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      G.O.P. States Abandon Group That Helps Fight Voter Fraud

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      Five red states have severed ties since last year with the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit that helps maintain accurate voter rolls.First to leave was Louisiana, followed by Alabama.Then, in one fell swoop, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced on Monday that they would drop out of a bipartisan network of about 30 states that helps maintain accurate voter rolls, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media.Ohio may not be far behind, according to a letter sent to the group Monday from the state’s chief election official, Frank LaRose. Mr. LaRose and his counterparts in the five states that left the group are all Republicans.For more than a year, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization known as ERIC, has been hit with false claims from allies of former President Donald J. Trump who say it is a voter registration vehicle for Democrats that received money from George Soros, the liberal billionaire and philanthropist, when it was created in 2012.Mr. Trump even chimed in on Monday, urging all Republican governors to sever ties with the group, baselessly claiming in a Truth Social media post that it “pumps the rolls” for Democrats.The Republicans who announced their states were leaving the group cited complaints about governance issues, chiefly that it mails newly eligible voters who have not registered ahead of federal elections. They also accused the group of opening itself up to a partisan influence.In an interview on Tuesday, Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who is Missouri’s secretary of state, said that the group had balked at his state’s calls for reforms, some of which were expected to be weighed by the group’s board of directors at a meeting on March 17. He denied that the decision to pull out was fueled by what the organization and its defenders have described as a right-wing smear campaign.“It’s not like I was antagonistic toward cleaning our voter rolls,” Mr. Ashcroft said.Shane Hamlin, the group’s executive director, did not comment about particular complaints of the states in an email on Tuesday, but referred to an open letter that he wrote on March 2 saying that the organization had been the subject of substantial misinformation regarding the nature of its work and who has access to voter lists.Wes Allen, Alabama’s secretary of state, withdrew the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center in January, a day after he was sworn in.Butch Dill/Associated PressDefenders of the group lamented the departures, saying they would weaken the group’s information-sharing efforts and undermine it financially because of lost dues. And, they said, the defections conflict with the election integrity mantra that has motivated Republicans since Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020.Republicans haven’t always been so sour about the work of the coalition, which Louisiana left in 2022.It was just last year that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mentioned the group’s benefit to his state, which he described as useful for checking voter rolls during a news conference announcing the highly contentious arrests of about 20 people on voter fraud charges. He was joined then by Cord Byrd, Florida’s secretary of state, a fellow Republican who, on Monday, was expressing a much different opinion. In an announcement that Florida was leaving the group, Mr. Byrd said that the state’s concerns about data security and “partisan tendencies” had not been addressed.“Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC,” Mr. Byrd said.Representatives for Mr. DeSantis, who is considering a Republican run for president, did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. LaRose, in Ohio, also had a stark shift in tone: After recently describing the group to reporters as imperfect but still “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” by Monday he was also calling for reforms and put the group on notice.“Anything short of the reforms mentioned above will result in action up to and including our withdrawal from membership,” Mr. LaRose wrote. “I implore you to do the right thing.”The complaints about partisanship seem centered on David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped develop the group and is a nonvoting board member. Mr. Ashcroft said he didn’t think that Mr. Becker, a former director of the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts who has vocally debunked election fraud claims, including disputing Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, should be on the board.Mr. Becker is the founder and director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, another nonpartisan group that has been attacked by election deniers.“There’s truth and there’s lies,” Mr. Becker said on a video call with reporters on Tuesday. “I will continue to stand for the truth.”Mr. Hamlin vowed that the organization would “continue our work on behalf of our remaining member states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”While some Republican states are ending their relationship with the group, California, the nation’s most populous state, could potentially join its ranks under a bill proposed by a Democratic state lawmaker. But in Texas, a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill with the opposite intention.Still, Sam Taylor, a spokesman for Texas’s Republican secretary of state, said in an email on Tuesday that “We are not currently aware of any system comparable to ERIC, but are open to learning about other potentially viable, cost-effective alternatives.”New York, another heavily populated state, is also not a member of the group.Seven states started the organization more than a decade ago. It charges new members a one-time fee of $25,000 and annual dues that are partly based on the citizen voting age population in each state. The Pew Charitable Trusts provided seed funding to the group, but that money was separate from donations that it had received from Mr. Soros, according to the website PolitiFact.Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who is Maine’s secretary of state, said in an interview on Tuesday that the group had been particularly helpful in identifying voters who have died or may no longer live in the state, which became a member in 2021.“We have a lot of Mainers who retire to Florida for example,” Ms. Bellows said.Ms. Bellows called the recent defections “tragic” and said that her office had received several inquiries from residents who had read criticism of the group online.“Unfortunately, this move by our colleagues in Florida and elsewhere to leave ERIC in part because of misinformation being spread by election deniers deprives all of us of the ability to effectively clean our voter rolls and fight voter fraud,” she said. More

