DeSantis signs stack of right-wing bills as 2024 entrance nears

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, an all-but-declared presidential candidate, has stepped up his headline-hunting travel and events before an official announcement, traversing the state and trying to hoover up national attention as he signs the sharply conservative legislation he believes can propel him to the Republican Party’s nomination.

On Wednesday, DeSantis signed a slew of measures that hit all the culture-clash notes his base has rewarded him for, including bills banning gender-transition care for minors, preventing children from attending “adult live performances” like drag shows and restricting students’ use of pronouns other than the ones they were assigned at birth in schools.

“We need to let our kids just be kids,” DeSantis said at a Christian school in Tampa. “What we’ve said in Florida is we are going to remain a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy.”

It was his third consecutive day of holding public bill-signing ceremonies across the state. The ceremonies, which he hosts in his official capacity as governor, allow DeSantis to promote his political message in settings that he carefully stage-manages as a veritable emcee, calling up additional speakers and then thanking them for their contributions. These events sometimes take on the feel of political rallies.

Such a platform gives DeSantis an advantage over his potential rivals for the presidency — many of whom are either out of office or hold legislative roles — as he sprints toward declaring his candidacy, which is likely to happen by the end of the month.

On Monday, his signing of a bill defunding diversity and equity programs at public colleges and universities drew a robust round of news coverage — as well as loud protesters. He and other Republicans who shared the stage mocked the demonstrators, many of them students at New College of Florida, a public liberal arts school in Sarasota that the governor has sought to transform into a conservative bastion.

The signing of bills aimed at the LGBTQ community Wednesday was “an all-out attack on freedom,” Joe Saunders, the senior political director of Equality Florida, an advocacy organization, said in a virtual news conference. He noted that DeSantis had already signed a six-week abortion ban as well as bills that allowed physicians to decline to provide care based on moral or religious grounds.

DeSantis sees freedom “as a campaign slogan in his bid for the White House,” Saunders said. “The nation should be on high alert, because, today, we are all Floridians.”

On Tuesday, DeSantis jumped at the chance to call out Trump for dodging a question about abortion. The former president had criticized Florida’s six-week ban as too harsh while remaining noncommittal about what restrictions he might support.

“I signed the bill. I was proud to do it,” DeSantis told reporters. “He won’t answer whether he would sign it or not.”

This time, it was the swipe at Trump that made headlines.