Ron DeSantis
1949
DeSantis prefiled the oath of office with the Florida secretary of state and became governor on January 8, 2019. The official swearing-in ceremony was held at noon that day. On January 11, DeSantis posthumously pardoned the Groveland Four, four black men falsely convicted of rape in 1949.
September 14, 1978
Ronald Dion DeSantis (/dəˈsæntɪs/ or /diːsæntɪs/; born September 14, 1978) is an American politician serving since 2019 as the 46th governor of Florida. A member of the Republican Party, DeSantis represented Florida's 6th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2018.
1997
DeSantis's mother worked as a nurse and his father installed Nielsen TV-rating boxes. They met while attending Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio, during the 1970s and moved to Jacksonville, Florida, during that decade. His family then moved to Orlando, Florida, before relocating when he was six years old to the city of Dunedin in Florida's Tampa Bay area. His only sibling, younger sister Christina, died in 2015 at age 30 from a pulmonary embolism. He was a member of the Dunedin National team that made it to the 1991 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. DeSantis attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School and Dunedin High School, graduating in 1997.
2001
After high school, DeSantis studied history at Yale University. He was captain of Yale's varsity baseball team and joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He was an outfielder on that team; as a senior in 2001, he had the team's best batting average at .336. While attending Yale he worked a variety of jobs, including as an electrician's assistant and a coach at a baseball camp. DeSantis graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A., magna cum laude.
2004
Born in Jacksonville, DeSantis spent most of his childhood in Dunedin, Florida. He graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School. DeSantis joined the United States Navy in 2004 and was promoted to lieutenant before serving as a legal advisor to SEAL Team One. He was stationed at Joint Task Force Guantanamo in 2006, and was deployed to Iraq in 2007. When he returned to the U.S. about eight months later, the U.S. Department of Justice appointed DeSantis to serve as a Special Assistant U.S. attorney at the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida, a position he held until his honorable discharge from active military duty in 2010.
2004
In 2004, during his second year at Harvard Law, DeSantis was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy and assigned to the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG). He completed Naval Justice School in 2005. Later that year, he reported to the JAG Trial Service Office Command South East at Naval Station Mayport, Florida, as a prosecutor. He was promoted from lieutenant, junior grade to lieutenant in 2006.
2005
After Yale, he taught history and coached for a year at Darlington School in Georgia. He subsequently attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2005 with a Juris Doctor, cum laude.
2007
In 2007, DeSantis reported to the Naval Special Warfare Command Group in Coronado, California, where he was assigned as a legal adviser to SEAL Team One; he deployed to Iraq in the fall of 2007 as part of the 2007 troop surge. He served as legal adviser to Dane Thorleifson, the SEAL Commander of the Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah.
April 2008
DeSantis returned to the U.S. in April 2008, reassigned to the Naval Region Southeast Legal Service. The U.S. Department of Justice appointed him to serve as a Special Assistant U.S. attorney at the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida. DeSantis was assigned as a trial defense counsel until his honorable discharge from active duty in February 2010. He concurrently accepted a reserve commission as a lieutenant in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the US Navy Reserve.
September 26, 2009
DeSantis met his wife, Casey Black, on a golf course at the University of North Florida. She had been a television host for the Golf Channel, and then a television journalist and news anchor at WJXT. They married on September 26, 2009, in a chapel at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. DeSantis is a Roman Catholic, and the marriage was officiated by a Catholic priest.
2011
Following his successful reelection as governor, there was speculation that DeSantis would run for president in the 2024 United States presidential election. DeSantis announced his bid for president on May 24, 2023, and is continuing to serve as governor during his campaign. He has written two books; Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama was published before his first campaign for Congress in 2011, and The Courage to Be Free was published in 2023 before his presidential campaign.
2012
DeSantis was first elected to Congress in 2012 and was reelected in 2014 and 2016. During his tenure he became a founding member of the Freedom Caucus and was an ally of President Donald Trump. DeSantis criticized Special Council Robert Mueller's investigation into allegations of "links and/or coordination" between the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He briefly ran for U.S. Senate in 2016, but withdrew when incumbent senator Marco Rubio sought reelection. DeSantis won the Republican nomination for the 2018 gubernatorial election and narrowly defeated the Democratic nominee, Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum, in the general election by 0.4%.