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      Ron DeSantis has his next target in his sights: freedom of the press | Trevor Timm

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      Ron DeSantis has his next target in his sights: freedom of the pressTrevor TimmFlorida’s rightwing governor and legislature want to gut one of the United States’ most important first amendment rulingsRon DeSantis, the Florida governor, and his cronies, not content with destroying free speech in public schools, have set for themselves a new target: destroying press freedom and every Floridian’s right to criticize public officials. Along the way, they aim to overturn the most important first amendment US supreme court decision of the 20th century.The latest bill to raise eyebrows sounds like it’s made up by the opponents of Florida Republicans to make them sound ridiculous. Unfortunately, it’s real. The proposed law, authored by state legislator Jason Brodeur, would – I kid you not – compel “bloggers” who criticize the governor, other officers of the executive branch, or members of the legislature to register with the state of Florida. Under the bill, anyone paid to write on the internet would have to file monthly reports every time they utter a government official’s name in a critical manner. If not, they’d face potentially thousands of dollars in fines.Banning ideas and authors is not a ‘culture war’ – it’s fascism | Jason StanleyRead moreIt’s a policy so chilling that it would make Vladimir Putin proud, and I wish that was hyperbole. In 2014, Russia’s autocratic leader signed a very similar provision, then known as the “blogger’s law”. As the Verge explained at the time, “under it, any blogger with more than 3,000 readers is required to register with the Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media oversight agency”.As despotic as this proposed Florida blogger law may be, it’s also so laughably absurd, and so unconstitutional on its face, that it’s hard to imagine even DeSantis’s rubber-stamp legislature would pass it. As Charles C Cooke recently wrote, “Senator Jason Brodeur is a moron, but he’s a solo moron” with no apparent further support here. One would hope. But the blogger blacklist bill may be useful for another reason: as an attention-grabbing sideshow, to take heat off another free speech-destroying proposal that has DeSantis’s explicit backing – this one aimed at a bedrock principle of press freedom in the United States.For the past few weeks, while his new Orwellian higher education rules have been getting the lion’s share of attention, DeSantis has also been on the warpath against New York Times v Sullivan, the landmark supreme court decision from the early 1960s that set the bar for defamation law in this country – and gave newspapers and citizens alike wide latitude to investigate and criticize government officials.Many legal scholars consider it the most important first amendment decision of the last century. It is one of the primary reasons newspapers in the US can aggressively report on public officials and powerful wealthy individuals without the constant fear that they are going to be sued out of existence. And up until a few years ago, when Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch started criticizing it, everyone assumed it was settled law.Recently, DeSantis staged a dramatic “roundtable” discussion to present to the public that he was now invested in changing Florida defamation law for “the little guys”, “the run-of-the-mill citizens”, the ordinary folk who don’t have “thick skin” like his. He then proceeded to use the majority of the presentation to rail against New York Times v Sullivan, which of course doesn’t apply to “the little guys” at all – only to powerful public figures like him.A few days later, DeSantis’s allies in Florida’s legislature introduced bills that would fulfill his wish and directly violate the Sullivan supreme court ruling. In their original draft, the law’s authors made no attempt to hide their disdain for the bedrock first amendment decision either. They called it out directly in the bill’s preamble, bizarrely stating that the unanimous decision from almost 60 years ago “bears no relation to the text, structure, or history of the first amendment to the United States constitution”. (That sentence was later deleted in the next version.)While the Florida house and senate version vary slightly in specifics, even the “tamer” senate version – introduced by the very same state senator Brodeur – guts almost every aspect of journalists’ rights. Here’s just a partial list of what the bills aim to do:
      Kill off a large part of Florida’s journalist “shield bill”, which protects reporters from being forced to testify in court.
      Presume any news report written with anonymous sources is defamation.
      Roll back Florida’s anti-Slapp law, which ironically protects “little guys” like independent newspapers when they are sued by wealthy individuals for the primary purpose of bankrupting them.
      Weaken the “actual malice” standard from Sullivan, to make it easier for public officials to sue newspapers or critics.
      Now, can states just pass laws that blatantly ignore supreme court precedent? Of course not. Any responsible judge would strike this down as unconstitutional right away. But DeSantis may be hoping for a friendly appeals court ruling from a Trump-appointed judge or supreme court showdown to revisit the Sullivan ruling – following the same decades-long Republican strategy that finally overturned Roe v Wade. And in the meantime, DeSantis can burnish his anti-media bona fides for his presidential run, and Republican legislatures around the country can use the opportunity to copy the bill or one-up him.Whether the bill survives in the long term doesn’t change the fact that it would destroy all media in Florida – the traditional and mainstream, but also the independent and alternative, including all the conservative publications that have sprouted up all over the state in recent years.DeSantis has turned Florida into a national laboratory for speech suppression. And every American – Republican or Democrat – should be horrified.TopicsUS politicsOpinionRon DeSantisFreedom of speechJournalism booksFloridaUS supreme courtcommentReuse this content More

