‘We’re going to tell the truth about the evils of communism,’ the governor said.
Florida students at all grade levels will receive further instruction on the history and dangers of communism beginning in the 2026–27 school year.
“We’re going to tell the truth about the evils of communism,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on April 17. “We’re going to tell the truth about the unprecedented death toll of the 20th century at the hands of communist tyranny—100 million killed at the hands of communist regimes spreading from China to the Soviet Union to Cuba. Those are the facts, and those are what we need to be very clear-eyed about now.”
Standing at a podium with a sign that read “Anti-Communist Education,” Mr. DeSantis signed Senate Bill 1264 at the Bay of Pigs museum in Hialeah, Florida, in front of a wall of pictures of the men who were a part of the brigade, commemorating the 63rd anniversary of the failed attempt to usurp communism in Cuba.
He was joined by the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Jay Collins; Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr.; some surviving Bay of Pigs veterans; and some people from South Vietnam.
“This law is very, very important to all of us,” Bay of Pigs survivor and Vietnam veteran Felix Rodriguez said. “I hope that every state of the union will adopt this type of law. So we have too many professors that are leftists teaching the wrong ideology to our students.
“None of them have lived in a communist country, and none of them will ever go to a communist country. They don’t know what socialism means. We do.”
Florida has previously added communism-focused education to its schools’ curriculum. The governor proclaimed on Nov. 7, 2023, “Victims of Communism Day” in 2022. The current 2023–24 school year became the first year in which all high school students taking a U.S. government class were required to have 45 minutes of instruction on atrocities of communism the world over, from the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the rise of Mao Zedong in China to the present-day totalitarian regime of Nicolás Maduro and the Chavismo movement in Venezuela.
By T.J. Muscaro
