DeSantis tells Biden administration to pound sand: Florida 'will not comply' with woke Title IX rules



The Biden administration released its final Title IX regulations last week, effectively establishing "gender identity" as a protected class and requiring tens of thousands of schools across the country to embrace radical gender ideology, largely at the expense of girls.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) told the Democratic administration to pound sand Thursday, declaring the Sunshine State "will not comply."

Rules from radicals

According to the late Birch Bayh of Indiana, the Democratic senator who formally introduced Title IX to Congress in 1972, the purpose behind the original statute was to address institutional discrimination against women in federally funded education programs and activities.

The Biden administration — ostensibly stricken with a strain of social constructivism that has left it incapable of defining what a woman is and is not — infected Title IX with its philosophy last week, making changes that former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told the National Review "guts the half century of protections and opportunities for women and callously replaces them with radical gender theory, as Biden's far-left political base demanded."

"I never thought I'd see the day where Title IX would be used to harm women, but sadly, that day has come," added DeVos.

Blaze News previously reported that under the new rules, sex discrimination now includes sexual preferences and "gender identity." Sex-based harassment now includes "harassment" on these bases.

The Biden Department of Education clarified that schools can no longer separate or treat people differently based on sex, stressing that preventing "someone from participating in school (including in sex-separate activities) consistent with their gender identity causes that person more than de minimis harm."

In effect, federally funded institutions and programs must allow trans-identifying men into women's locker rooms and restrooms. Those that refuse could face legal action.

DOE Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement, "These final regulations build on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation's students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights."

'Where woke goes to die'

After securing a landslide re-election win in 2022 and swearing his oath of office on a Bible on loan from nationally syndicated radio host and cofounder of Blaze Media Glenn Beck, Republican Gov. DeSantis emphasized that "Florida is where woke goes to die."

DeSantis, who has so far made good on that pledge, doubled down Thursday, stating in a video, "Florida rejects Joe Biden's attempt to rewrite Title IX. We will not comply and will fight back."

"We are not going to let Joe Biden try to inject men into women's activities. We are not going to let Joe Biden undermine the rights of parents. And we are not going to let Joe Biden abuse his constitutional authority to try to impose these policies on us here in Florida," added the governor.

"We are not going to let Biden get away with it," continued DeSantis, whose state made the invasion of women's bathrooms by men a criminal offense last year. "We will not comply."

— (@)

Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. noted on X, "Biden's proposed changes will harm students and eliminate protections for girls at school. We will not fall in line with this radical agenda!"

Diaz noted Wednesday in a letter to superintendents, "At Governor Ron DeSantis' direction, no educational institutions should begin implementing any changes."

The education commissioner stressed that "instead of implementing Congress's clear directive to prevent discrimination based on biological sex, the Biden administration maims the statute beyond recognition" in an effort to "gaslight the country into believing that biological sex no longer has any meaning."

"In doing so, it seeks to commandeer Florida's educational institutions and force them to violate various federal and state laws, including the First Amendment and Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, as well as statutes to protect students' privacy in bathrooms and locker rooms," continued Diaz. "In Florida, we respect parents’ rights to direct their children’s education. We protect our students’ safety and privacy. And we make sure every student is given the chance to thrive on and off campus. We will keep pressing to accomplish these goals."

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody made clear that the Sunshine State would be challenging "this betrayal of women in court."

Biden\u2019s new Title IX rules shred protections for women\u2014that so many fought for over decades. The idea that young girls can now legally be forced to undress in the same room with males in what is supposed to be a safe space like a locker room, that a young woman could be randomly\u2026
— (@)

DeSantis' initiative was lauded by various conservatives and parental rights advocates.

State Rep. Fred Deutsch (R) of South Dakota said, "Every state should follow Florida's lead to reject Biden's rewrite of Title IX."

Nicky Neily, founder and president of Parents Defending Education, wrote, "We need more courageous leaders like Governor Ron DeSantis who reject and fight back against the Biden Administration's extreme Title IX changes."

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If We Want Western Civilization To Survive, DEI Cannot

Many governors are undertaking salutary but desultory anti-DEI actions. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken a root-and-branch approach.

Florida rejects social studies textbooks containing leftist propaganda and revisionist histories about BLM, communism



Florida has once again evidenced Gov. Ron DeSantis' November claim that the state "is where woke goes to die."

Students will not be subjected to textbooks pushing leftist propaganda and revisionist histories. Instead, per the suggestion of Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., kids will be provided with textbooks that "focus on historical facts" that are "free from inaccuracies or ideological rhetoric."

The Florida Department of Education announced Tuesday that 66 out of the 101 instructional materials submitted for inclusion in the state's social studies curriculum for every grade level were approved.

While the majority of materials were ultimately accepted, only 19% of materials were initially approved "due to inaccurate material, errors and other information that was not aligned with Florida Law." However, the Education Department has worked with publishers to get the materials up to Florida's standards.

\u201cComm @SenMannyDiazJr has released FL\u2019s initial adoption list for K-12 social studies instructional materials. The approved list includes state standards-aligned social studies curriculum for every grade. To date, 65.4% of materials have been approved. https://t.co/Ul6z3ulleB\u201d
— Florida Department of Education (@Florida Department of Education) 1683635661

Sticking to the facts

The state has provided several examples of what didn't make the cut.

One submission provided guidance on how to talk to young children about the national anthem, suggesting, "You can use this as an opportunity to talk about why some citizens are choosing to 'Take a Knee' to protest police brutality and racism."

This suggestion was stricken from the accepted material.

Another textbook, this time targeting grades 6-8, attempted to hype socialism — an ideology linked to most of the 20th century's totalitarian regimes and mass murders.

The text said that socialism "keeps things nice and even and without unnecessary waste. These societies may promote greater equality among people while still providing a fully functioning government-supervised economy."

Rather than include this advertisement for the discredited ideology, the revised textbook strikes a historically accurate distinction between planned and mixed economies, noting some of the disincentives for industriousness and efficiency intrinsic to the former.

\u201cA textbook claimed that socialism "keeps things nice and even and without necessary waste" and that socialism "may promote greater equality among people while still providing a fully functioning government-supervised economy."\u201d
— Bryan Griffin (@Bryan Griffin) 1683642193

In a grade 6-8 text that delves into the positive impacts of the Judeo-Christian tradition on society, leftist rhetoric has been dropped in favor of more neutral terms in the utilitarian accounting.

Florida also refused to subject students to sanitized, revisionist histories about BLM radicals.

A grade 9-12 text was flagged because it entertained the leftist fallacy that brutal communist regimes such as those found in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and China were not representative of real communism.

"As for a true communist economy, there are none in the world today, and there have never been any in the past," said the text. "Communism still remains a theoretical ideal in the minds of many revolutionaries, even though in practice it has never been reached."

DeSantis' education department saw to it that the text now reads, "In theory, labor in a communist system is organized to benefit the whole community, and everyone consumes according to his or her needs. In practice, wealth in communist systems flows to a tiny elite. ... Communism as imagined by Marx remains a theoretical ideal in the minds of many revolutionaries, but in practice it has failed."

Awake, not woke

"Thanks to Governor DeSantis’ and the state’s consistent adherence to high quality, rigorous and factual content, Florida continually earns praise as a leader in education, including the recent number one ranking by U.S. News & World Report," Diaz said in a statement.

"To uphold our exceptional standards, we must ensure our students and teachers have the highest quality materials available – materials that focus on historical facts and are free from inaccuracies or ideological rhetoric," Diaz added.

This initiative is keeping with DeSantis' vow in April 2022: "In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida."

The New York Times reported that these efforts may prove consequential in states besides Florida.

Extra to sparing 3 million Florida public school students from leftist talking points, students in Florida, Texas, and California may also benefit, since the publishers who worked with the DeSantis administration to achieve higher standards with their texts also cater to these states.

Republican efforts to take politics out of education are not without their critics.

The editorial boards for the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel decried the removal of leftist propaganda from the curriculum in a Wednesday op-ed, writing, "It's better to be 'woke.'"

The editorial collective claimed that DeSantis' objectives were to "cater to bigoted and resentful white voters"; "breed a generation of future voters who will have learned nothing about racism's history or continuing consequences"; and "desensitize the nation's courts to systemic economic and political injustices."

After comparing the elimination of leftist agitprop from Florida grade school textbooks to efforts by apologists for the former Confederacy to paint a rosy picture of slavery, the editors suggested that it's up to the voters — who re-elected DeSantis in a landslide — to determine whether or not eliminating woke content should continue.

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AP distorts Florida anti-CRT bill to imply DeSantis wants to 'shield whites' from 'discomfort'



A spokeswoman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) slammed the Associated Press after a report misleadingly claimed an anti-critical race theory bill is intended to "shield whites from 'discomfort.'"

Leading with the headline, "Florida could shield whites from ‘discomfort’ of racist past," AP writer Brendan Farrington claimed that a bill supported by DeSantis "would prohibit public schools and private businesses from making white people feel 'discomfort' when they teach students or train employees about discrimination."

But the only excerpt of the bill quoted in the AP article makes no mention of people of any color. It states, "An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”

The bill, S.B. 148, is titled "Individual Freedom" and was introduced by Republican Sen. Manny Diaz, a Hispanic lawmaker. Diaz told the AP that his bill is intended to make sure that no group of people is singled out on the basis of their skin color and blamed for the sins of the past.

“No individual is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, solely by the virtue of his or her race or sex,” Diaz said. “No race is inherently superior to another race.”

This is the relevant section. At no point does it even mention white people; and it's basically telling instructors not to single out students or employees based on their race. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/148/BillText/Filed/PDF\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/0acmHsSoNe
— Zaid Jilani (@Zaid Jilani) 1642555577

Diaz was referring to tenets of critical race theory, a worldview that claims most laws and systems in America were historically rooted in the racist oppression of black people and other marginalized groups. Formulated by legal scholars in the 1970s as a response to perceptions that the civil rights movement did not sufficiently advance equality, CRT holds that racism is systemic in America's institutions and that white people who support those institutions are complicit in perpetuating the oppression of blacks and other minorities.

Conservatives reject this worldview, arguing that it substitutes race conflict for traditional Marxist class conflict to define white people as an oppressor class and everyone else as a victim class to justify programs for wealth redistribution. Republican politicians and conservative activists have proposed laws to ban critical race theory concepts from being taught in schools, while preserving the teaching of U.S. history.

Diaz's bill prohibits the teaching of collective guilt for members of any race. While that appears to be a response to critical race theory's claims about white people perpetuating racism, the text of the bill protects all people from being told they are collectively guilty of sins because of the color of their skin. It is not a bill to protect "white people" from feeling discomfort by talking about racism or the historic discrimination against non-whites in America.

In fact, the bill explicitly requires that schools teach "the history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience, abolition, and the contributions of African Americans to society.”

But left-wing pundits seized on the AP report to attack Florida Republicans. MSNBC host Joy Reid falsely claimed Florida was "literally legislating white people’s psychic comfort."

"To reiterate: it’s about to be ILLEGAL IN FLORIDA TO MAKE WHITE PEOPLE SAD. Fix it Jesus!" she lied.

To reiterate: it\u2019s about to be ILLEGAL IN FLORIDA TO MAKE WHITE PEOPLE SAD. Fix it Jesus! Are they gonna arrest comedians who tell jokes that hurt white patrons\u2019 feelings? Let white Floridians sue screenwriters who write white villains? Will there be book and movie bans?? Unreal!pic.twitter.com/z41Xou0XWc
— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid \ud83d\ude37 (@Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid \ud83d\ude37) 1642558689

Responding to the AP's distortion of the Florida bill, DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw blasted the report, calling the outlet "American Pravda" and accusing the AP of "implying that [DeSantis] is a white supremacist."

Hey @Ravinessman how is this in any way acceptable? @APpic.twitter.com/BINiKucG86
— Taryn Fenske (@Taryn Fenske) 1642558662

She also claimed that Farrington lied by writing that DeSantis' office did not respond to a request for comment after Democratic state lawmaker Sen. Shevrin Jones, who is black, told the AP DeSantis has adopted "racist rhetoric on critical race theory" and claimed the bill was a solution to a "problem that doesn't exist." Jones also said the governor's policies are racist.

DeSantis communications director Taryn Fenske shared a screenshot of Farrington's request for comment, in which the reporter told the governor's office that he asked Jones if Jones thinks DeSantis "is racist" and then asked for a comment. The email had no greeting, no deadline to respond, and didn't even include a professional signature.

Fenske's response was, "I just want to clarify — that you, without any context, asked a sitting State Senator if the Governor of Florida is a racist, while on the clock, being paid by the Associated Press?"

Her response was not quoted in Farrington's article.

The article was later updated to say, "The governor’s spokeswoman reiterated comments DeSantis made at a news conference last month in which he referred to the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr."