Florida Republicans’ New Bill May Be the Biggest Attack on Academic Freedom Yet

After Ron DeSantis’s months of attacks on colleges, schools, teachers, librarians, and students, the Florida governor is now pushing a sweeping legislation package that further threatens academic freedom at Florida universities.

House Bill 999 presents radical concentrations of power, taking liberties away from students and teachers and instead subjecting them to constant surveillance and paranoia for simply trying to embrace a fulsome education.

The bill calls for the removal of degrees in gender studies and critical race theory (or “any derivative major or minor of these belief systems,” perhaps left intentionally ambiguous) and bars anything else that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion. The bill also prohibits universities from promoting, supporting, or maintaining any program or campus activities that “espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion or Critical Race Theory rhetoric.”

The bill additionally directs university boards of trustees to be responsible for faculty hiring, and reads that a faculty member’s tenure could be reviewed “at any time.” In a vacuum, that may not seem inherently bad; given the chiling nature of the rest of the bill (and the broader Florida academic context), such a note suggests a regime eager to threaten tenure loss for those who step out of bounds.

If that all wasn’t enough, the bill also says that general education courses may not “suppress or distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics, such as Critical Race Theory, or defines American history as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.” And they ought to “promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization.”

These general education courses further must “promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic through traditional, historically accurate, and high-quality coursework,” and cannot be “based on unproven, theoretical, or exploratory content.”

The standards are largely to be overseen by the state Board of Education and Board of Governors—bodies whose members are appointed by the governor. And so determinations of what does and does not constitute “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or “values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic,” or even “accurate” are all ill-defined, amorphous, and ambiguous enough for Governor DeSantis’s authoritarian regime to carry out its desire to carve away any chance for Florida students to maintain a holistic and open-minded education.

House Bill 999 is indeed a focused continuation of DeSantis’s assault against academic freedom. But it is also a broader test: about how much power an aspirational fascist state executive can openly accumulate in America.

Tennessee lawmakers passed the country’s first ban on drag performances Thursday, part of an onslaught of bills restricting LGBTQ rights across the United States that could have much further-reaching consequences.

House Bill 9 is headed to Governor Bill Lee, who has said he will decide whether to sign the bill once it reaches his desk. If he does, the measure will go into effect on April 1, two months ahead of Pride Month.

The bill bans “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to prurient interest,” meaning of a sexual nature, either in public or if there is a minor present. The language is vague and makes no distinction between drag performers and transgender people.

When H.B. 9 was first introduced in November 2022, the ACLU of Tennessee noted that “dance, fashion, and music—essential components of a drag performance—are all protected by the First Amendment. Yet, these laws are written so broadly and vaguely that they would allow government officials to censor performers based on their own subjective viewpoints of what they deem appropriate on any given day.”

“So, let’s call this what it is—a malicious attempt to remove LGBTQ people from public life,” the group said in a statement.

The bill’s vagueness could also affect Pride celebrations, which last for the month of June. Drag performers or trans people appearing in public could be charged with felonies simply for existing.

“By passing House Bill 9, the Tennessee legislature has done nothing but spread hate, misinformation, and extremism,” Human Rights Campaign legal director Sarah Warbelow said in a statement. “Drag is a longstanding, celebratory form of entertainment and a meaningful source of employment for many across the state. Yet, rather than focus on actual policy issues facing Tennesseans, politicians would rather spend their time and effort misconstruing age-appropriate performances at a library to pass as many anti-LGBTQ+ bills as they can.”

It should go without saying that drag, like any performance, can be tailored to be appropriate for any audience. Seeing drag performances can actually be beneficial to younger people who are LGBTQ, because it shows them that they are not alone. More than half of LGBTQ youth struggle with depression, and 45 percent of trans kids have considered suicide, according to the HRC. But those with at least one adult in their life who accepts them are 40 percent less likely to attempt suicide.

Tennessee’s bill, unfortunately, is part of a homophobic and transphobic backlash to the increasing visibility of LGBTQ people. Drag performers have become a particular target for Republicans and right-wing extremist groups, who accuse the entertainers of being pedophiles.

There are dozens of bills being moved through state legislatures across the U.S. that would ban drag performances. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently revoked an organization’s liquor license because it hosted a drag show.

At a time of growing public pressure on the monopolistic practices of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, the ticketing giant doesn’t seem to be crumbling one bit. On Thursday, the company announced record profits, reporting a 2022 operating income up 125 percent from pre-pandemic levels to $732 million, and revenue up 44 percent to $16.7 billion.

Last month, the Senate held a hearing on Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s hold over the ticketing industry. And in November, Senators Amy Klobuchar, Richard Blumenthal, and Ed Markey sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking for a Justice Department investigation into the massive company, even suggesting the department consider breaking up the dominating duo’s merger. Members of Congress from all sides of the aisle have expressed their interest in taking on the massive company and helping consumers not be hounded by exorbitant fees and no alternatives.

And since then? Not too much. But in the meantime, Live Nation–Ticketmaster is swimming in cash.

The struggle against the de facto monopoly spans years. Thirty years ago, members of Pearl Jam began advocating for the breakup of Ticketmaster’s hold on consumers. “All the members of Pearl Jam remember what it’s like to be young and not have a lot of money,” said guitarist Stone Gossard. “We have made a conscious decision that we do not want to put the price of our concerts out of the reach of our fans.”

Public pressure has spiked more recently after fans of performers like Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift suffered from prohibitive prices and poor ticketing practices that led to people being turned away from concerts even though they had valid tickets. Millions of frustrated fans, big artists who care about those fans, and smaller artists’ income streams suffer from the monopoly power of entities like Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

On Wednesday, Senators Klobuchar and Mike Lee sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Jonathan Kanter, citing their findings from the January hearing and encouraging the Justice Department’s antitrust division to investigate further and act if it finds the company has indeed “walled itself off from competitive pressure at the expense of the industry and fans.” If that’s the case, so long as the division really looks for even a moment, it’ll have plenty of justification to take action.

Students at Florida public universities, including Florida State University, the University of Florida, and Florida International University, among others, staged a coordinated walkout Thursday in protest of Governor Ron DeSantis’s ongoing attacks on education, including policies targeting people of color and LGBTQ people.

The student protests were inspired in part by the DeSantis administration’s order for public universities to provide data on how many people seek gender-affirming care. But the collective action also came to be a stance against the broader authoritarian onslaught directed underneath the DeSantis administration.

Florida school districts are banning books en masse, while others are closing their libraries in order to avoid prosecution under a new law that requires a “specialist” to review every book in school. The New College of Florida’s president was forced out by the DeSantis-stacked board of trustees and replaced with another DeSantis ally. DeSantis has pushed through the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prevents discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity through third grade. He has lobbied for the “Stop Woke Act,” which restricts teaching on race in colleges. And he has announced plans to mandate Western civilization courses and to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on state college campuses.

DeSantis also banned schools from being able to teach Advanced Placement African American Studies, after his administration first pushed the College Board to water down the class anyway. He even filed an administrative complaint against the Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation for hosting a drag show, stripping the organization of its liquor license.

While it may feel easy to yield to frustration or cynicism in the face of DeSantian authoritarianism, the kids, as always, are not relenting—for themselves, and those they may not ever know.

“Ron DeSantis, we’re on our way to take you down and we’re full-steam ahead for a better day,” Dream Defenders Tallahassee organizer Malik Gary told Teen Vogue. “For people that work in the minority class, for people of the Black and brown community, for people that identify in the LGBTQIA community, for folks that are somebody, no matter what color, or race, or gender, or ethnicity. Everybody is somebody and deserves respect.”

Democrats are slamming President Joe Biden’s new immigration policy, with many branding it no better than the measures seen under his predecessor, Donald Trump.

The convoluted policy prevents adults or families from receiving asylum in the United States if they traveled through another country en route and did not apply for (and were denied) asylum there. The new process to apply for asylum in the U.S. includes multiple steps that are neither obvious nor easy to accomplish. It also requires immigrants to use a phone app, CPB One, that is poorly designed and glitchy.

Democratic Representative Jamaal Bowman slammed the policy Thursday as “extreme” and “not supported by U.S. law.” His fellow New Yorker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez urged Biden’s administration to rethink the policy, which she argued was far too restrictive.

Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley both called seeking asylum a “fundamental human right,” with Omar adding the policy “flies in the face of international law, U.S. law, and basic morality.”

Other Democrats have been pushing back on the policy since it was unveiled on Tuesday. Senators Bob Menendez, Cory Booker, Alex Padilla, and Ben Ray Lujan released a joint statement warning the policy “only perpetuates the harmful myth that asylum seekers are a threat to this nation.”

Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Jerry Nadler called on the president in another joint statement to increase the number of pathways to asylum instead of restricting them. “The ability to seek asylum is a bedrock principle protected by federal law and should never be violated,” they said.

Biden has come under fire since taking office for what Republicans have deemed a crisis at the southern border. Border crossings have reached their highest level in 20 years, and many lawmakers have warned that the U.S. is not equipped to handle the massive influx of people. This latest policy is an attempt to stem that flow, but many immigration rights groups say it could prevent tens of thousands of people from claiming asylum.

“This asylum ban is, at its core, Trump’s asylum ban under a different name. It will leave the most vulnerable people in much the same position as Trump’s policy did—at risk and unfairly denied the protection of asylum for reasons that have nothing to do with their need for refuge,” Anu Joshi, the deputy director of the ACLU’s National Political Advocacy Department, said.

The National Immigration Justice Center and its partner groups are preparing to sue the Biden administration if the law passes, noting that a similar Trump policy did not stand up in court.

Adding to the sting was Biden praising Poland for accepting so many Ukrainian refugees, just hours before his administration unveiled the new measure.