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Florida: DeSantis Degraded Education at Every Level

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2025 //
4

Governor Ron DeSantis has done everything possible to destroy education in Florida. He apparently hates public schools. He pushed through an expansion of vouchers that provides a subsidy to every student in the state, no matter if the family is rich or poor. Of course, most of those using the voucher never attended public schools. Most vouchers go to students in religious schools. Florida currently spends $4 billion annually on vouchers, a sum sure to increase.

Bad as public K-12 education is, the state’s public higher education system is in worse shape. DeSantis has placed political cronies in charge of every state university. He took charge of tiny New College (700 students) because he was offended that Florida had one progressive institution of higher education where students were encouraged not to conform. DeSantis replaced the board with conservatives who put a political extremist in President. What was once a haven for free-thinking students was transformed into a school for jocks and business majors.

The editorial board of the Sun-Sentinel summarized DeSantis’s record of using higher education as patronage for political cronies:

When Gov. Ron DeSantis won his landslide re-election in 2022, a half-fawning and half-fearful Florida Legislature gave him whatever he wanted.

The Harvard graduate could have used that power to burnish Florida’s celebrated universities. He could have chosen the best and brightest to lead schools already among the nation’s best. He could have been the education governor.

That — not a bellyflopping bid for the White House — could have cemented his legacy.

Instead, DeSantis has earned a doctorate in cronyism. He’ll be remembered as the governor who did everything in his power to erode higher education and independent thought. He puts politics above merit and qualifications, with sham “searches” and secret deals.

College and university campuses are now soft-landing patronage pads for Republican allies, at sky-high salaries.

Former House Speaker Richard Corcoran was installed as president of New College in Sarasota. Another politician, former House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, was handed the FAU presidency. A run-of-the-mill former legislator, Fred Hawkins, won the presidency of a state college in Avon Park despite lacking academic qualifications.

Former Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez is now president of Florida International University. Former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska was given the prestigious UF presidency, then flamed out amid reports of over-the-top spending.

It’s no surprise, then, that Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, a former Republican legislator from Hialeah who oversees state colleges and K-12 education, will slide into the presidency of the University of West Florida in Pensacola.

For DeSantis and Diaz, no university is too big and no kindergarten picture book is too small to escape being recast in the governor’s philosophy.

Step 1: Stack the board

First, DeSantis stacked UWF’s board of trustees. Then, newly appointed trustee Zach Smith quickly made clear that UWF president Martha Saunders was unwelcome.

Smith, a Heritage Foundation fellow, had to reach back to six years ago to find even a speck of mud to throw: Two student-organized drag shows in 2019; social media messaging about a Black Lives Matter co-founder and a book, “How to be an Antiracist,” once recommended by university librarians.

It’s true that best-seller is full of provocative opinions. But so is Smith’s book, “Rogue Prosecutors,” which pushes dark conspiracies about prosecutors corrupted by a wealthy Jew.

That did not stop his nomination to the UWF board by DeSantis, who only last year declared war on campus antisemitism amid great fanfare.

The widely popular Saunders saw the writing on the wall, and she resigned.

A farcical scene

That board meeting was an ambush, said trustee Alonzie Scott. The next one was a farce.

Without a job posting or a search, Diaz’s name alone surfaced as a replacement. Just as quickly, a special meeting was called by UWF trustees. There would be no search for a temporary president and no effort to pick an interim leader from the university.

There was only a perfunctory vote to install Diaz. Then, farce upon farce, the board voted with a straight face to begin looking for a permanent replacement for Diaz.

Barring a political earthquake, that will be Diaz. As former Pensacola mayor and UWF alum Jerry Maygarden said at the meeting, what serious candidate would apply for a job that smacks of a done deal?

Even Diaz’s roots defy all logic.

UWF’s strength is its strong community support among residents and businesses, including Republican leaders. Diaz’s Miami-Dade home is a 10-hour drive, 700 miles and culturally worlds apart from Escambia County in “Lower Alabama.”

None of this is about rescuing students who feel intimidated and indoctrinated.

After all, a state-mandated 2022 Intellectual Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity report found that a majority of UWF students surveyed felt the school provided them the freedom to express their own opinions. Half said they had no idea if their professors were liberal or conservative.

New College 2.0

Never mind. In April, DeSantis told UWF to “buckle up,” announcing he would do for them what he did for New College.

It’s hard to see the success story in New College since the governor declared war on it. DeSantis’ hostile takeover of the tiny liberal arts college has devolved into a money pit: The state’s cost for each New College student shot to more than $90,000. Other state universities average roughly $8,000.

Last month, New College and the University of South Florida were found to be secretly working on a deal to “transfer” USF’s Sarasota-Manatee campus to New College. It’s dead for the moment. Community leaders, kept in the dark as usual, demand answers.

Meanwhile, USF has become the latest fertile field for DeSantis to reward his friends. USF’s president said she will resign, creating yet another job opportunity for a like-minded crony.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Categories Corruption, Curriculum, DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Florida, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Higher Education, Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire: What’s Next for Vouchers: Champagne or Storm Clouds?

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2025 //
5

Jennifer Berkshire has both good news and bad news about vouchers. The idea of public funding for religious and private schools had some big wins this year, especially in Texas. But most vouchers are subsidizing kids who never attended public schools; that’s a feature, not a bug as it creates strong support for the giveaway among the highest-income people. But, lo! The real cost of have the state pay for everyone’s tuition is beginning to get the attention of taxpayers. And that could cause a backlash against welfare for the wealthy. Florida is already paying $4 billion a year for vouchers. Will taxpayers object?

She writes:

Champagne corks, storm clouds—I’m mixing my metaphors here. But as we survey the steaming wreckage of the 2025 state legislative sessions, both are present in spades. Let’s start with the popping corks: the school voucher movement really did notch some big wins this year, adding Tennessee, South Carolina, Idaho and the biggest prize of all, Texas, to the list of states with “education freedom.” Now add in the sneaky move to slip a voucher program that is really a tax shelter for the wealthy into the tax code and it’s easy to feel despondent, and not just about the future of public education. 

Listen in on the debates that played out in these states, though, and you’ll come away with a very different view. As the economy sours and the tide of red ink rises, alarm bells are sounding and a backlash is brewing.

