From a little league baseball star to the Republican Party’s culture warrior-in-chief, the rise of Ron DeSantis is impossible to ignore. Now, showdowns with Disneyland and Donald Trump loom on the horizon.
Under his watch, Florida has become a hotbed for so-called anti-woke laws such as the heavily-criticised “Don’t Say Gay” bill and a ban on teaching critical race theory.
The Sunshine State has also introduced restrictions on abortion following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade, enacting a ban on abortion after six weeks.
With DeSantis set to face off against Trump in the contest to be the Republican nominee, Sky News takes a look at five things you might not know about the politician who was once stationed at the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
He’s descended from Italian immigrants
DeSantis, 44, is Italian-American – in fact, all eight of his great-grandparents were born in Italy.
His mother’s grandfather was known as Antonio Rogers in America, but back in Italy he was Antonio Ruggiero – he changed his name after entering the US.
When it comes to immigration policy as governor, DeSantis has taken a hardline approach and has repeatedly and publicly clashed with President Biden.
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Perhaps his most high-profile immigration decision was the state paying for 50 mostly Venezuelan immigrants to be flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts to, he claimed, highlight the crisis at the southern border.
He was a talented baseball player before joining the Navy
DeSantis was part of the Dunedin team in Florida that made it to the Little League World Series in 1991 – a version of Major League Baseball’s World Series for children aged 10 to 12 years old.
He then went on to captain the Yale University varsity team where he played as an outfielder and led the team in batting average.
Any designs on turning pro were shelved, however, when he attended Harvard Law School and went on to join the US military as a navy lawyer.
While his service records were redacted upon release to the public, it is known that he worked with detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
One detainee has since alleged that DeSantis was present while he was restrained and force-fed.
DeSantis denied authorising force-feedings of prisoners who were on hunger strike – something he said he did not have the authority to do – in a recent interview with Piers Morgan.
In 2018 he reflected on his time at Guantanamo Bay, saying: “Everything at that time was legal in nature, one way or another.”
It might be the biggest challenge of our time, but when it comes to climate change DeSantis has been inconsistent.
In 2013, shortly after he became a member of the US House of Representatives, DeSantis signed a pledge to “oppose legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue”.
Fast forward eight years and the now-governor of Florida unveiled a plan for the state to start addressing the effects of rising global temperatures, beefing up things such as coastal defences.
Discussing the plan, he said: “What I’ve found is when people start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways.
“And so we’re not doing any left-wing stuff.”
And while he has assigned large amounts of cash towards dealing with the effects of rising temperatures, some point out that he is not doing enough to tackle the root cause: human-caused climate change.
He’s in a feud… with Disney
On 26 September, 2009, DeSantis married his wife, former newsreader Casey Black, at Disney’s Grand Floridian resort. Now Disney World is suing the Florida governor (for reasons unconnected to his wedding).
The feud has been going on for more than a year after Disney, in the face of significant pressure, publicly opposed the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill concerning discussion of sexuality and gender identity in classrooms.
DeSantis said Disney, which is one of his state’s biggest employers and its single biggest taxpayer, was a purveyor of “woke” ideology that shows inappropriate material to children.
As punishment for its opposition to the bill, DeSantis took over Disney World’s self-governing districtthat it used to run its Florida theme park,through legislation passed by lawmakers and appointed a new board of supervisors.
Disney is now suing DeSantis, claiming that he waged a “targeted campaign of government retaliation” and that the company’s free speech rights were violated.
He’s famed for stoking culture wars – and his ‘anti-woke’ agenda is having an impact
DeSantis’s crusade against all things “woke” has included banning public colleges from using federal or state funding on diversity programs as well as curtailing education about critical race theory, a way of thinking about US history through the lens of racism.
He chose to sign the funding bill into law at New College of Florida, a small, traditionally-progressive school in Sarasota.
A small group of protestors gathered outside the signing ceremony. DeSantis, as well as most of the speakers at the event, ridiculed them.
“You know, I saw some of the protestors out there. I was a little disappointed. I was hoping for more,” DeSantis said with a smile as his supporters clapped.
In May, the NAACP civil rights organisation issued a travel advisory for Florida over what it said was DeSantis’s “aggressive attempts to erase black history and to restrict diversity, equity and inclusion programs”.
Dr Bernice King, daughter of celebrated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, said her father would be “deeply concerned” about the “harmful, discriminatory legislation in Florida”.
The governor also signed a bill that will bar trans people from using public facilities that align with their gender identities and another that will restrict “adult” performances in front of minors. He said the latter measure was intended to limit drag performances.
But… does he have a chance at the White House?
It’s often said that the path to the US presidency runs through Florida (due to the state’s hefty weighting in the electoral college). But will it run directly from Florida to Washington DC in November 2024?