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      Ron DeSantis’s Rise From Unknown to Heir Apparent

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      Asthaa Chaturvedi, Mary Wilson and Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicAs the race to be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate gets underway, one figure has emerged as a particularly powerful rival to Donald J. Trump.That person, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has broken away from the pack by turning his state into a laboratory for a post-Trump version of conservatism.On today’s episodePatricia Mazzei, the Miami bureau chief for The New York Times.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis high-profile tour and book release could be the first steps to announcing a potential candidacy.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesBackground readingMr. DeSantis will soon get a chance to check off his wish list of proposals for Florida, including expanding gun rights.In his new book, “The Courage to Be Free,” Mr. DeSantis offers a template for governing.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Patricia Mazzei More

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      FBI searches for two Capitol attack defendants who have gone missing

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      FBI searches for two Capitol attack defendants who have gone missingJoseph Hutchinson and Olivia Pollock, whose brother is also a January 6 defendant, had ankle monitors that were removed or alteredThe FBI is searching for a Florida woman who was supposed to stand trial on Monday on charges stemming from the January 6 Capitol attack as well as another riot defendant who has also gone missing, officials said.A federal judge in Washington issued bench warrants for the arrest of Olivia Pollock and Joseph Hutchinson III last week after the court was notified that they had tampered with or removed the ankle monitors that track their location, said Joe Boland, a supervisory special agent with the FBI’s Lakeland, Florida, office.US Capitol rioter pleads guilty to stealing badge from beaten officerRead moreBoland said the FBI has recovered one of the defendants’ ankle monitors after they removed it, but declined to say whether it was Pollock’s or Hutchinson’s. As of Monday afternoon, the FBI had not located either of them, he said.Olivia Pollock, of Lakeland, is the sister of another January 6 defendant, Jonathan Pollock, who has been on the lam for months. The FBI has offered a reward of up to $30,000 in exchange for information leading to his arrest and conviction. He is accused of assaulting multiple police officers during the riot.Olivia Pollock and Hutchinson were initially arrested in 2021 and charged in a five-person indictment with assaulting law enforcement and other crimes. Hutchinson is representing himself at trial, and an attorney appointed to assist him as standby counsel declined to comment on Monday.Olivia Pollock’s lawyer, Elita Amato, said on Monday that her client “had been diligently assisting in her defense for her upcoming trial prior to her disappearance”.Authorities encouraged anyone with information about their whereabouts to contact the FBI.Olivia Pollock, who was wearing a ballistic plate-carrier vest during the riot, is accused of elbowing an officer in the chest and trying to strip the officer’s baton away during the melee. Jonathan Pollock is accused of thrusting a riot shield into an officer’s face and throat, pulling an officer down steps and punching others.Authorities say Hutchinson pulled back a fence that allowed other rioters to swarm police trying to defend the Capitol, punched an officer and grabbed the sleeve of another before throwing the officer out of his way.Hutchinson, who now lives in Georgia, was scheduled to face trial in August. The judge on Monday rescheduled Olivia Pollock’s trial for August as well.Also on Monday, a Colorado man pleaded guilty to using a chemical spray to attack police officers who were trying to hold off the mob.Robert Gieswein, of Woodland Park, Colorado, is scheduled to be sentenced on 9 June. Estimated sentencing guidelines for Gieswein recommend a prison sentence ranging from three years and five months to four years and three months, according to his plea agreement.Gieswein was wearing a helmet, flak jacket and goggles and carrying a baseball bat when he stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. He marched to the building from the Washington monument with members of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group.Gieswein repeatedly sprayed an “aerosol irritant” at police officers, pushed against a line of police and was one of the first rioters to enter the Capitol, according to a court filing accompanying his guilty plea to assault charges.Federal authorities have said Gieswein appeared to be an adherent of the Three Percenters militia movement and ran a private paramilitary training group called the Woodland Wild Dogs.Nearly 1,000 people have been charged so far in the riot. Sentences have ranged from probation for people who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor crimes to 10 years in prison for a retired New York police department officer who used a metal flagpole to assault an officer.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightFloridaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      DeSantis lambasts California’s ‘woke ideology’ in Reagan library speech