Let’s start with a quick trip to my neighboring state, New Hampshire, where a familiar series of events has transpired. Now, in the Granite State, vouchers are known as Education Freedom Accounts, and they were sold to notoriously thrifty Yankees as a way to save money as students abandoned “government schools” for less expensive private religious schools, home schools, microschools. But nothing of the sort happened, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for thousands of students who’d never attended public schools. Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s revenue situation has been deteriorating rapidly thanks to yet another round of slashing taxes on businesses. 

All of which adds up to some pretty bleak math as the state must now figure out how to pay for an expensive—and expanding—school voucher program even as New Hampshire’s budget pie keeps shrinking. Which is how GOP lawmakers seem to have landed on the worst of both worlds: an austerity budget that slashes funding for the state’s public higher education budget in order to pay for the cost of further undermining the state’s public education system. (If you’re wondering why this recipe sounds familiar, you’re thinking of Indiana, star of a recent episode of Have You Heard, and a cautionary tale about what happens when a state expands school choice while simultaneously cutting school funding and divesting from public higher education.)

Different state, same story

While the libertarian paradise known as New Hampshire may be unique, the dynamic playing out here is the same as in virtually every state that has now adopted school vouchers. 1) Ever-shifting goal posts regarding the purpose of these programs? Check. 2) Ballooning voucher costs as states now pick up the tab for students already attending private schools? Check. 3) Deep tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations, meaning less revenue to spend on public education and other social programs? Check. 

Consider Louisiana, which last year enacted the so-called LA GATOR program—short for Giving All True Opportunity to Rise. Now if you know anything about the recent history of school vouchers in Lousiana (spoiler: not good!), this is the time for a chuckle of the bitterest variety. What IS rising rapidly is the program’s cost—nearly $100 million in its second year, estimated to reach as much as $520 million as the program scales up. But when Governor Jeff Landry tried to collect the cash from lawmakers, something interesting happened. They said no, or at least, not so much. 

“I was not remotely expecting that,” [Senate President Cameron] Henry said about Landry seeking an extra $50 million for the program. “Somehow there was a misunderstanding, which we will rectify.” Despite Landry’s request, Henry said he will hold firm to spending roughly the same amount as vouchers cost this school year: $43.5 million “It will be no more” than that, he said, “because that was the original agreement.”

And it wasn’t just Louisiana. Over in Missouri, lawmakers axed their governor’s request for $50 million to scale up the voucher program known as MoScholars. The GOP senator behind the move offered a simple explanation. “I want to make sure that we’re fully funding our obligation to public schools before we start spending 10s of millions of general revenue dollars on private schools.”

If you’re wondering what’s going on, the answer is fairly simple. As voucher programs have ballooned in size and cost, they’ve become a bigger target, especially in states where they’re now hoovering up state funding at the expense of the public schools—which are still attended by most children in every state. And years of tax slashing in these same states is exacerbating what we might call the ‘pie’ problem. Factor in the worsening national economic forecast and things look even more dire. Texas, which is now on the hook for $1 billion a year to pay for vouchers, plummeting oil prices due to Trump’s tariffs is likely to lead to a recession as soon as this summer. 

Theory of change

As regular readers of this newsletter know, I’m an avid reader of conservative treatises. As I type, I’m surrounded by anti-public-education screeds by Pete Hegseth, Kevin Roberts, Betsy DeVos, and Corey DeAngelis. It’s the last one, Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools, that has proven to be a particularly useful guide to our times. How, for example, did school choice for the very wealthy become the civil rights cause of our times? Dr. DeAngelis explains:

“Allowing politically advantaged groups to benefit from the program is also a smart way to keep the policy protected for years to come.”

You see, there’s a theory here: that as monies grow scarce and one state after another devolves into a pitched battle over what’s left, the richest and most connected will fight the hardest to keep what’s theirs. For a preview of what this looks like, I recommend a pitstop in West Virginia, where lawmakers just wrapped up another session by shoveling money at tax cuts for the wealthy and school vouchers, while cutting programs that help people get clean water, find work after struggling with addiction and get child care. Oh well…

But for the theory of change to work, people have to want to live in a West Virginia-like reality, and I’m not at all convinced that that’s the case. Don’t believe me? Let’s head to Florida, which school choice proponents like to point to as a model for the rest of our states, and which now spends $4 billion a year on vouchers. Since the state made the program available to even the wealthiest Floridians, surprise, surprise, they’ve leaped at the opportunity to have tax payers pay their children’s private school tuition:

More than 122,000 new students started using vouchers for the first time in the 2023-24 school year, and nearly 70 percent were already in private school, many in some of Florida’s priciest institutions.

But Florida is also an example of the bad math, and shoddy assumptions, that drive the push for school privatization. As public education advocate and blogger extraordinaire Sue Woltanski has been tirelessly documenting, vouchers are indeed succeeding in defunding Florida’s public schools:

This isn’t because the money follows public school students fleeing to private options, but because, when families, whose children are ALREADY in private schools, are offered a tax-funded discount for their private school tuition, they flock to apply, and private schools encourage it.

As Sue keeps pointing out, the big flaw in the school choice lobby’s theory is that Florida’s public schools aren’t going away. A state that used to brag about how little it spent on its students is now funding two parallel education systems: “one for the nearly 3 million students still enrolled in public schools, and another for the hundreds of thousands already in private or home education, all out of the same funding formula.”

So what gives? The GOP’s solution is to slash funding for popular programs in public schools: AP, IB, CTE. When I asked a reader in Florida what he thought was motivating the lawmakers, he saw a longer-term conspiracy at work. Get rid of programs that parents care about and eventually they’ll abandon their local public schools. But that assumes that these parents are powerless and that lawmakers can eviscerate programs and institutions that matter to them without paying a price. I’m not so sure. 

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting Sarasota to speak to a group called Support Our Schools. SOS is a phenomenal advocacy group, and in partnership with a youth-led group that’s “organizing school boards to fight fascism, protect democracy, and build power from the ground up,” they’re having a real impact in a community that’s been ground zero for the right-wing takeover of public education. I headed south anticipating that my hosts would be despondent over the state of Florida and the nation, but what I found was the opposite. These local activists were energized, convinced that their cause—defending and strengthening public education—is finally breaking through. In their words, the situation for Florida public schools is now so dire that it’s impossible to ignore. 

