(CNN) — The second 2024 Republican presidential primary debate ended just as it began: with former President Donald Trump – who hasn’t yet appeared alongside his rivals onstage – as the party’s dominant front-runner.

The seven GOP contenders in Wednesday night’s showdown at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California provided a handful of memorable moments, including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley unloading what often seemed like the entire field’s pent-up frustration with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” she said to him at one point.

Two candidates criticized Trump’s absence, as well. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was “missing in action.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called the former president “Donald Duck” and said he “hides behind his golf clubs” rather than defending his record on stage.

The GOP field also took early shots at President Joe Biden. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said Biden, rather than joining the striking auto workers’ union on the picket line Tuesday in Michigan, should be on the southern border. Former Vice President Mike Pence said Biden should be “on the unemployment line.” North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said Biden was interfering with “free markets.”

However, what played out in the debate, hosted by Fox Business Network and Univision, is unlikely to change the trajectory of a GOP race in which Trump has remained dominant in national and early-state polling.

And the frequently messy, hard-to-track crosstalk could have led many viewers to tune out entirely.

Here are takeaways from the second GOP primary debate:

Trump’s safe approach appears to pay off

Trump might have played it safe by skipping the debates and taking a running-as-an-incumbent approach to the 2024 GOP primary.

It’s hard to see, though, how he would pay a significant price in the eyes of the party’s voters for missing Wednesday night’s messy engagement.

Trump’s rivals took a few shots at him. DeSantis knocked him for deficit spending. Christie mocked him during the night’s early moments, calling him “Donald Duck” for skipping the debate and then in his final comments said he would vote Trump off the GOP island.

“This guy has not only divided our party – he’s divided families all over this country. He’s divided friends all over this country,” Christie said. “He needs to be voted off the island and he needs to be taken out of this process.”

However, Trump largely escaped serious scrutiny of his four years in the Oval Office from a field of rivals courting voters who have largely positive views of his presidency.

“Tonight’s GOP debate was as boring and inconsequential as the first debate, and nothing that was said will change the dynamics of the primary contest,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said in a statement.

Candidates pile on Ramaswamy

Some of the candidates onstage didn’t want to have a repeat of the first debate, in which Ramaswamy managed to stand out as a formidable debater and showman.

Early in Wednesday’s debate, Scott went after the tech entrepreneur, saying his business record included ties to the Chinese Communist Party and money going to Hunter Biden. The visibly annoyed Ramaswamy shifted gears from praising all the other candidates onstage to defending his business record. But Scott and Ramaswamy ended up talking over each other.

A little later on Pence began an answer with a knock on Ramaswamy, saying, “I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in China.” At another point after Ramaswamy had responded to a question about his use of TikTok, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley jumped in, saying, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber from what you say” and then going on to say, “We can’t trust you. We can’t trust you.” As Ramaswamy tried to readopt his unity tone, Scott could be heard trying to interrupt him.

DeSantis, Pence duck health care questions while Haley pounces

Despite the efforts of moderators to pin them down, DeSantis and Pence struggled to respond when challenged on their respective records on health care.

Asked about the Trump administration’s failure to end the Affordable Care Act as promised, Pence opted instead to answer a previous question about mass gun violence. When Fox host Dana Perino pushed Pence one more time to explain why Obamacare remains not just intact but popular, the former vice president once again demurred.

Fox’s Stuart Varney similarly pressed DeSantis to explain why 2.5 million Floridians don’t have health insurance.

DeSantis found a familiar foil for Republicans in California: inflation. Varney, though, said it didn’t explain why Florida has one of the highest uninsurance rates in the country, to which DeSantis had little response.

“Our state’s a dynamic state,” DeSantis said, before pointing to Florida’s population boom and the low level of welfare benefits offered there.

Haley, though, appeared ready to debate health care, arguing for transparency in prices to lessen the power of insurance companies and providers and overhauling lawsuit rules to make it harder to sue doctors.

“How can we be the best country in the world and have the most expensive health care in the world?” Haley said.

A messy first hour

The first hour of the second GOP primary debate was beset by interruptions, crosstalk and protracted squabbles between the candidates and moderators over speaking time.

That’s tough for viewers trying to make sense of it all but even worse for these candidates as they try to stand out as viable alternatives to the absentee Trump.

Further complicating the matter, some of the highest polling candidates – DeSantis and Haley – were among those least willing to dive into the muck during the first hour. The moderators repeatedly tried to clear the road for the Florida governor, who was all but absent from the proceedings for the first 15 minutes.

Ramaswamy has fared somewhat better, speaking louder – and faster – than most of his rivals. But even he has gotten bogged down at points when caught between his own talking points and cross-volleys of criticisms from frustrated candidates like Scott.

The moderator group will likely get criticism for losing control of the room within the first half-hour, but even a messy debate tells voters something about the people taking part.

DeSantis keeps up recent attacks on Trump

Before the first debate in Milwaukee, a top strategist for a pro-DeSantis super PAC told donors that “79% of the people tonight are going to watch the debate and turn it off after 19 minutes.”

By that measure, the Florida governor managed to first speak Wednesday night just in the nick of time – 16 minutes into the debate. And when he finally spoke, he continued the sharper attacks on the GOP front-runner that he has previewed in recent weeks.

DeSantis equated Trump’s absence in California to Biden, who DeSantis said was “completely missing in action for leadership” on the economy, blaming him for inflation and the autoworkers strike.

“And you know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump is missing in action,” DeSantis said. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record.”

DeSantis accused Trump of adding “$7.8 trillion to the debt that set the scene for the inflation that we have.”

By the first commercial break, 35 minutes in, Christie was the only other candidate in the room who had levied any criticism of Trump.

Despite the shot taken at the person not on the stage, DeSantis later chided other candidates for fighting among each other instead of focusing on issues and Biden – one of many exchanges that was largely lost as the candidates talked over each other.

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(CNN) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose clashes with Disney and aggressive pursuit of conservative victories have made him a leading Republican Party figure, has filed to run for president in 2024.

His filing with the Federal Election Commission comes ahead of the announcement he’s set to make Wednesday evening with Twitter owner Elon Musk on the site’s audio platform, Twitter Spaces.

It makes official a decision that was widely expected since November, when DeSantis won reelection in resounding fashion and captured the attention of a party longing to turn the page from recent defeats. He steps into the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination later than other contenders and having failed to freeze more still from jumping in, but is better funded, better known and polling higher than all but one: Donald Trump.

The former president has treated DeSantis, whom he once endorsed for Florida governor, as his top foe for months, assailing him regularly on social media and in interviews. A super PAC aligned with Trump has spent millions attacking DeSantis on national television, setting expectations for a bruising primary between the two former allies.

To overcome Trump, DeSantis will need to convince Republican voters he is best positioned to take on President Joe Biden next November. That will likely involve winning over conservatives who may still look back fondly on Trump’s presidency while also coalescing support among Republicans eager for new blood to lead the party.

DeSantis, 44, has spent months laying the groundwork to make that case. He has traveled the country extensively, styling himself as a leader in the right’s culture wars and presenting a new vision for a Republican Party that uses elected powers to punish political opponents and force conservative orthodoxy on institutions and businesses. Working with his state’s GOP-controlled legislature, DeSantis has stacked up multiple policy victories – including banning abortion after six weeks, eliminating permits to carry a concealed gun in public, enacting a universal school voucher law and targeting access to transgender health care – all of which will serve as a platform as he launches his campaign.

“I think that (DeSantis) and former President Donald Trump, they have a lot in common, which they don’t want to hear, but I think it’s the truth,” Wisconsin voter Steve Frazier said after DeSantis spoke at a recent GOP dinner in Marathon County. “Unfortunately, they’re running possibly for the same office, and that’s a conflict for people like myself, in that we may have two very, very qualified men running for the same position.”

DeSantis has continued to generate headlines for his yearlong fight with Disney, his state’s most iconic business and a vital economic engine, over a new law that bans certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. After Disney put out a statement opposing the measure, DeSantis plotted a takeover of the special taxing district that allowed the entertainment giant to build its iconic theme park empire in Central Florida.

The move put Florida businesses on notice and alarmed even some in the GOP, who questioned whether elected executives should use state power to punish a company. Undeterred, DeSantis has made his clash with Disney a central part of his political story, devoting an entire chapter of his recent memoir to the saga. Disney has sued DeSantis, accusing the governor of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights, while DeSantis has vowed not to cave.

Though eager to take on private businesses, reporters and sometimes his own party, DeSantis has largely avoided directly confronting Trump. Instead, he has opted for more subtle comparisons between their tenures in office. He has maligned the lack of action during Trump’s first four years while listing off his own accomplishments as governor. He regularly touts the lack of “drama” and “leaks” in his administration, a clear jab at the chaos that often engulfed the Trump White House.

“If I were to run, I’m running against Biden,” DeSantis said in a recent interview with British television host Piers Morgan.

That same day, though, DeSantis seemed to poke fun at Trump over his alleged affair with an adult film star that is at the heart of a Manhattan district attorney’s case against the former president.

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star,” he said at a news conference.

To many, DeSantis had signaled he was ready to mix it up with Trump. But a week later, as Trump was indicted, DeSantis backed off and instead criticized the prosecutor who filed the charges.

The walkback was illustrative of Republican struggles to challenge Trump head-on that date back to the 2016 presidential primary. The former president’s GOP rivals have often opted instead to target the contender perceived as the biggest threat to overcoming Trump: DeSantis. Already, 2024 hopefuls such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have lobbed attacks at the Florida governor with more frequency than they have criticized Trump.

“The subject of most of the attacks at the first debate are going to be DeSantis, not Trump,” said Alex Conant, a veteran of several presidential campaigns.

Conant is familiar with what it is like to be running behind Trump. He advised Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in 2016 and watched as the Florida Republican faced arrows from the rest of the GOP field in a debate leading up to the New Hampshire primary. Rubio never recovered.

DeSantis’ team, Conant said, needs “to be eyes-wide-open that he’s going to be targeted at every moment of the first debate.”

DeSantis will have more resources than most to weather those attacks. A super PAC supporting his political ambitions, Never Back Down, had already raised $30 million in its first month after launching and has spent millions boosting DeSantis and responding to negative ads from Trump allies in early primary states. He has more than $85 million parked in a state political committee that his team has for more than a year planned to shift into a federal committee – possibly Never Back Down – though some campaign finance watchdogs have suggested that plan would run afoul of the law.

DeSantis, for a time, was also a favorite among the deep-pocketed Republican donors who have soured on Trump and are ready to finance an alternative. However, that support has somewhat cooled of late, with several key financiers expressing reservations about DeSantis. His hard turn right, his antagonistic feud with Disney and perceived personality faults have caused some to look for others to get behind.

Thomas Peterffy, a billionaire businessman who has donated $570,000 to DeSantis’ political committee over the years, recently told the Financial Times that he and other GOP donors were turned off by DeSantis’ stance on “abortion and book banning” and were “holding our powder dry.” DeSantis has championed a new state law that requires approval of books in classroom libraries and makes it easier for the public to flag schoolbooks to be pulled for review.

However, without another major Trump alternative emerging, DeSantis allies remain convinced that Republican donors ready to move on from the former president will ultimately get behind the Florida governor.

“There’s a broad acceptance that this is really settling into a two-person race, and there is a lot of personal appreciation for President Trump but realistic understanding he does not have the best chance to beat Biden,” former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, founder of the Never Back Down super PAC, told CNN in March. “He does not have the best chance to win the Senate and keep the House as demonstrated by history.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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(CNN) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the 2024 GOP presidential race next week, two Republicans familiar with the matter told CNN, initiating his much-anticipated bid to wrestle the future of the party from former President Donald Trump.

DeSantis will file paperwork declaring his candidacy next week with the Federal Election Commission, one Republican said, with a formal announcement expected the following week in his Florida hometown of Dunedin. DeSantis is likely to soft-launch the campaign as early as Wednesday to coincide with the filing of the paperwork, according to a Republican consultant close to the governor’s political team.

However, another source cautioned that the planning remains a moving target, and DeSantis is known to surprise even his closest allies and advisers with last-minute changes. DeSantis, who often boasts that he runs an operation free of leaks, may be further motivated to throw out the script to vex the media outlets who have preempted his announcement, the source said.

“With him, it’s always a possibility,” the source added.

But the machinery for a launch is already in motion as dozens of his top fundraisers and donors have been summoned to South Florida under the assumption they will be asked to begin building up a war chest for a DeSantis presidential campaign. By officially submitting his paperwork, his supporters can begin soliciting donations on his behalf.

About 100 hotel rooms have been reserved at the Four Seasons in Miami, which will host receptions for donors, briefings with DeSantis’ political team and sessions where attendees will dial for dollars, according to two sources familiar with the details. The goal is for each fundraiser to bring in between $100,000 and $150,000.

A spokesman for DeSantis’ political operation did not respond to a request for comment.

An announcement around the Memorial Day weekend is on the earlier side of the timeline that the governor’s political operation had targeted six months ago when it eyed a launch after Florida’s legislative session. This suggests DeSantis is responding to donors and supporters anxious to see him get in the race and more directly challenge Trump. Polling shows the former president remains firmly in the lead while DeSantis has lost some momentum during the belabored rollout of his expected campaign, which has included a book release and tour, a dozen appearances at local GOP fundraisers, an international trip, the creation of a super PAC, a donor retreat near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and a blitz through conservative media.

Along the way, DeSantis has stumbled at times, drawing poor reviews for his oscillating takes on the Russia-Ukraine war, prolonging his clash with Disney into a second year and getting caught flat-footed as Trump unveiled endorsements from Florida Republicans in Congress just before the governor visited Washington to build support.

However, DeSantis’ allies believe the trajectory of the race will change significantly once he is officially a candidate and responds to Trump’s broadsides and more vigorously shares his vision for the country.

According to The New York Times, DeSantis told donors and supporters during a call Thursday that there were only three credible candidates in the race – himself, President Joe Biden and Trump – and that only he and Biden had a chance of winning the general election.

DeSantis said on the call, which was organized by Never Back Down, a super PAC closely aligned with the governor, that data from swing states was “not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” the Times reported.

DeSantis has spent the last couple of weeks tying up loose ends – rapidly signing dozens of bills that have reached his desk, meeting with donors in Tallahassee and South Florida, and shoring up endorsements to boost his launch. He spent Saturday in Iowa, where he appeared to one-up Trump, making an unannounced visit to a BBQ joint in Des Moines – minutes from where the former president had canceled a rally due to threat of weather. While in the state, DeSantis laid the framework for his case against Trump.

“If we make 2024 a referendum on Joe Biden and his failures and we provide a positive alternative for the future of this country, Republicans will win across the board,” DeSantis told Iowa caucus voters in Sioux Center. “If we do not do that, if we get distracted, if we focus on the election in the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again, and I think it will be very difficult to recover from that defeat.”

On Friday, DeSantis will travel to another early nominating state, New Hampshire, to meet with state lawmakers – many of whom endorsed him earlier this week – for a policy round table, according to three sources familiar with the planning.

Never Back Down has in recent weeks rolled out dozens of key endorsements for the governor in Iowa and New Hampshire. On Wednesday, the super PAC also announced endorsements from 99 Florida lawmakers – a show of force from the rank-and-file Republicans who helped push DeSantis’ agenda through the state legislature this spring.

“Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature have worked together to achieve historic results and produce conservative victories for the people of Florida – turning the state into a beacon of freedom and the fastest growing state in the nation,” Never Back Down spokeswoman Erin Perrine said.

Trump’s campaign dismissed the Florida endorsements as politically motivated, noting that DeSantis had not yet signed the state budget, for which he has line-item veto power over the pet projects of state lawmakers.

“There are some brave legislators who have stood up to DeSantis’ Swamp-like behavior and resisted his intimidation tactics in order to do what is right for Florida and the country,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said. “Those who he can’t control – including almost the entirety of the Florida federal congressional delegation – have endorsed President Trump because he’s the only candidate who can beat Joe Biden and take back the White House.”

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(CNN) — Walt Disney Parks and Resorts on Wednesday sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his hand-picked oversight board, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court minutes after the board appointed by DeSantis to oversee Disney’s special taxing district sought to claw back its power from the entertainment giant, voting to invalidate an agreement struck between Disney and the previous board in February, just before that board’s dissolution.

“What they created is an absolute legal mess, OK? It will not work,” said Martin Garcia, chairman of the DeSantis-picked Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board of supervisors.

Wednesday’s moves are the latest escalation in the fight between DeSantis and Disney as DeSantis moves toward a 2024 presidential bid.

Disney responded by suing DeSantis, the board and Florida Department of Economic Opportunity acting secretary Meredith Ivey, seeking to block the board’s moves.

The lawsuit characterizes Wednesday’s vote as the “latest strike” in “a targeted campaign of government retaliation — orchestrated at every step by Governor DeSantis as punishment for Disney’s protected speech.”

It says DeSantis’ retaliation “now threatens Disney’s business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region, and violates its constitutional rights.”

“Disney finds itself in this regrettable position because it expressed a viewpoint the Governor and his allies did not like. Disney wishes that things could have been resolved a different way,” the lawsuit says. “But Disney also knows that it is fortunate to have the resources to take a stand against the State’s retaliation — a stand smaller businesses and individuals might not be able to take when the State comes after them for expressing their own views. In America, the government cannot punish you for speaking your mind.”

The board’s move Wednesday was expected, and board members in previous meetings had previewed its argument over why it saw the agreement as invalid. In March, the board hired a team of law firms to represent the district in “potential legal challenges” with Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, signaling that DeSantis’ appointees anticipated the fight was headed to the court room.

Disney CEO Bob Iger hinted at the entertainment giant’s case against the state when he told shareholders earlier this month that “the company has a right to freedom of speech just like individuals do.”

“The governor got very angry about the position that Disney took, and it seems like he’s decided to retaliate against us. … in effect, to seek to punish a company for its exercise of a constitutional right,” Iger said. “And that just seems really wrong to me — against any company or individual, but particularly against a company that means so much to the state that you live in.”

The fight now shifts to the courts, where Disney, in its 77-page lawsuit, is seeking an injunction that would block the board from exercising the power DeSantis and the Republican-led legislature sought to hand it.

“We are unaware of any legal right that a company has to operate its own government or maintain special privileges not held by other businesses in the state,” DeSantis communications director Taryn Fenske said. “This lawsuit is yet another unfortunate example of their hope to undermine the will of the Florida voters and operate outside the bounds of the law.”

DeSantis, speaking at a news conference in Jerusalem, blasted Disney’s lawsuit against him Thursday, saying the company did not “want to pay the same taxes as everybody else.”

“I don’t think the suit has merit. I think it’s political,” DeSantis said, accusing the entertainment giant of being “upset that they are actually having to live by the same rules as everybody else.”

The yearlong fight has strained what had long been a cozy relationship between Florida’s government and the state’s best-known employer and attraction of tourist dollars. DeSantis earlier this month suggested the state could build a prison or competing theme park on what had for decades been Disney-controlled property.

The Florida governor’s battle with Disney has become a flashpoint in the early stages of the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Former President Donald Trump and a slew of other candidates and potential rivals, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have lambasted DeSantis for his actions, characterizing them as anti-business.

After a hearing in which several business owners, including those who run restaurants and bars at Disney World locations, urged the board to work with Disney, Garcia said the board would seek to raise taxes to pay for its legal fees in evaluating and combatting what he called “eleventh hour agreements.”

“Because that’s going to cost us money, we’re going to have to raise taxes to pay for that,” Garcia said.

The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board of supervisors — the board named by DeSantis and packed with his allies earlier this year — took over the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the special taxing district that for half a century gave Disney control over the land around its Central Florida theme parks.

But before the DeSantis-selected board was in place, Disney in February reached an agreement with the outgoing board that seemed to render the body powerless to control the entertainment giant. The DeSantis administration was unaware of the agreement for a month and vowed retribution after it became public.

The agreements Disney signed with the previous board ensured the company’s development rights throughout the district for the next 30 years and in some cases prevented the board from taking significant action without first getting approval from the company. One provision restricted the new board from using any of Disney’s “fanciful characters” until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England.”

Its development agreement was approved over the course of two public meetings held two weeks apart earlier this year, both noticed in the local Orlando newspaper and attended by about a dozen residents and members of the media. No one from the governor’s office was present at either meeting, according to the meeting minutes.

In Wednesday’s meeting, the board’s special general counsel, Daniel Langley, walked through its legal argument for nullifying the deal between Disney and the previous board.

He said the board had not provided the required public notice of its meetings, and said the agreement was not properly approved by two municipalities within the district, the cities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista.

He also argued that previous amendments to Disney’s long-term comprehensive plan were not properly vetted and approved by those two municipalities.

“The bottom line is that a development agreement has to be approved by the governing body of a jurisdiction, and that didn’t happen from the cities that have jurisdiction,” Langley said.

Former Florida Supreme Court justice Alan Lawson, an attorney hired by the district, said that “the old board attempted to act without legal authority to act.”

“This is essentially about what it means to live and work in a country governed by the rule of law. Everyone must play by the same rules,” he said. “Disney was openly and legally granted unique and special privilege — that privilege of running its own government for a time. That era has ended.”

The end of a decades-old agreement

The state legislature created the Reedy Creek Improvement District in 1967 and effectively gave Disney the power to control municipal services like power, water, roads and fire protection around its Central Florida theme parks that didn’t exist before Walt Disney and his builders arrived. But the special district also freed Disney from bureaucratic red tape and made it cheaper to borrow to finance infrastructure projects around its theme parks, among other significant advantages.

That special arrangement, though criticized at times, was largely protected by state politicians as both Disney and Florida benefited from the tourism boom.

The unlikely fracturing of Florida’s relationship with its most iconic business started during the contentious debate last year over state legislation to restrict certain classroom instruction on sexuality and gender identity. Disney’s then-CEO, Bob Chapek, facing pressure from his employees, reluctantly objected to the bill, leading DeSantis to criticize the company. When DeSantis signed the legislation into law, Disney announced it would push for its repeal. DeSantis then targeted Disney’s special governing powers.

For DeSantis, who has built a political brand by going toe-to-toe with businesses he identifies as “woke,” the latest twist threatens to undermine a central pillar of his story as he lays the groundwork for a likely presidential campaign. An entire chapter of his new autobiography is devoted to Disney, and the saga is well-featured in the stump speech he has delivered around the country in recent weeks.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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 (CNN) — Facing accusations of whitewashing history after his administration blocked a new Black studies course for high-achieving high schoolers, Gov. Ron DeSantis has countered that Florida students already must learn about the triumphs and plight of African Americans.

“The state of Florida education standards not only don’t prevent, but they require teaching Black history,” DeSantis said last week. “All the important things, that’s part of our core curriculum.”

Indeed, Florida has required its schools to teach African American history since 1994, long before the recent push in many states to move toward a more complete telling of the country’s story. The stated goal at the time was to introduce the Black experience to a generation of young people. That included DeSantis himself, then a student in Florida’s public school system when the mandate became law.

But nearly three decades later, advocates say many Florida schools are failing to teach that history. Only 11 of the state’s 67 county school districts meet all of the benchmarks for teaching Black history set by the African American History Task Force, a state board created to help school districts abide by the mandate. Many schools only cover the topic during Black History Month in February, said Bernadette Kelley-Brown, the principal investigator for the task force.

“The idea that every Florida student learns African American history, it’s not reality,” Kelley-Brown said. “Some districts don’t even realize it’s required instruction.”

