>>This week on NewsNight, lawmakers pass an updated bill cracking down on the access children have to social media in Florida.

But confusion surrounds exactly which sites could be exempt.

Plus, Florida health officials hailed their response to a measles outbreak in our state.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort, and welcome to NewsNight where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in central Florida and how they affect all of us.

First tonight, the legislative session wrapped up last week with key priorities for the Republican House and Senate leaders making it to the governor's desk.

Among them, a ban on children younger than 16 from using certain social media services, with an exception for 14 and 15 year olds who get parental consent.

The governor vetoed an earlier more stringent bill, but the latest version still has First Amendment and privacy advocates concerned, and critics say it's unclear which social media companies it affects.

We'll discuss all of it in a moment.

But first, Krystel Knowles talked with one family concerned over the proposed laws impact on parental rights.

>>After Governor DeSantis vetoed HB 1, it's back to the drawing board and quickly.

Just days before the end of the legislative session, lawmakers reintroduced and passed a social media bill with modifications.

>>We know from all the research that the main place where crimes against children happen are online social media platforms.

We addressed that this year in a way that I think puts us ahead of other states will be sustained both legally and is also effective.

We know that in addition to crimes against children, we see record deterioration in the mental health of our kids, whether it's anorexia or self-harm, or even having almost a third of high school women that have contemplated suicide in the last year.

>>For anyone under 16, social media is off limits except for 14 and 15 year olds with parental consent.

But that's not sitting well with Kelly Reidel who supervises her ten year old daughter's social media use.

>>I don't agree with the government telling me what I can do with my kids, with social media.

There are good parts to social media and the kids do use it sometimes to communicate with friends and or with their teachers for classes.

So there is some good and I believe the parent or the caretaker for the child should be in charge of their limitations on social media.

>>It's unclear which social media sites will be restricted, Reidel's ten year old daughter, Brooklyn, hopes to be a child actor.

She uses social media to follow other child actors and says she's okay with her mom supervising her when she's online.

>>They should have like some sort of like supervision by their parents and like them knowing what they're posting because they could be posting like bad stuff that should not be posted.

When you're a kid under 15, so like I do think that it's fun to have it.

But I think you need like supervision and you just need to make sure that you're doing the right thing on there and you're not doing anything that's like not appropriate for your age or something.

>>The bill places responsible for enforcing rules with social media platforms, which could face civil penalties if they fail to do so.

But legal challenges are likely as tech companies push back in Florida and other states.

>>Krystel Knowles reporting there.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

And joining us in the studio this week, Christopher Heath, investigative reporter, WFTV Channel 9.

Thanks for coming in once again, Chris.

Good to see you.

Greg Angel, Spectrum News 13, reporter and anchor over there.

Good to see you as well.

>>Always a pleasure.

>>And Talia Blake, Morning Edition host up bright and early as ever, at 90.7 WMFE News.

Thank you so much, guys, for coming in.

The governor vetoed a previous social media bill despite bipartisan support for it.

Right.

I mean, why do supporters think this effort is better?

>>I think they feel like on the margins they've changed it enough by giving some leeway for people who are 16-15 to get parental authorization and then, you know, by banning it from there on down, they feel like they've made enough changes to make the governor happy.

At the end of the day, you know, the governor may and may or may not sign it.

But what we are going to have to wait and see is how do the courts suss all this out?

Right now, the fifth Circuit's already taking up the Texas case, dealing with some of these things.

Utah has had a couple of bites of this apple trying to get it constitutionally correct, and they haven't been able to do it.

So I don't know that they've ultimately solved the problem of overreach, quite frankly, and intruding into people's private lives in the name of protecting children, which is why it got bipartisan support.

Everyone wants to protect children.

We all want to protect children.

But you can't burn the Constitution to the ground to protect children.

You've got to balance the two.

>>And some people would say children, of course, also have constitutional rights of free speech and so forth.

I mean, Greg, I mean, there is confusion over which social media sites might even be wrapped up in this.

I mean, how do they define social media?

>>Well, the legislature has put in broad bullet points, if you will, talk about whether 10% of users are of or below a certain age, whether there's features within these apps include constant scrolling, sharing content, and viewing other people in context-- >>Page breaks and things.

>>Page breaks, pop up alerts.

It also goes a little bit further to the fine that some some of these apps where they are direct messages from one person to another person would not be included.

So WhatsApp for example, since that's a direct to direct messaging.