Throughout my visit, one theme echoed repeatedly. A backlash is coming. It can’t come soon enough.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Funding, Lies, New Hampshire, Vouchers

Drag Show Owners Beat DeSantis in Court

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2025 //
2

Anyone who has ever seen a drag show knows that they are performances. I remember seeing “Dame Edna” on Broadway, and she was hilarious. There was nothing sexual about her show. And by the way, Dame Edna was played by a straight man who created an original character. Last year, I went to play “Drag Bingo” at a local restaurant, and the performers were funny. Their goal was to entertain.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, America’s number one prude, decided that drag shows had to be banned because they “sexualized” children. In addition to drag shows performed in bistros, there are also Drag Queen Story Hours at local libraries, where drag queens read children’s books out loud. Parents bring their children to these events; the little ones do not come alone.

To heck with parental rights, DeSantis wanted to close down all the drag shows.

Hamburger Mary’s, one of the leading venues for drag queens, sued.

They won.

Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sebtinel tells the story:

In recent years, Florida Republicans have been on a crusade to censor books, speech, theatrical performances and even thoughts expressed in private workplaces.

Their actions have been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional — often by conservative judges who have more respect for the Constitution than these petty politicians with their phony patriotism.

Still, it takes courage to stand up to political bullies willing to spend unlimited amounts of tax dollars, paying lawyers as much as $725 an hour, even when they know they’ll lose.

DeSantis spends millions on legal bills at $725 an hour. And he just lost again | Commentary

That’s why John Paonessa and Mike Rogier deserve credit.

The Clermont couple and Hamburger Mary’s franchise owners are the victors in the latest court fight against Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP lawmakers’ attempts to silence speech they dislike.

This time it was Florida’s war on drag queens, which was pretty clearly unconstitutional from the day it debuted, mainly because it was so poorly written.

Authors of the so-called “Protection of Children” act claimed to want to protect kids from “shameful” and “lewd” performances, but couldn’t even explain what that meant.

When bill sponsor Randy Fine was asked on the House floor to define “shameful” — so that venue owners could know what kind of performances would be illegal — he responded:

“Um … um … [eight seconds of silence] … I think that it … again, that is things that are … I dunno … I mean, again, you can look these things up in the dictionary.”

Quite the legislative brain trust.

The reality is that Florida already has laws on the books that protect children from sexually explicit performances. Did you know that? A lot of these tinpot politicians sure hoped you didn’t. But two rounds of federal judges did. And they concluded that this law wasn’t written to target obscenity in general, but rather drag in particular. That’s selective censorship. And if you’re a fan of government doing it, you might prefer living in Russia.

Patriotic Americans don’t support government censorship of speech. Dictators in North Korea do.

So after Paonessa and Rogier saw lawmakers repeatedly target drag performers — and even nonprofit organizations like the Orlando Philharmonic rented out their venues for such shows — Paonessa said the two men decided: “If we just let them do this, what is next?”

Both a federal judge in Orlando and appellate judges in Atlanta ruled they were right to do so.

Appeals court sides with Hamburger Mary’s in suit challenging drag show law

The 81-page appellate ruling from the majority made several key points: One was that the state already has laws to protect minors and that out-of-court comments from guys like Fine and DeSantis made it clear that the politicians were trying to specifically — and unconstitutionally — target drag.

Another was that the state’s own inability to define the kind of behavior it was trying to outlaw proved it was overly broad. “The Constitution demands specificity when the state restricts speech” to shield citizens “from the whims of government censors,” the ruling stated.

The case also laid bare a lie: These chest-thumping politicians don’t actually believe in “parental rights” or “freedom.” Because this law attempted to make it illegal for teens to attend certain performances even when accompanied by their parents.

Keep in mind: These politicians are fine with parents taking their kids to see R-rated movies with hard-core sex and graphic violence. They kept that legal. It was only when drag queens got on stage that these politicians lost their minds.

Drag queens? Evil. Cinematic depictions of bestiality? That’s OK. Those are some strange family values.

I can’t recall ever taking my own kids to a drag performance. But that was my choice — not the government’s. And Paonessa said many of his restaurant’s offerings, including the Sunday drag brunch, were family-friendly affairs that some teens enjoyed so much, they would return with their own kids when they were older.

Of course some drag performances are vulgar — just like some movies are. But trying to use a snippet of one sexed-up drag show to represent all drag performances is about as honest and accurate as using a movie like “Eyes Wide Shut” or the “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” to represent all movies. It’s a tactic of misrepresentation known as “tyranny of the anecdote” that’s particularly effective with the intellectually incurious

For the record, a dissent was authored by a 95-year-old judge appointed by Gerald Ford who invoked states’-rights-themed arguments and said censorship laws needn’t be that specific.

While the judges who shot down the drag law last week were appointed by Democratic presidents, the judges who shot down DeSantis’ other unconstitutional attempts to silence speech have been hard-core, Federalist Society conservatives.

GOP judges: DeSantis violated the Constitution again. Lawyers made $725/hr | Commentary

Like the ones who blocked the “Stop Woke Act” that tried to ban private businesses from holding employee-training sessions on topics like sexism and racism that GOP lawmakers found too “woke.”

And the Trump-appointed judge who invalidated the GOP law that called for arresting citizens who donated more than $3,000 to citizen-led campaigns for constitutional amendments.

If you think government should be able to imprison citizens for donating to campaigns that politicians dislike or silence private speech within the walls of private companies, don’t you dare call yourself a constitutionalist. Or even a patriot.

Scott Maxwell: First Target. Now Florida budgets $20 million to sue other companies | Commentary

In response to the latest judicial smackdown, a DeSantis spokesman whined about judicial “overreach” and said: “No one has a constitutional right to perform sexual routines in front of little kids.”

Once again, he was banking on your ignorance, hoping you don’t know Florida already has laws that protect minors — just not ones created specifically to target drag.

The appellate judges referred the case back to Orlando Judge Gregory Presnell, who issued the original injunction in a ruling that was maybe even more damning in effectively detailing the law’s many flaws. But there’s certainly a chance the state will continue trying to litigate the case, since it has unlimited access to your money.

Frankly, Paonessa and Rogier, who shut down their Hamburger Mary’s location in downtown Orlando last year in the middle of this court battle and are currently looking for a new home, probably couldn’t have afforded to fight back in this two-year court battle if they hadn’t had pro bono help. It came from a Tennessee attorney, Melissa J. Stewart, who fought a similarly unconstitutional attack on drag in that state.

But Paonessa said they decided to fight for their rights — and yours — because they concluded: “If not us, then who?”

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Creativity, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, Freedom, Gender

Will Ron DeSantis Outrun This Scandal?

