'Anti-Woke' Governors Get Wake-up Calls

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, both considering 2024 presidential bids, are good at generating headlines for their plans to counter liberal cultural and policy issues.

DeSantis provides denunciations or declarations monthly. Most recently, he has called for a grand jury to investigate the distribution and promotion of COVID vaccines in the state — ignoring the fact that he was the lead cheerleader for the shots.

Yet governors are not dictators. Their plans can get pushback from citizens, be dismissed by courts, and even rejected by their own supporters. Updates on these two Republicans show they have lessons to learn and that citizens do still have a say in our Democracy.

Youngkin won his 2020 election by promising to ban anti-racist school curricula and to oppose LGBTQ inclusion in schools. His campaign fueled tumultuous school board meetings where protesters falsely claimed that trans-inclusive bathroom policies led to sexual assaults.

The governor’s policy, which went into effect last month, says student participation and use of school facilities, such as bathrooms or locker rooms, should primarily be based on their biological sex.

But school officials in several larger counties have recently said they won’t comply. And it is unlikely the governor can legally force them. At least one parent has sued the state over the policy.

The governor has also run into trouble while refashioning the history and social studies curricula. He appointed a group that consulted with conservative groups that mostly support charter schools and oppose multiculturalism.

Educators, Democratic lawmakers, and others criticized the proposal. The Board of Education, with a majority of Youngkin appointees, rejected the guidelines, now undergoing a third rewrite.

“The standards are full of overt political bias, outdated language to describe enslaved people and American Indians, highly subjective framing of American moralism and conservative ideals, coded racist overtures throughout,” the Virginia Education Association said in a statement.

Earlier versions of the standards, for instance, labeled indigenous people as “America’s first immigrants.” References to Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth were deleted. Black, Asian, Sikh, and Native American parents criticized the changes for excluding their histories.

A later version proposed more subtle changes. For example:

• 6th grade guidelines call for examining America’s response to the Holocaust, while the new guidelines suggest exploring the “consequences of the Holocaust.”
• Current guidelines include discussion of the civil rights movement, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the Women’s Rights Movement. Proposed guidelines do not mention the latter two movements.
• 11th grade guidelines call for lessons on “the culture of the Indigenous people of North America.” That’s missing in the proposed guidelines, which suggest students learn about “the entrepreneurial characteristics of early explorers (e.g. Christopher Columbus).”

Youngkin said his administration will work to improve the guidelines: “I said from the first day that I wanted us to teach all of our history, the good and the bad — all of it.”

Meanwhile, polls from even conservative sources show that midterm voters were not motivated by concerns about transgender students or teaching about racism.

DeSantis, who is besting former President Trump in early polls, is more audacious in his strategies, aided by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature. However, many of his platforms crumble underneath him:

Ending discussions of race

Last month, a federal judge partially blocked a law championed by DeSantis designed to limit discussion of racism and privilege in public universities. In an August ruling, the same judge blocked the part of the bill that targeted workplace diversity practices.

“The First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark,” wrote U.S. District Judge Mark Walker.

The law faces another challenge by K-12 teachers. DeSantis’ office is expected to appeal the decisions. “Woke ideology is an attempt to really delegitimize our history and to delegitimize our institutions,” DeSantis said about the legislation. “They really want to tear at the fabric of our society.”

Punishing Disney

DeSantis and Republican lawmakers abolished Disney’s self-governing status to great fanfare earlier this year. It was a response to the corporation’s public criticism of the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which limited discussion of gender identity in schools.

A major tourism draw, Disney had a 1967 agreement to build its resort on rural and swamp land and set up a local taxing district to administer government services to the area. It’s one of 1,800 such districts in the state.

Critics pointed out that the state violated the company’s free speech rights, as well as state laws on taxing districts. Also, the decision meant that more than a $1 billion bond debt would shift from the corporation to taxpayers. Disney also paused political donations and a plan to relocate high-tech workers from California to the Orlando area.

Now, lawmakers are looking to reverse that decision before the repeal of the taxing district actually takes effect. News reports say there are negotiations about management of the taxing district that would allow the governor to save some face.

Exposing voter fraud

DeSantis created his personal election police force to uncover voting fraud. With the publicity of SWAT-like tactics, police rounded up 20 ex-felons in August for illegally voting. Ex-felons, except those convicted of murder and felony sex charges, are allowed to vote. Some had voted two years earlier.

The problem: The DeSantis’ government had approved their applications and issued them voter registration cards. That raised concerns about entrapment and disenfranchisement. At least 12 of the people arrested were registered as Democrats; 19 of them were Black.

So far, one case was thrown out of court; charges were dropped this month in another case. The purported crackdown looks weak and disorganized.

Relocating migrants

Stealing an idea from the Texas governor who bused migrants to northern cities, DeSantis launched his own relocation program. He paid to have someone go to Texas and woo 49 asylum seekers onto charter planes that took them to Martha’s Vineyard. Though surprised by their arrival, Massachusetts officials and citizens turned out to help them.

A Boston lawyer has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of some of those migrants. The civil complaint claimed migrants were given $10 McDonald’s gift certificates and promised jobs in Boston or Washington, D.C.

A Florida lawmaker filed a lawsuit asserting that the $12 million budgeted for the flights runs afoul of state laws. The U.S. Treasury Department’s watchdog is looking into whether DeSantis improperly used money that was intended to fight COVID. Numerous news organizations and civic groups have taken the administration to court, demanding public records on how the flights were coordinated and who was involved.

Both governors’ attacks on “woke culture” are broad and have deep consequences for themselves, their states, and the country.

Recently, in a separate lawsuit, a judge asked a DeSantis lawyer to define “woke.” He described it as, “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

If that’s what it means, what’s wrong with being woke?