Dear Friend,
The 2023 session of the Florida Legislature unofficially began this past Tuesday with our first week of committee meetings in Tallahassee.
Three of my committees met last week, including the Select Committee on Hurricane Resiliency & Recovery. This is a new group created in response to Hurricanes Ian and Nicole, which devastated our state last year. In this committee, we’ll be looking at ways to help our hardest-hit communities continue to rebuild from the storms, but also at how we can better prepare and protect ourselves against future storms. My hope is this will also be a place where we can have serious discussions about climate change, which is causing stronger, wetter and more-destructive hurricanes.
I’m also serving this year on the Transportation & Modals Subcommittee, which met for the first time last week. This subcommittee will consider legislation that affects infrastructure like highways, airports and seaports. I’m going to make sure mass transit is part of those discussions, alongside pedestrian safety and electrification.
The third committee of mine that met last week was the Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee, which will hear bills dealing with our state’s colleges and universities. And we already know that’s going to be a major battleground over the next few months, because Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is right now waging a full-on war against higher education in Florida.
Watch Anna’s Committee Meetings Below
Select Committee on Hurricane Resiliency & Recovery
Transportation & Modals Subcommittee
Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee
In case you missed it last week, the governor launched what is pretty much a hostile takeover of New College of Florida, the small Sarasota public university that is nationally renowned as one of the country’s top public liberal arts colleges.
But DeSantis wants to destroy all that and transform New College into conservative indoctrination camp like Hillsdale College, a private Christian school in Michigan. To make that happen the governor installed six new members on New College’s Board of Trustees, including a racist, anti-LGBTQ+ bigot who helped create the fake controversy over Critical Race Theory and who has disgustingly encouraged people to call LGBTQ+ folks “groomers.”
Make no mistake, this is a strategic attack by DeSantis, who doesn’t want universities training young folks to think critically. He’s targeting a small college, with a smaller alumni base (so less people to fight back) in a conservative part of Florida (so less local elected officials to fight back). But this is a PUBLIC school, funded by OUR tax dollars. And what happens at New College impacts all of us – so every Floridian should care about this and fight back.
And we already know DeSantis is planning to go after other schools soon, too. Last week, the Governor’s Office also ordered universities to provide his office with a list of all “staff, programs and campus activities” that support diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
This is a witch hunt. The governor is once again looking for another fake Boogeyman that he can then pretend to attack, all to curry favor with Republican primary voters as he prepares to run against former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race.
Ron DeSantis is so blindly ambitious that he’s willing to sacrifice our state’s universities to further his political climb. We have to push back, and push back hard.
And we will.
Onward,
Rep. Anna V. Eskamani