Kamala Harris Slams Ron DeSantis Over Florida's Black History 'Propaganda'

Vice President Kamala Harris laid into Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday for his administration’s controversial educational standards for teaching about Black history.

“They want to replace history with lies,” Harris said in Jacksonville, the Republican governor’s home turf, during a last-minute trip to the state. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not have it.”

The vice president, who made history as the first Black person to hold the position, met with local teachers and civil rights activists before giving an aggressive speech responding to GOP efforts nationwide to ban books and curtail rights in and out of the classroom.

Florida’s new social studies standards for K-12 schools were approved by the state board of education this week. They include instruction on how slaves benefited from skills that they learned. They also place an emphasis in early grades on the achievements of notable Black Americans rather than the challenges they faced.

A group of 11 organizations, including the NAACP, sent a letter to the board of education saying that students deserved the “full unvarnished history,” whether it be good or bad.

“How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Harris asked Friday.

She then took a dig at DeSantis who is running for the GOP presidential nomination by referring to “people who want to be leaders” and saying they are “pushing propaganda on our children.”

Under DeSantis’ tenure, Florida has enacted several controversial policies pertaining to classroom instruction. Earlier this year, the Florida school board banned the teaching of Advanced Placement African American Studies in high schools across the state, claiming the course lacked educational value. The state also enacted its so-called “Don’t Say Gay” measure that bars public school teachers from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity in grades kindergarten through eighth grade .

Harris first took aim against Florida’s education standards in Indianapolis Thursday at a national convention for Delta Sigma Theta, a historically Black sorority.

She warned that “there is so much at stake in this moment: our most basic rights and freedoms, fact versus fiction, foundational principles about what it means to be a democracy.”

DeSantis fired back on Friday by accusing Harris and other Democrats of lying.

“Democrats like Kamala Harris have to lie about Florida’s educational standards to cover for their agenda of indoctrinating students and pushing sexual topics onto children,” DeSantis said in a statement. 

The Florida governor then invoked the youngest daughter of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. The elder Biden has not yet publicly acknowledged the child. “Maybe if Biden’s granddaughter moved to Florida he’d actually visit her,” DeSantis said.

The governor’s response is only the latest example of Republicans flinging ugly attacks against the Bidens. At a congressional hearing earlier his week, far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) showed naked pictures of Hunter Biden that were obtained from his laptop.