Is Ron DeSantis failing before he’s even started?

Just this week, he signed into law a bill that would exempt him from Florida's

resign to run law, so he won't have to give up his office

if he wants to run for president.

He also continued his war on teachers,

signing into law a bill that will ban the state's public colleges

and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.

will soon announce his run to be the Republican presidential nominee for 2024.

But there's a problem.

Polls show he just is not as popular

among Republicans as his main challenger, Donald Trump.

I don't think so. Based on polls, he's not doing OK with anything.

rejecting his brand of politics when it's the state's most popular city,

Jacksonville, where voters this week elected their first female mayor,

a Democrat defeating a Republican who'd been endorsed by Ron DeSantis.

So despite his best efforts,

is Ron DeSantis failing before he's even started?

I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist for The Guardian,

and this is Politics Weekly America.

of a nightmare here in Florida is exactly what that has been.

Before that, he was a member of the state's House of Representatives.

And before that, he was a teacher.

becoming the first LGBTQ plus black person to serve in the Florida legislature.

with a strong hand, and it's either his way or no way at all.

And that goes for individuals on both sides.

There has been no governing.

It's been Ron DeSantis's way.

And so when the governor wants to be the governor, he wants to be the chief

justice, he wants to be the speaker of the House.

He wants to be the Senate president.

He wants to be all of it all at the same time.

I'm just wondering if you then imagined even some of the laws which have now been

passed and become law in your state, to what extent did you ever imagine they would be?

because there was a time when we were working on the Competitive Workforce Act

bill, which would have basically outlawed businesses in Florida for firing anyone

based off of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

That was a bipartisan bill.

And that was under Governor Rick Scott when we were trying to do that.

But this year, you could not even bring any legislation like that forth because

the legislation that we have been seeing has been anything but that.

And as someone who is a openly gay black man serving in the Florida legislature,

the unfortunate part is that you find yourself having to convince your

colleagues that I matter, I sit inside this room with you fighting for my

constituents, the same number of constituents who you serve, I serve.

So it hasn't been easy to serve in the legislature, especially as the governor

and the Republicans have come after and continue to come after marginalized people.

And in my case, the LGBTQ community and the black community.

this isn't just the usual pendulum swing of politics,

but Florida politics is shifting rightward?

I mean, after the death of George Floyd,

when we saw the the number of protests that was taking place across the country,

the pushback that came from Republicans basically denouncing and discrediting

our voices based off of a huge issue that we have been fighting in this country

for far too long, and that is police brutality amongst black men and women.

That pushback that came just showed me that where Florida was at.

And I had to remind myself that Florida is still the South.

You denied the Florida Senate passed HB1, the so-called anti-riot bill.

The controversial bill will raise penalties for crimes committed during a riot

and let businesses sue for damages if their local government doesn't take action

to stop a riot. However, opponents argue that the bill

could hurt Floridians right to protest.

We're going to make the language so vague

that it makes you not want to protest at all, regardless of what you're protesting for.

And when I started at Florida was very much always described as a swing state

to a state that could go Democrat or Republican.

There was a Democratic governor,

Lawton Childs, remember, covering that race in the 90s.

Now, people pretty well firmly put it in the red column,

especially after Donald Trump's spell in the White House.

We're going to be focusing our conversation on the governor, Ron DeSantis.

To what extent do you think it was Trump

and Trump's presidency that, yes, put Florida almost permanently

in that red column, but also that propelled Ron DeSantis?

more than I would say that as far as Democrats are concerned,

that honestly, we just have not done our due diligence in getting our people out

to vote. I believe that the Democrats, we got very complacent.

How much does Donald Trump play into it?

I mean, he plays a huge role in it, but he also played a role in the reason why

the country went the direction it went in.

But as far as Ron DeSantis is concerned,

when he ran again in 2020, more people did not go out and vote than they did.

And for his reelection than they did when he was first elected,

it was just a fact that Democrats didn't show up like they did in the former years.

so let's drill into that and perhaps best known is the Parental Rights

and Education Bill, which is known universally as the Don't Say Gay Bill.

orientation or gender identity in grades K through third.

And any instruction that is not age

appropriate or developmentally appropriate according to state standards.

Those standards, however, not yet in place for several grades.

but that's been understood to have been its thrust.

It was signed into law last year, 2022.

At the time, Ron DeSantis said that, you know,

teaching those subjects was inappropriate for children.

And the crucial thing, from his point of view,

was to give parents the choice as to when

these kinds of areas should be covered for their kids.

