After President Donald Trump recently entered office for a second time, his administration seems poised to enact an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda more sweeping than his first term.
After Donald Trump’s stunning win over Kamala Harris in both the popular vote and electoral college, cranks have lined up to offer their hot-take-masquerading-as-diagnosis for why Democrats underperformed in 2024. Some have pinned the blame on “wokeness,” claiming that Democrats going to bat for the rights of transgender people placed them in a bad position against an increasingly right-wing American population. Pronouns, “latinx” and defunding the police, according to these pundits, cost Harris the election.
However, DeSantis’s brand of climate change denial is not merely about rejecting science but perpetuating cruelty.
Political machinery has a long history in UF SG, dating all the way back to its beginning. SG began in the summer of 1915 but in only a few years, a group of students conspired to monopolize its levers of power.
Here at UF, Gov. Ron DeSantis made multiple attempts to suppress pro-Palestinian students.
At UF’s Student Government, a similar DeSantian move to redraw election maps has taken place.
The disastrous and short-lived Sasse presidency came as no surprise to the majority of students, faculty and campus workers who opposed his appointment for its lack of transparency and his lack of qualification.
“Dark Brandon is coming back,” President Biden told one voter earlier this month. Dark Brandon, to review, is the internet meme that satirizes the president’s low energy persona by depicting him as a laser-eyed figure cloaked in darkness obliterating malarkey. Its inversion of reality is the punchline. Biden, too, has increasingly inverted reality as he desperately clings to his party’s nomination after a devastating debate performance.
I tuned into the first Presidential debate of the election season with alcohol in hand. My friends sat around the couch, watching the live political spectacle alongside 51 million other viewers. Drinks ran dry as both candidates made gaffe after gaffe. While former President Trump lied about abortion “even after birth” and denounced Biden as a “bad Palestinian,” our current President’s age became painfully visible as he struggled to form coherent answers to Trump’s rhetoric. Even when silent, Biden unnervingly stared off into space, looking visibly confused.
I co-organized my first protest the spring of my freshman year, opposing House Bill 1557 or the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. During our march through Gainesville, dozens of community members swelled the crowd while others heckled us with homophobic slurs.
Rey Arcenas is a UF history and women’s studies senior.
Solutions by The State News
