DeSantis keeps waging culture wars, tries to make peace with Trump

ORLANDO, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis has tried lately to shore up his relationship with former President Donald Trump and soften his much-maligned public image even as his culture war agenda continues.

He’s signed laws to allow chaplains in public schools, mandate teaching kindergartners about the history of communism, and ban lab-grown meat that he declared was a plot hatched by the “global elite.”

“It’s a placeholder,” said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, a state where DeSantis campaigned heavily but dropped out before its primary.

“I don’t think he and his circle have figured out yet exactly what went wrong. … I don’t know that they have much of a clue what to do for 2028. So when you don’t know what else to do, keep doing the same thing.”

—Orlando Sentinel

New data shows many outsiders arrested in Columbia, CCNY Gaza protests, but unclear if they were ‘agitators’

NEW YORK — More than 45% of the pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at Columbia University and City College this week were “unaffiliated” with the schools, NYPD sources told the Daily News on Thursday, though it’s unclear how many of the demonstrators were so-called “outside agitators” involved in driving the recent tumult on the campuses.

The issue of whether “outside agitators” were behind the encampment protests at Columbia, City College and other schools has become a focus of intense debate.

Mayor Eric Adams, NYPD officials and college leaders have repeatedly said outsiders were influencing student behavior, while student protest leaders deny that’s the case.

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