But really, when you look at the language, it really includes the Twitter, the X, not sure what we're calling it these days Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and whichever ones are are still out there.

So it really kind of gives the broad language.

And of course, that's going to eventually come back to First Amendment and how it applies, because it's also the argument, you know, you're talking about some of the challenges, Chris, and some of the other states.

It's that patchwork effect.

How is it one state or this state can do something?

How do you enforce that?

>>We talk about the first Amendment on this, but it's also deals with the contracts clause.

>>Yes.

>>Florida's trying to execute a contract as Florida not within Florida's powers, and it's not the sexiest part of the constitution, but it's a power delegated to the federal government, not to the states.

Again, there's a lot of problems with HB one, which got vetoed, and HB three, which may get vetoed, or the governor may just sign it and say, you know what, I'm signing it knowing that we're going get challenged and probably get, you know, a stay in court.

>>I mean, Florida already has a social media law that's in the Supreme Court.

I mean, this one probably is heading for the Supreme Court as well, especially given that a lot of states are doing it.

>>Oh, absolutely.

And it's really just continuing the trend of a lot of these major bills, especially these social focused bills, barnstormer bills, whatever you want to call them, that have been challenged in court.

You know, we just saw the decision with the parental rights and education bill, for example, on which - those who challenged the bill, the LGBTQ plus advocates and the governor's office both claiming victory... >>But essentially reaching a settlement.

>>Yeah, essentially reaching a settlement.

But yeah, I think all indications is this one will likely also head to court.

>>Well, let's dig down a little bit on this age verification issue.

I mean, there is a requirement for third party, anonymous age verification for social media.

I mean, first of all, and also for adult websites as well.

I mean, first of all, what are the requirements there, Talia?

>>Yeah.

So they want this anonymous, anonymous age verification, which we don't really exactly know how that's going to play out.

We're still going to have to wait and see what that's going to look like.

And one of the requirements is that after you put your information into whatever the verification site is, that that information immediately gets deleted.

After that, you've been verified.

How we're going to know if that information gets deleted is still yet to be seen.

But the main thing is that okay, yes, you going to have to verify your information, but we're not going to store it anywhere.

It's not going to be stored in some outside database somewhere else.

It's going to be deleted.

But we're not really sure if that's going to happen-- >>And the courts have referenced this in previous cases, talking about, you know, we're not opposed to age verification.

If the technology exists, basically leaving that door open, that if we ever get the technology that's flawless enough that it protects everyone and doesn't violate the Constitution, we're fine with it.

But does that technology exist?

>>Well, and and also too, you know, what are the steps here?

So let's say I have a 12 year old who.

Okay, yeah, fine.

You can be on Instagram.

How is that going to be proven?

How am I going to prove that I'm the parent?

How am I going to prove that this is my child who I'm letting access to?

Again-- >>The practicality.

>>Yeah, the practicalities of it, I think, you know, cart before the horse kind of bill.

>>I mean, it's worth mentioning, of course, that the privacy issue is also central to what the US House just did, passing a bill to force the Chinese owners of Tik Tok to sell that app or face a ban in the United States.

It really does seem that social media now has become a focus both on the state and federal level.

>>Absolutely.

I mean, think about how many businesses are on social media, how many people made their careers just even during the pandemic.

On Tik Tok alone, how many people are making their livelihoods just on that one app?

I mean, there are a lot of people standing up against that Tik Tok ban because it's its own commerce in its own way.

>>And that's why a lot of people are kind of pushing back on it, too, because, you know, travel blogs, cooking videos, and then they're able to create, you know, side products and services.

Health and fitness, another another realm on there.

So, you know, that's the thing.

When you start dealing with people's money.

>>Yeah.

Livelihood.

Yeah.

>>Well, let's land this plane, Chris, by asking about the whole parental rights issue.

I mean, lawmakers have essentially spent the last few sessions talking about parental rights.

How do they answer the criticism that this kind of flies in the face of legislation that we've seen in recent sessions emphasizing parental rights?

>>Hypocrisy is the price vice pays to virtue?

Yes, we're all about small government, but we'll preempt all of your local government rules in Tallahassee.

We're all about parental rights, except when it's up to whether or not you get to decide if your 12 year old has a Tik Tok account.

You know, it's you just it's blatant hypocrisy.

They know it.

We know it.

It's you can't have it both ways.

You can't scream parental rights.

You can't scream small government and then do things that are totally big government and totally fly in the face of parental rights.

I've got two kids.

One's 13.

One's 11.

It's up to my wife and I what they do.

But apparently if they want a social media account now it's up to Tallahassee whether or not my kids get a social media account.

You can't have it both ways, but they're going to try.

>>And to be fair there have been some lawmakers have made that point, but a very interesting one to watch it as it progresses in the courts, no doubt to remind that we are recording this program on Thursday morning so things can change by air time.

Meanwhile, you can find a link to the bail on online protections for minors.

It's on our website, wucf.org/newsnight.

Well, many bills we've covered on this program over the last couple of months passed this session that include, among other things, new measures to tackle homelessness in the state, loosened child labor laws and preempt local government rules designed to protect workers from extreme heat.

Lawmakers also passed a slightly smaller budget than last year and a raft of tax breaks near the end of the session.

Talia let me come to you first on this.

When you cover business and the economy, so I'm kind of interested to get your take on that heat protections bill.

What does it do?

>>So the heat protection bill kind of prevents any city, municipality, county in the state from adopting legislation aimed at protecting workers, outdoor workers from extreme heat.

Here is something that we are so used to here in Florida.

We know how bad it is, especially during that August month.

And there also are no federal standards for this.

So kind of if nothing is done at the state or the city level, then what protections are there for our outdoor workers?

And I want to say that there's about like, say, 2 million workers in Florida that work outside.

Think about just like, for example, I-4.

I-4 is always under construction.

Imagine if we didn't have our workers out there doing that, I-4 construction, making sure that the roads are better for us to get to where we need to go to and how bad that could trickle down into our economy.

I also think that this could have more long term effects for maybe our migrant community because a lot of them work outside if there are no protections in place for them.

What does that mean for the rest of us?

What does that mean when you go to the grocery store?

Because someone wasn't out in those fields picking.

Yeah, exactly.

Picking those vegetables and stuff.

>>And the farm workers have been pretty vocal in their desire for heat protections over the years.

I mean, Chris, talking about the labor market, though, I mean, lawmakers passed that bill to allow 16, 17 year olds to work longer and later hours.

I mean did this session, I wonder, deliver a lot of what business wanted.

How did it go for that?

>>This session, in a lot of ways is a response to what happened last session.

In the last session.

We had a lot of bills that cracked down on migrant workers out of Flor - Florida's Agriculture industry is propped up on legal migrant workers.

They come here, they pick of the various crops and then, you know, but they're here on a very limited visa for that job.

But all of a sudden, you start cracking down on that.

Well, then all of a sudden, that workforce that you've been relying on for all of those jobs starts to dwindle.

And then you have to go back and say, okay, well, what can we do to replace it?

I know let's get 16 year olds in there to go work some of these jobs.

And this was a response to that.

So when you take away one workforce and you don't have anything to replace it, you're going to have problems because demand hasn't gone away.

People haven't stopped needing roads to be paved, they haven't stopped needing new roofs, stop needing vegetables.

I mean, I kind of stopped eating vegetables.

But most most people, you know, still like vegetables once in a while.

And these things have to be, you know, picked.

And it's not fun labor.

But we've gone out of our way to get rid of migrant workers.

So now we're turning to teenagers.

>>Yeah.

Eat a carrot, Chris.

I mean, we talked on the show before about the kind of session this was in the power of the government in setting the agenda.

He's here's how he sees it.

>>Everything that we've set out to do, we've accomplished 100% of the promises have been delivered on all our big ticket items that we set out to do the teacher pay, increase, the toll relief, the tax relief, my say Florida home law and order, all of that was done.

And so so I'm happy we got everything that that we asked for and then some and so that's that's that's a good feeling to have.

>>Certainly that the leaders of the House and Senate got a lot of what they wanted social media, health care, for example.

But now the dust is settling on that session.

Do we get a clearer picture of how the governor's influence played out?

We discussed this in the show before.

Do we get a clearer picture now?

>>I think there is an argument to be made that the governor, absent likely too strong of a word to use.

But remember, the beginning of session, the governor was on the presidential campaign trail.

He was not here.

I think if you also look at some of the anecdotes, a lot of those social woke kind of bills we've seen in the prior sessions really weren't getting the traction in the headlines, much less language in the bills.

A lot of a lot of what we saw this session was more matter of fact.

You also look to see the fact that HB one, for example, the fact that the governor publicly-- >>The first social media.