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2025 //
11

Jason Garcia is an investigative reporter in Florida who has had plenty to investigate during the regime of Ron DeSantis. His blog is called “Seeking Rents.” This is a post you should not miss.

The governor acts like a dictator, and the Republican-dominated legislature doesn’t stop him. Remember the takeover of New College? It was the only innovative, free-thinking public institution of higher education in the state. It was tiny, only 700 students. But DeSantis took control of the college’s board, hired a new president (a crony) and set about destroying everything that made it unique. He issued one executive order after another for the entire state to crush DEI and assure the only permissible thought mirrored his own. He attacked drag queens and threatened to punish bars and hotels that allowed them to perform. He created a private army, subject only to his control. He selected politicians to run major universities. He imposed thought control on the state. Fascism thrives in Florida.

Thus far, he has gotten away with his gambits. But Garcia doesn’t think he will get away with this one.

He writes:

A simmering scandal erupted Friday afternoon when the Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald and Politico Florida revealed that the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a $10 million payment last fall to a charity founded by the governor’s wife — which then turned around and gave the money to groups that helped finance the governor’s campaign against a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana in Florida.

In a nutshell: The DeSantis administration pressured a major state contractor to make a $10 million donation to the Hope Florida Foundation, the controversial charity spearheaded by First Lady Casey DeSantis. It was part of a settlement negotiated with Centene Corp., after the state’s largest Medicaid contractor overbilled the state by at least $67 million.

Days later, Hope Florida transferred that $10 million to a pair of dark-money nonprofits. The state-backed charity gave $5 million each to “Save Our Society From Drugs,” an anti-marijuana group founded by a late Republican megadonor, and “Secure Florida’s Future,” a political vehicle controlled by executives at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Big Business lobbying group.

And days after that, Save Our Society From Drugs and Secure Florida’s Future gave a combined $8.5 million to “Keep Florida Clean,” a political committee — chaired by Ron DeSantis’ then-chief of staff — created to oppose Amendment 3, the amendment on last year’s ballot that would have allowed Floridians to use marijuana recreationally rather than solely for medicinal reasons.

It’s a daisy chain that may have transformed $10 million of public money — money meant to pay for health insurance for poor, elderly and disabled Floridians — into funding for anti-marijuana campaign ads.

DeSantis, of course, has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing wrong while also lashing out in increasingly vitriolic ways at everyone from the Republican speaker of the state House to the newspaper reporters digging into the story.

But at least one prominent GOP lawmaker — Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican who has been presiding over hearings into Hope Florida — told the Times and Herald that the transaction chain “looks like criminal fraud by some of those involved.”

Clearly, this looks very bad. But it is also by no means an isolated incident. 

In fact, this is part of a larger pattern of potential abuses that Ron DeSantis committed last fall when he chose to turn the power of state government against two citizen-led constitutional amendments that appeared on the November ballot: Amendment 3 and Amendment 4, which would have ended Florida’s statewide abortion ban.

Consider what we already know about how DeSantis financed his campaigns against the two amendments using public money taken from taxpayers — and private money taken from donors who got public favors from the governor.

  • Five state agencies directly funded television commercials meant to weaken support for the marijuana and abortion-rights ballot measures. We still don’t know the full extent of their spending, although Seeking Rents has estimated the total taxpayer tab at nearly $20 million. We also know that the DeSantis administration commandeered money for anti-marijuana advertising from Florida’s share of a nationwide legal settlement with the opioid industry — money that was supposed to be spent combatting the opioid addiction crisis.
  • At the same time, another nonprofit funded by Florida taxpayers poured at least $5 million into television ads attempting to soften Florida’s image on women’s healthcare at a time when Florida’s near-total abortion was under intense attack. It was the Florida Pregnancy Care Networks’ first-ever TV ad campaign. And its commercials, which were overseen by DeSantis administration staffers, complemented the state agency ads against the abortion-rights amendment — right down to using the same slogan.
  • Last June, after DeSantis vetoed legislation that would have strictly regulated the state’s hemp industry, CBS News Miami revealedthat industry executives and lobbyists promised to raise $5 million in exchange for the veto for the governor to spend on his campaign against Amendment 3. “Our lobby team made promises to rally some serious funding to stand with him on this,” a hemp industry representative wrote in one message that included a bank routing number for the Republican Party of Florida. “We have to pay $5 million to keep our end of the veto,” a hemp executive wrote in another message.
  • In the closing weeks of the campaign, records show that the Big Tobacco giant Philip Morris International gave $500,000 to DeSantis’ personal political committee — which was also chaired by the governor’s then-chief of staff and which DeSantis was using to campaign against both Amendment 3 and Amendment 4. Shortly after the election, the DeSantis administration handed Philip Morris a lucrative tax break, ruling that the company could sell a new line of electronically heated tobacco sticks free of state tobacco taxes.

There were other abuses of power, too. DeSantis and his team threatened to criminally prosecute television stations that aired ads supporting Amendment 4. They sent state police to the homes of Florida voters who signed Amendment 4 petitions. And they hijacked the ballot-writing process for Amendment 4.

There’s a reason why the DeSantis administration made sure to extract a promise of legal immunityfrom the organization that sponsored Amendment 4 as part of a legal settlement negotiated after the election.

DeSantis’ tactics worked. Though Amendments 3 and 4 each won majority support from Florida voters — 55.9 percent for recreational marijuana, 57.2 percent for abortion rights — both fell short of the 60 percent support needed to amend the state constitution.

But, suddenly, it looks like this may not be over — at least not for Ron DeSantis.

House Republicans are seeking troves of records from the DeSantis administration, including text messages and emails related to Hope Florida. The chamber has also scheduled another hearing on the Casey DeSantis charity next week.

What’s more, the House also unveiled a sweeping ethics reform package last week that would, among other things, explicitly expose senior government officials to criminal penalties if they interfere with elections.

That particular legislation would also prohibit state employees from soliciting money for political campaigns — an idea that emerged after DeSantis aides got caught squeezing lobbyistsfor more donations to their boss’ political committee ahead of a possible Casey DeSantis campaign for governor….

Ron DeSantis bet his political future on beating the marijuana and abortion-rights amendments. And he won both of those battles.

But it may turn out that he ultimately lost the war.

Wishful thinking? I hope not.

