NYC progressives fear ‘total failure to coalesce’ around mayoral primary challenge

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams has said there’s a “coordinated effort” to keep him from a second term. He’s entirely right.

About two dozen progressive organizers, political consultants and nonprofit leaders — united by their desire to defeat the moderate Democratic mayor in 2025 — joined a secretive meeting at a home on Staten Island on July 17.

Cristina Gonzalez, a political organizer, and Janos Marton, an organizer and attorney were the hosts. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso was the guest of honor. Their goals: Start coordinating a Democratic primary challenge to Adams. And see if Reynoso could be the progressive standard-bearer, running against the incumbent mayor.

Multiple attendees who spoke with POLITICO left with the impression that Reynoso is giving serious thought to it, but is not likely to run.

The New York Times first reported details of the meeting Friday. Reynoso’s political team shared a vague statement, declining to confirm his interest: “At a time when Brooklynites are facing many challenges, I am laser focused on delivering for residents and building a more resilient, equitable borough. It is an honor and privilege to serve as the Borough President of Brooklyn.”

Names in the mix

It’s become the hottest topic in New York City politics: Who will run against Adams in 2025? While everyone seems to agree that defeating the powerful incumbent would be difficult, there’s a widespread sense that he isn’t invincible. The right candidate, with the right organization, some luck — and maybe a public scandal or two for Adams — could actually win.

Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be many progressives’ dream candidates, but Bowman lives outside the city, in Yonkers, and has shown no real interest in running. Ocasio-Cortez, even less.

Neither of the Congress members’ offices provided comment.

Whether it’s Reynoso or someone else, the progressives’ search continues. And there’s a sense that time is wasting.

“If anyone is serious about running for mayor, they need to be out there, be everywhere,” said one Democratic political consultant who is involved in progressive plans to challenge Adams and was granted anonymity to discuss private strategy sessions.

The primary is scheduled for June 2025, but many of Adams’ critics are eager to find a candidate now.

“These discussions have intensified in the last few months,” said Allen Roskoff, a longtime progressive activist, who helped organize Frank Barbaro’s unsuccessful challenge to Mayor Ed Koch in 1981.

“Hardly a day goes by I don't get a phone call, ‘What are we going to do?’” Roskoff said in a phone interview. “I’ve spoken to three women in the last month, and the big question is money, money, money. I say you won’t raise a dime if you don’t run. I think money will flow in.”

Other names have surfaced, like state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, of Brooklyn, and his Queens colleague, Sen. Jessica Ramos. Myrie didn’t respond to a request for comment, but four people familiar with conversations he’s had told POLITICO Myrie is seriously considering a run.

A person close to Ramos confirmed that she has not ruled out running. “The only thing [Ramos] has decided firmly is what the rest of the general feeling is: there needs to be a very well organized, very strong effort behind a candidate who can bring a lot of corners of the electorate together,” that person said in a text message.

Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas’ name is in the mix as a potential candidate, as is Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani and formerAssemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, who mounted an unsuccessful bid for the seat now held by Rep. Dan Goldman. Mamdani declined to comment. Niou has tweeted multiple times that it’s “not gonna be me.”

“To be honest I have been approached multiple times, it’s just not the role that I’d be interested in,” González-Rojas said in an interview Friday. “It’s a completely different role as an executive. One that’s very hated.”

The most obvious contenders would be the two progressive favorites who won citywide elections in 2021: Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who ran to the left of Gov. Kathy Hochul in the 2022 primary, and Comptroller Brad Lander, who has emerged as the mayor’s archrival. Williams has consistently, publicly denied his interest in running in 2025, and Lander is thought to prefer to focus on the 2029 race, when Adams is expected to be term-limited out.

That could end up being a crowded contest, with every other Democratic borough president — Reynoso, Donovan Richards of Queens, Vanessa Gibson of the Bronx, and Mark Levine of Manhattan — frequently mentioned as possible contenders.

“The fundamental calculus for a lot of these folks is: Am I better off running in 2025 in a primary against Mayor Adams versus 2029, in what will then be an open seat,” said Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic pollster and consultant with Slingshot Strategies. “And when you run against an incumbent mayor of New York, you are leaving a lot on the table.”

Adams’ political advisers are not exactly quaking in their boots. His campaign started raising a lot of money early while City Hall settled big labor contracts to shore up support from the city’s powerful unions. And Adams and his team have been hammering home the point that crime in the city is trending downward, sticking with an issue that helped him win a crowded race two years ago.

