hochman, nate

ntbcw CA AG cand

see haiti pet BS

---

-=-=-=

-=-=

RWW

09/09/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Andrea Fuller, Ken Bensinger and Edward Wong @ The New York Times: For Fired DeSantis Campaign Staff Member, a Second Chance at State Dept.

The hiring of Nate Hochman, who lost his job amid an uproar over a video containing a Nazi symbol, underscores the administration’s willingness to overlook past transgressions.

NYT

In 2023, a young speechwriter for the presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida suffered a seemingly devastating career setback.

Within days of Nate Hochman’s promotion of a pro-DeSantis video that flashed an image embraced by white supremacists, public outcry grew, and he was among a group of staff members fired by the campaign.

But Mr. Hochman’s career was not over. Within a year, he was making videos with America 2100, a right-wing advocacy group with ties to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Then came a stint working for a Republican senator on Capitol Hill.

This year, Mr. Hochman took a position as a senior aide to one of the most powerful figures in the federal government. He joined the State Department under Mr. Rubio and now works as deputy director of the agency’s policy planning office. According to Mr. Hochman’s email signature, he is also Mr. Rubio’s chief speechwriter.

Mr. Hochman did not respond to a request for comment.

“Nate Hochman is a trusted and key member of the department who has worked tirelessly to advance the president’s foreign policy agenda,” Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement.

Mr. Hochman’s trajectory is far from unique in today’s Washington. He has joined the growing ranks of those who have found that a public controversy — even one associated with a high-profile dismissal — is not disqualifying for entry into the top ranks of the Trump administration.

...

---

an 6 25

In 2023, far-right conspiracy theorist Nate Hochman (not to be confused with 61-year-old Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman) was fired from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' struggling presidential campaign after promoting an online video that contained neo-Nazi imagery.

But that wasn't the end of Hochman's involvement in politics. In February, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) hired Hochman as a policy adviser — a move that, according to The Guardian's Jason Wilson, shows that in 2025, "there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican Party politics."

In an article published on June 6, Wilson explains, "The Guardian reported last September on Hochman's previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a think tank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio's chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the State Department. In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman's work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos — some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations."

Wilson adds, "This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative's political career."

IFrame Content

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, finds Schmitt's willingness to hire Hochman troubling.

Beirich told The Guardian, "Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays. Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don't seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency."

Wilson notes that in 2022, Hochman promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory during an interview with right-wing radio host Glenn Beck — claiming that the Biden Administration was "fundamentally trying to change this country through their illegal immigration policy."

*Read The Guardian's full article at this link.

---

Nate Hochman (@njhochman) / X

X · njhochman

69K+ followers](https://twitter.com/njhochman)

Firefighters, cops and other first responders have been fired or suspended for criticizing BLM, voicing support for President Trump—even donating $25 to ...

[### Nate Hochman - X

x.com

https://x.com › njhochman › status](https://x.com/njhochman/status/1883960109048688681)

Jan 27, 2025 — Donald Trump could be the first Republican president in modern history to actually govern the way he ran in the primary.

Including results for *nathan*** hochman trump claremont immigrant

Search only for nate hochman trump claremont immigrant

Search Results

[### How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center ...

The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com › 2022/08/03 › magazine › cl...](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/magazine/claremont-institute-conservative.html)

Jun 15, 2023 — When Trump failed to win re-election, some Claremonters accused Democrats of using the pandemic to unconstitutionally change election laws to ...

[### The Radical Young Intellectuals Who Want to Take Over ...

The New Republic

https://newrepublic.com › article › young-intellectuals-i...](https://newrepublic.com/article/164408/young-intellectuals-illiberal-revolution-conservatism)

Dec 2, 2021 — “Conservatism in 2021 means radicalism,” announced Nate Hochman, a 23-year-old writer at National Review. Describing the posture of his ...

[### Activist with far-right ties fronts Marco Rubio-linked anti- ...

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › sep › nate-ho...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/21/nate-hochman-marco-rubio-anti-immigrant-thinktank-america-2100)

Sep 21, 2024 — Nate Hochman recorded several videos for America 2100, a thinktank linked to the Republican Florida senator.

[### Donald Trump and the "Vision Thing" - by Damon Linker

Substack · Notes from the Middleground

40+ likes · 1 year ago](https://damonlinker.substack.com/p/donald-trump-and-the-vision-thing)

An essay published last week by a Ron DeSantis campaign staffer helps explain what really gave the former president his edge against the ...

[### The Claremont Institute and Trump's Politics of White Fear

LAmag

https://lamag.com › news › claremont-institute-trump](https://lamag.com/news/claremont-institute-trump)

Sep 10, 2020 — From the Claremont Institute's apocalyptic rhetoric to Stephen Miller's anti-immigration fervor, the right-wing's most controversial messaging has a long ...

Missing: nate ‎| Show results with: nate

[### The Right Now

Claremont Review of Books

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com › the-right-now](https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-right-now/)

In The Conservative Sensibility (2019), George F. Will emphasizes the resulting Americanness of American conservatism. The thing this republic's conservatives ...

[### How white victimhood is shaping a second Trump term - Vox

vox.com

https://www.vox.com › politics › republicans-white-ide...](https://www.vox.com/politics/357963/republicans-white-identity-politics-newsletter)

Jul 2, 2024 — As the GOP's voting base diversifies, conservative elites are doubling down on white identity politics.

[### Nate Hochman (@njhochman) / X

X · njhochman

69K+ followers](https://twitter.com/njhochman)

Firefighters, cops and other first responders have been fired or suspended for criticizing BLM, voicing support for President Trump—even donating $25 to ...

Missing: claremont ‎| Show results with: claremont

[### Nate Hochman – On the Slow Divorce Between ...

Independent Women's Forum

https://www.iwf.org › The Latest](https://www.iwf.org/2023/02/15/nate-hochman-republicans-and-big-business/)

Feb 15, 2023 — NRO Staff Writer Nate Hochman rejoins the podcast to talk through his extensive reporting on the influence of big business in red states.

[### Ourselves and Our Posterity

Claremont Review of Books

https://staging.claremontreviewofbooks.com › ourselves...](https://staging.claremontreviewofbooks.com/ourselves-and-our-posterity/)

Immigration, tribalism, and globalism have shattered the idea that there's still a coherent population that the American government is supposed to ...

---

an 9 24

alternet-trump has a brand new front in the Haitian conspiracy push

Jordan Greenand Raw Story September 23, 2024

During a campaign rally in Tucson, Ariz., earlier this month — his first since debating Vice President Kamala Harris — former President Donald Trump doubled down on his false claims that Haitians are stealing and eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Then, he tossed another small Rust Belt community into the national spotlight.

“Likewise, a small 4,000-person town, Charleroi, Pennsylvania,” Trump said. “Have you ever heard of it? Charleroi. What a beautiful name. But it’s not beautiful now. It’s experienced a 2,000 percent increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris.

“So, Pennsylvania: Remember this when you have to go to vote,” Trump added.

The sudden burst of attention by Trump and his allies on the borough of Charleroi in Pennsylvania’s Mon Valley is yet more evidence that the campaign is leaning into racial scapegoating as an electoral strategy to win critical swing states, even as critics warn the rhetoric could spill into vigilante violence.

ALSO READ: Let's call Springfield what it is: Republican-made terrorism

Trump and his MAGA allies' focus on Charleroi appears to have begun on Sept. 11, when a shadowy nonprofit linked to a former speechwriter for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign posted an interview with a pro-Trump member of the Charleroi borough council.

The language in the X post by the nonprofit America 2100 is markedly similar to what Trump would say at his campaign rally the following day.

“It isn’t just Springfield; it’s happening everywhere,” the post reads. “In Charleroi, Pennsylvania — a low-income town of just 4,000 — the immigrant population has increased by 2,000% over the past two years. It’s almost all Haitians.”

