Teen Vogue’s Red Tide series explores what it’s like for young Floridians living under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s conservative policies. No other 2024 presidential candidate has championed the right’s crusade against young people, especially the marginalized, quite like he has. We travel to Tampa, Tallahassee, and Sarasota — plus western Massachusetts — and speak with more than 20 Floridians who are fighting to make the state equitable and safe for everyone.

While Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was underwater in April, Governor Ron DeSantis was nearly 1,200 miles away on his book’s promotional tour, which left locals to guess about when he’d show. A deluge of rain had flooded roads, homes, and closed down the airport, but the state leader wasn’t there.

Months later, a Florida student recalls that moment for me as a sign of what was to come: In addition to the literal rising waters and storm fronts Floridians continue to face, that moment in Fort Lauderdale served as a visual for what it is to live under DeSantis and Florida Republicans’ proud “red wave” takeover.

All over the state, symbolic waters are also on the rise, and marginalized Gen Z’ers are struggling to keep their heads above it. As DeSantis continues to expand his “war on wokeness” for his presidential bid, his policies are devastating marginalized communities, leaving many young people reeling as they try to survive in the state they call home.

In just the last year, Florida policies targeting young, queer, trans, Black, and migrant people have abounded. In April, the Florida Board of Education expanded DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law in schools to include all grades. That same month, and just a day after Fort Lauderdale flooded, DeSantis signed into law a sweeping six-week abortion ban. In May, he signed his “Let Kids Be Kids” package of five bills, which includes a ban on gender-affirming care for minors that also impacts adults; banning trans students from using their correct pronouns; banning minors from drag performances; taking state control of the Florida High School Athletic Association under the guise of protecting “women in sports”; and criminalizing trans access to the appropriate bathroom. These anti-trans policies have forced some people to flee the state in search of safe, nonjudgmental health care.

In June, Florida’s Board of Education banned the teaching of “critical race theory,” a legal framework term that has been turned into a racist dog whistle. Most recently, after leading the charge of Republican governors cruelly transporting migrants out of their states, DeSantis signed an anti-immigrant law punishing companies that knowingly hire the undocumented and pushing hospitals to ask Medicaid recipients about their citizenship status, thus targeting several hundred thousand migrant workers living in Florida. Because of these policies, over the summer the NAACP issued a travel warning for the state for people of color and LGBTQ+ people.

Now, young Floridians long for a time just a few years ago, before DeSantis. “The obstacle is just living, at this point,” 21-year-old Micah Barkley tells me in a Tallahassee coffee shop, “trying to make sure that everybody lives in peace and can get Florida back to what it was.” We’re seated beneath a hot-pink, faux “Wanted” poster with “DeSantis” printed in all caps at the top, “Fresh-squeezed Florida fascism” at the bottom, and a list of some of his legislative moves in between. “It wasn’t even good [a few years ago], but as soon as he became governor, it’s just gone downhill from there.”