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      DeSantis lambasts California’s ‘woke ideology’ in Reagan library speechFlorida governor, expected to announce presidential run, says Democrats have been infected with a ‘woke mind virus’Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, took his fight against liberalism deep into the Democratic territory of California on Sunday, part of a national roadshow as he lays the ground for an expected White House bid.DeSantis has been meeting with wealthy donors in recent days and burnishing his national credentials in a series of speeches boasting about his achievements in Florida while lambasting the “woke ideology” of leaders in Democratic strongholds including California and New York.DeSantis, who is expected to announce a presidential run in the next few months, has made a war on liberalism a central theme of his governorship and a way to appeal to the Republican base.While he has not yet announced a White House bid, one candidate who has – former Republican president Donald Trump – clearly views DeSantis as a major potential threat as the GOP nominating contest kicks into gear. Trump has already launched personal and political attacks on DeSantis as the race for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination begins to heat up.DeSantis, speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library about 50 miles north of Los Angeles, made a veiled reference to the chaos of Trump’s presidency and his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020.“You don’t see drama and palace intrigue,” DeSantis said of his governorship in Florida. “You see surgical precision and execution.”DeSantis, who narrowly won election to the governor’s mansion in 2018, touted his landslide re-election in November.He attacked Democratic governors and leaders as being infected with a “woke mind virus”. The term “woke” has become shorthand among opponents as leftwing ideology run amok.He decried their policies on tax, vaccine mandates and classroom “indoctrination”.DeSantis also took aim at Disney, which opposes a Florida law that restricts classroom instruction of gender and sexual orientation.Last month he signed a bill that takes control of a special tax district surrounding Walt Disney World that for half a century allowed it to operate with a high degree of autonomy.“There’s a new sheriff in town,” DeSantis declared, referring to what he has called the end of Disney’s “corporate kingdom”.Other candidates expected to jump into the Republican primary race include former vice-president Mike Pence and ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, declared her candidacy last month.TopicsRon DeSantisRepublicansUS politicsUS elections 2024CaliforniaFloridanewsReuse this content More

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      Florida Republicans seek new abortion restrictions amid broad rightwing push