2013
DeSantis signed a 2013 "No Climate Tax Pledge" against any tax hikes to fight global warming. He voted in favor of H.R. 45, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act in 2013. DeSantis introduced a bill in 2014 that would have required the Justice Department to report to Congress whenever any federal agency refrains from enforcing laws. In 2015, DeSantis was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, a group of congressional conservatives and libertarians.
2014
DeSantis defeated six candidates in the 2012 Republican primary for Florida's 6th congressional district, and defeated Democratic nominee Heather Beaven in the general election. He was reelected in 2014 and 2016.
2015
DeSantis called for IRS commissioner John Koskinen's resignation for having "failed the American people by frustrating Congress's attempts to ascertain the truth" about alleged IRS targeting of conservatives. He co-sponsored a bill to impeach Koskinen for violating the public's trust. He criticized IRS employee Lois Lerner and asked that she testify in front of Congress. The Citizens Against Government Waste, a conservative think tank, named DeSantis a "Taxpayer Superhero" in 2015. He is a past supporter of eliminating the federal income tax and the IRS, and co-sponsored legislation to replace them with a national sales tax called the FairTax.
2015
DeSantis was a critic of Obama's immigration policies, including deferred action legislation (DACA and DAPA), accusing Obama of failing to enforce immigration laws. In 2015 he co-sponsored Kate's Law, which would have increased penalties for aliens who unlawfully reenter the U.S. after being removed. DeSantis encouraged Florida sheriffs to cooperate with the federal government on immigration-related issues.
2015
In 2015, he introduced the Let Seniors Work Act, which would have repealed an incentive to retire instead of keep working and would have exempted senior citizens from the 12.4 percent Social Security payroll tax; he also co-sponsored a measure to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits. According to PolitiFact, it is “half true” that DeSantis voted to cut Social Security and Medicare and voted to increase the retirement age, because those votes were on non-binding resolutions that would not have become law even if passed, and because the objective was to stabilize those social programs to avoid steeper cuts later.
May 2015
In May 2015, DeSantis announced his candidacy for the 2016 United States Senate election in Florida. He ran for the seat held by Marco Rubio, who initially did not file to run for reelection due to his 2016 presidential campaign. DeSantis was endorsed by the fiscally conservative Club for Growth. When Rubio ended his presidential bid and ran for reelection to the Senate, DeSantis withdrew from the Senate race and ran for reelection to the House.
2016
In 2016, DeSantis introduced the Higher Education Reform and Opportunity Act, which would have allowed states to create their own accreditation systems. He said this legislation would also give students "access to federal loan money to put towards non-traditional educational opportunities, such as online learning courses, vocational schools, and apprenticeships in skilled trades".
2016
In 2016, DeSantis received a "0" rating from the Human Rights Campaign on LGBT-related legislation. Two years later, he told the Sun-Sentinel that he "doesn't want any discrimination in Florida, I want people to be able to live their life, whether you're gay or whether you're religious."
May 17, 2017
DeSantis was present before the June 2017 congressional baseball shooting, and the perpetrator asked him whether the players were Republicans. Later that summer, DeSantis proposed legislation that would have ended funding by November of that year for the Mueller investigation of President Trump. He said that the May 17, 2017, order that initiated the probe "didn't identify a crime to be investigated" and was likely to start a fishing expedition.
2018
DeSantis supports a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress, so that U.S. representatives would be limited to three terms and senators to two. He served three terms in the House of Representatives, retiring in 2018 to run for governor.
January 05, 2018
On January 5, 2018, DeSantis filed to run for governor of Florida to succeed term-limited Republican incumbent Rick Scott. President Trump had said the previous month that he would support DeSantis should he run for governor. During the Republican primary, DeSantis emphasized his support for Trump by running an ad in which DeSantis taught his children how to "build the wall" and say "Make America Great Again". Asked whether he could name an issue on which he disagreed with Trump, DeSantis declined. On August 28, 2018, DeSantis won the Republican primary, defeating his main opponent, Adam Putnam.
November 2018
DeSantis expressed support for the Voting Rights Restoration for Felons Initiative after it passed in November 2018, saying he was "obligated to faithfully implement [it] as it is defined" when he became governor. After he refused to restore voting rights for felons with unpaid fines, which voting rights groups said was inconsistent with the referendum's results, he was challenged in court. The Florida Supreme Court sided with DeSantis on the issue, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit also sided with DeSantis in a 6–4 ruling.
2019
According to the CDC, life expectancy during 2020 dropped in Florida to 77.5 years from 79 years in 2019; that fall of 1.5 years in Florida was less than the nationwide fall of 1.8 years. Both the statewide and nationwide falls in life expectancy were "mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in unintentional injuries", with the unintentional deaths mostly attributed to drug overdoses.
2019
DeSantis signed an executive order in 2019 that included a variety of components relating to the environment. These included a promise to spend $2.5 billion over four years on restoring the Everglades and "other water protection", and the creation of a Blue-Green Algae Task Force, an Office of Environmental Accountability and Transparency, and a Chief Science Officer. He also replaced the entire South Florida Water Management District board.
January 2019
In January 2019, DeSantis officially suspended Broward County sheriff Scott Israel ostensibly for his responses to the mass shootings at the Fort Lauderdale airport, where a Broward deputy disarmed the murderer 85 seconds after the shooting began, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, appointing Gregory Tony to replace Israel. In his first two weeks in office, DeSantis appointed Barbara Lagoa, Robert J. Luck and Carlos G. Muñiz to fill the three vacancies on the Florida Supreme Court, shifting the court's majority from liberal to conservative. In January 2019, he signed an executive order calling for the end of the nationwide K-12 educational standards initiative, Common Core, in Florida.
February 12, 2019
During his military career, DeSantis was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the Iraq Campaign Medal. He was still serving in the U.S. Navy Reserve as of his transition to the governorship. His U.S. Navy service ended on February 12, 2019, a month after his gubernatorial inauguration, with the rank of lieutenant commander.
April 2019
In April 2019, DeSantis directed Florida's elections chief to expand the availability of Spanish-language ballots and Spanish assistance for voters. In a statement, DeSantis said, "It is critically important that Spanish-speaking Floridians are able to exercise their right to vote without any language barriers."
June 2019
DeSantis has sought to ban "sanctuary cities". In June 2019, he signed an anti-"sanctuary city" bill into law. Florida had no sanctuary cities before the law's enactment, and immigration advocates called the bill politically motivated. DeSantis's administration allocated $12 million for relocating migrants to other states.
June 2019
During his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, DeSantis pledged to lower corporate income taxes to 5 percent or lower. During his tenure, corporate income taxes in Florida got as low as 3.5 percent in 2021, but by 2022 they had increased to 5.5 percent. DeSantis has maintained Florida's low-tax status during his time as governor. In June 2019, DeSantis signed a $91.1 billion budget the legislature passed the previous month, which was the largest in state history at the time, though he cut $131 million in appropriations. In June 2021, he signed a $101.5 billion budget that included $169 million in tax relief.
June 2019
In June 2019, DeSantis signed a measure that would make it harder to launch successful ballot initiatives. Petition-gathering for ballot initiatives to legalize medical cannabis, increases to the minimum wage, and expansion of Medicaid were also under way. DeSantis instructed Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to investigate whether Michael Bloomberg had criminally offered incentives for felons to vote by assisting in a fundraising effort to pay off their financial obligations so they could vote in the 2020 presidential election in Florida. No wrongdoing was found.
2020
In April 2021, DeSantis signed into law the Combating Public Disorder Act he had been advocating. Aside from being an anti-riot statute, it forbade intimidation by mobs; penalized damage to historic properties or memorials, such as downtown Miami's Christopher Columbus statue, which was damaged in 2020; and forbade publishing personal identifying information online with intent to harm. DeSantis had argued for this legislation by citing the George Floyd protests of 2020 and the 2021 United States Capitol attack, although only the former was mentioned at the signing ceremony. Several months after the signing, a federal judge blocked the portion of the law that introduced a new definition of "riot", calling it too vague.
2020
In February 2021, DeSantis announced his support for several election law restrictions. He called for eliminating ballot drop boxes and limiting voting by mail by requiring that voters re-register every year to vote by mail and that signatures on mail-in ballots "match the most recent signature on file" (rather than any of the voter's signatures in the Florida system). The changes to mail-in voting were notable given that Republicans had historically voted by mail more than Democrats, but Democrats outvoted Republicans by mail in 2020. According to a Tampa Bay Times analysis, DeSantis' signature match proposal could have led to rejections of his own mail-in ballots due to changes in his signature history over time; voting rights experts argued that the signature matching proposal could be used to disenfranchise voters whose signatures varied over time.
March 2020
During 2020 and 2021, scientists and media outlets gave mixed reviews of DeSantis's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of October 2021, Florida's age-adjusted death rate was the 24th-highest in the nation; from March 2020 through March 22, 2023, Florida had the 12th-highest rate in cases and deaths per 100,000 people among the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, without adjusting for the age of Florida's large and vulnerable elderly population. By 2023, many political scientists acknowledged that DeSantis' management of the pandemic may have benefited him in his reelection campaign, and he was credited with turning "his coronavirus policies into a parable of American freedom".
March 11, 2020
By March 11, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) concluded that community spread of the pandemic had occurred within Florida. After considering the matter for a few weeks, on April 1 DeSantis issued an executive order to restrict activities within the state to those deemed essential services. By June, he had adopted a more targeted approach, declaring in mid-June:
July 10, 2020
On July 10, 2020, DeSantis announced that Florida would spend $8.6 million out of $166 million received by the state from a legal settlement between Volkswagen and the United States Department of Justice relating to emission violations to add 34 charging stations for electric cars. The stations would be along Interstates 4, 75, 95, 275 and 295. On June 16, 2021, DeSantis signed into law House Bill 839, which bans local governments in Florida from requiring gas stations to add electric car charging stations.
November 2020
In November 2020, DeSantis proposed an "anti-mob" extension to the preexisting stand-your-ground law in Florida that would allow gun-owning residents to use deadly force on people they believe are looting. It would also make blocking traffic during a protest a third-degree felony and impose criminal penalties for partaking in "violent or disorderly assemblies".
December 2020
Throughout most of 2019, Florida's unemployment rate hovered below 5 percent. During the COVID-19 lockdown in early to mid-2020, Florida, and most other states, saw unemployment rates near 15 percent. DeSantis partially blamed his gubernatorial predecessor, Rick Scott, for leaving behind a dejected unemployment system that created backlogs as COVID-19 damaged the state economy. Afterward, Florida's economy swiftly started recovering, and the unemployment rate fell below 7 percent by the latter half of 2020. In December 2020, DeSantis ordered the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity to extend unemployment waivers until February 27, 2021. Since May 2022, Florida's unemployment rate has sat around two percent, below the national average.
2021
By April 2021, Florida was 27th out of 50 in both cases and deaths per capita. In May 2021, DeSantis rescinded the state of emergency and all COVID-19-related public health orders, statewide. The same day, he signed a bill into law that prohibited businesses, cruise ships, schools, and government entities from requiring proof of vaccination for use of services. Amid a July resurgence in new infections, DeSantis banned public schools from implementing mask mandates and thus left mask-wearing up to the students' parents, though he advised them against it because "it's terribly uncomfortable for [children] to do it; there's not very much science behind it." Later in 2021, his executive order about masking was superseded by a new state statute that he signed accomplishing the same thing.
February 2021
By February 2021, DeSantis had generally positive approval ratings, ranging from 51 to 64 percent. That same month, the Biden administration mulled imposing travel restrictions on Florida and other domestic locations to prevent further spread of COVID-19, and DeSantis pledged to oppose any effort "to shut FL's border". In March 2021, Politico called DeSantis the nation's most "politically ascendant" governor, as his controversial policies had been at that point "short of or even the opposite of ruinous", while Florida had "fared no worse, and in some ways better, than many other states".
February 02, 2021
On February 2, 2021, DeSantis announced support for legislation to crack down on Big Tech and prevent alleged political censorship.
March 2021
In March 2021, DeSantis proposed legislation to impose restrictions and stricter requirements for Florida universities to collaborate with Chinese academics and universities; he said this would crack down on economic espionage by China. DeSantis signed two such bills in June.
May 2021
As governor, DeSantis resisted taking many of the measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 that various other state governments implemented, such as face-mask mandates, stay-at-home orders, and vaccination requirements. Florida's age-adjusted death rate for COVID-19 remained near the national average, while Florida experienced above-average economic growth and the fastest population growth of any state in the country. In May 2021, DeSantis signed into law a bill that prohibited businesses, schools, cruise ships, and government entities from requiring proof of vaccination. He cut state-government spending, which, combined with federal stimulus payments and high sales-tax revenue, led to the largest budget surplus in Florida history. DeSantis engaged in recovery efforts after Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Nicole, and oversaw the passage of the controversial Parental Rights in Education Act. He was reelected in a landslide in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial election; his 19.4% margin of victory over Charlie Crist was the state's largest in 40 years.
May 2021
In May 2021, he signed a deal with the Seminole Tribe of Florida to allow the tribe to offer statewide online sports betting. In its 2021 session, the Florida legislature passed DeSantis's top priorities. During his tenure, DeSantis has had a generally smooth relationship with the legislature, which enacted many of his proposals.
May 05, 2021
On May 5, 2021, DeSantis announced that all Florida police officers, firefighters, and paramedics would receive a $1,000 bonus.
June 01, 2021
On June 1, 2021, DeSantis signed the Fairness in Women's Sports Act (SB 1028). It bans transgender girls and women from participating and competing in middle-school and high-school girls' and college women's sports competitions in Florida. The law took effect on July 1.
June 2021
In June 2021, DeSantis led an effort to ban the teaching of critical race theory in Florida public schools (though it had not been part of Florida's public school curriculum). He described critical race theory as "teaching kids to hate their country", mirroring a similar push by conservatives nationally. The Florida Board of Education approved the ban on June 10. The Florida Education Association criticized the ban, accusing the board of trying to hide facts from students. Other critics claimed the ban was an effort to "politicize classroom education and whitewash American history".
June 21, 2021
On June 21, 2021, DeSantis signed into law House Bill 919, which prohibits local governments from placing bans or restrictions on any source of electricity. Several sizable cities in Florida at that time (Orlando, St. Petersburg, Tallahassee, Dunedin, Largo, Satellite Beach, Gainesville, Sarasota, Safety Harbor and Miami Beach) were setting goals to get all their energy from renewable sources. The bill was described as similar to those in other states (Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona and Oklahoma) that passed laws preventing cities from banning natural gas hookups. DeSantis also signed a bill incentivizing wildlife corridors.
August 2021
By August 2021, amid a record in new cases within the state, Florida had become the state with the highest per capita hospitalizations for COVID-19. DeSantis disputed President Joe Biden's assertion that Florida was not doing enough to combat the pandemic. He also argued that Biden was allowing COVID transmission across the southern U.S. border. The Washington Post reported that this claim was based on "guesswork and assumptions, not evidence", while PolitiFact reported that COVID-19 hot spots tend to be clustered far from the border, in places with low rates of public vaccination, not along the southern border, as would be expected if migrants were driving the surge in cases.
September 2021
Between 2021 and 2023, various notable people urged DeSantis to run for president in the 2024 election. In September 2021, he called 2024 speculation "purely manufactured". In April 2023, he said, "I am not a candidate, so we’ll see if and when that changes"; at that time, Trump was leading DeSantis in polls for the Republican nomination, but DeSantis was performing better than Trump in battleground polling of the general election.
September 2021
DeSantis opposes efforts to defund the police, and as governor has introduced initiatives to "fund the police". In September 2021, he introduced a $5,000 signing bonus for Florida police officers in a bid to attract out-of-state police recruits.
September 2021
In September 2021, DeSantis announced he would run for reelection. On November 7, he filed the necessary paperwork to officially enter the race. In the general election, he faced Democratic nominee Charlie Crist, a U.S. representative and former Florida governor. Crist heavily criticized DeSantis's decision to deport illegal immigrants to Democratic states, arguing that it was human rights abuse. During an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, Crist called DeSantis "one of the biggest threats to democracy".
September 14, 2021
On September 14, 2021, DeSantis announced that Florida would replace the Florida Standards Assessment (FSA) test with a system of smaller tests scattered throughout the year. He said there would be three tests, in the fall, winter and spring, each smaller than the FSA. Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran agreed with the decision, calling it a "huge victory for the school system". The new system is to be implemented by the 2022–23 school year.
November 2021
In November 2021, DeSantis signed into law a legislative package that made Florida the first state to impose fines on businesses and hospitals that require COVID-19 vaccination without exemptions or alternatives.
November 22, 2021
As a result of a significant increase in gasoline prices, on November 22, 2021, DeSantis announced that he would temporarily waive Florida's gasoline tax in the next legislative session, in 2022.
December 02, 2021
On December 2, 2021, DeSantis announced that as part of a $100 million funding proposal for the Florida National Guard, $3.5 million would be allocated to the reactivation of the Florida State Guard, a volunteer state defense force that had been inactive since 1947.
