Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, thoroughly spanked on the public stage by Donald Trump (and Gov. Gavin Newsom), is back in his home state trying to clean up some of the mess he made. On Thursday, DeSantis and his team released an announcement that he will continue “to debunk the false narrative that the state of Florida bans books,” calling on the state legislature to “make necessary adjustments so that we can prevent abuses in the objection process and ensure that districts aren’t overwhelmed by frivolous challenges.”
Unable to admit that HB 1069, which he signed into law in May 2023, has led to Nazi-esque book bans, DeSantis’s announcement instead blamed “people [who] have abused this process in an effort to score cheap political points.” It is a rich sentiment coming from the guy who appointed the co-founder of the far-right Moms for Liberty to the state ethics commission last fall in an attempt to drum up excitement for his flailing presidential campaign.
The announcement came with a bizarre video uploaded to the right-wing and libertarian-catering Rumble platform. The video claims that any reports from “the media” concerning books like “The Diary of Anne Frank” being banned is false. In fact, it was one of those Moms for Liberty that DeSantis likes so much who got the book banned from her local high school.
In an attempt to revise very recent history, DeSantis’ announcement claims, “No district in Florida has removed any dictionaries or thesauruses,” calling that assertion “ridiculous.” They have as recently as last month.
DeSantis also forgot to cover how editions of books like “Sleeping Beauty” and Jon J. Muth’s acclaimed series of illustrated children’s books “Zen Shorts” found their way onto his state’s banned book lists.
The book bans are just some of the more glaring results of DeSantis and Florida Republicans’ authoritarian, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-education, anti-Black history policies. The Parental Rights in Education Bill along with the Stop Woke Act (the latter led a textbook company to strip out the mention of race in the section about Rosa Parks) are also a part of the culture war policies the Florida governor has overseen. DeSantis’ announcement wasn’t interested in addressing those concerns.
Florida Republicans tend to really lean into the lying and hypocrisy once their bad and frequently unconstitutional policies are exposed. So in that way, DeSantis is just doing what Republicans in his state have been doing for years: Lying and revising the history of their terrible decision making.
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Unable to admit that HB 1069, which he signed into law in May 2023, has led to Nazi-esque book bans, DeSantis’s announcement instead blamed “people [who] have abused this process in an effort to score cheap political points.” It is a rich sentiment coming from the guy who appointed the co-founder of the far-right Moms for Liberty to the state ethics commission last fall in an attempt to drum up excitement for his flailing presidential campaign.
The announcement came with a bizarre video uploaded to the right-wing and libertarian-catering Rumble platform. The video claims that any reports from “the media” concerning books like “The Diary of Anne Frank” being banned is false. In fact, it was one of those Moms for Liberty that DeSantis likes so much who got the book banned from her local high school.
In an attempt to revise very recent history, DeSantis’ announcement claims, “No district in Florida has removed any dictionaries or thesauruses,” calling that assertion “ridiculous.” They have as recently as last month.
DeSantis also forgot to cover how editions of books like “Sleeping Beauty” and Jon J. Muth’s acclaimed series of illustrated children’s books “Zen Shorts” found their way onto his state’s banned book lists.
The book bans are just some of the more glaring results of DeSantis and Florida Republicans’ authoritarian, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-education, anti-Black history policies. The Parental Rights in Education Bill along with the Stop Woke Act (the latter led a textbook company to strip out the mention of race in the section about Rosa Parks) are also a part of the culture war policies the Florida governor has overseen. DeSantis’ announcement wasn’t interested in addressing those concerns.
Florida Republicans tend to really lean into the lying and hypocrisy once their bad and frequently unconstitutional policies are exposed. So in that way, DeSantis is just doing what Republicans in his state have been doing for years: Lying and revising the history of their terrible decision making.
Campaign Action