Recent polling has DeSantis consistently trailing former President Trump, with some indication that the gap is growing.
In one recent poll by the Harvard CAPS/Harris firm, Trump leads DeSantis 65% to 35% in a hypothetical primary matchup.
“DeSantis is announcing in a much more difficult environment than a few months ago but most voters believe he can still mount a serious challenge to…Trump,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the poll, told The Hill.
DeSantis reportedly told top donors that only he, Trump and President Biden are “credible” candidates to be commander-in-chief.
“And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president – Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” DeSantis said, according to the New York Times.
Much has been said about the students whose protests have gripped America this past week.
Their cause has been framed in polarising ways. A violent Hamas-sympathising mob? Or peace activists striving for equality?
Within a frenzied spectrum of views and noise, one young student sat down with me for a conversation.
Aidan Doyle, 21, is a philosophy and jazz double major at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
He was arrested early on Thursday morning for being part of an encampment at the university.
He told Sky News he was shocked that the police arrested so many student protesters, despite not intervening in an attack on the protesters by a pro-Israeli group the day before.
He said his arrest had not deterred him from continuing his protest, which he likened to the Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s.
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Mr Doyle rejected the notion, from President Biden, that the protests are not peaceful.
“Graffiti, putting posters up, that’s all peaceful,” he said, commenting on the president’s statement from the White House.
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“I also think that President Biden needs to actually take some introspection and realise that maybe the reason so many of these protests are happening is partially due to him.”
Mr Doyle added: “Protests in general are part of the American spirit. They’re part of being an American. And if we were to just stand around in circles and sing and dance, and pretend everything was fine, then nothing would change and nobody would care at all.
“Part of a protest is causing disruption and causing at least a minor level of chaos that is, again, not violent but that actually disrupts things.”
He denied any accusations of antisemitism, but conceded there is a spectrum of opinion within the movement.
“If you’re going to criticise a movement, I think you have to look at the movement’s goals and their mission, not what fringe members of the group say or do.
“You have to actually look at what we say, what the organisers say, and what is in the mainstream, and what our mission and our goal is: the peace and prosperity of the Palestinian people.”
Asked if he believed in Israel’s right to exist as a country, he said: “I think Jewish sovereignty is incredible. I think it’s an amazing thing.”
He added: “I think that if there is a country for Jewish people that protects the Jewish people, that is of utmost importance, especially with the vile and rampant antisemitism that exists across the world that I see every day and that I try and combat as much as possible.
“But doing that and then simultaneously repressing another group of people, dehumanising them and brutalising them, then the question of whether your state has the right to exist becomes secondary.”
Students, charged and released with a date in court, are here now to collect their belongings. They’re missing bags, belts, shoes, all lost in the chaos of the night before.
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From the very heart of the protest encampment, our cameras had captured the chaos.
Officers moving in. Tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse. Stun grenades to disorientate.
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They were scenes which have stirred an already fevered debate about Israel and Gaza, yes, but about much more too. About America, about policing, and about free speech too.
President Biden said yesterday: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest.”
‘Wrong’ say the protesters. Their movement, they say, is the very essence of protest; of civil disobedience which is threaded through US college campus history.
They reject any notion that they are threatening or violent. Yet the deeply divisive history of the Israel-Palestine conflict ensures that the beholder will so often be offended by the actions of the other side.
It was the students perceived antisemitism through their pro-Palestinian slogans which had drawn a group of pro-Israel protesters to the encampment earlier in the week.
The chaos of that night was reflected in a statement by the university’s student radio station which has been covering every twist.
“Counter protestors used bear mace, professional-grade fireworks and clubs to brutalize hundreds of our peers, UCLA turned a blind eye. Police were not called until hours into the onslaught and stood aside for over an hour as counter-protestors enacted racial, physical and chemical violence,” the statement from the UCLA Radio Managerial team said.
Watching the clear-up after the nighttime police sweep of the protesters I spotted two people embracing. A young man and an older woman.
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Professor recalls violent arrest at protest
It turned out to be a thread of history. One was a student who’d been arrested the night before.
The other was a student from a past time. Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history.
“I’m so proud of these people here. I’m so proud,” she told me.
“You know the civil unrest of the students back in ’68 and it continued for several years, it actually changed the course of the Vietnam War and hopefully this is going to do the same thing.”
But then, back at the police station, a conversation that hints at the wider challenges for America.
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‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country. For him, no government is better than any on offer.
“The problem with our system is that we can’t rely on the police, we can’t rely on the military to keep us safe.
“When we need to make our voices heard, we need to make them heard, and the only way to do that without being repressed is by keeping each other safe and I think that last night and the last few months have really exemplified that,” he told me.
These protests are about more than Gaza. They are aligning a spectrum of dissent.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.