Responsible Republicans are continuing to root out toxic, racist liberal ideologies where they can find them. It needs to be the top priority for the party as a whole.
Florida’s Board of Education announced on Wednesday that public colleges are now banned from using state or federal funds on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, activities, and policies. This rule stems from the law Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) signed in May placing restrictions on the use of taxpayer funding for DEI programs at public universities.
Florida universities self-reported spending at least $34 million on DEI programs when DeSantis asked them to report in 2023. That is $34 million (at least) in taxpayer dollars that was being used by ideological bureaucrats to discriminate against or on behalf of certain demographics while defining students and staff down to nothing more than their skin color or other immutable characteristics. And now, that is no more in the third-most populated state in the country, officially and, in the board’s words, “permanently.”
This is the way forward for the GOP. The toxic racial obsession that is being imposed on every area of public life, from politics to sports to television and film, flows from higher education. It has leaked out of academic bubbles and into liberal media, where stories are created and oriented around the skin color of everyone involved. It has leaked into politics, to the point that liberal prosecutors pursue cases because the racial dynamic fits into the worldview even if it is, say, a self-defense case on the New York City subway. And it has leaked into all of education, to the point that schools want to propagandize to elementary school students about how their skin color defines them.
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Call it DEI or critical race theory or just plain old racism, it is a toxin that is destroying American life and American values everywhere it spreads. The young adults who absorb this ideology in higher education then go out and spread it through, for example, antisemitic activism or through their jobs in corporate marketing. And at public universities, this is being done with your hard-earned tax dollars. Florida, along with Texas and other states, recognizes that this is a travesty.
The GOP must push forward with this everywhere. Red states such as Florida should be rooting DEI out at public universities while more competitive states, such as Wisconsin, should be forcing Democrats to defend the racism coming out of these programs. This must be the way forward, and Republicans need to push forward no matter the slings and arrows that are returned.