I mean, this has been a pattern elsewhere

in the country with Republican politicians,

officeholders saying this is all about the rights of parents.

And that's obviously been quite an effective

tactic, saying parents have a right to say what their children learn in school.

But just sketch out for us.

And obviously you have a very particular perspective.

You know, we mentioned that your own identity.

But what you think this is the real world

impact on the LGBTQ plus community and particularly, I suppose, on children?

part about all of this is that the Republicans, they say parental rights,

but it's really parental rights that couch their homophobia and call it

parental rights or they're trying to couch religious freedom when they really

mean racism and discrimination.

Parents already have undeniable rights.

The rights are given to parents for them

to protect their child, to answer for their child and everything.

As a former teacher, there is no school

nowhere where you can find what they are teaching children about gender identity

or sexual orientation in grades K through three.

They were using this as red meat to be able to get their base,

to go out and say that this is what's happening and really railroading against

school leaders all for what? To express their homophobia

and against the LGBTQ community, the trans community and truly

against African-Americans, even with things that they're doing.

It's not fair, again, and it's disingenuous.

the trans dimension of this bill going through, I think, the legislature,

which would prevent trans people from changing the sex on their birth

certificates and also restrict or even, I think, eliminate hormone therapy,

puberty blockers for minors, those under the relevant age.

I mean, again, is your view there that that is born of a particular view

of the issue or is that actually just again about the so-called culture wars,

which has become a signature theme and motif of DeSantis in his public rhetoric?

that have happened in Florida against a minor.

It just hasn't happened.

Even in asking the bill sponsor to show me proof that this was happening,

the bill sponsor couldn't even show this to me.

Even when asked a question about where else is this happening in the country?

Nowhere.

This is coming out of their playbook to do what?

To discredit, to begin to bring a great divide.

To say that this is what's happening to your children.

I've never heard of a drag queen to molest a young kid,

but I know elected officials who have, I know pastors that have done it.

But yet still, we call in the transgender

community and other LGBTQ people and you're saying that they are groomers.

No, you can't turn it back on individuals who have experienced sexual abuse.

And now you want to create this because it makes good for you in a talking point

with the politics, all of a sudden that this becomes true.

No, that cannot be the case.

But this is just what the Republicans have done.

And this is what has our politics have turned into becoming so divisive

and using disingenuous comments to where, you know, for a fact that your base is not

going to fight against it, they're going to believe what you say

and making the Democrats look like groomers, making the Democrats look

like they're sexualizing children or indoctrinating children.

you know, you said about doing this for political reasons.

What are the political reasons behind it?

Who which constituency in Florida does this work for?

Who does it appeal to?

What's the politics behind the this slew of moves that we've been describing?

that the classroom is the starting ground, is the main ground.

If you want to make any type of change, look what they're doing.

They're taking it. They're going into our higher education system.

We want to move away from allowing teachers to teach facts and move away

from teachers to being able to pick books on their own.

We need to make sure that we're talking

about the Western civilization, move to move away from this conversation

about real African-American history and what America was.

They talk about indoctrination.

This is the start of the indoctrination of them trying to change the concept of what

education really, really is and what history really is and what it was.

for them because voters, Florida voters will respond to anything

which is described to them as a threat to their kids.

That's the point you're you're making.

And just on all of this stuff and what the effect, as you see it, has been on,

you know, maybe the morale, but also on the lives of LGBTQ plus people in Florida.

What are you seeing?

I also see them very hurt.

I see them feeling as if no one supports them.

I see them feeling as if that they that they have to legitimize themselves

in this state and them trying to figure out what's next.

What else is there for for them to do to us?

even international attention is the battle between the governor,

Ron DeSantis, and one of the state's biggest employers, the Disney Corporation.

This is not many people expected this to be one of the stories of the year.

But the Disney Corporation is now suing Ron DeSantis in federal court

for what it says was retaliation against the company because Disney had taken

a position against the so-called don't say gay bill.

They had said they wanted to see this legislation ultimately revoked.

But Governor DeSantis has hit back at them and saying, you know,

restricting particularly and again, I'm not sure how many people around

the world knew this, but the Disney Corporation effectively acted as sort

of a government over the territory that Disney World holds, being able to,

you know, set their own rules more or less.

And Ron DeSantis is sort of either threatened

or hinted that he could he could encroach on that.

Now, Disney World's governing board has

filed a lawsuit to continue its right to oversee the district.

That includes Disney World.

You can see it's a kind of pitch battle

between two very powerful players, the governor of the state and this huge

corporation. What are voters in Florida making of this

battle between the governor and one of the state's biggest corporations?