The persistent focus in Florida on instruction of African American topics comes as DeSantis has partially built his Republican stardom by targeting public schools for signs of progressive ideologies. His administration has forced K-12 schools to comb their textbooks and curriculum for any evidence of Critical Race Theory or related topics and he championed a new law that puts guardrails on lessons about racism and oppression. Both measures were cited in the state’s decision last month to block a new Advanced Placement class on African American Studies from Florida high schools. (On Wednesday, the College Board, which oversees AP courses and exams, released an updated framework of African American Studies class that did not include many of the authors and topics DeSantis had objected to. His administration said it was reviewing the changes to see if the course now complies with state law.)

Black Democratic lawmakers say the state Department of Education under DeSantis has shown far more zeal in enforcing these new restrictions on how race can be taught in schools than the state, in almost 30 years, has ever demonstrated toward ensuring that Black history is taught at all.

“If we say that the speed limit is 70 and someone goes 80, the Highway Patrol is there with some consequences,” state Sen. Geraldine Thompson said at a recent press conference. “But there have been no consequences for not teaching African American history.”

The governor’s office and the Florida Department of Education did not respond when asked about the state’s efforts to enforce the mandate to teach Black history. But DeSantis recently elaborated on how he expects the subject to be taught.

“It’s just cut and dried history,” DeSantis said. “You learn all the basics. You learn about the great figures, and you know, I view it as American history. I don’t view it as separate history.”

A mandate with no money

For a state that had to be dragged to desegregate all of its schools well into the 1970s, the move to require African American history in Florida classrooms was notably unceremonious. Lawmakers unanimously approved the mandate in 1994 with little debate. Few newspapers covered then-Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles signing the bill into law.

After it passed, the state created the African American History Task Force to help school districts with this new directive and to come up with a strategy for implementation. But neither the law nor the Florida Department of Education set a deadline for districts to comply.

Former state Rep. Rudolph Bradley, the Black lawmaker who sponsored the bill to require African American history back then, now says there was a major flaw in the legislation that kept it from accomplishing what he set out to achieve: Lawmakers didn’t set aside any money for school districts to update their textbooks, buy new instructional materials or train teachers.

“The mistake on my part, being a freshman, I didn’t understand the importance of attaching appropriations,” Bradley told CNN in a recent interview. “I didn’t understand what an unfunded mandate was and how difficult that would make it for school districts to incorporate it.”

Even districts that had sought to comply with the law faced hurdles. Among those early adopters in 1994 was Pinellas County, where efforts to incorporate African American history into their lessons were underway prior to the law’s passage — and where a teenage DeSantis was entering sophomore year of high school that fall.

At Dunedin High School, a predominantly White school within walking distance of Florida’s gulf shores, DeSantis should have been among the first wave of students to be exposed to this more complete telling of history. The school already offered African American history as an elective and the district had tapped the teacher of that class, Randy Lightfoot, to guide Pinellas schools into compliance with the new law. (Lightfoot said DeSantis was not a student in his African American history class.)

Lightfoot and his team met after school for three hours a day, four times a week for months to forge a plan to incorporate Black history, culture and figures into every grade level, he told CNN in a recent interview. They printed a blueprint called “African American Connections.”

The accurate teaching of African American studies, the document said, “explains the causes of racial division in society, including prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination” and the “systematic oppression perspective of Africans and African-Americans and their resistance to that oppression.”

The state heralded Lightfoot’s efforts as a model for adhering to the new law, according to news accounts from the time. The Florida education commissioner liked it so much he handed a copy to every school district, Lightfoot said. DeSantis more recently has called the idea of systemic racism “a bunch of horse manure.”

By 1996, Lightfoot was warning that his efforts were being stymied by lack of resources. Lightfoot struggled to convince the Pinellas school board to acquire textbooks that included the new lessons on Black history, according to the St. Petersburg Times, which also noted that the district cut his staff.

The attempts to expand the curriculum to teach African American history also came during a period of racial strife in Pinellas County. In 1996, riots broke out in St. Petersburg, the city 20 minutes south of DeSantis’ suburban home, after the police killed an unarmed Black teenager during a traffic stop, and again when the officers involved were cleared of charges. Meanwhile, graduation rates for Black male students remained stubbornly low in Pinellas, the Times reported, and the county school board had broached the controversial idea of curbing forced busing to desegregate the public schools, leading to a period of distrust between the board and Black residents.

By the time DeSantis graduated in 1997 — having earned recognition as a decorated Advanced Placement history student, according to his senior yearbook — getting African American history in Pinellas schools was still a work in progress, Lightfoot said.