The America 2100 post was boosted when Donald Trump Jr. re-posted it only 10 minutes later.

Nate Hochman, a senior adviser to America 2100 and the only person publicly identified with the nonprofit, was fired from the DeSantis campaign in June 2023 after reportedly making a video featuring the Sonnenrad — a symbol also known as the Black Sun that is associated with Nazis — and tweeting it from a pro-DeSantis account.

Previously, Hochman had praised Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has denied the Holocaust and made numerous antisemitic statements. Hochman said on a December 2021 Twitter Space chat that Fuentes had “gotten a lot of kids based, and we respect that for sure.” He added: “But the fact that you’ve said super edgy things means that there’s a pretty strong ceiling to what you can accomplish in politics.”

Hochman, a former intern at the Claremont Institute’s American Mind magazine and now a contributor at the American Spectator, announced on X on Monday that he was making a road trip to Charleroi “to report on the Haitian immigration crisis.”

Over the course of the week, Hochman posted video after video on the America 2100 X account, featuring interviews with local white residents who were unhappy about their new Haitian neighbors.

In one interview, a white man identified as “Tom” complains that the Haitians “have no interest in our culture” and that they open their own groceries “at the main drag of town.” The X post identifies Tom as “a lifelong native,” although the video shows Tom saying he moved to Charleroi in 2017.

In a video posted on Thursday, a man identified as “Ernie” laments that Charleroi “used to be a nice, middle-of-nowhere blue-collar town.”

“I think they’ve just destroyed the town, and they’ve bought all these properties,” Ernie says. “Okay, you might be able to buy a house cheap, but what kind of people are you gonna get in?”

“Yeah, what kind of neighbors you have?” Hochman says.

“Well, that’s it,” Ernie says. “And right now I’m surrounded by the immigrants.”

Some of the America 2100 X posts echo Great Replacement, a white supremacist conspiracy theory that, taken to an extreme, falsely claims that white people face genocide because of demographic changes.

“One thing that can’t be overstated is the degree to which mass migration wreaks havoc on the social cohesion of the already-existing community,” reads one post from a Sept. 7 thread about Springfield. “Local landlords, for example, have been making a killing. But they’re replacing their fellow citizens — and locals hate them for it.”

The post includes screengrabs from the “Haitian Community in Springfield, Ohio” Facebook page. One commenter replies to a post by a local realtor offering her services to the immigrant community by writing, “Wouldn’t plan on staying too long.”

Another X post by the America 2100 account refers to immigrants as “invaders,” using verbiage that turned up in the manifesto of 21-year-old white supremacists who massacred 23 people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in August 2019.

Hochman could not be reached for comment for this story.

NOW READ: Notorious conspiracy theorist rolled out by RNC to train election overseers in Michigan

Trump himself has repeatedly used the term, including during his recent campaign rally in Tucson.

“Under Kamala Harris, our country is under a thing called invasion,” he said. “Did you ever hear the word invasion? Just like a military. It’s like a military invasion. We’re being conquered and we’re being occupied by a foreign element.”

Swing state strategy of attacking immigrants

While the racist rhetoric against Haitian immigrants in Springfield focused on false claims that they are stealing and eating people’s pet, the attacks in Charleroi have zeroed in on another object of fear in white grievance politics: jobs.

An X post by the Libs of TikTok account run by Chaya Raichik, one of more than a dozen social-media influencers enlisted by the Trump campaign for a “war room” that amplified his attacks on Harris during the recent debate, shared a video on Tuesday that featured a man ruefully describing an arrangement to transport Haitian immigrants by bus to and from a processed food packaging plant in Charleroi.

“Incredible footage revealing an operation in Charleroi, PA where Haitians are being bussed to and from food factories operated by Fourth Street Foods,” the post reads. “Kamala imported 2,000 Haitians into this town of 4,000 people, and now they’re taking American jobs.”

State Sen. Camera Bartolotta, a Republican who represents Charleroi, said in a reply that she had re-posted from the Libs of TikTok account in the past, but the post about her constituents was not true.

“There was no workforce in Charleroi a few years ago when a business owner desperately needed them,” Bartolotta told Raichik. “He advertised and looked for workers for a long time. Before shutting down completely, he hired an agency that connected immigrants who were vetted and legal to work in his facility.”

David Barbe, the CEO of Fourth Street Foods, confirmed to KDKA News of Pittsburgh on Wednesday that his immigrant employees haven’t displaced any native-born workers.

“If I had 300 Americans come in today and they wanted to work, we would make room for them,” Barbe told investigative journalist Andy Sheehan.

Contrasting with the claims by the locals interviewed by Hochman suggesting that the Haitian immigrants are bankrupting Charleroi, Borough Manager Joe Manning told Sheehan that the new arrivals have made a net positive contribution to the area economy.

“They come here, they buy property,” Manning said. “They open businesses. They work here. They pay taxes. So, for us, at the end of the day, it has been a benefit.”

Some of Trump’s supporters believe that his false claims about Haitian immigrants, far from alienating voters, will instead give him the edge in critical swing states.

Jeremy Carl, a former deputy assistant secretary of the interior and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, praised Trump for bringing up “the cats” during the debate.

“You know, that’s just going to be a winning issue for us because it really is the linchpin of kind of every other crazy thing the left has done particularly on immigration,” Carl said during a podcast appearance on Monday.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who previously served as mayor of Braddock — a borough only 30 miles away from Charleroi — predicted to Raw Story that Pennsylvania voters will ultimately reject Trump’s electoral strategy of demonizing immigrants.

“Blame the immigrants, whether it’s that my dog’s gone — blame the immigrant,” Fetterman said. “That’s very anti-immigration. And now they’re proud of that. They’re not even trying to veil that. And western Pennsylvania has a really long history of immigration, and sometimes people blaming all of the ills on immigrants too. And I strongly reject that. And western Pennsylvania I think will as well, too.”

‘A total explosion of media’: Enter CSPOA

The Trump campaign did not respond to a question from Raw Story about how the candidate became aware of the Haitian immigrant community in Charleroi.

However, during an interview with the Liberty RoundTable podcast, Borough Councilman Larry Celaschi alluded to the America 100 X post published on the eve of Trump’s rally in Tucson.

“I know I did an interview with another news source out there that happened to go viral, and the next thing you know we’re hearing the same language that they had as their headlines was released from President Trump’s own mouth at his rally,” Celaschi said. “Since that time, it’s just been a total explosion of media here in the borough of Charleroi. It’s just overwhelming. I didn’t know that there were that many media sources out there.”

The two men who interviewed Celaschi, along with Borough Mayor Gregg Doerfler, are themselves representative of the far-right media personalities who have gravitated to the drama that Trump generated surrounding Charleroi.

Sam Bushman, the podcast host, is the CEO of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or CSPOA, an organization that promotes the controversial idea that sheriffs are the highest law in the land and are not legally bound to uphold state and federal laws that they unilaterally deem to be unconstitutional.

As documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Bushman has a long history of promoting racist ideas and providing a forum for hardcore white nationalists. In July 2023, he interviewed a member of the white supremacist group Identity Dixie. In a Facebook post, the pseudonymous guest known as “Padraig Martin” advised those who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol that the next time they should be “prepared to kill them all.” He urged: “Do not leave a single police officer, congressman, judge or any other functionary.”

The other host who interviewed the Charleroi borough mayor and councilman on Tuesday was Richard Mack, the founder of CSPOA and current president of its advisory board.

Ignoring the fact that the Haitians living and working in Charleroi are there under temporary protected status, Mack suggested that an unspecified group of “supposed leaders” should be investigated for “aiding and abetting illegal immigration.” He added, “It might rise to the level of treason.”

Bushman and Mack prodded Doerfler and Celaschi to tell them about crime committed by Haitians.

Pressed for specific examples, Doerfler said, “The people, they’re just afraid to walk the streets, or whatever. I’ve heard a lot of that.”

Doerfler did not return a phone message left by Raw Story.

Celaschi told Bushman and Mack about a business owner who ran into her establishment and dialed 911 after a Haitian immigrant allegedly pursued her, demanding money he believed she owed him.

“To me, your police chief, if there’s illegals in your community, need to take action on the illegal activity, doesn’t he?” Bushman said. “I mean, I’m not here to try to divide your community, but I’m saying, look, if you got illegal people committing illegal acts, are they in jail, or they just allowed to run around free? Where’s your law enforcement locally?”

Doerfler and Celaschi confirmed that the police do arrest people in Charleroi, including Haitians, who break the law.

“The racist intervention of far-right groups like CSPOA in places like Charleroi makes the entire community significantly less safe and makes it more challenging to deal with real issues facing rural America,” Devin Burgart, who monitors the far right as director of the Seattle-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, told Raw Story. “This type of rhetoric puts the Haitian community and Black residents of Charleroi in grave danger, as the bomb threats and violent racist rhetoric leveled at Springfield proved.”

Echoing Trump’s false charge in Tucson last week that “not only is Comrade Kamala allowing illegal immigrants to stampede across our border, but she’s flying them here from other countries,” Bushman asked the two borough leaders if they believe the federal government is complicit in a crime.

“Did the federal government and your state government in some way literally aid and abet illegal activity in America?” Bushman asked.

“Yes, they did aid and abet,” Celaschi responded. “Absolutely. I will stand by your statement 1,000 percent.”

Bushman was exultant.

“And they’re literally saying the federal government has partnered in promoting illegal activity, all the way down to their city,” he said, “to the point of literal virtual mayhem where citizens are in fear in their community.”

---

an 3 23

of all the right-wing think tanks in the United States, the most overtly MAGA has been the California-based Claremont Institute. Claremont, founded in 1979, was around long before former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. But a think tank that was once identified with traditional Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater conservatism has, in recent years, moved to the far right and fully embraced the MAGA ideology and the "America First" agenda — much to the dismay of former Nancy Reagan speechwriter Mona Charen and other Never Trump conservatives.

Claremont draws vehement criticism from both the left and the Never Trump right.In an article published by the liberal/progressive-oriented The Nation on March 30, journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire emphasizes that Claremont is helping to shape the "anti-woke" obsessions of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

"Claremont's leaders have marshaled so much early support behind DeSantis because they see him as a staunch ally in thwarting the alleged march of 'wokeism' through virtually every American institution: the media, corporations, and education, from pre-K through college," Berkshire explains. "They view DeSantis' legislative assault on diversity and inclusion — including stripping the Walt Disney Company of some state tax breaks, reversing diversity policies, and sharply curtailing discussions of race and gender in Florida schools — as amodel for right-wing activism across the country.Claremont and DeSantis both are holding forth Florida as a red-state template — a militant Republican state government providing a 'blueprint' for rolling back civil rights across the country."

Although the Florida governor has yet to make a formal announcement, he appears to be gearing up for a 2024 presidential run. And Berkshire emphasizes that DeSantis' "brain trust" is "stocked with Claremonsters," including Christopher Rufo (who advised DeSantis on Florida's Stop Woke Act) and the Florida governor's new speechwriter Nate Hochman.

"When DeSantis officially launches his candidacy," Berkshire explains, "he'll point to a long list of right-wing policy accomplishments. But using the levers of power to ram through an unpopular agenda is not the same thing as winning over hearts and minds. As he sells a retrograde vision of America with the help of a militant right-wing intellectual cadre, DeSantis is likely to learn that lesson the hard way."

Read The Nation's full report at this link.

---

ref by an 3 23

it was the latest stop on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s “where woke goes to die” tour. The focus was on higher education—specifically: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at Florida universities. The roundtable event featured speakers like Christopher Rufo, the lead architect of the GOP’s crusade against critical race theorywho is now helping to mastermind the ideological makeover of Florida’s New College. The gathering followed the by-now-standard script of education-themed right-wing grievance: DEI initiatives are a scam orchestrated by the “woke mob,” and Florida is not about to submit to them—not if the governor and his brain trust have anything to say about it.

The event would make headlines after an Axiosreporter called the official press release “propaganda” and was fired as a result. But the ensuing furor over journalistic standards sidestepped what’s ultimately at stake in DeSantis’s war on the alleged woke excesses of the education establishment—a drive to deliver colleges and universities back to the rule of white male elites, and thereby turn back the clock on 75 years of progress.And at the center of this crusade is a West Coast bastion of cultural conservatism—the Claremont Institute, which served as a key intellectual recruiting ground for Donald Trump’s rise to power but has now shifted its allegiance to DeSantis.

DeSantis’s agenda was neatly distilled in the title of a new report by Claremont fellow Scott Yenor, who teaches political science at Boise State University: “Florida Universities: From Woke to Professionalism.” The paper was released in conjunction with theDEIroundtable, and claimed to document the unhinged course of DEI initiatives in Florida’s public university system, while also detailing steps the state can take to rein them in. Among Yenor’s recommendations: defund and dismantle all DEI offices in Florida’s colleges and universities, make collecting data on the basis of race and sex illegal, and scuttle any DEI-infused disciplines—education and law are particular targets—in favor of “science.” And that’s just the start. “From Woke to Professionalism” seeks to provide a playbook for Florida to go to war against the “reigning national civil rights regime.”

:{:{This means more than simply targeting the DEI establishment. Yenor also urges state officials to remedy what he sees as a core problem in higher education: too many women.}: State officials, he argues, should conduct civil rights investigations into academic programs, including education and nursing, in which women vastly outnumber men, while also ditching any curriculum or programs deemed “anti-male.” :{Disparate impact theory, a favorite target of the cultural right for its emphasis on systemic discrimination, gets repurposed here to boost the real victims of diversity policies: white men. MIRROR INVERT}:

The report’s pivot away from DEI-bashing to the systematic purge of female students is part of Yenor’s ambitious proposal to correct what he sees as the damage done by feminism. Last year, he gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in which he denounced colleges and universities as “the citadels of our gynocracy,” and derided career-oriented women as “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome.” Traditionally male-dominated fields such as engineering, law, and medicine should stop trying to recruit women, he argued. The culture should return to urging women to pursue “feminine goals”—chief among them, staying home and having children in the interest of restoring strong families, and through them, a strong nation. Yenor’s bid to dragoon the nation’s women back into the separate sphere of domesticity and child-rearing is but one key directive he’s undertaken as head of Claremont’s Center for the American Way of Life. Together with Rufo—another Claremont scholar—Yenor has been dispatched to the Sunshine State front lines in what Claremont director Ryan Williams calls the “fight against woke leftism.” He will serve as Claremont’s new senior director of state coalitions, based in the state capital of Tallahassee.

Claremont’s leaders have marshaled so much early support behind DeSantis because they see him as a staunch ally in thwarting the alleged march of “wokeism” through virtually every American institution: the media, corporations, and education, from pre-K through college. They view DeSantis’s legislative assault on diversity and inclusion—including stripping the Walt Disney Company of some state tax breaks, reversing diversity policies, and sharply curtailing discussions of race and gender in Florida schools—as a model for right-wing activism across the country. Claremont and DeSantis both are holding forth Florida as a red-state template—a militant Republican state government providing a “blueprint” for rolling back civil rights across the country.

this tight ideological alliance explains why DeSantis’s brain trust is stocked with Claremonsters, as the think tank’s staff and fellows refer to themselves, who now play an outsized role in shaping policy. Rufo, for example, advised DeSantis on his Stop WOKE Act, which prohibits schools, colleges and businesses from teaching students and employees anything that would cause anyone to “feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin. And when DeSantis orchestrated a takeover of New College, he tapped Rufo to lead the effort to remake the school as a “Hillsdale of the south,” referencing the fundamentalist Michigan college long positioned on the vanguard of right-wing culture warfare.

Even DeSantis’s new speechwriter has Claremont ties. Nate Hochman, a rising star in the intellectual right’s amorphous coalition of culture warriors, self-proclaimed economic populists, and unabashed America firsters, is both a former Claremont intern and a fellow. Hochman, who proclaimed earlier this year that he hopes that the “Republican party agenda is going to cohere around the culture war as its organizing, totalizing force,” now will be able to bring that mandate into the forefront of DeSantis’s campaign messaging.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Claremonsters will continue chipping away at what they see as Florida’s misguided dalliances with the woke. In his road map for higher education in Florida, Yenor holds up as his model the University of California, Berkeley–in the 1950s, before the Free Speech movement and the hippies wrecked everything. The University of Florida, he writes, should be a beacon of academic freedom and meritocracy for the country, just as UC Berkeley was back then. Of course, UC Berkeley was also an elite, and almost entirely white, institution in the 1950s. Some 90 percent of entering freshmen in the 1960s were white, and most hailed from families that were substantially wealthier than the typical Californian. And just one-quarter of students were women. For them, the school offered a 10-week course on marriage, jokingly known to students as “From Courtship to Venereal Disease in Ten Easy Lessons.”

Elsewhere, Yenor has argued more explicitly that returning college to the elites should be the goal. Only 8 percent of Americans attended college as late as 1960, he pointed out in a recent op-ed for the Christian advocacy organization American Reformer. “The United States should move toward 8% from its current 46%.”

“Too many of the wrong sorts of people go to college” is not exactly the stuff of campaign bumper stickers. DeSantis knows this firsthand, thanks to his ill-considered effort to escalate Florida’s assault on AP African American Studies into a full-scale attack on “Advanced Placement, Inc.” No doubt DeSantis and his corps of culture warriors calculated that the entire Advanced Placement program was a ripe target in the rolling war on wokeness, but the move was a political disaster. Parents in Florida regard AP classes not as a manufactory of left-wing ideological conformity but as a crucial path to getting their kids admitted to select colleges—and saving money when they get there. And they’re not wrong—so the politically savvy DeSantis has since moved on to other targets.

nor does Yenor’s wide-ranging campaign against the “gynocracy” seem likely to resonate with the suburban women to whom the GOP tries intermittently to appeal. As Daily Beast columnist Michael Daly pointed out, DeSantis’s wife, Casey, who tweeted enthusiastically about Yenor’s Tallahassee appointment, holds a BA in economics—one of the disciplines Yenor regards as subject to gynocratic infiltration. And her mother is a speech pathologist—another of the female-dominated fields that he wants dismantled.

There are also growing signs that DeSantis’s war on wokeness is losing its luster among Florida voters. A recent poll found that his marquee bill aimed at rooting out diversity efforts in the state’s higher education system is particularly unpopular. Sixty-five percent of voters, including 38 percent of Republicans, oppose it. And as his signature issue—limiting what students can learn and teachers can teach in Florida’s public schools in the name of parent rights—becomes synonymous with book banning, his popularity is likely to dim further.

Of course, the GOP supermajority in the Florida state legislature will continue to rubber-stamp increasingly outlandish bills on gender and diversity, regardless of whether the public supports them. Indeed, the pliant legislative body is a big reason Claremont is so bullish on Florida spearheading the nation’s return to the pre–civil rights era.

When DeSantis officially launches his candidacy, he’ll point to a long list of right-wing policy accomplishments. But using the levers of power to ram through an unpopular agenda is not the same thing as winning over hearts and minds. As he sells a retrograde vision of America with the help of a militant right-wing intellectual cadre, DeSantis is likely to learn that lesson the hard way.

Jennifer C. BerkshireJennifer C. Berkshire hosts the education podcast Have You Heard. She is the author, with Jack Schneider, of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door.

---