Ron DeSantis goes on bizarre rant after federal judge blocks his “Stop WOKE Act”

Failed Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) went on a wide-ranging seven-minute rant on Monday about the “woke mind virus,” gender-affirming healthcare, the Olympics opening ceremony, crime statistics, and student protestors when asked about a recent federal court ruling that placed a permanent injunction on his so-called Stop WOKE Act.

The law, which DeSantis signed in 2022, prohibits businesses from requiring employees to attend mandatory diversity and inclusion training, including those focused on racial and LGBTQ+ inclusion. Last Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker placed a permanent injunction against the law. Walker called the law “positively dystopian” and said it violates business’s rights to free speech.

Related:

Who is Ron DeSantis? Where does he stand on LGBTQ+ rights?

DeSantis opposes the expansion of LGBTQ+ civil rights, LGBTQ+ non-discrimination protections, and LGBTQ-inclusive school policies.

Walker temporarily blocked the law in August 2022 after a honeymoon registry business, a Florida-based Ben & Jerry’s ice cream franchisee, and a workplace-diversity consultant firm sued. The businesses said the law violated their ability to speak “on important societal matters” and to engage “employees in robust discussion of ideas essential for improving their workplaces.”

Stay connected to your community

Connect with the issues and events that impact your community at home and beyond by subscribing to our newsletter.

Daily

Weekly

Good News

Walker’s ruling was upheld by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March. The three-judge appeals court panel said the law penalizes “certain viewpoints — the greatest First Amendment sin.” Last Friday, Walker — who is an appointee of former President Barack Obama — made his injunction permanent.

In a Monday press conference, DeSantis pledged to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently has a 6-3 Republican majority.

“We have every right as a state to provide protections for employees and businesses to say if they are doing woke training, which is basically discriminating against folks on the basis of race, you have right to opt out of that,” DeSantis said. “It’s not a question of what the company can say. They can say whatever they want, but you have a right to not have to self-flagellate. You have a right to not have to sit there and listen to nonsense. And so we were right on that.”

He then referenced another law he signed in May 2023 that forbids colleges and universities from spending government funds on “diversity, equity, and inclusivity” (DEI) programs. The law has resulted in the shutdown of campus LGBTQ+ support centers, women’s support offices, and other cultural centers across the state.

DeSantis then mentioned SB 7072, a law he signed in 2021, which seeks to force social media companies to host content that violates their policies on hate speech and other harmful content. This month, the Supreme Court told lower courts to re-examine the law’s free speech implications.

The governor then said, “The whole gender surgeries for minors, we said, ‘Not going to fly in Florida.'” He claimed, “There’s a lot of people making a lot of money off this, and you take some teenager and you cut off private parts, and then they get into their 20s and they can’t reverse it, and it becomes a big, big problem. And it’s not based in science, it’s based in ideology.”

DeSantis’s claims are untrue. Foremost, only 0.7% of Americans identify as transgender, meaning that the medical industry is hardly making “a lot of money” from gender-affirming care. Second, operations that “cut off private parts” aren’t conducted on minors. Third, fewer than 1% of patients who undergo gender-affirming surgical procedures end up regretting it. Lastly, almost every major medical and psychological association in the U.S. supports gender-affirming care as safe and essential to trans people’s well-being — and their assertions are based on numerous scientific studies.

DeSantis continued by discussing the back-and-forth of various court decisions about the aforementioned laws. He then spread more disinformation about gender-affirming care and said, “At the end of the day, we have every right as a state to say that of all the different things you have when you go to work, that you can’t be forced to sit there and have to listen to this dribble. You can opt out.”

He then said, “I think if you look Columbia University, you look at some of these, these agencies that we have in government, you look at corporations, some of them, once they get infected and captured by the woke mind virus, the institutions just crumble, and they become hollow shells of what they were supposed to be. What [Florida is] doing when we say, ‘We’re where woke goes to die,’ it’s because we don’t want our institutions to be infected with woke ideology. We want our institutions to be rooted in what’s right.”

He then added, “The minute you go into these other things where all of a sudden people get elected district attorney and they release criminals, or they refuse to prosecute criminals, crime goes up. Well, actually, statistics don’t go up, because what they start doing, they stop reporting crimes. So they say, ‘Oh, this crime is down all these cities, and everyone’s scared to walk down the street.’ And no, it’s not that crime is down — it’s that the reporting is down. Because first of all, if you get mugged in some of these places, it’s not even worth reporting it. There’s never going to prosecute somebody for that.”

He offered no proof for his bizarre claim.

He then claimed that Jewish billionaire philanthropist and investor George Soros’s investments in district attorney’s races made it so that “criminals are able to rule the roost.”

He then complained about Columbia University in New York City, telling student protestors who demonstrated against Israel’s targeting of Palestinian citizens and vital infrastructure in Gaza, “I can tell you that you want to try to take over, you want to try to commandeer parts of our university, you’re going to be ejected from the premises immediately. We’re just not going to put up with it. We’re not going to let the inmates run the asylum.”

He then complained about the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympic Summer Games — which featured a Dionysian feast with drag queens that was angrily mistaken by many conservative Christians as a mockery of The Last Supper (a famous artwork painted by gay artist Leonardo DaVinci and replicated countless times in modern pop culture).

“I was just sad seeing this,” he said. “It’s like, you know, that was really a symbol of the decline of Western civilization. I don’t think in the closing ceremony they’re going to do anything where they mock Islam, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that doesn’t happen. And so when they’re doing that, you know, and they’re mocking The Last Supper like that, it just shows that so much of, particularly Western Europe, you know, they’ve really walked away from the values that once made those countries great.”

DeSantis dropped out of the Republican presidential race in January after failing to gain any serious traction among primary voters. He will be ineligible to run again in the next Florida gubernatorial election in 2026. He will leave office in January 2027.

Don't forget to share: