THE FLORIDA PROJECT

Strongman Governor Ron DeSantis transformed the Sunshine State. Can he sell his blueprint to the nation?

- MOLLY BALL/ TALLAHASSEE

IT'S A TUESDAY MORNING IN TALLAHASSEE, AND a wood-paneled hearing room at the Florida legislature is packed. The state senate's fiscal-policy committee is considering a bill to prohibit most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and dozens of citizens have lined up to testify: anguished young students in colorful hair and ABORTION IS HEALTH CARE T-shirts; little old ladies wearing cardigans and crosses. For hours they speak in emotional terms as the senators listen.

Yet an air of inevitability hangs over the proceedings. Governor Ron De Santis supports this bill, and therefore it is destined to pass. In Tallahassee these days, what the governor wants, the governor gets. It is De Santis who welcomed this fight, DeSantis who calls the shots, and DeSantis who will reap the credit-or blame-for his latest move in a frenzy of right-wing policymaking.

His dominance is hard to overstate. From school-board meetings to the Walt Disney Corp., the shelves of elementary-school libraries to local mask ordinances, everything bears his stamp. Having shepherded his state through the COVID-19 pandemic, bucking the political and medical establishments to follow his own read of the data, DeSantis has manipulated levers of power to enact a sweeping agenda. The week I landed in Tallahassee, he signed an expansive school-voucher law and a measure investing more than $700 million in affordable housing. The legislature was hearing his proposed ban on gender-affirming health care for minors, a bill to expand gun rights that would allow concealed carrying of firearms without a permit, another that would dramatically curtail union rights, and a bid to prohibit socially conscious investing. All would eventually pass. At DeSantis' behest, legislators this year also eliminated diversity programs at public universities, made it easier to sentence criminals to death, and barred schools from using trans students' preferred pronouns.