To give you an idea of how far/right the legislature is, Garcia lists some of the bills that are currently moving through the legislative process:

  • House Bill 549: Requires all new public school textbooks to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-29 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor.
  • House Bill 575: Replaces Gulf of Mexico with “Gulf of America” in state law. Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-27 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor….
  • House Bill 1517: Allows someone to file a wrongful death lawsuit seeking lost wages on behalf of an embryo or fetus. Passed the House of Representatives by a 79-32 vote. (See votes)…
  • House Bill 7031: Cuts the state sales tax rate from 6 percent to 5.25 percent. Passed the House of Representatives by a 112-0 vote. (See votes)
  • House Bill 123: Allows a traditional public school to be converted into a charter school without the consent of the teachers who work at the school. Passed the House Education & Employment Committee by an 11-4 vote. (See votes)

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read

Scott Maxwell: Florida Replaces Immigrant Labor with Child Labor

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2025 //
6

It was entirely predictable that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would create a labor shortage by driving immigrants away. Whether documented or not, immigrants are the backbone of the tourist industry and agriculture, two of the basic elements in the state’s economy. Once they were gone, who would replace them? Children. DeSantis is now promoting a reduction in child labor laws to replace the immigrant labor he criminalized. Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell describes the new Florida economy, balanced on the backs of children. Not the rich kids, but the poor kids.

Maxwell writes:

The Newsweek headline looked like satire: “Florida May Replace Immigrant Workers With Child Labor.”

Savvy Floridians know, though, that you can’t fictionalize stories more absurd than this state’s reality. And Florida lawmakers are, in fact, trying to roll back the state’s child-labor laws.

Basically, if employers in this state can’t exploit immigrants, the governor and Legislature want them to be able to legally exploit your children.

The latest proposal would allow teens to work longer hours, without breaks and even overnight shifts on school nights. Take that, Myanmar.

Up next, maybe we can emulate Burkina Faso where more than half the kids are in the labor force, some as young as 7. Now there’s a country with values.

What you’re witnessing is a real-life version of the dog that chased cars without thinking about what he’d do if he actually caught one. In this case, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s GOP legislators have fumed for years about undocumented workers without having the slightest clue about how they’d respond if those workers actually walked off Florida job sites.

So now they’re panicking and want your kids to fill the bill.

Normally, in a free-market economy, if an employer can’t find workers, it would just raise wages until people start applying. That’s how supply and demand works.

But Florida’s GOP politicians don’t want to ask their campaign donors to raise wages. They’d rather flood the market with another class of exploitable workers — teenagers.

Maybe you used to dream of your teen becoming an engineer or architect. Well, forget that Ivy League, ivory-tower fiddle-faddle. Florida’s economy needs them harvesting tomatoes and cleaning motel rooms.

In some ways, it makes sense to put our kids to work. We’re sure not educating them. Florida’s SAT scores have dropped to 47th in America. And our state’s eighth-graders just posted the lowest math and reading scores in 20 years.

So, if we’re not preparing them for higher education or high-paying jobs, we might as well get them primed for the low-wage tourism and agriculture jobs that make this state hum.

Senate Bill 918, would eliminate restrictions on how many hours 16- and 17-year-olds can work. It would end guaranteed meal breaks and also lift restrictions for kids as young as 14 who are home schooled or enrolled in virtual school. (So if you want your rugrat pulling down a paycheck, just yank ’em out of traditional school.)

The Florida Policy Institute summarized the bill by saying it would allow Florida to work teens “for unlimited hours, any time day or night, seven days per week and without breaks.”Welcome to childhood in Florida.

Not all Republicans think this is a boffo idea. Sen. Joe Gruters, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, joined Democrats in opposing the bill, saying: “I think we need to let kids be kids.”

Gruters chose his words carefully: “Let kids be kids” is a line DeSantis uses a lot, usually when he’s pushing censorship laws.

Apparently, in DeSantis’ worldview, teens aren’t mature enough to see certain drag performers, even alongside their parents — but are mature enough to work right through the night until school starts at 7 am. That’s just kids being kids.

As I’ve said before, I’m a fan of teens having jobs. I had a paper route in middle school and landed my first real job at a drugstore when I was 14 — old enough to legally sell condoms and tampons, but still immature enough to giggle about it. (Basically, if you ever entered a Revco in the 1980s,  nervous about making a purchase, I was your worst nightmare.)

But here’s the thing: I believe teens should get jobs when they and their parents want them to get jobs — not because we need to plug labor holes in our low-wage economy.

Keep in mind: DeSantis didn’t promote his roll-back-child-labor-laws ideas at a panel discussion on building teen character. He did it at panel discussion on immigration. After noting that undocumented workers provided “dirt cheap labor,” DeSantis asked: “Why do we say why we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when you know teenagers used to work at these resorts?”

This is just about swapping one exploitable labor class for another … in a state that already turns a blind eye to companies that break labor laws.

Remember Florida’s “mandatory” E-Verify law? It explicitly said that the state couldn’t even fine companies caught breaking the law until they’re caught three times. And that law-breaking employers must be given 30 days to stop breaking the law before they’re punished. What other laws work like that?

This is a state that gives companies a pass on labor-law violations and now wants to give them a younger workforce. What a dangerous combo. Even moreso when you consider GOP lawmakers also want to let businesses subvert minimum wage laws for some workers “younger than 18 years of age.”

Kids in Florida who say they have financial “hardships” can surrender even more workplace protections. Basically, the poorer you are, the more you can be exploited. So it ain’t gonna be the private, prep-school kids working farm fields and cleaning motel rooms at 3 in the morning.

DeSantis seemed particularly interested in using kids to fill the theme parks’ job needs. But the proposed rollbacks would also allow teens to work longer hours waxing floors, painting houses, stocking shelves, doing landscaping and working in fast food. Kids would still be banned from doing particularly dangerous jobs like mining or tarring roofs higher than six feet.

So teens could be asked to work overnight shifts right up until the start of a school day. That’s just “kids being kids.” But we’d draw the line at putting kids in boiler rooms and phosphate mines. A state has to have standards, after all.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Childhood, Cruelty, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Immigration

Peter Greene: DeSantis Wants More School Shootings, More Death

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2025 //
4

Peter Green explores one of the strangest paradoxes of our time: how can people be “pro-life” and also oppose any gun control? Guns kill people. Guns kill thousands of people every year. Consistency would demand that a person who is pro-life would also want to regulate the sale of guns.

