DeSantis’s Florida shows the disaster of more competent Trumpism. By Catherine Rampell

www.washingtonpost.com

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The Trump policy agenda — but with less drama and more competent execution.

That’s the platform most GOP presidential hopefuls are presenting to primary voters. The idea seems to be that by toning down former president Donald Trump’s more vaudevillian, law-skirting qualities, candidates can lure away the traditional conservatives who think of themselves as prioritizing pro-life values, adherence to the Constitution, limited government, fiscal restraint and religious freedom.

Unfortunately, no shift in style can obscure the fact that a truly Trumpian agenda serves none of these lofty principles. It subordinates them to one single goal: owning the libs and other disfavored groups. And we’re already seeing proof of concept, since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has lately been implementing such an agenda in his state — with an efficiency that shows how much more Trumpism undercuts conservative values when it doesn’t have incompetence to hold it back.

Take DeSantis’s draconian new anti-immigrant law, which took effect last month. It was supposed to demonstrate how a more disciplined government executive could deliver on Trump’s unfinished economic and cultural agenda. But evidence available so far suggests it’s undermining values that conservatives say they care about.

Among other measures, the law requires hospitals to interrogate incoming patients about their immigration status, and then report the resulting data back to the state. Unsurprisingly, this has had the effect of discouraging immigrants and their family members from seeking potentially lifesaving medical treatment.

A legal hotline operated by the Florida Immigrant Coalition has been inundated with calls from people asking for advice on whether they should still seek care, says Renata Bozzetto, the coalition’s deputy director. She added that, in at least one recent case, a medical provider had canceled two appointments because of confusion over whether the law still allows undocumented patients to receive treatment at all.

To be clear: It does. But there is so much misinformation about what the law does and does not permit — much of it deliberate, Bozzetto contends — that this kind of misunderstanding appears common.

“The chilling effect is absolutely the main issue,” she said. “It speaks to how the state shouldn’t be trying to do law for something that is supposed to be managed by the federal government. A lot of the confusion, it’s because the state policy is incoherent with federal policy.”

In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled that immigration law is the purview of the federal government, not of the states — a legal precedent that is now the basis for an ongoing constitutional challenge to the Florida law. Not that constitutional violations appear to be terribly troubling to DeSantis and his ilk; like other Republican presidential candidates, he has pledged to end birthright citizenship, even though it is enshrined by the 14th Amendment.

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Florida’s new immigration law also looks likely to undermine the state’s fiscal and economic advantages. It fritters away taxpayer dollars on stunts to ship asylum seekers to blue states, for instance.

Meanwhile, Florida employers have expressed concern about consequences of both the law itself and political leaders’ broader hostility toward immigrants, who make up more than one-quarter of the state’s workforce.

Comprehensive data is not yet available, but employers report that, since the law passed, some foreign-born employees have stopped showing up to work or left the state altogether. Workers apparently fear being rounded up and arrested at their jobs, or during their commutes. Some have lost their ability to drive to work, because the new law invalidated drivers’ licenses issued by certain states.

Local immigration advocates say that many of those departing have legal permission to live and work in the United States. But they are nonetheless leaving Florida because they fear the risks for others in their household. Even some GOP politicians in Florida have warned of an exodus of talent, leaving construction incomplete and crops unpicked.

Such policy changes have not only hurt Florida businesses. They have affected a constituency Republican politicians usually claim to prioritize: people of faith.

At a regional church gathering last week, several pastors said they had already lost large shares of their congregations, said Joel Tooley, lead pastor of Melbourne First Church of the Nazarene in central Florida. One pastor in a farming community reported losing roughly 95 percent of their congregation in recent months.

Nonimmigrant churchgoers are anxious about the law, too.

The legislation includes confusing language making it a felony to provide transportation to undocumented people under certain circumstances. Tooley, who said he was, until recently, registered as a Republican but is now politically unaffiliated, says this jeopardizes common congregational activities: Like many pastors, he often asks churchgoers to give rides to fellow congregants to or from the grocery store, camp or school.

Or, most often, religious services. “This is a normal expression of our faith,” says Tooley.

Today, it’s an expression of faith that might expose believers to criminal liability — all in service of helping ambitious politicians pave a path to the White House.