Here we go again:

Let me ask the same question I usually ask when people do this: “How?”

How? Explain the “connection.” Tell me what the link is supposed to be between what happened in Jacksonville and “the changes” to the curriculum. Which “changes”? How do they relate to the crime? Spell it out.

They can’t, of course, because the idea is utterly ridiculous. The three Americans who were murdered in Jacksonville on Saturday were killed by a white supremacist who hated black people — and had for a long time. What, exactly, is Ordonez’s implication? That the killer had normal views on race until Florida banned DEI in public universities? That the killer was most of the way there in his ideological fervor, but that a contrived dispute over a single word in a single line from the public school curriculum pushed him over the edge? That Florida was a welcoming place until DeSantis said that he wouldn’t “allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other,” at which point all bets were off. Seriously: What’s the mechanism?

There isn’t one. And, worse, NPR’s reporter knows it. He’s not inquiring; he’s smearing. The aim was to get DeSantis’s name into the same sentence as a neo-Nazi; as if the two men have anything whatsoever do to with one another, as if DeSantis didn’t call the guy a “scumbag” and a “coward” at the first possible opportunity, as if disagreements as to how schools can best foster universalism are really disagreements over whether or not racial hatred is acceptable.

Well, shame on him. And shame on anyone else who sees the universal condemnation of a despicable act and thinks to himself, you know, maybe if I can divide those people I’ll get closer to the unrelated policies that I desire.