The controversial Florida governor taking on Mickey Mouse and Donald Trump – five things to know about Ron DeSantis
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.
He has now entered the race to be the next US president, filing a declaration of candidacy with the federal electoral commission on Wednesday.
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.
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.
Can DeSantis beat Trump? Pic: AP
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.”
Ron DeSantis while on deployment in Iraq
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He signed a ‘No Climate Tax Pledge’
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.
Ron DeSantis speaks during a tour of an area impacted by Hurricane Ian with President Biden. Pic: AP
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.
Ron DeSantis throws marker pens into the audience after signing various bills. Pic: AP
As punishment for its opposition to the bill, DeSantis took over Disney World’s self-governing district that 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.
Laws limiting drag performances in Florida have been met by protest. Pic: AP
“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.
DeSantis during a visit to New Hampshire. Pic: AP
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.
This is despite Trump’s various legal problems, including a jury in a civil case finding him liable for sexually abusing a woman in a department store changing room in the 1990s.
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.
A case of the flesh-eating screwworm parasite has been detected in a person in the United States for the first time.
The parasitic flies eat cattle and other warm-blooded animals alive, with an outbreak beginning in Central America and southern Mexico late last year.
It is ultimately fatal if left untreated.
The case in the US was identified in a person from Maryland who had travelled from Guatemala.
Beth Thompson, South Dakota’s state veterinarian, told Reuters on Sunday that she was notified of the case within the
last week.
A Maryland state government official also confirmed the case.
The person was treated and prevention measures were implemented, Reuters reports.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Maryland Department of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
What is screwworm?
The female screwworm fly lays eggs in the wounds of warm-blooded animals and once hatched, hundreds of screwworm larvae use their sharp mouths to burrow through living flesh.
It can be devastating in cattle and wildlife, and has also been known to infect humans.
Treatment is onerous, and involves removing hundreds of larvae and thoroughly disinfecting wounds. They are largely survivable if treated early enough.
The confirmed case is likely to rattle the beef and cattle futures market, which has seen record-high prices because of tight supplies.
The US typically imports more than a million cattle from Mexico each year to process into beef. The screwworm outbreak could cost Texas – the biggest cattle-producing state – $1.8bn (£1.3bn) in livestock deaths, labour costs and medication
expenses.
A view shows a calf after being sprayed with a disinfectant spray to prevent screwworm. Pic: Reuters
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has set traps and sent mounted officers along the border, but it has faced criticism from some cattle producers and market analysts for not acting faster to pursue increased fly production via a sterile fly facility.
What is a sterile fly facility?
The case also comes just one week after the US agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, travelled to Texas to announce plans to build a sterile fly facility there in a bid to combat the pest. Ms Rollins had pledged repeatedly to keep screwworm out of the country.
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A sterile fly facility produces a large number of male flies and sterilises them – these males are then released to mate with wild female insects, which collapses the wild population over time. This method eradicated screwworm from the US in the 1960s.
Mexico has also taken efforts to limit the spread of the pest, which can kill livestock within weeks if not treated. It had started to build a $51m sterile fly production facility.
The USDA has previously said 500 million flies would need to be released weekly to push the fly back to the Darien Gap, the stretch of rainforest between Panama and Colombia.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington DC in an effort to mitigate crime will begin carrying firearms, an official has said.
Defence secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the authorisation of roughly 2,000 National Guard troops to begin carrying weapons.
The majority of the guard members will carry M17 pistols, their service-issued weapons, while a small number will be armed with M4 rifles, reports Sky’s US partner organisation, NBC News.
The troops are authorised to use their weapons for self-protection.
A White House official told NBC News that despite being armed, as of Saturday night, the National Guard troops in DC are not making arrests, and will continue to work on protecting federal assets.
The troops were largely deployed from outside the state and were framed by President Trump as a concerted effort to tackle crime and homelessness in the nation’s capital.
Such deployments are not common, and are typically used in response natural disasters or civil unrest.
Democrats have bashed the deployment as partisan in nature, accusing Mr Trump of trying to exert his presidential authority through scare tactics and said his primary targets have been cities with black leadership.
Armed members of the South Carolina National Guard patrol outside of Union Station. Pic: AP
Pentagon plans to deploy US army to Chicago
Yesterday it was reported that the Pentagon was drafting plans to deploy the US army in Chicago, the largest city in the state.
The governor of Illinois then accused Mr Trump of “attempting to manufacture a crisis” and “abusing his power to distract from the pain he is causing working families”.
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Officials familiar with the proposals told the Washington Post that several options were being weighed up by the US defence department, including mobilising thousands of National Guard troops in Chicago as early as September.
Mr Trump had told reporters on Friday that “Chicago is a mess”, before attacking the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and hinting “we’ll straighten that one out probably next”.
The governor of Illinois has accused Donald Trump of “attempting to manufacture a crisis” over reports the US president was considering deploying the military in the state.
US newspaper The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the Pentagon was drafting plans to deploy the US army in Chicago, the state capital.
It comes as part of Mr Trump’s crackdown on crime, homelessness, and illegal immigration in mainly Democrat-run cities. He recently deployed the National Guard in Washington DC.
In a statement responding to the report, governor JB Pritzker said Illinois had “received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention”.
He added: “The safety of the people of Illinois is always my top priority.
“There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalising the Illinois National Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active duty military within our own borders.”
The governor then said: “Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicise Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he is causing working families.
“We will continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect the people of Illinois.”
Officials familiar with the proposals told the Post that several options were being weighed up by the US defence department, including mobilising thousands of National Guard troops in Chicago as early as September.
The Pentagon said it would not comment on planned operations, adding: “The department is a planning organisation and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel.”
People protest against President Donald Trump’s use of federal law enforcement and National Guard troops in Washington DC. Pic: AP
Mr Trump, however, told reporters on Friday that “Chicago is a mess,” before attacking the city’s mayor Brandon Johnson and hinting “we’ll straighten that one out probably next”.
Mr Johnson has not yet commented on Saturday’s reports, but said on Friday that the president’s approach to tackling crime has been “uncoordinated, uncalled for and unsound”.
“There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago, but sending in the military is not one of them,” he added.
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It comes after around 800 National Guard troops were deployed in Washington DC earlier this month, despite the US capital’s mayor revealing crime in the capital was at its “lowest level in 30 years”.
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What’s it like having the army on DC’s streets?
According to preliminary figures from Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police, violent crime is down 26% in 2025 – after dropping 35% in 2024 compared with 2023.
In June Mr Trump ordered 700 US Army marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in California, during protests over mass immigration raids.
The deployment came against the wishes of state governor Gavin Newsom, who said: “The federal government is sowing chaos so they can have an excuse to escalate.
“That is not the way any civilised country behaves.”
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