Next on Ron DeSantis’s Agenda: Going After African American Studies and Records of Health Care for Trans Students

That wasn’t the only disturbing move DeSantis has made recently on the education front. As Politico reported Thursday, his administration sent a blanket request to a dozen state universities seeking information about how many individuals have received gender-affirming care at campus clinics. The administration didn’t explain what it would do with the information, but LGBTQ advocates warned that it was another move by the governor to make educational institutions in Florida “less inclusive of their students for his political gain,” as Equality Florida’s Brandon Wolf said in a statement. 

“This is an attempt to intimidate them out of supporting trans students and shutting down research related to gender-affirming care without passing a single law,” Florida lawmaker Carlos Guillermo Smith, the first openly LGBTQ Latino person elected to the state’s legislature, wrote Wednesday, noting that a similar request in December about Critical Race Theory appears to have resulted in universities dropping Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. (Walker, the judge presiding over legal challenges to the “Stop WOKE Act,” ruled last week that the request did not violate the temporary injunction he’d issued, handing a significant win to the DeSantis administration.)

DeSantis, of course, has become a political hero to Republicans by waging culture wars against the most vulnerable people in his state and by seeking to enforce a revisionist, right-wing vision of American history. He’s wasted little time doubling down on all that — as well as his battle against common sense COVID measures, which could handcuff the state’s response to future public health emergencies — as he inches closer to an anticipated bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. That bullying has helped him turn Florida into a far-right fantasyland. But it remains to be seen if it’ll help him realize his grander ambitions: A Morning Consult poll released Wednesday suggested the GOP base prefers a different demagogue, with DeSantis trailing former President Donald Trump in the survey by 17 points, 48% to 31%.