But no. Among the most zealous pro-life governors is Ron DeSantis of Florida. He doesn’t want any woman to get an abortion, regardless of the peril to her life or the fetus. But when it comes to guns, DeSantis wants everyone to have at least one.

Green writes:

This week in his State of the State speech, Ron DeSantis announced that it was time to get over the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting–that would be the one in Parkland in which a 19-year-old killed 17 and injured 17 others in the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in US history. 

After that shooting, the state put in place a piddly excuse for an attempt to make such horrors less likely, but even that is too much for DeSantis, who specifically wants to get rid of language raising the age to purchase a shotgun or rifle from 18 to 21 and also the red flag law that lets family members or law enforcement petition the court to remove someone’s firearms id they are risk to themselves of others. You know– like maybe a 19 year old with a long history of racism and fascination with mass shootings. “We need to be a strong Second Amendment state. I know many of you agree, so let’s get some positive reform done for the people in this state of Florida,” DeSantis was quoted by the Florida Phoenix. 

Also, he’d like to have open carry in the state.

Because nothing is more important than an American’s God-given right to shoot other people. Because we should go to any length to “protect” a fetus, but once it’s a live child, its life is less important than someone’s right to fire off a couple of rounds at anyone that bugs them. Because this is one more way politicians can show that for all their talk, they don’t particular care about young humans. 

On the right column of the blogspot version of this blog, I have had one image parked for years. It’s not complicated

I would say that it’s the least we could do, but of course the least we can do is nothing, and Ron DeSantis would like us to get back to doing that. 

The only bright spot here is that the legislature doesn’t seem to have his back on this. Good. DeSantis should be ashamed that he can’t even produce a bad argument for his favored policies other than complaining that Florida has “lagged on this issue.” What a bummer– imagine all the people who are going to some other state because it’s easier to shoot people there. 

Categories Cruelty, DeSantis, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Guns, Health

Florida: “Support Our Schools” Fights for Public Schools in Sarasota

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2025 //
1

In Sarasota, supporters of public schools are pushing back against Trump’s plan to abolish the U.S. Department of Education.

Residents, students lobby school board amid Department of Education uncertainty

By Heather Bushman, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

The biggest story from this week’s Sarasota County School Board meeting didn’t comefrom the agenda, or even from inside the board chambers: All eyes were on Washington and how the board will respond to turmoil over national education policy.

About 40 Sarasota County students and residents rallied outside the School Board chambers before Tuesday’s meeting to question the potential elimination of the U.S. Department of Education by the Trump Administration and what it could mean for local schools. The group, which packed the meeting chambers, voiced concern for a potential loss of funding to public schools and asked the board for clarity on the possible local impacts.

Local advocates said they worried any reduction in federal funding could put disabled and underprivileged students at risk, with threats to Title I allocations and other programs permeating the national conversation. Attendees of the pre-meeting rally, which was organized by local education advocacy group Support Our Schools, waved signs and echoed chants asking the board to put “students before politics” and to ensure “government for all every day.”

Zander Moricz, a Pine View School alumnus and founder of the SEE Alliance, said the School Board needs to ensure local programs remain funded if the national department dissolves.“There is no plan to make sure that those resources are maintained and that those impacted students have the support structure that they need,” Moricz said. “We need to ask, ‘What is the plan? How are you going to make one? What are you going to do about it?’”

The ultimate effect of potential Department of Education cuts on Sarasota County Schools is unclear. Funding marked specifically for special programs could be distributed as general block grants to be used at the states’ discretion, which would mean each state receives a lump sum and can decide how to distribute it.

Also in question are 504 plans, which are unfunded mandates that require accommodations for students with disabilities. Florida is among 17 states that joined a lawsuit seeking to find section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act — the section that outlines the 504 plans — unconstitutional.

Sarasota County Schools received more than $71.8 million in total federal funding this school year, according to its adopted 2024-25 budget. Parts of that allocation include $11.4 million in Title I funds and $12.3 million in Individuals with Disabilities (IDEA) funds, which account for a combined almost 40% of the district’s $60 million in special revenue grants.

Sixteen Sarasota County schools are listed as Title I schools, and Support Our Schools calculated that the IDEA funds translate into 170 special education teachers across the county.

About 15 speakers implored board members to provide guidance on how they’ll keep these plans and funds in place. Sebastian Martinez, a Sarasota County Schools alum, said he understands national Department of Education proceedings are out of the district purview, but he urged them to prepare for potential impacts at the local level.

“As an individual School Board, I’m not asking you to fight the feds,” Martinez said. “I’m asking you to be proactive.”

Speakers asked the board to pass a resolution affirming it will maintain its current fundingto programs even if the federal funds are allocated as a block grant. Several referenced board member Bridget Ziegler’s resolution to reject Title IX protections against gender identity discrimination brought forth by the Biden Administration last May and pushed the board to take a similar stance against federal policy — albeit this time from the other side of the aisle.

Ziegler said federal cuts will focus on cutting costs at the federal level, not on reducing program funding. Though she said she’s not certain what will happen, Ziegler cited the $80 billion in operational costs that the federal government would save if the department dissolved and said she supports deregulating the department in the name of efficiency.

“Those are the monies that will actually be reduced, not the dollars geared toward those specified families and students,” Ziegler said. “It’s creating an unfair narrative that’s causing a lot of heartburn.”

Board member Tom Edwards assured the audience that the school district will do its due diligence in funding its programs. He noted the board had moved past budget difficulties before and said they would continue to stay on top of its budget.

“I promise you that we’re going to survive this,” Edwards said. “All I can do is the very best I can do.”

Other Sarasota County School Board business

In agenda-related business, the board unanimously voted to renew the charters of Island Village Montessori School and Sarasota Military Academy, whose current contracts expire in June, for 15 years. Island Village currently has 527 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, and Sarasota Military Academy currently has 997 students in sixth through 12th grade.

The board also approved Dreamers Academy’s request to expand their enrollment to middle school students, adding sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students to their current kindergarten through fifth-grade enrollment. Dreamers Academy has 519 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and with the approval of its amended contract, it willenroll middle school students beginning with sixth-graders later this year and adding seventh- and eighth-graders in 2026 and 2027.

All three charters gave presentations to the board at a Jan. 7 workshop.