“Mayor Adams has lowered crime across the board, invested billions of dollars in working people, and added thousands of jobs to our city in 18 short months — and that is why poll after poll shows he has strong support from Democrats and New Yorkers of all backgrounds,” said Evan Thies, an Adams campaign adviser, in a statement. “The fact that these folks would rather play politics in some backroom two years before the election instead of help the mayor help working people tells you all you need to know about what they really care about: their own power.”

What would be different?

Looming over progressives’ discussions is the 2021 election. The organizations, elected officials and voters that could be called the city’s progressive movement were split largely among three candidates: former City Comptroller Scott Stringer, nonprofit executive Dianne Morales and attorney and MSNBC contributor Maya Wiley.

While most support shifted to Wiley by election day, many progressives had a real sense of a missed opportunity. Wiley ended up finishing in third place, behind Adams and Kathryn Garcia — a more moderate former sanitation commissioner.

“The 2021 race lingers very painfully for progressives in the total failure to coalesce,” Marton said.

There’s a constantly spoken desire for all corners of the progressive movement to put aside their differences and coalesce behind one candidate in 2025 to give them the best chance of victory.

Of course, the political left is notorious for infighting.

Marton tweeted Friday about the Times story, saying he didn’t expect the private meeting at his home to get reported in the paper. Rebecca Katz, a prominent progressive consultant, sniped at him, saying that coverage happens when you pose for a photo — as he and Gonzalez did, for the Times.

“Not going to beat anyone when every step is easily caricatured,” Katz wrote. Marton clarified that the photo was taken after Times reporters started asking about the meeting.

There is, however, widespread agreement on the left that a challenger should be a person of color.

Adams has frequently painted his critics as people who don’t want to see him succeed, as the city’s second-ever Black mayor, and putting up a white candidate would only strengthen that line of attack. More importantly, a Black or Latino candidate would be more likely to pull votes away from Adams’ base in the boroughs outside of Manhattan.

But progressives’ best-laid plans for a one-on-one matchup could go awry if another serious challenger were to enter the race.

Political insiders say Stringer, who served as comptroller from 2014 to 2021, is considering another mayoral run, after his last campaign was derailed by decades-old sexual harassment allegations, which he has vociferously denied. Stringer was one of the leading progressive candidates in the last election, but is less likely to earn the movement’s support in 2025, for reasons including his race, as a white man, and a mutual distaste for the way progressive elected officials and organizations left his campaign last time.

Some think Adams’ greatest threat to reelection isn’t a progressive challenger, but one who could criticize the mayor’s management of the city. Garcia, a longtime government administrator, ran on her management chops in 2021, and came within 7,197 votes of Adams, less than 1 percentage point short.

“If there were somebody that would challenge him, that person has to come off as ‘I’m the grown up manager in the room,’ not entirely different from what (former Gov. Andrew) Cuomo did in 2010,” said Basil Smikle, a strategist and the former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party.

Smikle doesn’t know who the candidate could be — Garcia, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, is a top aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul now, and is not thought to be interested. People close to Wiley also say she is not interested in a rematch.

But Smikle knows what the message could be: “I’m not the guy who’s going to clubs at night. I’m not the guy who’s going to attack old ladies. I’m the thick-skinned manager that you want for this city that’s going to be tough on crime, not politically an ideologue. … Your only party is pro-New York.”

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Got Bitcoin? Now you can donate it to this GOP presidential candidate.

Move over, Andrew Yang. There’s a new crypto candidate vying for the White House.

Miami Mayor and cryptocurrency enthusiast Francis Suarez — who already takes his salary in Bitcoin — is now accepting campaign donations for his 2024 bid in the form of cryptocurrency.

Suarez announced the new fundraising effort Friday during an interview with CoinDesk, an online news site covering bitcoin and digital currencies.

“Officially, my campaign is accepting bitcoin,” Suarez said. “This is a process of developing technologies that are going to create democratizing opportunities for wealth creation and are not manipulated by a human being's alternative motives, political goals, et cetera.”

The longshot Republican hopeful has tied his political brand to crypto since he swept into office in 2017, promising to turn the Florida city into the “crypto capital.” Last year, he unveiled the “Miami bull” statue — a futuristic adaptation of the iconic Wall Street sculpture — to mark the start of the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami.