It's a petty fight and that the governor should be focusing on things that's really

going to move Florida forward. And I think we also should point out

that this fight is just weird for him to to die on his heel.

And I think it should be we should point out that Reed Creek has been established

in this state with rules on the books for over four years and all because Disney is

too woke now, they are all of a sudden not good for Florida.

But let's put Disney, the corporation aside for a second.

Let's talk about the workers at Disney

who this impact or the people in the surrounding areas who this impact.

This is more than just about politics.

We're talking about real people's lives.

We're talking about a institution that has been in the state that brings billions

of dollars here that the governor wants to go and to fight with.

Why? All because they express their First Amendment.

Right.

All because you want to make national

attention to your political agenda to run for president.

It's not how we should be doing politics.

but this is part of a wider move by Ron DeSantis leaning into all the so-called

cultural issues, he signed this law which became known as the Stop Woke Act, W.O.K.E.

Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act, a slightly forced kind of acronym,

which was really tying the hands of a whole lot of educational institutions,

businesses telling them what they could teach and saying it would be wrong

to teach anything that would cause anyone to, quote, feel guilt,

anguish or any form of psychological distress due to their race,

color, sex or national origin.

And what that seemed to get to, again,

we've talked about it on this podcast before, is this all out Republican

critique or onslaught against so-called critical race theory.

We are not going to tell some kindergartner that they're an oppressor based

on their race and what may have happened 100 or 200 years ago.

And we're not going to tell other kids that they're oppressed based on their race.

for something they themselves didn't do just their ancestors did in the past.

Again, just give us the unpack, decode the politics of this for us.

What are Republicans doing when they go after critical race theory so-called?

right now is you ask an individual about critical race theory.

Those who disagree with it,

they don't even know what critical race theory is when they say that it's being

taught in our classroom. One, I think they should understand

that critical race theory is a way of understanding how American racism has

shaped public policy or a divisive discourse that pits people of color

against white people.

And it only exploded that way because of how Donald Trump expressed it to his base.

We will get critical race theory out of our schools, out of our military and out

to opt out of the forced indoctrination in the classroom.

And guess what happened?

Everyone ran with it.

Well, if you teach in black history,

oh, this is critical race theory, this is too woke, this is wokeism.

Or you start teaching about Martin Luther King and his letters to the Birmingham jail.

Oh, this is woke ideology that we're trying,

that they're trying to indoctrinate our children with.

Let's be honest.

When we're talking about critical race theory,

what they're trying to do is distort facts.

What they're trying to do is shield their children from understanding how their

ancestors did African-Americans during that time.

They don't want to uncover that truth.

The truth is that history is not only is it ugly, it's nasty,

it's controversial and it's uncomfortable.

And the fact of the matter is you don't want your children to sit through

a conversation on how uncomfortable it was during that time.

And when we even ask and we say things

like this, even in committee or on the floor, it's discredited with,

oh, we're not trying to hide the truth.

We want to just make sure that we're

teaching things that's based on the curriculum.

They don't know what critical race theory is,

but the black history is what's under attack right now.

there have always been sort of proxies for essentially sort of dog whistle attacks

on black people, and sometimes it would be politicians to talk about crime.

Sometimes they would talk about welfare.

You have phrases like inner city or these

were code words for having a go at black people.

And critical race theory is the latest one of those.

What do you make of that take?

The segregation is real.

All of these things that happen, all of this is real.

Whether you want to talk about how they

ran expressways through black communities, that's real.

That's not wokeism.

That's facts.

in what they can and can't teach in the classroom,

some teachers in Florida are fighting back.

decision making on what to teach, how to teach, etc.

was left to the instructors.

And there was a great deal of respect for what teachers did.

and economics to high school students in Manatee County.

When a new Florida law started requiring

all books in public schools to be vetted

by a trained media specialist,

many teachers, including Don,

chose to cover up unvetted books in their

classrooms rather than remove them, to make a point.

And we have them here locally in our community

who are monitoring books and monitoring

what's going on in the classroom, almost waiting

for somebody to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

And that's tough to teach when you have that.

post that she was being investigated by the state's

Department of Education after she showed her

students the animated Disney film Strange

World, which, and this is not the main plot

point, features a character who is biracial and gay.

A spokesperson for the department later said the complaint

will be reviewed by an investigator and the school

district has written to parents, letting them know

that the district was reviewing the matter to see if

further corrective action is required.

