Florida Democrats are attempting a new stunt, reported The Daily Beast this week: using Gov. Ron DeSantis’ landmark law allowing parents to remove books from schools to ban the governor’s own publication.
“In a clever bit of trolling, Florida Democrats are subjecting DeSantis’ new tome — ‘The Courage To Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival’ — to the rules that he and GOP lawmakers established to weed out books with allegedly inappropriate content on race, sexuality, and gender from school libraries,” reported Jake Lahut.
“Fentrice Driskell, the minority leader in the Florida House, is leading an effort across 50 counties to see if any of them might review or ban DeSantis’ book based on his law’s vague and unwieldy criteria.”
“The very trap that he set for others is the one that he set for himself,” said Driskell in a statement to The Daily Beast.
Such a move would not have much practical effect, since according to the report, no school in Florida currently stocks DeSantis’ book in their libraries, let alone uses it in any academic curriculum. However, the report notes, the point is to “[draw] attention to how HB 1467’s vague and arbitrary language can be abused when taken to its logical conclusions — while putting a critical spotlight on the contents of the book, widely seen another clear sign that DeSantis will run for president in 2024.”
The law does not strictly define what counts as “inappropriate” content on race or gender, meaning that numerous books and other content that simply mentions these topics have been targeted by right-wing activists — among them a book about the life of baseball star Roberto Clemente, and a film about civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, although the school in the latter case denies it was actually banned.
The confusion over how to implement the law has led to one school emptying its entire library of books, which DeSantis claims was a “hoax” even though the video footage is widely available.
“Few policy projects have been more central to DeSantis’ brand as an education culture warrior than HB 1467, making it a natural target for Florida Democrats,” noted the report. “Particularly with the drop in Democratic turnout that helped DeSantis cruise to reelection, Driskell said the onus is on Florida Democrats to not rely solely on attacking the Florida governor … Driskell added that polling shows parents are largely not fans of government interventions such as book banning, but the rest of the country hasn’t had to deal with a law like DeSantis’.”