Just over a week after Gov. Ron DeSantis declared that Florida was “where woke goes to die,” a federal judge blocked another key provision of the state’s “Stop Woke Act,” calling “positively dystopian” its limits on discussion of race, gender and other topics in university classrooms.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday that the law violates the First Amendment rights of students and faculty. Walker had already stopped from enforcement another part of the law which restricts what can be discussed in workplace training.
While DeSantis’ nicknamed the law the Stop Woke Act, its official title is the “Individual Freedom Act.” Walker called that the “State’s doublespeak.”
“In this case, the State of Florida lays the cornerstone of its own Ministry of Truth under the guise of the Individual Freedom Act, declaring which viewpoints shall be orthodox and which shall be verboten in its university classrooms,” Walker wrote in his 139-page ruling.
Good reminder that although DeSantis is being touted as a moderate alternative to Tromp, much of what he’s been saying, promoting and doing is also all too reminiscent of the policies of that weirdly mustachioed leader whose manifesto Tromp used to have on his nightstand.
We had very good friends that lived in Florida, we visited at Christmas time quite a bit over the years.
They lived in one of those 55 and older communities but it was actually more like 70 and older.
We were down there one Christmas Eve, an ambulance came in lights and sirens and went out no lights, that usually means the person passed. Happened a lot.
I made a comment about how depressing that was.
My friend’s answer was “this is heaven’s waiting room”.
That didn’t help with the depressing part. They both made it out of the waiting room a couple years ago. Their kids want me to get a place in there. No thank you to that but mostly no thank you to Florida.
I doubt we’ll ever spend time in Florida again unless things change.
DeSantis scares me more than Trump did. He is much more focused and able to keep things in his mind long enough to do real damage, while seeming more respectable and reasonable to people who aren’t aware of exactly what he’s doing. Much more dangerous, in my opinion.
I do wonder if he can capture the Trump crowd, because I think they like the chaotic nature of Trump… If he can capture Trump’s base, then yeah, I agree he’s more dangerous, but I’m not sure that he can.
Not that we should wait around for that, of course. Oppose the dangerous fascist out of the gate.