Unlike young teachers in the state who might fear putting

their heads above the parapet, Don, who's nearing

the end of a long career, has decided,

along with a few others, to sue Ron DeSantis

over the Stop WOKE Act.

free speech rights, that the law

prevents teachers and subsequently, therefore,

students from exercising their free speech rights

in the classroom by denying them access to

information that is a critical

part to education.

And so that's what we're challenging on our First

Amendment prior restraint grounds.

It's a matter of principle.

I've been teaching young people

for 38 years, raised a family,

have grandchildren, and I've tried to educate my children

and my grandchildren that when something's

wrong, you stand up and you let your voice be heard.

And I can't very well

have been trumpeting that message for

all these years.

And then when the opportunity came for me

to take up a high profile

risk, I suppose, for lack of a better word, by,

you know, attacking something that was clearly wrong,

I couldn't very well avoid that.

with each side giving depositions.

It's not clear when or if the lawsuit

will go to court, but Don Falls believes

that if DeSantis isn't stopped in some way,

there'll be an exodus of teachers from the state.

the profession, because there's,

they make it more and more difficult not only

to be a teacher, but to feel

like you're valued as an educator.

And so for a young person thinking about going

into education, my question would be,

why would you, at least in the state of Florida?

The comment I've heard from so many people is

this isn't the Florida that I grew up in.

When I hear that, it's sad because I love

the community that I live in.

You know, a lot of people are saying, you know, I

can't live here anymore because of this.

essentially suffering because of Ron DeSantis's

political aspirations.

In fact, so many people have said, I've said it and other people

have said, we've got some serious issues

that the governor should be dealing with.

His focus has been on these

cultural issues, going after what

teachers are teaching or Disney.

Those are not issues that the governor of the

third largest state in the United States should be

focusing all of his time on, nor spending

taxpayers' money on defending

all these multiple lawsuits.

But yes, I think, you know, I think he's been looking

seriously at a presidential run.

So whether he continues that route,

I don't know. But he surely is not being the governor

of the state.

a bit, because everything we're talking about is part

of a whole suite of actions that

the governor has taken, signing a bill that

would ban most abortions in the state after just six weeks.

It's one of the shortest periods, if you like,

that of anywhere in the United States,

making it legal for gun owners

to carry a gun in public without

government issued permit.

And also just most recently, and I think this, you know,

this was sort of gobsmacking, signing into law

a bill that would bar state officials from investing

money, public money, to promote environmental,

social and governance goals.

In other words, making it, you know, against the law

to be making decisions that would help the environment.

I mean, we obviously can guess your view

in principle of these issues and these decisions.

We can guess pretty strongly that you would be against them.

But again, explain the politics to us.

What is DeSantis' game here?

It's not by accident that the governor

did not sign the Permanent

Carry, nor the abortion

bill publicly.

He did it privately because it

doesn't poll well.

The messaging on it is off and they

know that they are losing people from their base,

especially suburban white women.

They're losing them to these issues.

And so that's why.

The politics behind it is the governor believes

that this helps him across

the country to win a primary.

But I believe they're shortsighted in what they're doing.

Because in the general election, what this looked like,

I don't think it plays out well for them.

And so the politics behind it is that he believed

that this is what propels him into becoming the presidential nominee.

He wasn't thinking about Florida when he did any of this,

whether it was about abortion or whether it is penalizing

individuals for their investment.

is the big problem of the DeSantis candidacy.

And we're talking about his bid.

We don't know if he hasn't formally announced, but to be

the Republican presidential nominee in 2024.

And they say his offer is essentially Trumpism

without Trump, that he won't be Trump himself.

You won't get the kind of erratic personal behavior.

But ideologically, it's the same.

And the problem is that, as you've just said, I think Republican

primary voters may well like Trumpism,

but they also like Trump and therefore they'll go for Trump.

And general election voters, meaning the wider American public

who will vote in November 2024.

They don't really like Trumpism.

They don't like that six week abortion ban or those open guns.

In your view, is that the sort of fatal

flaw in the DeSantis candidacy?

Or is there a way that actually you can see, much as you may not

like it, a way he gets over that?

to his pollsters

and to his political staff

that they should go look at President Trump, former President

Trump's last election he lost because of these same

type of policies that DeSantis is pushing.

It's not a winning message.

America doesn't want to be known as the laughing stock

of the world because we are becoming

more divisive by the day.

America right now is so

divided racially,

politically, and this concept

that this is the winning issue.

I can guarantee you that the majority of Americans do not want to be here.

They even hate that we are in this position that we're in right now.