DeSantis’ Anti-Illegal Immigration Stance Not an Impediment in Hispanic-Heavy Florida

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) made waves in September when he flew 48 migrants who had been released by DHS after apprehension at the Southwest border to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Although “experts” at the time asserted the incident would cost DeSantis politically, those flights and the governor’s other efforts to crack down on illegal immigration likely bolstered his reelection bid in the Sunshine State, where he cruised to victory on Tuesday.

Martha’s Vineyard. Republican governors in Texas and Arizona had been busing Southwest border migrants to Washington, D.C., for weeks before DeSantis chartered two planes to take about four dozen others — mostly Venezuelan nationals — to the toney Massachusetts beach resort on September 14.

He wasn’t shy about his reasons for doing so. According to ABC News, DeSantis told rally-goers in Wisconsin four days later: “l'll tell you this: The border is now an issue in these elections. ... It's on the ballot, and we got to make the most of it.”

While the governor gained praise from some quarters for his actions, they also gained the attention of federal investigators and the ire of political opponents, who derided the flights as a “stunt”.

DeSantis’ Efforts to Crack Down on Illegal Immigration. Stunt or not, those flights were part-and-parcel of DeSantis’ efforts to crack down on illegal immigration in his state.

He started right out of the gate during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, echoing many of then-President Donald Trump’s anti-illegal immigration talking points, running a campaign ad teaching his then-toddler son how to “build the wall”, and depicting his then-primary opponent, former Florida Agricultural Commissioner Adam Putnam (R), as “Amnesty Adam” for endorsing the June 2013 Schumer-Obama Gang of Eight immigration amnesty.

He has been dogged on the issue since taking office. In June 2019, DeSantis signed a bill barring so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions in his state and requiring such entities to “support and cooperate with federal immigration enforcement”.

In December, the governor introduced a number of proposals to “fight illegal immigration and protect Floridians from the Biden Border Crisis”.

In addition to supporting legislation to strengthen E-Verify enforcement, those proposals included an emergency rule to deny state licenses or license renewals to HHS shelters for unaccompanied alien child (UAC) migrants unless the federal government entered into a “cooperative agreement” under which Florida would be provided with notice before UACs were moved into the state.

In April, DeSantis joined 25 other GOP governors in an “American Governors’ Border Strike Force” to improve intelligence sharing and better position the states to combat drug- and human-smuggling in their jurisdictions.

In June, he used his powers to ask the Florida courts to impanel a grand jury that would examine various immigration-related “crimes and wrongs” residents and local officials there may have engaged in.

The list goes on.

The Election Results. Nonetheless, his pro-border and anti-illegal immigration stance does not appear to have cost DeSantis politically and likely bolstered his support in heavily Hispanic Florida counties.

With 99 percent of the votes counted, DeSantis defeated his Democratic opponent (and former Republican Florida governor) Charlie Crist by more than 19 points, 59.4 percent to 40 percent.

Significantly, DeSantis beat Crist by more than 11 points in Miami-Dade County, where 69 percent of the residents — nearly two million individuals — are Hispanic, many of them Cuban-Americans. As the New York Times explained on November 5, the county was “once a lock for Democrats”, but “not anymore”.

Note that DeSantis lost Miami-Dade in his first gubernatorial run by 21 points, meaning that his win there Tuesday represented a 40-point swing in support.

It’s not just that Cuban enclave, however.

DeSantis also won by more than six points in Osceola County, defeating Crist 52.8 percent to 46.1 percent. Some 56.3 percent of the 400,000-plus residents there identify as Hispanic, and as of 2018, nearly 124,000 of them were Puerto Rican, many of whom fled the island in the wake of the September 2017’s Hurricane Maria. In addition, about 5.6 percent are from South America.

Hardee County, in south-central Florida, has a much smaller population of just over 25,000, and about 44 percent of the residents are Hispanic, with Mexicans as the largest ethnic group. DeSantis captured more than 82 percent of the votes in that county in 2022, compared to just 17 percent for...

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University of Chicago postpones course on the problem of whiteness

This first came to light about a week ago when a University of Chicago student tweeted about the upcoming class.

Naturally the professor is a white woman.

Schmidt predicted that no one else at his school would object because they would fear repercussions for speaking up.

After Schmidt tweeted about the class the website was updated to show that it had been canceled. But according to Inside Higher Ed, it hasn’t been canceled just postponed:

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The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #1198

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The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1898

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside? 

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific, 

from the beautiful to the repugnant, 

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed, 

you could be inspired, you could be appalled. 

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. 

You have been warned.

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The Partisan Rigging of the 2022 Election Election reform candidates are not the threat. The threat to democracy is to leave things the way they are.

In a society that retains trust in its institutions, the most authoritative source for news and information would probably be the publicly funded media property that is supposed to adhere to the highest standards of journalistic objectivity. Here in America, that would have been PBS. Except it isn’t. The American media, by and large, along with Silicon Valley’s social media communications oligopolies, are doing everything they can to deny American voters the opportunity to politically realign their nation.

It’s always useful for conservatives to watch the legacy networks, starting with PBS, to fully appreciate the level of bias that pervades their “news” organizations. While watching them all the time might quickly become intolerable, return periodically to be reminded: The political content on these networks serve the interests of the Democratic Party.

These days, and for at least the past year, PBS anchor Judy Woodruff, along with every PBS reporter, repeats the term “election denier” dozens of times during every daily news broadcast. They repeat it without irony, without hesitation or qualification. It doesn’t matter what level of skepticism someone may have about the 2020 election. Skepticism in and of itself makes one a “denier.” One can have well founded, incrementalist concerns about election integrity, or one can believe every allegation ever made about systemic election fraud, but there’s no room for such a continuum. According to PBS, all these folks are “election deniers.”

Characterizing anyone concerned about election integrity as an “election denier” is manipulative and deceptive, and with rare exceptions, every major news network is doing it. The pervasive deception practiced by the national media throughout the Trump presidency and ever since, in addition to being deliberately manipulative, is designed to cause profound election consequences. We know it was coordinated; we know it was effective. It still is. And all of it designed to elect Democrats and defeat Republicans. Does that constitute “rigging” an election, and if not, why not?

The media’s role in rigging elections to favor Democrats cannot easily be overstated, but it’s far from the only way in which elections in America are rigged. We’re all familiar with the way laws were ignored in swing states by partisan election officials. Depending on which state these violations occurred, they included ballot drop boxes, ballot harvesting, mailed ballots, changes in procedures governing ballot custody and ballot verification, same day registration, waiving voter ID requirements, and more. We all remember how one activist multi-billionaire sent over $400 million dollars to public agencies tasked with administering elections, and restricted his donations to Democrat-heavy precincts in these same swing states in order to “get out the vote.”

To reduce this to the obvious: Ignoring laws is against the law. And public entities accepting private donations that are made with explicitly partisan objectives, at the very least, violates the supposed impartiality and political neutrality of the election bureaucracy. Does any of that constitute rigging an election? Why not?

These allegations are beyond serious debate. Nearly all media is partisan, favors Democrats, and manipulates their audiences. Election officials broke state election laws to help Democratic candidates. Partisan private-sector billionaires made donations to public entities with the goal of increasing Democratic turnout.

But there’s so much more. Consider the manipulated search results on Google, and the suppressed content on the major social media platforms. The partisan participation of America’s social media and search giants in manipulating public opinion, all by itself, has decisive election consequences. These communications platforms deliberately shape...