Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended his call to ban pro-Palestinian groups from Florida state colleges Sunday, after one of his Republican presidential primary opponents, Vivek Ramaswamy, slammed the demand as “a shameful political ploy.”
“It’s unconstitutional. It’s utter hypocrisy for someone who railed against left-wing cancel culture,” Ramaswamy posted on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday, alleging that it violates students’ right to free speech.
DeSantis held firm Sunday.
“This is not cancel culture. This group, they themselves said, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack, that they don’t just stand in solidarity that they are part of this Hamas movement,” DeSantis said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
I think their really, and I cannot stress this enough, paper thin argument was that Palestinian isn’t a race per se. They also are ignoring the very clear intention that is discrimination based on nationality which is illegal in most cases in the US (see customs and border patrol for exceptions that shouldn’t be granted but are in fact institutionally legal).
Again their point is fairly pointless, useless even, and they could’ve said it without coming off like an asshole trying to nettle at a topic they don’t understand. But I do think that was the point to their poorly constructed question.
For reference what is happening is federally illegal and specifically goes against the protections against national origins (see the section on public accommodations): https://www.justice.gov/crt/federal-protections-against-national-origin-discrimination-1
That’s how I read their question as well. I just went with the snarky answer :)