“Cryptocurrency is the future and it's here to stay—America's next president must lean into this generational opportunity, not shy away,” Suarez posted on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, on Friday. “If you agree, donate just $1 in Bitcoin, and I'll send you a 'Vote Bitcoin' t-shirt, on me.”

The move is just the latest alternative fundraising tactic Suarez has turned to as he creeps toward the RNC’s requirement for candidates to collect 40,000 donors (with 200 unique donors in 20 different states) to earn a spot on the August debate stage. His campaign recently began offering $20 gift cards in exchange for donations of as little as $1, and previously offered supporters a chance to join a raffle for tickets to see soccer star Lionel Messi’s first game with the Florida team Inter Miami.

Donors are not the only debate requirement Suarez still needs to meet; the Miami mayor will also have to poll at 1 percent in a handful of polls to meet the RNC's strict criteria. So far, seven candidates have qualified for the first debate: former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

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Government watchdog finds U.S. embassies running software vulnerable to attacks

The State Department is running outdated software at many of its embassies and missions — making them easy prey for hackers — and lacks the cybersecurity personnel to secure critical networks, according to a report from a government watchdog.

The Government Accountability Office put together the report before news broke last month that Chinese hackers had hacked into the emails of high-level State Department officials. It highlights the fact that concerns about the State Department’s ability to protect its sensitive communications are long-running and deep.

Two people familiar with the report — which is still being finalized — shared details with POLITICO. They were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the report, which isn’t public.

The two people said that GAO found that many U.S. embassies and missions use vulnerable legacy systems, including WindowsXP, an operating system Microsoft stopped providing any automatic updates to almost a decade ago. That means that Microsoft is not developing patches or fixes for any security holes that emerge that hackers could exploit to gain access to those networks.

“This is a huge problem in my opinion, if that’s true of course,” said Vahid Behazadan, assistant professor of computer science at the University of New Haven.

“If no other provider is available to provide the patch, then the attackers can walk right in.”

The assessment, which GAO began at the end of last year, also found that many State Department posts lack not only a chief information security officer, but any cybersecurity personnel whatsoever. The cybersecurity vulnerabilities that GAO identified are particularly significant at State’s missions — such as postings that are often located at international organizations rather than capital cities.

It’s not clear how many foreign posts use the outdated software.

A spokesperson for the State Department declined to comment on the report. A spokesperson for GAO also declined to comment, noting the report is unfinished. It is expected to be complete sometime in the fall, according to the two people. GAO last year included improving cybersecurity as one of its priority recommendations for the State Department.

The report is likely to add to the pressure on the State Department to step up its cybersecurity following the recent breach of agency emails. Those perpetrators of that hack also accessed emails of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are now looking into the incident, including the Republican leaders of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

The State Department’s Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy has been working in recent months to increase the number of diplomats that go through cybersecurity training. Nathaniel Fick, the ambassador at large for Cyberspace and Digital Policy, said earlier this year that the agency aims to “have a basically trained cyber and digital policy staff member in every mission in the world that matters in the next couple of years, in the next two years.”

The agency has also stepped up efforts to root out vulnerabilities, submitting a report to Capitol Hill last month that outlined the steps taken to patch more than 500 vulnerabilities in agency systems reported over the past two years.

James Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former diplomat, said Friday that he believes the findings “get back to money,” adding that the State Department “hasn't been able to afford to upgrade and no one pushed them to do it.”

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A different type of Trump show comes to D.C.

Donald Trump came to Washington D.C. on Thursday to be arraigned for the third trial he’s faced this year.

But the day wasn’t strictly spent on legal matters. His team treated it as a political one too, with care given to all of the history and theatrics that accompany an ex-president’s booking at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse.

Trump arrived aboard his jet in the afternoon, decked in a standard blue suit and red tie with a full team in tow. Top aides Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles, Jason Miller and Boris Epshteyn were there. So too was Alina Habba, his lawyer and main legal spokesperson.

Aides shot video footage of the arrival from the plane, while his operation blasted screen grabs of the cable news networks, all of them hyper focused on Trump’s arrival and motorcade ride through downtown D.C.

The portrayal they sought to convey was akin to that of a gladiator being summoned before the angry hordes in the coliseum. When the accompanying press corp got into the motorcade’s vans, Trump’s handlers gave them single-page pamphlets that described Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump for his efforts to overturn the election as part of the “Biden Playbook.” The document included pictures of Biden’s son Hunter, smoking a cigarette, and a timeline of every charge leveled against Trump set against every revelation made about younger Biden’s business exploits. Earlier in the day, his campaign put out a detailed attack on Smith’s wife.

