Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/TNS/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Ah, early June. The weather is warm, the water is fine, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is casually doing the most diabolical shit.

You name the progressive cause, and DeSantis has taken substantive steps to stymie it over the past few days, waging attacks on everything from gun control to vaccine mandates to trans rights.

Yesterday, DeSantis joined a growing contingent of Republican governors who are trying to make it harder—or impossible—for trans kids to access gender-affirming medical care. His method is bureaucratic. Unlike in Texas and Alabama, DeSantis wants to circumvent the state legislature by placing the decision in the hands of the state Board of Medicine. The Florida Health Department, led by Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, has made clear that it opposes these medical procedures. In a letter, the Board of Health requested an opportunity to “establish a standard of care” to curtail what Ladapo described as “complex and irreversible procedures.”

“The current standards set by numerous professional organizations appear to follow a preferred political ideology instead of the highest level of generally accepted medical science,” Ladapo wrote.

As my colleague Samantha Michaels has reported, treatments like puberty blockers and hormonal therapy can greatly reduce the risk of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among trans kids. “Typical gender-affirming treatments for kids are deemed safe and effective by major medical associations like the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics,” she writes.

The cherry on top? Hours before the Florida Board of Medicine issued its letter, the state Agency for Health Care Administration issued a controversial report that suggests that gender-affirming care is ineffective for people of all ages. The existence of the report threatens to ban Medicaid coverage of these treatments. As the Kaiser Family Foundation has reported, transgender adults tend to report lower household incomes and higher rates of unemployment than cisgender adults—which means they are likely to rely on Medicaid at higher rates than cis adults.

So, in multiple ways, DeSantis and his administration have tried to tamp down on gender-affirming care without even having to vote on it in the legislature.

As if that weren’t enough, DeSantis turned his crusade on, uh, the Special Olympics. The organization had a vaccine requirement for the games set to be held in Orlando this weekend. This makes sense, since, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people with disabilities might be more likely to get Covid, and those with underlying medical conditions have a higher risk of becoming severely ill.

But Florida has a law banning vaccine mandates, which allowed it to threaten the Special Olympics with a $27.5 million fine, according to ABC News reporter Jay O’Brien. Not wanting to stir the pot, the organization dropped its vaccine requirement.

And, lastly, in DeSantis’ world, free speech is all well and good, except when it comes to a baseball team advocating for kids not getting shot in school. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, which has a pitcher from Uvalde, where 19 children and two adults were killed in a mass shooting last week, made several social media posts in support of gun control during its May 26 game. Among them was a pledge to donate $50,000 to Everytown for Gun Safety’s Support Fund, which promotes education, research, and litigation to reduce gun violence.

Days later, DeSantis vetoed state funds for a new practice facility for the team. I wonder why.

DeSantis’ actions could be cast as just more culture war, as if all these actions against gun control, vaccine mandates, and trans care were designed to gin up his base. But it’s not all talk: These decisions will have material consequences for the most vulnerable Floridians.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate