DeSantis’ dangerous personal army is in turmoil. Let’s hope it stays that way | Opinion
Well, that didn’t take long.
A little more than a year after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he was activating the state guard for the first time in 75 years — a move that had government overreach written all over it — the civilian volunteer force is fast becoming an embarrassing mess at best and a powerful personal militia at worst.
An organization that started out with a non-military disaster-response mission has expanded into a group that can be deployed to protect “people and borders from illegal aliens and civil unrest.” Some recruits are dropping out because the training is more militaristic than they expected. The state is looking for the program’s third leader in eight months. Recent stories by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times and The New York Times documented the disarray and tensions.
Far from being a FEMA-style group, the new force is being trained by the state’s National Guard in a shortened and looser — some critics have called it slapdash — form of boot camp, with camouflage uniforms, shaved facial hair, rappelling with ropes, woodland navigation with a compass and military-style command. When the first class of recruits graduated in June, DeSantis issued a congratulatory press release calling them “soldiers.”
Roughed up
During training in June at Camp Blanding, the National Guard base near Jacksonville, a disabled retired Marine Corps captain who volunteered for the force reported to police that he was battered by Florida National Guard instructors who shoved him into a van after he questioned the program and its leadership.
Another former member, Brian Newhouse, a retired 20-year Navy veteran who was chosen to lead one of the State Guard’s three divisions, told the Miami Herald that the original idea for the force got “hijacked and turned into something that we were trying to stay away from: a militia.”
The idea started out more benignly, as power grabs usually do, dressed up in 2021 as mere assistance to the overworked Florida National Guard. In just a couple of years, it has grown from a proposal for 200 volunteers to more than 1,500 people, with a $108 million budget and planes and boats available to deploy.
DeSantis said thousands had applied. Of the 150 accepted, 120 graduated.
And the mission? In 2022, lawmakers said the guard was for emergencies and couldn’t operate outside the state. Those requirements were dropped a year later. Add to that the fact that the Florida Guard reports directly to DeSantis and only to DeSantis, and you have the makings of a very dangerous situation in the Sunshine State.
The leaders of the organization told the Times that a military-style organization makes sense — it can coordinate easily with the National Guard. And calling the group’s members soldiers is just tradition, going back to the way the guard was formed during World War II. The Florida guard, though, was disbanded in 1947, once the threat of war was over.
On our dime
This isn’t about a real threat. It’s fear-mongering. It’s designed to pump up anti-immigration sentiment and take a swipe at President Biden. It’s about one man’s goal to become president. It’s about duping taxpayers into paying for it all.
Maybe the chaos, then, is actually a blessing. If this state guard — with what sounds like an increasingly militaristic bent — were to get fully organized, it could easily become what we have feared from the start: a personal army for DeSantis. State power is already being abused here, in the so-called free state of Florida, to squelch dissent and free speech and target vulnerable groups.
How much worse could it become with a DeSantis Army at the ready?
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This story was originally published July 17, 2023 at 3:25 PM.