Florida’s Governor and Florida’s first President are united on federal oversight on what books state educational systems feature.
Ron DeSantis is celebrating moves from Donald Trump’s Department of Education to “end” former President Joe Biden’s “book ban hoax,” framing them as long overdue correctives to federal overreach.
“R.I.P. to the Book Ban Hoax The conflation of parents objecting to age-inappropriate, often sexually charged material being in their kids’ schools (even in elementary grades) with ‘banning’ books was always a ridiculous narrative that the left, legacy media and the Biden administration manufactured and advanced. Glad to see the Trump USDOE (before it gets shut down) put the kibosh on this nonsense,” DeSantis said Friday.
Trump’s Department of Education rescinded Biden policy fighting state and local “removal of age-inappropriate, sexually explicit, or obscene materials from their school libraries” that the previous administration alleged “created a hostile environment for students” as “a meritless claim premised upon a dubious legal theory.”
“By dismissing these complaints and eliminating the position and authorities of a so-called ‘book ban coordinator,’ the department is beginning the process of restoring the fundamental rights of parents to direct their children’s education,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “
The department adheres to the deeply rooted American principle that local control over public education best allows parents and teachers alike to assess the educational needs of their children and communities. Parents and school boards have broad discretion to fulfill that important responsibility. These decisions will no longer be second-guessed by the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education,” Trainor added.
The controversy over Florida’s right to curate education materials made national news, including when DeSantis ran for President.
During a town hall in Hampton, New Hampshire, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate was confronted with remarks from an attendee, who said his sister had a friend who had to remove a Seuss book from a Florida library and thus would not vote for DeSantis.
The speaker didn’t mention which Seuss book was pulled, but it didn’t matter, as it compelled DeSantis again to defend the removal of texts from classrooms and libraries.
Answering the accusation, the Governor described “pornographic books that are in the schools” and how the state has “empowered parents to object to that and, and to have it removed because it’s just not right that that’s happening.”
The Governor defended one “school in Miami-Dade County” and its decision to remove a work by Amanda Gorman after a challenge in which the author was misidentified as Oprah Winfrey. He previously called this a “poem ban hoax.“
“There was this book of poems from, I guess a lady that did a poem at Biden’s inauguration. And the school decided to move it from elementary library to middle school library. And that was it. And they said that this was somehow, they were banning these poems and it’s like, like, this had nothing to do with the state. So I would just say anything on that is a hoax, our standards are very clear, they are not controversial at all.”
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