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Progressive Critics Twist Standard High School Medical Form to Accuse DeSantis of Tracking Girls’ Menstrual Cycles

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Florida governor Ron DeSantis talks to the media in Fort Myers Beach, Fla., October 26, 2022. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

The AP fact checked the claim and labeled it ‘false,’ but the article’s framing only encouraged the governor’s committed critics.

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Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we take down the latest progressive attack on Florida, review some egregious climate-change fear mongering, and hit more media misses.

Progressives’ Latest Failed ‘Gotcha’ on Ron DeSantis

The Associated Press published a “fact check” this week that actually proves the latest round of hysterics about policy in the Sunshine State is false. But if you only listen to progressives, you would never know it.

The AP looked into the claim, “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is requiring all female student-athletes in the state to provide detailed information about their periods in order to compete in organized sports.”

The outlet’s verdict? “False.”

It adds: “The Florida High School Athletic Association is weighing the recommendation from an advisory committee, but no final decision has been made. DeSantis’ education commissioner is a member of the association’s board of directors and the commissioner also appoints three others, but the association is a private nonprofit organization, not a state agency under the purview of the governor’s office.”

However, this defense of DeSantis was tucked into an article that was vaguely headlined, “Florida weighs mandating menstrual cycle details for female athletes” and included a photo of DeSantis, despite the entire purpose of the piece being to explain that he is not involved in the decision-making.

DeSantis critics took the headline and ran with it.

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten shared the article and said, “This is dystopian. And creepy. And government intrusion. Forcing girls to detail their menstruation to their schools, to the state, should scare everyone.” Former U.S. surgeon general Jerome Adams said, “Huh? Government should stay out of personal and familial health decisions . . . but under penalty of law, you must have your daughter track and report her periods? What am I missing? Seriously?”

Former Ohio state senator Nina Turner wrote, “This is authoritarianism. Full stop.” 

Though not tied to the AP fact check, transgender activist Charlotte Clymer said, “I sincerely believe that Ron DeSantis lost any hope of winning the presidency this week. Standing by while the state requires girls to submit information on their menstrual cycles to school officials? It’s over. He may win the nomination, but he’s not gonna win the general.” 

George Conway replied to Clymer’s tweet, “He’s finished. Period.”

However, as the AP notes, the proposed mandate was not developed by DeSantis’s office and will be up for debate at the Florida High School Athletic Association’s meeting on February 26 and 27.

The change is not targeting transgender students, the association’s spokesperson told the AP, and makes minimal revisions to the form that are consistent with national guidelines for sports physicals developed by the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Sports Medicine, and other groups.

The state currently asks female athletes five optional questions about their period on the current Preparticipation Evaluation Form. The new proposed change would make four questions about menstruation mandatory, including if the student has ever had a period, the age they had their first period, the date of their most recent period and how many periods they’ve had in the past year.

Meanwhile, the AP fails to note that the same exact questions are asked in super-liberal areas including New York and San Francisco, as the Washington Examiner reported.

DeSantis’s team also noted similar questions can be found elsewhere outside of Florida. Deputy press secretary Jeremy Redfern tweeted a questionnaire and wrote “WHY WOULD FLORIDA DO THIS?!?!? Just kidding. This is Hawaii’s form.”

Headline Fail of the Week

A new essay from the Nation asks “Should We Start Preparing for the Evacuation of Miami?”

The piece offers an argument for evacuating the city from Daniel Aldana Cohen, a UC-Berkeley sociology professor, and against evacuating from Samantha Schuyler, the magazine’s research director.

“It’s urgent for governments and social movements to start planning for millions of people to land in new places. Prepping Miami’s evacuation is a perfect starting point. Its residents are a multiracial, multinational, and multigenerational assemblage that spans the class spectrum. Tragically, many of them are already climate migrants—like Puerto Ricans displaced by recent hurricanes,” Cohen writes.

Forcing cities to accommodate “climate migrants” from Miami would “trigger conversations about zoning for density, enshrining tenant rights, upgrading infrastructure, taxing the rich, building green banks, and battling racism and police violence,” Cohen adds.

He concludes that a “surge in climate displacement” threatens to deepen an existing “eco-apartheid” in the U.S.

Schuyler argues against evacuating the city but calls to “reimagine coastal living” and advocates a potential scenario that would see people who live directly on the shoreline relocating without “abandoning the whole city.”

However, she warns, “At some point, if South Florida doesn’t change its approach to navigating climate change, evacuation will be necessary.”

DeSantis’s rapid-response director Christina Pushaw responded to the alarmist piece by asking how Cohen would propose forcing 2.6 million people to evacuate from the city.

“I dont [sic] think they have considered the reaction they will get from Miami residents who came here as (legit, political) refugees and have no interest in being ‘climate refugees,’ Pushaw added.

While other scientists and environmentalists have also noted that Miami will be in a vulnerable position if sea levels rise over the next several decades, they have advocated any variety of long- and short-term solutions to protect the city from flooding that would not include the drastic measure of forcing millions of people out of their homes. 

Media Misses

• MSNBC’s Chris Hayes made it known he couldn’t care less about a surveillance balloon belonging to a top U.S. adversary hovering over sensitive military facilities in Montana:

• Representative Don Beyer (R., Va.) expressed a similar lack of concern over the Chinese spy balloon, telling his Republican colleagues they can “stop panicking about a balloon now,” after the U.S. government finally shot the balloon down.

• Not to be outdone, Bill Kristol shared his own naïve balloon take:

• The Intercept published a piece calling pro-life pregnancy resource centers “fake clinics” and summing up dozens of attacks on pro-life centers in the last year as “small actions” and “low-level property damage, transmuted into potential federal offenses through a mangling of the FACE Act.”

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