“This is election interference at its finest against the leading candidate, right now, for president of either party,” Habba told reporters outside the courthouse, upon arrival.

Trump’s team has long viewed his trials not just as a courtroom crucible to be endured but as a political catapult to be utilized. He has fundraised off of them and demanded the loyalty of fellow Republicans over them. Before departing for D.C. on Thursday, he posted on his social media platform that a fourth indictment could ensure his election.

But the nation’s capital is a difficult backdrop for Trump to rally the masses. The city didn’t just overwhelmingly vote for Joe Biden in 2020, it was the site of the riot that has landed Trump in the very legal predicament he now faces.

The former president’s team has argued that this makes D.C. an inherently unfair place for him to face trial. It’s a plea likely to not hold much sway in the courtroom itself. But there were elements of that distaste apparent throughout the day.

On the ride over from the airport to the courthouse, a prominent middle finger was directed at the motorcade. Protesters showed up at the scene. Some of them were there to support the former president. But others weren’t, including one who held a sign suggesting that instead of denoting the year of the forthcoming election year, 20-24 was actually a reference to the years the ex-president would serve behind bars.

The site of the arraignment itself was outfitted with an intense barricade. Throngs of onlookers stood many yards away as Trump eschewed a grand entrance caught by cameras for one in an underground tunnel.

Once inside, all those theatrics seemed to slip away. Trump was no longer able to orchestrate a campaign setting around a legal trial. Instead, he was subjected to the type of indignities that come with being a criminal defendant. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya informed him that he could face up to 20 years in prison and that he had the right to remain silent. He pleaded not guilty to all four counts against him. The judge warned him not to commit any crimes while out on release. His next hearing was scheduled for Aug. 28.

It was not the type of material fit for a campaign slogan. But within the hour, Trump had found his foot again. He had left the courthouse and headed back to the airport where he gave a brief statement to reporters while holding an umbrella to shield him from the rain.

“This was never supposed to happen in America,” he said. “This is the persecution of the person who is leading by very very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot. So if you can’t beat ‘em, you persecute them or you prosecute them.”

By that point, his campaign had already dashed off a fundraising appeal under the name of Trump’s son Eric. “My father was just officially arraigned,” read the subject line.

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Kagan enters fray over Congress’ power to police Supreme Court

PORTLAND, Ore. — Justice Elena Kagan on Thursday jumped into the heated debate over ethics at the Supreme Court, arguing that Congress has broad powers to regulate the nation’s highest tribunal despite the recent claim from one of her conservative colleagues that such a step would violate the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Kagan’s comments, at a judicial conference in Portland, came just days after the Senate Judiciary Committee responded to recent ethics controversies around justices’ luxury travel by advancing a billrequiring the court to establish an ethics code and setting up a mechanism that would enforce it.

“It just can’t be that the court is the only institution that somehow is not subject to checks and balances from anybody else. We’re not ethereal,” Kagan told the audience of judges and lawyers attending the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. “Can Congress do various things to regulate the Supreme Court? I think the answer is: yes.”

Kagan insisted she was not responding directly toJustice Samuel Alito’s blunt statements in an interview last month that Congress would be violating the Constitution’s separation of powers if lawmakers sought to impose ethics and recusal policies on the high court.

“Congress did not create the Supreme Court,” Alito told The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”

While Alito’s statement sounded unqualified, Kagan said she was unsure precisely what question he was asked. She also suggested his remark could not have been as broad as it seemed because the Constitution specifically provides for Congress to dictate the sorts of cases the Supreme Court can and cannot hear.

“Of course, Congress can regulate various aspects of what the Supreme Court does,” said Kagan, who joined the court in 2010 after being nominated by President Barack Obama. “Congress funds the Supreme Court. Congress historically has made changes to the court’s structure and composition. Congress has made changes to the court’s appellate jurisdiction.”

Kagan quickly added that this did not mean Congress could take steps to dictate the outcome of specific cases.

“Can Congress do anything it wants? Well, no,” she said. “There are limits here, no doubts.”

Kagan also offered what could be viewed as a rebuke of Alito, saying she was reluctant to spell out her views further because the court could someday have a case in which it is asked to assess those limits. She also said she didn’t want to “jawbone it” while Congress is considering legislation, although the bill that cleared committee on a party-line vote last month seems to have no chance of clearing the full Senate or being taken up by the Republican-led House.

However, Kagan also said it would be her preference to see the Supreme Court act to defuse the current controversies by taking its own action to address ethics concerns. And she became the first justice to publicly confirm widely held suspicion that the members of the court don’t see eye to eye on the issue — disagreement that has limited an attempt by Chief Justice John Roberts to act on the subject.

“It’s not a secret for me to say that we have been discussing this issue, and it won’t be a surprise to know that the nine of us have a diversity about this and most things. We’re nine freethinking individuals,” she said.

“Regardless of what Congress does, the court can do stuff, you know?” Kagan said. “We could decide to adopt a code of conduct of our own that either follows or decides in certain instances not to follow the standard codes of conduct … that would remove this question of what Congress can do. … I hope that we will make some progress in this area.”

During her remarks on Thursday in an onstage conversation with a bankruptcy judge and attorney involved in organizing the conference, Kagan took a more conciliatory tone toward her conservative colleagues than she did last year in a flurry of public appearances that seemed to evince serious frustration with her role on the court. Those remarks followed the bitter disagreement over the court’s decision last June, by a 5-4 vote, to overturn the federal constitutional right to abortion that had been recognized for nearly half a century.

In her first public comments since the court wrapped up its work this term just over a month ago, Kagan repeated some of her prior criticism, suggesting that her conservative colleagues were sometimes carrying out their policy preferences. She cited, in particular, rulings from this term reining in the federal government’s power to regulate wetlands and rejecting President Joe Biden’s plan for student debt relief.

Kagan said it’s important for the court “to act like a court … mostly it means acting with restraint and acting with a sense that you are not the king of the world and you do not get to make policy judgments for the American people.”

Kagan also stressed on Thursday that she believes it’s important for the court to achieve consensus when possible.

“I do believe very strongly in working strenuously to achieve consensus,” she said. “I would rather decide less and have greater consensus than decide more with division. … I like to search for what might be thought of as principled compromises. Some compromises you can’t make, but some compromises you can.”

On balance, Kagan’s latest remarks seemed to lack the edge of her comments last summer and fall, when she often sounded profoundly disillusioned with the court.

“Some years are better than other years,” Kagan said last year as she looked back over the term in which the court ruled on abortion. “Time will tell whether this is a court that can get back … to finding common ground.”

In her speeches last year, she even skewered some of the banal anecdotes justices often tell about their interactions, suggesting that they may mislead by masking tensions on the court.

“I don’t see why anybody should care that I can talk to some of my colleagues about baseball, unless that becomes a way for a better, more collaborative relationship about our cases and work,” Kagan said last October.

Kagan’s public statements that the court’s legitimacy was being fairly questioned prompted Roberts to offer an unusual brush-back pitch.

“Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for questioning the legitimacy of the court,” the chief justice said last summer, without naming Kagan or other critics.

In the court’s most recent term, the court’s conservative supermajority did not always vote in lockstep in the contentious and politically controversial cases. Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberals in a key redistricting case from Alabama, turning aside efforts to undercut legal requirements to create or maintain districts where minority voters have a strong chance of electing candidates of their choice.

And a third conservative on the court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined Roberts, Kavanaugh and the liberals to fend off an expansive claim that the Constitution gives state legislatures sweeping authority over election laws, practices and disputes, with little role for state courts or even governors.

During an appearance at a legal conference in Minnesota last month, Kavanaugh cited those decisions as evidence that the court is not divided into inflexible, warring camps.

“We have lived up, in my estimation, to deciding cases based on law, not based on partisan affiliation or partisanship,” Kavanaugh said. “We work … as a team of nine.”

Despite those compromises and instances of moderation, the overall rightward shift of the court remained unmistakable. Three of the highest-profile cases of the term — decided on the last day decisions were released — all came down along the court’s 6-3 ideological divide.

The string of stinging defeats for the court’s liberal wing came in casesrejecting the use of race in college admissions,overturning Biden’s $400 billion student debt relief plan, andupholding the rights of business owners to deny some kinds of services to LGBTQ people.

At the outset of the nearly hourlong conversation on Thursday, Kagan discussed one particularly contentious case from the current term that found her in an unusually barbed disagreement with a fellow liberal justice and the court’s only other Obama appointee, Sonia Sotomayor.

Kagan, a proud New Yorker, didn’t mince words in her dissent or in discussing it at the conference — although she seemed to find humor in the furor created by her disagreement with Sotomayor in the case involving Andy Warhol’s adaptation of an iconic photograph of the musician Prince.

“We just kind of went at each other hammer and tongs. We had some choice words for each other,” Kagan said, drawing laughter from the audience. Kagan said that while she often agrees with Sotomayor, “I think Justice Sotomayor gets stuff wrong on other occasions and this is one of them.”

“If you think that Justice Kagan and Justice Sotomayor are identical judges, with identical methodologies, reaching identical outcomes on the basis of identical approaches to law, I have to say you haven’t been paying careful attention,” Kagan said. “Judges are different.”

After positively citing Roberts’ work on the ethics issue, Kagan also again paid tribute to the chief. He was the only other justice to join her in dissent in the Warhol case, and he assigned her to write what both expected would be a classic Kagan opinion.

“Both he knew and I knew that he was giving me a gift,” she said.

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AP Psychology 'effectively banned' in Florida over sexuality lessons, College Board says

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has “effectively banned” a high school Advanced Placement psychology course from being taught in the state because it includes lessons on sexual orientation and identity that violate state law, the College Board said on Thursday.

The decision not only deepens a raging dispute between the struggling Republican presidential candidate and massive education nonprofit, but it also threatens the course loads of thousands of Florida students just before a new school year.

“We are sad to have learned that today the Florida Department of Education has effectively banned AP Psychology in the state by instructing Florida superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law,” the College Board said in a statement. “The state has said districts are free to teach AP Psychology only if it excludes any mention of these essential topics.”

Florida’s education department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this summer, the College Board, which administers AP exams, rejected changing AP Psychology lessons on gender and sexual orientation in a direct challenge to DeSantis after his administration expanded restrictions and regulations on classroom instruction in April. That decision came after Florida and the nonprofit previously clashed over an African American history AP course that state officials rebuked for being “filled with Critical Race Theory and other obvious violations of Florida law,” pointing to the “anti-woke” policies under DeSantis.

Florida's education system was also thrust in the national spotlight over Black history teaching standards that aim to instruct students that slaves learned skills that "could be applied for their personal benefit." That controversy prompted sharp rebukes from Vice President Kamala Harris and Black conservatives.

"Now, Florida’s Department of Education has further compromised the quality of education in the state by acting as if LGBTQ+ people don’t exist," Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in a statement. "LGBTQ+ people do exist, and any decision to remove us from curricula isn’t going to change that.”

More than 28,000 Florida students took AP Psychology in the 2022-23 academic year, according to the College Board, which said the course asks students to “describe how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.”

“The state’s ban of this content removes choice from parents and students,” the board said. “Coming just days from the start of school, it derails the college readiness and affordability plans of tens of thousands of Florida students currently registered for AP Psychology, one of the most popular AP classes in the state.”

Florida’s decision to block the psychology content was also panned by Equality Florida, an LGBTQ advocacy group. The organization likened the move to state officials' past objections to the AP African American Studies course and claims that that course “lacks significant educational value.”

“The DeSantis regime is at war with students and parents, censoring more AP curriculum and denying students the opportunity to earn college credit,” Equality Florida said in a statement.

The DeSantis administration's firm stance against sexual content in Florida’s schools also includes recently strengthening a state rule that expands parental rights laws, labeled “Don’t Say Gay” measures by critics, that is at the center of this dispute.

Under the policy, classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited among all K-12 students instead of targeting lessons for children only in kindergarten through third grade as in the original 2022 law.

In wake of this change, Florida’s Department of Education pressed the College Board in May to review its courses to determine if any “need modification to ensure compliance” with state laws and regulations, a stance that ultimately put the psychology class at risk.

The College Board — in a shift in how the nonprofit is handling Florida since the battle over Black history — responded by declining to alter the course. This move created a stalemate that is only now coming to a head as the fall semester nears, sparking new uncertainty for “tens of thousands” of Florida students set to take the course.

Florida education officials told school superintendents about the state’s decision to deny students access to the course during a Thursday conference call, according to a report from the USA Today Network.

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House Armed Services chair threatens subpoena over Space Command pick docs

“It now appears you have something to hide, otherwise a forthright response to the committee’s patient and numerous requests would have already come," Mike Rogers said.

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