Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ fast track to turning Florida from the Sunshine State into the nation’s Most Fascist State is wracking up a ton of money for his potential reelection or 2024 presidential run.
Thanks to bills such as HB 233, which went into effect on July 1. The bill demands that all faculty and students at public universities fill out surveys annually to assess the “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” at their schools. HB 233 already has a lawsuit hot on its heels, according to The Washington Post. The Post reports a judge will rule soon on an effort by University of Central Florida associate professor Robert Cassanello to block the law.
But it’s because of laws like HB 233 that DeSantis has been able to build up such a staggering war chest. According to CNN, the governor is sitting on $111 million and more money is pouring in daily.
As for the required surveys, they don’t come without some risks. According to The Tampa Bay Times, “indoctrinating students” could result in the schools losing their budgets, as suggested by the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ray Rodrigues.
When pushed during a press conference last year to list the cases where conservative students were actually being indoctrinated, DeSantis could not—but did say that he knows “a lot of parents” who are concerned about such things, Salon reports.
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Responses to the survey will not necessarily be anonymous, and how the information will be used has not been laid out, but as the bill states, the information is meant to learn "the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented" at public universities, and whether students "feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom."
While signing the bill, DeSantis reportedly said that universities “used to be” places where students were “exposed to a lot of different ideas.”
"Unfortunately, now the norm is, these are more intellectually repressive environments. You have orthodoxies that are promoted, and other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed. … That's not worth tax dollars, and that's not something that we're going to be supporting moving forward,” the governor added.
Cathy Boehme, a researcher with the Florida Education Association, told the Miami Herald in April she worries Florida HB 233 will “force a fearful self-consciousness that is not as much about learning and debate as about appearances and playing into an outside audience.”
Lobbyist and advocate of the bill, Barney Bishop, says he hopes the efforts of the bill will eventually extend to K-12 schools, as well.
“I think that those of us who have diverse thinking and look at both sides of the issue, see that the way the cards are stacked in the education system, is toward the left and toward the liberal ideology and also secularism—and those were not the values that our country was founded on. … And those are the values that we need to get our country back to,” Bishop told the Herald. “I think the problem isn’t just in higher ed… The truth of the matter is that kids are being indoctrinated from an early age,” he added.
“This would erode the autonomy of our public universities and colleges. It would be so far out of alignment with the entire purpose of people attending college in the first place, to prepare them to be free thinkers and to compete in this dynamic and globalized world,” State Rep. Fentrice Driskell, the leader of the Florida House Democratic caucus told the Post.
The bill equally prevents a university from “shielding” students from “access to, or observation of, ideas and opinions that they may find uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.” Democratic lawmakers in Florida say this could make it easier for white supremacist groups to appear on campus for events, Salon reports.
Playing to his base, DeSantis is hellbent on outright winging any and all competition in the coming election months. With his “Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act," or the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” and his “Don’t Say Gay” bills, DeSantis is fast-becoming Trump 2.0—but worse. And DeSantis has made it pretty clear he doesn’t need to kiss the orange monster’s ring to make a presidential run in 2024.
Editor's Note: Updated to clarify this law was proposed in 2021 and took effect on July 1, 2022.
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