Ron DeSantis accuses California of an ‘attack on the American family’

Ron DeSantis continues to make his case against the state of California in political speeches around the country. During remarks to the Concerned Women for America, the Florida Governor and 2024 presidential candidate offered a “contrast” between the Sunshine State and the Golden State, which has a different view about the rights of minors than DeSantis’ Florida. “Look at the contrast we have between a state like Florida, which honors parents’ rights, versus a state like California that is now doing legislation that says if you as a parent have a child — maybe like a 10-year-old son — and the son comes to you and says that they think that they’re really a girl, if you say no, you could lose custody of your own kid,” DeSantis said. “That is an assault on parents’ rights, that is an attack on the American family and in the state of Florida, those policies are dead on arrival.” DeSantis’ ire was inspired by California’s just-passed Assembly Bill 937, which compels judges to consider a “parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity or gender expression as part of the health, safety and welfare of the child.” Florida has no equivalent to that law, of course, and state legislation in recent years has worked to undermine concerns about gender identity and gender expression via measures including, but not limited to, the Parental Rights in Education law. DeSantis’ thundering against California laws comes as that state’s Republicans seem to be ruling him out as a presidential candidate. In a survey released by Berkeley’s Institute of Government Studies, DeSantis trails Donald Trump, 55% to 16%.

California’s delegate apportionment rules grant all of the state’s 169 delegates to a candidate above 50%. That means if Trump holds this level of support next year, the former President will take all the delegates unless changes are made at the GOP Convention, which is at the end of the month. DeSantis’ gripes about the Golden State have been a recurring theme of his campaign up until now, including cautionary tales about San Francisco. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t affect people’s lives.

I was just in San Francisco. I saw — in 20 minutes on the ground — people defecating on the sidewalk. I saw people using fentanyl. I saw people smoking crack right there in the open, right there on the street. It was a civilization in decay,” the Governor said at a Faith & Freedom Coalition event in June. Earlier this year, DeSantis offered a provocation to the Golden State when he sent a flight full of undocumented immigrants from Texas to California, which he bragged about during an event in neighboring Arizona. “These sanctuary jurisdictions are part of the reason we have this problem because they have endorsed and agitated for these types of open border policies,” DeSantis said in June. The Governor has also attacked California law mandating humane treatment for pregnant pigs (something Florida has in its Constitution).

While at a Never Back Down bus tour stop in Atlantic, Iowa, he said his presidential administration would not “let California regulate how farmers in Iowa conduct their business on things like, you know, these pork producers have to follow California law to do this stuff.”