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      Florida Republicans seek new abortion restrictions amid broad rightwing pushProposals include restrictions on gender identification, diversity programs, press freedoms, and relax concealed weapons lawsFlorida Republicans are planning a broad rightwing legislative push, including new restrictions on gender identification, diversity and equity programs, abortion and press freedoms, and further relaxation of concealed weapons laws and the ability of courts to impose death sentences.The basket of proposed legislation comes five months after the state’s rightwing Republican governor Ron DeSantis won re-election by a decisive margin and the Republicans established a convincing majority in the state legislature.The broad push is seen by many as following the Republican governor’s ideological wish-list as DeSantis positions himself for a likely 2024 White House and an attempt to wrest the Republican party from out of the shadow of Donald Trump.Last week, Republican lawmakers moved to expand the state’s controversial “Parental Rights in Education/Don’t Say Gay” law with proposed legislation limiting the use of gender pronouns within parts of the public and charter school education system.The legislation, known as House Bill 1223, is aimed at establishing a requirement that “personal titles and pronouns” used in schools for kindergarten through 12th grade match the identity assigned at birth.The bill says that “a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun” that does not match their sex and expands bans on sexual orientation and gender identity topics in schools by five years, from third to eighth grade.The legislation, introduced last week, also releases employees, contractors, or students in Florida K-12 schools from referring to others using their preferred personal title or pronoun if it does not match their sex.Seeking to suppress trans rights has become a political tactic for Republicans in recent months across the US amid a broad right-wing backlash against LGBTQ communities, that has included proposed book bans, attacks on drag shows and the promotion of conspiracy theories.Other laws set to be pushed in Florida include allowing concealed weapons without a permit or training, a ban on diversity and equity programs at state universities, new abortion restrictions, rolling back press freedoms and allowing courts to pass a death sentence without a unanimous jury verdict.Republican lawmakers in Florid have indicated that they are guided by DeSantis. “We’re going to get his agenda across the finish line,” Republican Senate president Kathleen Passidomo said last month.The governor summoned lawmakers to a special session last month that would expand his power to transport migrants solely from Florida to transport from anywhere in the US. Lawmakers also gave state prosecutors expanded powers over voting-related crimes.The legislative slate follows DeSantis’s 19% margin in his re-election in November and appears to have little effective Democrat opposition. HB 1223 builds on 2021’s Parents Bill of Rights and HB 1557 Parental Rights in Education better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which triggered widespread outrage but has been copied by other Republican-controlled state legislatures.Under the proposed legislation, both private providers or public schools would also be blocked from providing instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.Equality Florida Public Policy director Jon Harris Maurer said in a statement that the legislation “is about a fake moral panic, cooked up by Governor DeSantis to demonize LGBTQ people for his own political career”.“Governor DeSantis and the lawmakers following him are hellbent on policing language, curriculum, and culture. Free states don’t ban books or people,” Maurer added.TopicsFloridaRon DeSantisRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Just the tip of the iceberg’: Kimberlé Crenshaw warns against rightwing battle over critical race theory

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      ‘Just the tip of the iceberg’: Kimberlé Crenshaw warns against rightwing battle over critical race theory Exclusive: Author and academic cautions pushback against racial justice education feeds revival of segregationist policiesThe professor who is a leading voice on critical race theory has warned that the rightwing battle against racial justice education not only threatens US democracy, but encourages a revival of segregationist values and policies.‘Cowering to politics’: how AP African American studies became the most controversial course in the USRead moreKimberlé Crenshaw is among top American academics and authors recently stripped from the latest draft of the advanced placement (AP) African American studies course being piloted in US high schools, after Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, led an aggressive backlash against it.The Columbia University and UCLA law professor and co-founder of the African American Policy Forum thinktank, believes that the escalations against racial history teaching, in Florida and elsewhere represent “the tip of the iceberg” of rightwing efforts to retract the progress since the civil rights era and push America towards authoritarianism.“Are [schools] on the side of the neo-segregationist faction? Or are [they] going to stick with the commitments that we’ve all celebrated for the last 50, 60 years?” Crenshaw asked, referring to headway made on equal opportunities since the 1960s.“The College Board fiasco, I think, is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of interests that have to make this decision,” she said.The College Board, the organization that administers college readiness exams and AP courses for high schoolers to earn college credits, denied bending to political pressure amid accusations that the curriculum has been watered down.But in what many viewed as a response to DeSantis’s ban, the work of Crenshaw and other high-profile progressive Black figures, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, were relegated from required reading to “optional” within the course.Several topics, including intersectionality, queer studies and the Black Lives Matters movement, were downgraded. The new version of the course now suggests Black conservatism as a research project idea.DeSantis, who will probably run for president in 2024, claimed the course violated state law and “lacks educational value”.Even apart from outrage at states moving to ban the course outright, if the edited version ends up being the course’s final form when it is set to launch fully in 2024, Crenshaw cautions that states teaching the significantly pared-down version will see its students earning the same credits as those studying the fuller version that includes the kind of contemporary and intersectional material she views as vital.Making such core topics optional “is exactly the same structure of segregation”, she said. “It’s like ‘we’re going to create this so that the anti-woke [camp] will permit states to decide whether they want the segregated version, or whether they want a more fully representative and inclusive version,’” said Crenshaw.Crenshaw is widely known for her activism and scholarship on two essential schools of thought on anti-Black racism. She is a trailblazer in critical race theory, which explores the persistence of systemic racism in US legal institutions, pioneered by law professor Derrick Bell. And she coined the term intersectionality, in 1989, describing how different identities such as race, gender and sexuality cut across each other and overlap.And from the previous draft last fall to the current version of the AP course, the key word “systemic” disappeared entirely and the word “intersectionality” went from several to a lone mention.Crenshaw said that the “frightening” choice in the new AP course to make contemporary lessons optional follows a similar logic to how corporations navigated Jim Crow segregation.Crenshaw noted that Donald Trump and the right’s Make America Great Again (Maga) extremism is directly linked to the College Board’s decision – and further back to strategies used during decades of racial segregation laws that prevailed from post-Reconstruction to the 1960s.“One of the truly, bone-chillingly frightening things about the aspiration to ‘make America great again’ that’s amplified by what’s happening with the College Board is that one of the most sustained features of segregation in the past was the fact that businesses were not only enablers, they facilitated segregation,” she said, driven by the profit motive and the white supremacy movement.“So when businesses and segregation were aligned, it was a chokehold on Black freedom aspirations,” she said.Crenshaw spoke to the Guardian from the sunlit living room of her New York home. A nearby desk that Crenshaw calls the “graveyard” is stacked with commonly banned books – books that Crenshaw herself hands out as part of her Books Unbanned tour, such as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.She urges a stronger, concerted pushback to this latest manifestation of racist history. “What was brilliant about the civil rights movement is that they really pressured national interests, corporate interests, to break with their policies of simply facilitating segregation in the south,” she said.Crenshaw believes that the College Board development reflects just one part of a continuous strategy from the right to target and disenfranchise minority groups.“It’s called ‘make America great again’. So what is it about this America now that this faction finds wanting?” she asked.“The energy and power structure of the Maga [movement] is really this desire for a time where there isn’t a sense of ‘I have to share this country with people who don’t look like me, [and] what we are born into was never an even playing field,’” she said.So when the “idea of greatness” harks back to the time of racial tyranny, she noted, far-right forces attempt to forgo the teaching of said history, so that “future generations have no tools, no exposure, no ability to critique the present as a reflection of the past”.Today’s most influential Republicans have made inclusive education a target and taken the supreme court further to the right, undermining other democratic institutions, as well as playing down the 6 January 2021 insurrection where extremist Trump supporters tried to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump and some carried Confederate flags inside the US Capitol after breaking in.In Crenshaw’s view, this is all with the goal of transforming the “decades-long journey towards greater social justice” into what the right admonishes as “wokeness” – which is in fact the encouraging of racial justice and equity.“Wokeness has become the oppression, not the centuries of enslavement and genocide, and imperialism that has shaped the lives of people of color, in ways that continue into the present,” said Crenshaw.Crenshaw traces the aggressive disinformation campaigns about critical race theory to a September 2020 executive order passed by then president Donald Trump that restricted federal agencies and contractors from providing diversity and equity training.“When that happened it was a five star alarm for me. Because if this can happen with the stroke of a pen, it means that our entire infrastructure that we’ve built since Brown [v Board] is weakened,” said Crenshaw, noting the landmark supreme court case that prohibited segregation in US public schools, adding that several elite universities rushed to comply with Trump’s mandate.Soon after, she became acutely aware that Trump and activist Republicans were twisting the term critical race theory and critiquing Black history taught in schools, or slamming research such as the New York Times’ 1619 project in order to spread moral panic.“The ban on anti-racism is so profound, that even the story of a kindergarten or first grade integrating an all-white school runs counter to [the new laws],” said Crenshaw, referring to the memoir of activist Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to integrate an elementary school in the American south in 1960.“So, white kids’ feelings are more important than black kids’ reality.”She continued: “They got their marching orders and into the school boards they went, and into the legislatures they went.”She warned: “If parents can be convinced that there is a wrong happening in public schools, they might be convinced to agree to the dismantling of public education across the board.”Colleges and universities have faced similar assault, Crenshaw noted, as professors are targeted under state laws.Crenshaw further laments the risks of conservatives’ steady takeover of the supreme court and the dismantling of federal voting rights protection and threat to affirmative action in higher education.“This court stands poised to really gut the entire civil rights infrastructure that was built by blood, sweat and tears,” said Crenshaw.Overall, Crenshaw exhorts Democrats and the media to employ much more vigor and urgency in addressing escalating attacks on US institutions, noting that many news outlets frame “the push towards authoritarianism as a [mere] rebrand”.“It was wishful thinking to believe that once the campaign was over, this was going to go away,” said Crenshaw, referring to the Biden-Harris victory in the 2020 election.But Crenshaw remains buoyed by hope that the next generation can overcome attempts at retrenchment from the far right: “This is the next generation’s lap to run. And we’ve got to hand them a baton that they can carry.”In the meantime, Crenshaw says there must be more acknowledgment of what’s at stake.“At some point, there has to be a recognition that we’re fighting for the soul of the country,” she said.TopicsUS politicsUS educationToni MorrisonRon DeSantisDonald TrumpThe far rightFloridafeaturesReuse this content More

