Such are the extremes to which Republican pols now go, having been pressured by their extremist base, whose extremism has been fed by extremist Republican pols. The circle of madness.
Salon: "Public universities in Florida will be required to survey both faculty and students on their political beliefs and viewpoints, with the institutions at risk of losing their funding if the responses are not satisfactory to the state's Republican-led legislature."
The draconian requirement is laid out in a law signed last week by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who hopes to be the next Donald Trump, going all the way. The law's stated purpose is to ensure "intellectual diversity" on college campuses, which will vanish, since faculty members may be identified in their surveyed responses. Any insufficiently intellectually "diverse" professor could be indirectly sacked by extremist Republican pols, once his or her employer is threatened with the loss of state funding.
The law's actual purpose was articulated by one of its chief lobbyists two months ago: "In a conversation with the Miami Herald … he said [the forthcoming law was] less about 'intellectual diversity' and more concerned with maintaining the country's conservative Christian identity."
Finally, as with the barrage of "election security" laws being by passed by GOP goons to battle the nonexistent plague of election fraud, "When pressed by reporters, the governor did not offer" — could not offer — "any specific examples of repression and discrimination faced by conservative students."
Never in my life did I suspect that before it was over — or at any time — a U.S. state's publicly funded colleges and universities would be subjected to the American right's version of Nazi Germany's "educational" system. Until now. And the Trumplike ghoul who governs the state is rumored to be in possession of a real shot at reoccupying the Wolf's Lair in Washington, D.C. — made realistically possible by just one or two ghoulish Republican states legally capable of declaring their Electoral Votes for whichever presidential candidate they please, voters be damned.