When conservative justices on the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron precedent last week — and essentially hampered federal agencies, or their experts, from instituting regulations as they see fit — it was a devastating attack in the GOP’s war on fact-based governance.
Donald Trump’s Republican Party is a cult of personality that rejects empirical data when it’s inconvenient and crusades against institutions that impede its political goals. And at both the national level and state level, this movement is moving in sync.
A new veto by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is proof positive.
Among four vetoes announced by DeSantis last week, one of the bills — the bipartisan Senate Bill 165 — involved beach closures over water quality.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat:
SB 165 would have required the [Florida] Department of Health to adopt and enforce rules for sampling beach waters and public bathing spaces and issue health advisories within 24 hours if the quality failed to meet standards. Under the bill, the DOH would have to notify local television stations about the advisory. The DOH would be able to close beaches and public bathing spaces if it deemed it necessary “to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public.”
In a letter justifying his decision, DeSantis claimed that the Florida Department of Health “should not be vested with the power to supersede local jurisdictions regarding the operation of beaches.” That sentence doesn’t really complete the thought, though, does it? What he’s really saying is that the department shouldn’t be vested with the power to close beaches even if it determines those beaches are rife with hazardous materials that could harm beachgoers.
It shouldn’t surprise you that this is the same guy who cut funding for stormwater drainage while residents in his state were being battered by a tropical storm. Cruel and unusual lawmaking is DeSantis’ modus operandi. And he’s been on a veto tear this legislative session in particular, with many of his other vetoes exhibiting his far-right ideology.
A recent study listed two of the state’s beaches as being among the most polluted in the U.S., after their waters were found to have loads of harmful chemicals, stormwater runoff and raw sewage.
The SB 165 veto is arguably the most dangerous one for Floridians. A recent study listed two of the state’s beaches as being among the most polluted in the U.S., after their waters were found to have loads of harmful chemicals, stormwater runoff and raw sewage.
You read that right: raw sewage.
On that note, the Florida Department of Health recently issued a warning about other beaches due to potential fecal pollution, after finding high traces of a literally sickening bacteria — Enterococcus — that’s often found in human stool.
Just another day in the life of Ron DeSantis: Florida’s anti-“woke” crusader. Owning the libs and undermining government institutions, all so Floridians can keep their right to backstroke in poopy water that may make them ill.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.