Contact Herald-Tribune Reporter Heather Bushman at hbushman@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @hmb_1013.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Resistance, Supporting public schools, U.S. Department of Education

Florida: Vouchers Are Helping Affluent Families Pay Private School Tuition

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2025 //
6

Annie Martin and Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel have repeatedly exposed the fraud baked into Florida’s voucher program. It began in 1999 with the modest ambition of offering choice to low-income students in “failing schools.” It expanded to provide vouchers for students with disabilities. In past articles, they surveyed voucher schools and identified academic deficiencies, such as uncertified teachers and principals, and Bible-based textbooks. Now, they report on what happened after the state removed all income limits in 2023. Florida now offers money for all students, regardless of family income.

Most of the students getting the voucher money are not low-income, do not have disabilities, and are not escaping bad public schools.

The students getting vouchers are already enrolled in private schools. They don’t need the extra money but they are happy to take it.

They write:

A block from Winter Park’s tony Park Avenue sits St. Margaret Mary Catholic School, where tuition can top $14,000 a year for a K-8 education.

But at this school in the heart of one of Central Florida’s wealthiest communities, about 98 percent of students used taxpayer-funded scholarships worth roughly $8,000 to help pay tuition last year.

Only three percent of St. Margaret Mary’s students got that state financial aid just one year earlier.

The change – repeated at schools around the state – is one powerful measure of how a 2023 Florida law has supercharged a school voucher initiative that was already the nation’s largest.

Once reserved for low-income students and those with disabilities, state scholarships, often called vouchers, are now available to all – and they’re fueling an unprecedented pipeline of public money, estimated at $3.4 billion this year, into private, mostly religious schools across the Sunshine State.

All that money is doing more than just expanding Florida’s voucher program. The new rules are transforming it.

Since their emergence as a conservative educational talking point four decades ago, vouchers have been pitched as a way to provide “school choice” – the opportunity for families who couldn’t otherwise afford private education to escape a substandard neighborhood public school.

But when lawmakers dropped the income limits on Florida’s programs, the key element of the 2023 law, the system became something else:

Choice for lower-income families plus a wide-open taxpayer subsidy for the better off.
More than 122,000 new students started using vouchers for the first time in the 2023-24 school year, and nearly 70 percent were already in private school, many in some of Florida’s priciest institutions, according to data from Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers most of the state’s scholarships. About 40 percent came from families too wealthy to have qualified previously.

So in many cases the new law did not expand these new families’ options. Instead, it provided state subsidies for the choices they had previously made and were able to afford on their own.

The implications of that shift are vast, an Orlando Sentinel analysis has found.

• Voucher use has jumped by 67% since the new law was approved.
• Individual private schools are seeing even bigger surges, creating new reliance on taxpayer funding. The Sentinel found nearly 250 schools where the number of students using vouchers jumped by at least 100 children in the first year after the law changed. At St. Margaret Mary, the growth pushed total annual voucher funding from $65,000 to $3.5 million – in just one example of the multi-million dollar windfalls.
• A significant amount of the money is flowing to Florida’s most expensive private schools, many of which served few voucher students in the past: Campuses that advertise annual tuition of $15,000 or more added more than 30,000 voucher students last year.
• The proportion of private school students with state scholarships has topped 70% this school year. Ten years ago it was less than a third.
• More Florida students use vouchers — a total of 352,860 — to attend private campuses than are enrolled in public schools in Osceola, Orange and Seminole counties combined.

Program critics say Florida is now spending an inordinate amount of its education resources on the wrong people – rather than focusing on system improvements that would be good for all students.


“This is just a subsidy for wealthier people — people who already have the advantage,” said state Rep. Kelly Skidmore, a Democrat from Boca Raton who voted against the expansion.


Skidmore is among those who fear the impact of the voucher explosion on public schools – which are losing money as students shift to private education – and the implications of handing millions in taxpayer dollars to private schools over which the state has little control.


These schools are free, as the Sentinel has reported previously, to hire teachers without college degrees, teach history and science lessons outside mainstream academics and discriminate against LGBTQ students and staff. They do not face the same accountability requirements as their public counterparts, whose students’ test scores and graduation rates are publicly reported. Without such numbers for private schools, it’s difficult to assess the impact of Florida’s voucher program on the quality of education students receive.

Nevertheless, the voucher push shows no signs of abating, with more than 10% of all K-12 students in Florida now receiving the subsidy.

On Jan. 10, Gov. Ron DeSantis celebrated Florida’s “choice revolution” at Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville, which now enrolls more than 1,200 voucher students.

“The debate about school choice I think is over. Clearly you’re better offering choice than not offering choice,” DeSantis said.

An Orlando mother of four sent them to The First Academy, affiliated with First Baptist Church of Orlando, where high school tuition is more than $24,000 a year. Nearly 90% of the students use vouchers now, up from about 20% two years ago. She paid the full cost for her two oldest, who graduated, and can afford to pay for her two youngest, but is delighted to take the state subsidy.

Florida is spending $3.4 billion annually to subsidize the state’s most affluent families.

Is it surprising that Florida’s NAEP scores fell to their lowest point in 20 years? The state is not investing in its public schools, which enroll the overwhelming majority of its students.

Categories DeSantis, Education Industry, Ethics, Florida, Funding, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Scott Maxwell: How Did Matt Gaetz Escape Accountability?

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2025 //
26

Scott Maxwell, opinion writer for The Orlando Sentinel, points out a glaring example of double standards of justice: Matt Gaetz and anyone else charged with the same behavior. Matt Gaetz got away with behavior that would land anyone else in jail. It is astonishing that Trump thought he was the right person to hold the highest position in the Justice department.

Maxwell writes:

By now, most of you have probably heard about the U.S. House report on the behavior and actions of former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz.

If you haven’t actually read the full report, I’d encourage you to do so.

The descriptions of drug- and sex-fueled parties seem like something you’d expect in a tabloid report about Charlie Sheen — not an American lawmaker recently nominated to be this country’s attorney general.

But the most important thing to know about this report is that House investigators concluded that Gaetz repeatedly broke the law.

The report mentioned “illicit drug use” a half-dozen times and said there was “substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz met with women who were paid for sex and/or drugs” on “at least 20 occasions.”

It cited testimony that “Victim A recalled receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz … which she understood to be payment for sex. At the time, she had just completed her junior year of high school.”

The report’s conclusion: “… there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”

Maybe none of this surprises you.

What should outrage you, though, is that virtually all of this behavior — including multiple accusations of law-breaking — was greeted with a collective shrug by Florida law enforcement.

