher education. He stacked the historically apolitical New College of Florida board of trustees with conservative ideologues to create an institute of higher learning that adheres to his version of American education and white exceptionalismWhich one is explicitly modeled after conservative evangelical Christian colleges.
What Ron DeSantis did in Florida mirrors efforts in other states, including Texas. He is part of a new class of conservative legislators who talk about freedom while restricting freedom. This political maneuver is part of the construction of its national presence, but it does not represent the opinion of most Americans. THE Florida’s population is growing faster than most other places in the United States, but the state is now on the verge of having fewer critical thinkers, fewer people of color as educators and subjects of education, more deaths in childbirth and dozens of people in crisis because of their identities. A country led by someone who exercises such cruelty, bigotry and megalomania will never be “a more perfect Union”.