Hayes says that “in Ron DeSantis’ Florida, the state will decide what books your child can or cannot leave their school library by threatening teachers and librarians with time in prison if they do not comply with vague laws about instruction on race, gender and sexuality. The state will decide what women can do with their own bodies by banning abortion at six weeks. Of course, that is for all intents and purposes a complete abortion ban, which means that Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party of Florida control the bodies of every Floridian who can get pregnant. It’s their body not yours. The state will also decide how you can dress in public, which costumes you can wear. By enacting what is essentially a full ban on drag performances that will also likely restrict Pride events.”
In fact at least three cities in Ron DeSantis’ “Free State of Florida” have now canceled LGBTQ Pride celebrations out of fear his vague anti-LGBTQ laws will put them at risk. The most recent cancellation, Tampa’s Pride event, is one of the largest in the region, WFLA reports.
“The state will decide what kind of speech corporations can engage in,” Hayes continues, “including which criticism they can make of the government, by going after Disney punitively for speaking out against anti-LGBTQ laws.”
“But Ron DeSantis’ dystopian authoritarian vision is most apparent in the legislation he just signed yesterday. It bans all gender-affirming care for all minors in Florida, everyone 18 and younger, that law also empower state courts to change custody agreements if a child is receiving or is at risk of receiving gender-affirming care. Meaning taking a kid away from a parent. Telling parents how they can or cannot raise their own children is among the most authoritarian things a government can do. Now that is exactly what Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party in Florida and generally the conservative movement that endorses this are doing purely for ideological and punitive purposes.”
Governor DeSantis, Hayes notes, will announce his presidential run next week, and “has turned his entire governing agenda in Florida into a kind of set piece for his presidential campaign. He has been waging a culture war on his own constituents for the purpose of elevating himself. While Ron DeSantis tours around the country promoting himself and his new memoir titled, ‘The Courage to Be Free,’ at home he runs a government based on the opposite of freedom.”
“His agenda is about state authority and its punitive views and decrees from on high. In Florida,” Hayes says, DeSantis “is running a kind of little MAGA kingdom, in which Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party in the state legislature, with their big majorities, tell you how to live your life and you don’t get to choose.”
“Ron DeSantis really is running on authoritarian agenda,” Hayes makes clear. “The policies he has enacted in Florida are the opposite of freedom, to me the opposite of core American values.”
“Now the sick irony here the one that I just can’t get over and really kind of sticks with me is that the right-wing movement that gave us this new law signed yesterday, is the very same group of people that screamed about parental rights for years, amidst the pandemic. ‘I get to say whether my kid wears a mask, I get to say whether my kid gets vaccinated. I get to say whether my kid goes to school.’ And Ron DeSantis was the public face of that movement.”
Hayes played a clip of DeSantis during the height of the coronavirus pandemic saying, President Biden “wants to have the government force kindergarteners to wear masks in school. He doesn’t believe the parents should have a say in that. He thinks that should be a decision for the government. Well, I can tell you in Florida the parents are going to be the ones in charge of that decision. Joe Biden suggests that if you don’t do lock down policies, then you should quote get out of the way, but let me tell you this: If you’re coming after the rights of parents and Florida, I’m standing in your way. I’m not going to let you get away with it.”
“What a tough guy,” Hayes responds, mocking the Florida governor. “You see all that swagger? He’s gonna stand in your way. If you’re coming after parental rights, if you try to tell a parent what they can do with their kids. That very same wing of the Republican Party embodied by Ron DeSantis and the government of the state of Florida, has now demanded and produced a situation in which the government, that guy you saw there with a tough guy swagger about freedom, is going to decide if your child who lives in your home, that you gave birth to or raised, that you love, your kid, what kind of care they can get. He decides. Care that, to be clear, the American Academy of Pediatrics supports and recommends.”
“Think about what this means,” Hayes asks of viewers. “Right now as I’m speaking to you, there are parents and families in Florida that have decided, as a family, as parents, along with their doctors, that this health care, gender-affirming care, is the best care for their kids. You may not like it, but you know what? It’s none of your, excuse me, goddamn business. To me, that is what the courage to be free means. Freedom means that in my household, our family decides what kind of health care our child does or does not get. Not Ron DeSantis. Not the Republican Party. That is no longer the case in Florida.”