Statewide, only a handful of schools had earned “exemplary” status from the African American History Task Force by the end of that decade, meaning they had reached benchmarks for compliance. “Exemplary” school districts must demonstrate their curriculum included African American topics beyond Black History Month, training for teachers in the subject, involvement of parents in the learning and collaboration with a local university for support. In 1999, a bill that would have required public school textbooks to include African American history went nowhere in the state legislature.

Carlton Owens, a Black classmate of DeSantis’ at Dunedin High, said he only saw people like himself reflected in the curriculum during Black History Month or lessons around slavery and the Civil Rights movement.

“There’s so much more history that’s inspiring that is interwoven in the American story as a whole,” Owens, now a lawyer and small business owner, said. “And that wasn’t highlighted then, and that needs to be happening now.”

The state “put the material out there for districts,” said Lightfoot, now a history professor at St. Petersburg College. “But they didn’t put the kind of money in to check and make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

“We were trying to fill in the gaps and the holes in history,” he added. “At the same time, we had Black male students who we thought we could help improve their grades if they saw their stories in history and science and literature. Where it worked, we had pretty good success with it. But we had the support of state leaders to do it. It was a different climate then.”

Discrepancies in teaching African American history

In a 2019 press release, the Florida Department of Education announced it would require districts for the first time to report how they were teaching required subjects including “Holocaust education, African American history, Hispanic heritage, women’s history, civics and more.”

A CNN review of those reports for the 2021-22 school year found wide discrepancies in how districts lesson-plan around the subject of African American history. Some districts provide lengthy plans for weaving the African American experience into social studies from kindergarten through high school graduation; others suggest exploration comes primarily during Black History month. More than a dozen submissions largely parroted the requirements listed in state law without including any details of the instruction.

Leon County, declared an exemplary school district by the African American History Task Force, included details like its lessons on African American scientists, songwriters and artists during grades K-5. Dixie County, near the Florida Panhandle, submitted 1,600 words on how it teaches African American history to high schoolers. Madison County, a school district near the Florida-Georgia border, simply wrote: “Courses are taught on a daily basis by a Florida certified teacher. The district also stresses Black History Month with daily mini-lessons for all grade levels.”

The Florida Association of School Superintendents did not respond to a request for comment.

Democrats and advocates contend the state has done little with this information. They also say the administration has not yet indicated how it will ensure schools are complying with a new state law signed by DeSantis that requires annual instruction of the 1920 Ocoee massacre, when dozens of Black Floridians were murdered in a horrific Election Day racial cleansing.

Democratic lawmakers say they intend to introduce legislation that would require the state to enforce whether school districts are teaching African American history as the law intends, though its supporters acknowledge any bill is unlikely to gain traction in a statehouse controlled by Republicans.

“It won’t go anywhere,” said state Sen. Shevrin Jones, a member of the legislature’s Black caucus. “But it’ll be a helluva message that we’re getting behind true and accurate Black history being taught in the state of Florida.”

Early in his first term, there was some hope from the state’s Black community that DeSantis would forge a different path than some of his Republican predecessors. In one of his first acts as governor, DeSantis voted to pardon the Groveland Four — two Black men who were lynched and two who received lengthy sentences for allegedly raping a White woman in 1949 — widely considered one of the darkest episodes in Florida’s violent past. Former Gov. Rick Scott, who served two terms prior to DeSantis taking office, had refused to pardon the four men despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence.

But DeSantis’ posture changed following the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. DeSantis responded to the national unrest by mobilizing the state’s national guard and pushing through what he called an “anti-riot” law that included harsh new penalties for protesters if a demonstration turns violent.

DeSantis then turned his attention to schools. In June 2021, he urged the state Board of Education to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory, an academic framework based around the idea that systemic racism is embedded in many American institutions and society. His administration then rejected math textbooks on the grounds that they included Critical Race Theory and other forbidden topics. Last year, lawmakers approved one of DeSantis’ top legislative priorities: the so-called “Stop WOKE Act,” which said schools cannot teach that anyone is inherently racist or responsible for past atrocities because of their skin color. The bill, which DeSantis signed into law, also said schools could teach that oppression of races has existed throughout US history but not persuade students to a particular point of view.

The controversies around these actions have catapulted DeSantis into the national conversation on teaching race and helped fuel his rise as a potential presidential contender. Throughout these episodes, DeSantis has often maintained that African American history is built into Florida’s education framework.

“Florida statutes require teaching all of American history including slavery, civil rights, segregation,” DeSantis contended during his debate against his Democratic opponent last year, Charlie Crist. “It’s important that that’s taught. But what I think is not good is to scapegoat students based on skin color.”

Reginald Ellis, a professor of History and African-American Studies at Florida A&M University, said if students were adequately learning Black history, he would see it first hand in his classroom.

“What I find, even at a historically Black college, the vast majority of students have not really been exposed to much African American history and experience,” Ellis said. “It is a law on the books. There is a task force. But, for the most part, it clearly isn’t a curriculum that is being enforced. School districts effectively have the option to opt-in or opt-out.”