December 15, 2021
On December 15, 2021, DeSantis announced a new bill, the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act ("Stop WOKE Act"), which would allow parents to sue school districts that teach critical race theory. The bill is designed to combat "woke indoctrination" in Florida businesses and schools by preventing instruction that could make some people feel they bear "personal responsibility" for historic wrongdoings because of their race, gender or national origin, preventing instruction that teaches that people are "inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously", and preventing instruction that teaches that groups of people are oppressed or privileged based on their race, gender or national origin. He said of the bill, "No taxpayer dollars should be used to teach our kids to hate our country or hate each other." On August 18, 2022, a Florida judge blocked the act, saying that it violates the First Amendment and is too vague.
2022
As governor, DeSantis has overseen the executions of five inmates, all of them convicted murderers. In 2022, DeSantis criticized the life sentence jurors imposed on the Parkland high school shooter, as opposed to the death penalty. In that case, nine jurors supported a death sentence, but three blocked it. In April 2023, DeSantis signed a law (Senate Bill 450) that allows juries to impose a death sentence if at least eight of the 12 jurors agree. In May 2023, DeSantis signed a law allowing those convicted of raping a child under 12 years old to receive the death penalty, defying and setting up a "challenge" to the Supreme Court decision Kennedy v. Louisiana.
2022
Florida saw fast economic and population growth in 2022 and 2023, together with a record state budget surplus. In June 2022, DeSantis decided against ordering COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5, making Florida the only state not to preorder vaccines for that demographic.
2022
He is a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. In 2022, DeSantis appeared on the Time 100, Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
2022
In the spring of 2006, DeSantis arrived at Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), working directly with detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The records of his service in the Navy were often redacted upon release to the public, to protect personal privacy, according to the Navy. Mansur Ahmad Saad al-Dayfi, who was held at Guantanamo, alleged in 2022 that DeSantis oversaw force-feedings of detainees.
2022
The day after his primary win, in a televised Fox News interview, DeSantis said, "The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state". His use of the word "monkey" received widespread media attention, and was interpreted by some, including Florida Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo, as a racist dog whistle alluding to the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Andrew Gillum, who is African-American. DeSantis denied the racism charge. Dexter Filkins, writing in The New Yorker in 2022, called it a "disastrous gaffe", and quoted an unnamed ally of DeSantis lamenting that afterward, "We were handling Gillum with kid gloves. We can't hit the guy, because we're trying to defend the fact that we're not racist."
February 2022
In February 2022, DeSantis voiced his support for the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act (HB1557), commonly known as the "Don't Say Gay" law, which would prohibit discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in school classrooms from kindergarten to grade 3. He said it was "entirely inappropriate" for teachers and school administrators to talk to students about their gender identity. DeSantis signed the bill (House Bill 1557) into law on March 28, 2022, and it took effect on July 1. This statute also includes a provision "requiring school district personnel to encourage a student to discuss issues relating to his or her well-being with his or her parent or to facilitate discussion of the issue with the parent", and does not limit such issues to sexual orientation or gender identity. As of March 2023, DeSantis was considering further similar legislation for all grades. On April 19, the state board of education extended the act’s restrictions on classroom instruction to grades 4-12, unless the instruction is required by existing state standards or is part of an elective course on reproductive health.
April 2022
The Walt Disney Company, owner of Walt Disney World in Florida, called for the law’s repeal, beginning a dispute between Disney and the state government. In April 2022, DeSantis signed a bill eliminating the company’s special independent district and replacing its Disney-appointed board of overseers. He also threatened during a press confrence to build a new state prison near the Disney World complex. On April 26, 2023, Disney filed suit against DeSantis and several others, accusing them of utilizing political power for "government retaliation" purposes.
April 14, 2022
Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, DeSantis pledged to "expand pro-life protections". On April 14, 2022, he signed into law a bill that regulates elective abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy; under the previous law, the limit had been 24 weeks. The law includes exceptions for abortions beyond 15 weeks if it is necessary to avert "serious risk" to the pregnant woman's physical health or if there is a "fatal fetal abnormality", but does not make exceptions for rape, human trafficking, incest, or mental health.
September 2022
DeSantis was widely praised for the state's response to Hurricane Ian — the deadliest hurricane to hit Florida in over 85 years. In September 2022, DeSantis declared a state of emergency for all of Florida as Ian approached and asked for federal aid ahead of time. On October 5, after Ian deserted Florida, President Biden arrived in Florida and met with DeSantis and Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. DeSantis and Biden held a press conference in Fort Myers to report on the status of the cleanup. In addition, DeSantis partnered with Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, Inc., to use the Starlink satellite Internet service to help restore communication across the state.