I know it’s tempting to consider this story just another report about slimy behavior from another slimy politician. But I’d encourage you to look at this report in terms of how justice is generally doled out in this state and country — with powerful and connected people getting a pass while we throw the book at low-level offenders.

In fact, I’d like to juxtapose the Gaetz report to another Florida case I wrote about just two weeks ago in a column titled: “Prison for poor addicts. Deals for wealthy crooks. Twisted ‘justice’ ”

That piece featured a federal judge from Orlando who was incredulous that federal mandatory-minimum sentencing laws required him to send a homeless drug addict to prison for five years for taking $30 from a man who asked him to deliver a package of drugs.

Judge Roy “Skip” Dalton argued that this destitute man of the streets with no history of drug dealing needed treatment for his addiction, not five years in prison. Dalton said a lengthy prison sentence wouldn’t make the community any safer, wouldn’t help the man with his addiction and would cost taxpayers gobs of money.

The justification for tough sentences is supposedly that lawbreakers deserve no mercy or sympathy — unless you’re a member of Congress.

Or a fraud-committing CEO.

Or the kid whose parents cut big campaign checks.

The reality is that this country has two systems of “justice” — one for the powerful and privileged and one for everyone else.

Politicians and law enforcement love to talk about how they’re “tough on crime” — until they or their friends are involved.

Need proof? Consider the long list of lame excuses by Florida law enforcement agencies for why they didn’t pursue charges against Gaetz.

Remember: The House report said that Gaetz “Violated State Laws Related to Sexual Misconduct” and “Used Illegal Drugs” — with some of those alleged activities taking place in Seminole County at the home of former legislator-turned-lobbyist Chris Dorworth.

But when the Orlando Sentinel asked state and local law-enforcement agencies why they didn’t do anything, they merely made excuses and pointed fingers.

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office said local police or FDLE should’ve handled things.

The FDLE wouldn’t answer questions.

And the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said that no one came to them with allegations and that they thought the feds were on the case.

I’ve seen less buck-passing at the U.S. Mint.

Imagine how ridiculous it would sound if you heard that chorus of excuses from authorities for some street-level criminal:

We thought the other guys were handling this. This isn’t our job. Nobody directly complained to us about these activities (that were widely documented in the media). 

Also, it’s worth noting that none of these investigative agencies said they didn’t think crimes were committed — just that they didn’t think they were the ones who should be doling out justice.

For his part, Gaetz, who comes from an extremely wealthy family in Florida’s panhandle, has denied any legal wrongdoing.

“My 30’s were an era of working very hard — and playing hard too,” he said. “It’s embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now.”

Way back in his 30s. Gaetz is 42.

Most Floridians would be quaking in their flip-flops if Congress released a report that said they had broken all kinds of laws. Not Gaetz. He’s already back on Twitter (X), promoting Bitcoin and fuming about immigration proposals.

Why? Because Gaetz knows how justice in this country works.

If you’re poor and lacking connections, you’ll be sent to prison for small-time crimes. But if you’re powerful and connected, you’ll get a pass — and maybe a talk-show deal or Cabinet nomination.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Accountability, Bias, Character, Corruption, Ethics, Failure, Florida, Justice

Florida: Trump Plan to Deport TPS Immigrants Will Be a Disaster for the State

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2025 //
6

The editorial boards of the Miami Herald and the Orlando Sentinel warned about the economic consequences of Trump’s plan to deport immigrants with Temporary Protected Status. They are “our neighbors, our friends, and our relatives.” Why didn’t Floridians think of that before they voted?

The editorial says:

It’s like 2017 all over again when it comes to Donald Trump and his threats about ending Temporary Protected Status.

TPS, a federal program familiar to  Floridians, protects some immigrants from deportation for a limited time because of emergency conditions in their home countries, such as Venezuela and Haiti. To qualify, they must be living in the U.S. when their country is designated for TPS and must meet a certain cutoff date. It allows them to live and work legally in the U.S. but does not offer a pathway to permanent legalization.

In his previous term, Trump tried and failed to end TPS for immigrants from Haiti and Nicaragua. This time, the president-elect should think twice. His home state of Florida would be affected more than any other. Almost a third of about 863,880 TPS recipients now live in this state, many from Venezuela and Haiti, places with well-documented turmoil and failures.

TPS recipients have legal status in the country, even if they initially came without documents. And TPS recipients pay into the system, through taxes. An estimate from 2019 put the number at $4.6 billion in federal, state and local taxes each year.

Their ranks are growing

As the Miami Herald has reported, the number of TPS recipients in Florida has more than quadrupled in the past three years, up from about 65,000 in April 2021 to about 295,720 now.

The Biden administration expanded TPS, including for about 472,000 Venezuelans, a move that translates into many more who could potentially be affected if Trump targets TPS — a program created in 1990 under President George H. W. Bush.

TPS emerged as an issue in the 2024 Trump campaign during that shameful episode in September, when Trump’s running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, spread debunked conspiracy theories about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and Trump continued to spread that misinformation at a presidential debate.

“They are eating the dogs … they are eating the cats,” Trump said repeatedly.

Ominous threats in Ohio

In early October, when Trump was asked whether, if reelected, he would revoke TPS for Haitians — at least those in Springfield — and deport them, he responded: “Absolutely. I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country.”

Vance also mentioned TPS at an Arizona campaign event in October: “What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole. We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.”

All of that was well before the election.

Now, with a second Trump administration in the offing, theory could become reality. Look at his appointments: immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy — he has criticized the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program aimed at slowing the number of migrants at the southern border — and Tom Homan as the “border czar.” Homan led Immigration and Customs Enforcement when families were separated during Trump’s first term.

Immigration was one of the main drivers of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Much attention was focused on his vows to conduct mass deportations, especially of undocumented people. About 11 million immigrants without legal status were in the U.S. in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Trump has also talked about a host of other immigration actions, including ending birthright citizenship and restarting construction of the border wall. After the fearmongering in Ohio, TPS is on the table, too. Lawsuits derailed Trump’s efforts the last time. Will it happen again?

We understand that TPS is, by definition, supposed to be temporary. That’s fair. But in many of these countries — Haiti, certainly, and Venezuela — conditions are just as bad as they were or worse. Returning TPS recipients to their countries could put them in danger. In Florida, where TPS recipients are our neighbors and friends and relatives, we should already know that.

This editorial was originally published in the Miami Herald. The Sentinel sometimes republishes editorials that reflect our point of view. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Economy, Elections, Extremism, Florida, Trump
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