Bradley, the original bill sponsor, said the law’s shortcomings fall on those who have held power in Tallahassee and in school districts for the past three decades, and not DeSantis. Bradley, who changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican later in his political career, said he was supportive of DeSantis’ education agenda and accused activists of using schools to “drive a wedge between Blacks and Whites.”

“The law is still a work in progress, but if we want to use it as a tool to divide then that is a total violation of the spirit of the law,” Bradley said. “When I passed that bill, it was designed to bring people together, not divide.”

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(CNN) — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called on state lawmakers to make permanent existing penalties for companies that require all employees get the Covid-19 vaccination, his latest move to curtail pandemic mitigation efforts.

The proposal would extend indefinitely measures DeSantis signed in 2021 that made Florida the first state in the country to threaten businesses with fines if they required workers to get the Covid-19 vaccine. Those measures pitted DeSantis and Florida against the federal government over President Joe Biden’s efforts to get the country’s workforce inoculated — a standoff that helped boost the Republican governor’s popularity among conservatives.

Now, as DeSantis considers running for president, he is reinstigating that battle.

This time, DeSantis has encouraged skepticism of Covid-19 vaccines altogether, staking out a position far to the right of his top potential rival for the GOP nomination, former President Donald Trump, who continues to count the development of the vaccines as one of his administration’s chief accomplishments.

“They were wrong about lockdowns,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “They were wrong about mask mandates. They were wrong about school closures. They were wrong about mRNA shots. They were wrong about vax passports and vaccine mandates.”

DeSantis wants to make permanent laws passed in November 2021 after he called a special session in response to the Biden administration’s federal vaccine mandate. Those measures, scheduled to expire at the end of June, included prohibitions on mask requirements in schools and government and prohibited vaccines as a condition to travel.

DeSantis had called on lawmakers to ban vaccine mandates outright and inflict punitive penalties on businesses that didn’t comply and threatened to pull state protections against Covid-19-related businesses to any company that followed Biden’s mandate. But the Republican-controlled legislature wouldn’t go that far. Instead, the bill that ended up on DeSantis’ desk said businesses could require vaccination as a condition of employment if workers are allowed to opt-out through a medical or religious exemption, proof of natural immunity or by submitting to regular testing for Covid-19.

It’s not clear if DeSantis would extend the existing limitations on vaccine requirements or if he is suggesting new legislation that would ban any business from making vaccines a condition of employment.

In addition to proposing permanent prohibitions on strict mask and vaccine mandates, DeSantis also wants to prevent doctors from losing their medical license if they stake out positions that contradict medical consensus. During Tuesday’s event in Panama City Beach, DeSantis welcomed to the stage a local dermatologist who has spread unsubstantiated Covid-19 conspiracies on Twitter.

“We want to have our medical practitioners, particularly our physicians, be protected with the freedom to be able to speak the truth,” DeSantis said.

Following Tuesday’s announcement, state House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat, called DeSantis “the number one peddler of a dangerous message from the anti-vax establishment.”

“It is a fake ideology with real consequences — 84,000-plus dead Floridians and counting,” Driskell said. “Masks work, the CDC has proven that. The mRNA vaccines work.”

DeSantis’ more recent skepticism of vaccines is a reversal of his efforts in early 2021, when his administration worked aggressively to make shots available to seniors and the governor boasted about the state’s speed at distributing the vaccine.

“Florida Leads the Nation in Vaccines for Ages 65+ with Seniors First Approach,” said a January 2021 press release from his office.

At one point, DeSantis appeared on Fox News alongside a 100-year-old World War II veteran receiving a dose live on air. At a press conference in July 2021, DeSantis delivered a full-throated backing of the vaccine’s effectiveness against the Covid-19 virus.

“If you are vaccinated, fully vaccinated, the chance of you getting seriously ill or dying from Covid is effectively zero,” he said at the time. “These vaccines are saving lives. They are reducing mortality.”

However, as DeSantis set his sights on a potential showdown with Trump for the GOP nomination in 2024, his public support for the vaccine began to wane. He refused to say if he had received a booster shot — a position Trump called “gutless” in a 2022 interview — and he has made Florida an outlier in its approach to the vaccine in recent months. Under DeSantis, Florida became the only state to recommend against vaccinating children and the state Department of Health has also discouraged men under 40 from getting the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine because of concerns about side effects.

Cases of myocarditis and pericarditis, inflammation of the heart and heart lining, are rare after mRNA vaccines, although they are more likely to occur among young men. The risk of heart inflammation is far greater from Covid-19 than from vaccination.

DeSantis in December also successfully lobbied the Florida Supreme Court to empanel a grand jury to investigate the development, distribution and promotion of the vaccine.

The post DeSantis pushes to permanently ban Covid-19 mandates in Florida appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.