September 2022
In September 2022, after similar actions by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, an agent of DeSantis recruited 50 newly arrived asylum seekers, mostly from Venezuela, in San Antonio, Texas, and flew them via two chartered planes to the Crestview, Florida airport, where they did not debark, then proceeded to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Attorneys representing the immigrants claimed the refugees were lied to, promised jobs, funds, English lessons, legal services and housing assistance at their destination. The Florida legislature had appropriated $12 million to transport migrants out of the state, funding under the purview of attorney Larry Keefe, DeSantis's public safety czar, who was in charge of immigrant affairs and had a prior relationship with the air carrier. Vertol was paid $615,000 on September 8 for the transport, and received another $980,000 less than two weeks later. The destination community was not notified of the refugees' impending arrival and requirements. The migrants filed a class-action suit against DeSantis, calling his treatment of them "extreme and outrageous, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community."
January 2023
In January 2023, DeSantis announced a proposal to permanently ban COVID-19 mandates in Florida. The proposal includes a permanent ban of mask requirements throughout the state, vaccine and mask requirements in schools, COVID-19 passports in the state, and employers hiring or firing based on COVID-19 vaccines.
January 2023
The law was expected to go into effect on July 1, but a state judge blocked its enforcement, ruling that the Florida Constitution guarantees a right to privacy that renders the law unconstitutional. After DeSantis appealed the ruling, the law went into effect on July 5, pending judicial review. In January 2023, the Supreme Court of Florida agreed to hear a legal challenge to the law.
March 2023
In March 2023, DeSantis said in a press conference of SB300, which bans abortions after six weeks with exceptions to 15 weeks for rape and incest: "I think those exceptions are sensible. We welcome pro-life legislation." Floridian physicians have expressed concern about the bill; most major medical societies such as AMA, ACOG, and AAP consider abortion essential and life-saving health care, but SB300 will make providing abortion punishable by up to five years in prison. DeSantis signed the bill into law on April 14, 2023.
March 2023
In March 2023, fact-checkers at PolitiFact said it would be misleading and mostly false to say in present tense that DeSantis wants to raise the retirement age to 70, because he has walked back that position he took ten years earlier. His current stance is that "we’re not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans".
April 03, 2023
On April 3, 2023, DeSantis signed HB 543 into law, which allows Florida residents to carry concealed handguns without a permit. The law will go into effect on July 1, 2023.
May 2023
DeSantis is not wealthy compared to other national politicians. As of May 2023, his assets included $105,755 in a thrift savings plan, $30,302 in the Florida Retirement System, a $134,181 governor’s salary, and $235,000 in a USAA account. He has free housing at the Florida Governor's Mansion, and about $21,000 in student loan debt. At the end of 2021, he reported a net worth of $318,987.
May 24, 2023
On May 24, 2023, DeSantis officially launched his bid for president. His bid for the presidency was announced over Twitter, with assistance from its owner, Elon Musk.
Early 2023
DeSantis' initial rollout of vaccines in early 2021 gave rise to various complaints about favoritism toward campaign contributors and discrimination against communities that were predominantly Democratic, poor, or inhabited by ethnic and racial minorities. DeSantis denied the alleged favoritism, defended his handling of the rollout, and pointed toward many vaccines distributed in underserved communities.
2024
DeSantis won the November 8 election in a landslide, with 59.4 percent of the vote to Crist's 40 percent; it was the largest margin of victory in a Florida gubernatorial election since 1982. Significantly, DeSantis won Miami-Dade County, which had been a Democratic stronghold since 2002, and Palm Beach County, which had not voted Republican since 1986. Crist conceded the election shortly after DeSantis was projected as the winner. At DeSantis's victory rally, supporters chanted "two more years" at various times rather than the common "four more years" to show support for DeSantis for president in 2024.
2024
The gubernatorial debate was held on October 23, and the candidates exchanged attacks. At one point, Crist asked DeSantis whether he would serve a full four-year term, in relation to talk about a potential DeSantis campaign for president in 2024. DeSantis responded, "the only worn-out old donkey I'm looking to put out to pastures is Charlie Crist". DeSantis mentioned that Crist promised in his 2006 gubernatorial campaign that he would not raise taxes, but when elected signed a large increase in taxes and fees. He also criticized Crist's role as U.S. representative, saying that during 2022, Crist showed up for work for only 14 days.
