Florida’s First Coast News validated, in late January, social media reports that teachers in Duval County public schools have been told to remove or cover up books in their classrooms that were not approved by the Florida Department of Education.

On January 27, Florida substitute teacher Brian Covey tweeted a video of empty shelves in a middle school library. This week, weeks after Covey’s video went viral, First Coast News asked Gov. DeSantis about the video. DeSantis responded with a lie: “That was a fake narrative, that was not true,” DeSantis said. “It’s all politically motivated,” he claimed.

Speaking of politically motivated, the next day Covey was fired. He said he was told it was for violating the district’s social media and cell phone policy, something he had never been told about before. The school district told FCN Covey’s video was a “misrepresentation” and caused a “disruption.”

FCN went to the library and filmed – you guessed it – empty shelves. The non-fiction shelves were full but fiction shelves were empty. But as Covey pointed out, and FCN’s video also showed, there were tables, storage bins, boxes, equipment, etc. obstructing the non-empty shelves, if not blocking them altogether.

Judd Legum interviewed Covey and has a good Twitter thread that further calls out DeSantis’ lies. First, his bogus claim that that only books "99% of people realize is wrong" will be banned.

Also, the huge number of books that are off the shelves.

If DeSantis was really only removing books that almost everybody thinks are “wrong,” he’d be crowing about it, not trying to cover it up and silence those speaking out.