Corona Ron DeSantis Is Playing With a Losing Hand

Florida is currently in the throes of one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the country with a whopping 18.4% positivity rate, and it continues to be one of the top states when it comes to the average number of new cases reported daily.  Governor Death Sentence is proudly presiding over his state's COVID spiral, now even claiming that the latest spike in cases was merely a “seasonal” effect and no government measures could have prevented it.  Well, it looks like Corona Ronnie may have dealt himself a losing hand.

The week began on a bad note as  Judge Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida smacked down DeSantis in a 60-page ruling granting Norwegian Cruise Lines an injunction blocking the governor’s law that prevents businesses requiring proof of vaccination.   Since the day DeSantis announcd his “no vaccine passports” policy, Norwegian has been unflinching in its opposition, threatening in May to skip Florida ports altogether if the governor’s ban was upheld.  Now it looks like the cruise line will be checking for vaccine cards in the Sunshine State, now that Corona Ron has lost both in Circuit Court last week and District Court on Sunday night.

Ronnie is also losing on the school front.  At the end of July, Ron DeSantis signed an executive order that said states which required face masks risked losing their funding. The DeSantis administration clarified that any loss of funding would not directly affect students, but could come from the salary of school board members or the superintendent who violated the law. 

Superintendent Rocky Hanna of the Leon County School District said his priority was keeping students safe amid the state’s rising case numbers. “If something happened and things went sideways for us this week and next week as we started school, and heaven forbid we lost a child to this virus, I can’t just simply blame the governor of the state,” he said. “I can’t.” Hanna added that if he didn’t do what was best for students in his district, then that would be on him. 

In speaking to ABC News, Carlee Simon, superintendent of Alachua County Public Schools, said she was following the advice of experts and was letting them guide her decision-making process. "The safety and the security and the quality of instructional hours are what matters right now," she stated in an interview. In reference to defying the ban on masks, she added, "I know it appears I'm being combative and I don't want to be combative, but this is the responsibility I have in this position."

And now the Broward County School Board has voted to maintain the school district's mask mandate that was originally approved July 28. "You can't ignore this pandemic. It's deadly, and it's getting worse instead of better and the more we don't use masks, the more we position the mutation of this virus to grow," said Rosalind Osgood, school board chair.

Several lawsuits have since been filed challenging the constitutionality of the executive order. Several school districts are considering mask mandates and a few have said masks will be required, with some opt-out exceptions. Other school districts that have defied DeSantis' executive order and instituted a mask mandate include Leon County, which includes Tallahassee; Alachua County, which includes Gainesville; Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa; and Orange County, which includes Orlando.

 

And now, even individual parents are getting in on the "Smackdown Ron" action.  Judi Hayes and a handful of other concerned parents with students who have disabilities filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida and DeSantis. It's the second lawsuit DeSantis is facing over his mask mandate ban.

"It is a common sense, reasonable accommodation for a vulnerable child who is immunocompromised or at risk of a serious disease to require a public entity to implement simple precautions to ensure that the most vulnerable children are safe," the lawsuit states. "While this proposition should not be in dispute, Governor DeSantis' executive order requires school districts to defy their obligations under Federal Law and harms the children who the disability discrimination laws were enacted to protect."

The lawsuit claims violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

 

Corona Ron is even losing among members of his own political party.   A Republican senator from Louisiana and longtime physician has criticized DeSantis'  decision to ban mask mandates in public schools.  “I’m a conservative,” Sen Bill Cassidy said. “I think you govern best when you govern closest to the people being governed. And if the local community ... their ICU is full, and the people at the local schools see that they’ve got to make sure they stay open because otherwise children miss out for another year of school, and they put in policy, then the local officials should be listened to.  I don’t want to top down from Washington DC I don’t want to top down from a governor’s office.”

The Delta variant has ravaged Louisiana as well as Florida, which recorded its highest daily case total last week since the beginning of the pandemic.  Sen Cassidy continued: “When it comes to local conditions, if my hospital is full and my vaccination rate is low and infection rate is going crazy, we should allow local officials to make those decisions best for their community.”