The DeSantis administration keeps rotating through different groups to marginalize and new talking points to gin up culture wars. Over the weekend, I interjected on Twitter regarding their new talking point that anyone who supports gender-affirming care for transgender youths supports sterilizing children.
One of the ridiculous features of this governor's administration is that he appoints cronies into high-ranking government positions and tasks them with spreading propaganda online and in the press. They don't discharge the legitimate functions of their jobs, but have plenty of time to stoke division and hate on Twitter. I have covered this before with respect to the governor's press secretary, Christina Pushaw, who has even encouraged personal attacks on a reporter in the past, for which she was banned from posting on Twitter for 12 hours.
The "sterilizing children" talking point is devoid of much (if any) legitimacy and is being used by the DeSantis administration to support their move to deny a wide range of medical care for transgender minors on Medicaid. This, notably, is in opposition to recommendations from the American Medical Association. The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration had a meeting on Friday, July 8, 2022 to make this maneuver, and like many school board meetings across Florida regarding mask requirements, proponents of DeSantis' agenda vastly outnumbered opponents. The school board meetings from summer and fall of 2021, in particular, often featured a roving band of "Moms for Liberty" provocateurs traversing the state like a traveling circus, setting up shop in the parking lots of school district headquarters, flooding the public comment period of each meeting with a parade of anti-mask speakers, and chanting with megaphones outside the meeting chambers for hours on end. I saw this firsthand in Volusia County. These groups have dark money support from billionaires that hope to profit from the privatization of public education that they seek to bring about, by killing off public education via a thousand cuts.
Of course, the DeSantis administration wants to deflect from important topics like non-stop mass shootings, the explosive January 6th committee hearings, the climate crisis and its worsening impacts on Florida, over-development and decimation of natural ecosystems in Florida (DeSantis is heavily funded by builders), lack of affordable housing, and so forth. But, at the same time, the new policies DeSantis and his cronies continue to implement are not mere bluster—they have a profound, negative effect on marginalized groups, such as transgender Floridian minors.
It is remarkable that the Press Secretary for the Florida Department of Health, Mr. Jeremy Redfern, felt it prudent to re-tweet my critical statement about the DeSantis administration with the message, "I’m just here to call you people like you [sic] that support sterilizing children." Since tweeting this on July 9, 2022, he has been verified with a blue checkmark by Twitter, although we already knew he actually is the Press Secretary for FL DOH based on the official website and re-tweets by other DeSantis administration characters (most notably Ms. Pushaw).
We know that Florida is a hotbed for insurrectionists, "Proud Boys," and more nefarious characters, including Mr. Joseph Biggs, who is currently under prosecution for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol and lives just several miles from where I grew up and lived until my mid-20s near Daytona Beach, Florida. When high-ranking DeSantis officials feel the need to "call out" dissidents, it can easily incite many of our less upstanding citizens to seek retribution against those being "called out." The DeSantis administration is heavily involved with culture wars at the national level, perhaps even more than at the state level, and they have expressed their strongest support for the United States Supreme Court justices who are being protested at restaurants, at their homes, and so forth regarding their recent ruling that demolished Roe v. Wade (1973). This is definitely the pot calling the kettle black. But, the Republicans do not care about ideological consistency, nor is it much use to highlight this as a persuasive argument. Still, it is clear Republicans have lost the legitimacy to govern. Therefore, political commentators and many elected officials should stop pretending we are in a pre-Trump political environment amenable to sensible compromise. As we have seen, most of the congressional Republicans who have shown a modicum of such sensibility are in the process of being expunged.
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Notes:
https://19thnews.org/2022/06/florida-medicaid-transgender-healthcare/
https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/unmasking-moms-liberty
Richard I personally admire your continued pushback and truthfully reporting the Clear and Present dangerous policies and alt right ideologies of Dictator Rohan DeadSantis and his Field Marshall's of DeSantisStand. DeadSantis and his Field Marshalls ideologies intend to make DeSantistand an all white, wealthy, heterosexual, disable persons free State of corrupt evangelicals bowing to DeadSantis. Dictator Rohan has no use or help for any other type of human being in his State of Extreme Right. Dictator Rohan wants everyone to know He is the Man In his version of his The High Castle...... except he is ruling from a hot muggy swamp alone with venomous snakes and alligators.
Vote For Charlie Crist in November and bring sunshine back to Florida... Run Ron Out 2022
It's better to leave the transgender issue to God because he will be the final judge in the issue. Otherwise you're going to risk your eternal life not knowing God's will in this issue.