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      Ron DeSantis takes control of Disney’s governing district after ‘don’t say gay’ row

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      Ron DeSantis takes control of Disney’s governing district after ‘don’t say gay’ rowMove comes after Florida governor lashed out at theme park’s protest of law restricting sexual orientation discussion in schoolsRon DeSantis, the governor of Florida, signed a bill on Monday that gives him control of Walt Disney World’s self-governing district, punishing the company over its opposition to a state law that restricts sexual orientation and gender identity discussions in schools.“The corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” DeSantis said during a press event at Lake Buena Vista near Orlando. “There’s a new sheriff in town, and accountability will be the order of the day.”The Courage to be Free review: Ron DeSantis bows and scrapes to TrumpRead moreThe bill authorizes DeSantis, a Republican, to appoint a five-member board to oversee the government services that the Disney district provides in its sprawling theme park properties in Florida. The quasi-government entity also has the authority to raise revenue to pay outstanding debt and cover the cost of services.“We have a situation here that was basically indefensible from a policy perspective,” DeSantis said. “How do you give one theme park its own government and then treat all the other theme parks differently? We believe that that was not good policy.”Disney did not immediately comment on Monday.State Republicans last year targeted Disney after it publicly clashed with DeSantis, who is widely considered to be running for president in 2024, over a law that restricts classroom instruction of gender and sexual orientation, known by its opponents as the “don’t say gay” measure.In March, Disney’s then chief executive officer, Bob Chapek, publicly voiced disappointment with the bill limiting LGBTQ+ discussion in schools, saying he called DeSantis to express concern about the legislation becoming law.Political observers viewed the bill as retaliation for Disney’s views. DeSantis moved quickly to penalize the company, directing lawmakers in the GOP-dominated legislature to dissolve Disney’s self-governing district during a special legislative session, beginning a closely watched restructuring process. DeSantis and other Republican critics of Disney slammed the company for coming out against the education law, calling it a purveyor of “woke” ideology that injects inappropriate subjects into children’s entertainment.Speakers at the bill-signing ceremony included a parent who criticized Disney for speaking out against the state’s education bill, saying the company “chose the wrong side of the moral argument”. Another person who identified himself as a longtime Disney theme park employee took issue with the company’s policies regarding vaccinations.Disney World is the largest employer in central Florida with close to 75,000 employees, and the theme park drew 36.2 million visitors in 2021, according to the Themed Entertainment Association.The creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, as the 55-year-old Disney government is known, and the control it gave Disney over 27,000 acres (11,000 hectares) in Florida, was a crucial element in the company’s plans to build near Orlando in the 1960s. Company officials said they needed autonomy to plan a futuristic city along with the theme park. The city never materialised, however; instead, it morphed into the Epcot theme park.The Disney government allows the company to provide services such as zoning, fire protection, utilities and infrastructure.In taking on Disney, DeSantis furthered his reputation as a culture warrior willing to battle perceived political enemies and wield the power of state government to accomplish political goals, a strategy that is expected to continue ahead of his potential White House run.The feud also reinforced the governor’s brash leadership style, and the coming months will be critical to DeSantis as he builds his profile out beyond Florida. He is expected to utilize the coming regular legislative session, which begins next week, to bolster his conservative agenda before he announces his candidacy for president.At his news conference, DeSantis said he would appoint Tampa attorney Martin Garcia as the chairman of the district’s new governing board, along with new board members Bridget Ziegler, a conservative school board member and wife of the Florida Republican party chairman, Christian Ziegler; Brian Aungst Jr, an attorney and son of a former two-term Republican mayor of Clearwater; Mike Sasso, an attorney; and Ron Peri, head of the Gathering USA ministry.TopicsRon DeSantisWalt Disney CompanyFloridaUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More