>>Yeah, the first social media bill, the fact that the governor specifically and publicly came out and said, I do not support this bill and ran around, Passidomo push it through their chambers anyway, I think that says a lot.

It's a question of whether or not the governor is seen by lawmakers as a lame duck governor or whether some have said he's still running this shadow presidential campaign.

It'll be interesting.

But even with the new leadership coming in, they've already said we plan to take back the reins of the legislature and make sure that lawmakers run that body.

But in this case, I think you saw a Senate president and a House speaker take control of session once more.

But the caveat line item veto, wait till that budget comes.

Let's see what the governor.

>>Yeah, let's let's see what he does.

I mean, what do you think, Chris?

I mean, some base conservative issues, as Gregg mentioned, did fail to gain traction.

I mean, bills on, you know, rainbow flags, guns, abortion, so on.

How are those on the right viewing this session from those you talk to?

>>You know, it's kind of a two, two fold there.

Some of them are upset that they didn't get a lot of what they wanted through on this session after having pretty much everything they want in the previous session.

You know, rubberstamped all the way through.

Upset that some of it didn't go through on the abortion issue.

I think the right is still trying to get its footing.

A lot of people have described it as, you know, the dog that caught the car on the Post Dobbs decision.

But this Alabama, you know, in-vitro fertilization ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court, you saw it.

There were bills moving in Florida to deal with abortion and to definitely ratchet back a lot of some of the, you know, choice options that women have.

We're moving along.

All of a sudden, IVF becomes a top talking point and Republicans are on the defensive.

And you saw those bills quickly just, nope, we're not going to we're not going to touch those this session.

It's too hot for them right now on that one.

So it really kind of depends on which issue you're talking about.

>>I mean, talking about issues on education.

I mean, the legislature did pass a bill barring identity politics in teacher prep programs.

What does that do?

>>Well kind of bringing it back to what Greg said about woke legislation?

>>Yeah.

>>So basically with the identity politics, it's saying that like systemic racism, oppression, privilege, those things aren't baked into the US's institutional systems and it didn't create inequalities across social, political or economic field.

>>So so basically a continuation of the "stop woke" that that we mentioned before.

I mean, Greg, what the Post the Washington Post wrote over the weekend that Florida voters are tiring of the war on Woke.

Is that true, do you think?

Did the session really reflect that?

>>I think when you look at Americans and especially you look at the electorate, it's not monolithic.

So you're going to have those individuals who who say immigration is important to me.

Banning pride flags is important to me.

You're going to find those individuals, right?

But across the board, at a higher level, I do think that people are just exhausted.

I think they're done with it.

And they're they're looking at some of these efforts and say, you know, what's the point?

What's the impact?

Like, how does it better my life for lawmakers to go after, you know, banning pride, flags and things like that?

So I do think that there is a real exhaustion.

And, you know, again, just look at the presidential campaign.

>>I was going to say maybe we saw that play out.

>>I mean, we're basically going to have deja vu 2020 all over again.

And I even think with that election, I believe it's going to be a very narrow election results.

Whoever wins is going to going to win by a very narrow margin.

And I also think it's going to be a historical low turnout as well.

I think people are becoming disengaged, exhausted from the process and-- >>Want some kind of change that may be going forward.

Well, we're interested to hear from you.

What are the most important developments for you that came out of this session?

Be sure to join the conversation on social media.

We're at WUCF TV on Facebook, X, and also on Instagram.

Okay.

Finally tonight, the Broward County School District announced this week that its recent measles outbreak is officially over.

No new cases reported.

Central Florida saw some cases, too, but health officials said there was no local transmission here.

The CDC says the number of MMR vaccine exemptions has risen from 1.5% in 2012 to 3.9% in 2022.

We'll hear from two doctors about this.

Kenneth Alexander, an infectious disease specialist with Nemours Children's Health.

But first, here's Orlando pediatrician Candice Jones.

>>Community immunity or herd immunity is very, very, very important.

And we know that we need about 95% of our population to be vaccinated in order to have that community immunity or that protection against these serious vaccine preventable illnesses.

And we're seeing more and more that that number is decreasing.

And so therefore, we have what I say is holes in our cheeses, in our cheese, holes in our cheese, and our community immunity is weakened.

And that allows for these highly contagious viruses to then spread.

>>People aren't familiar with measles much anymore, and in reality, measles is a bad disease.

One in five children who get measles end up in the hospital.

And in the days before measles vaccine, 4 million children a year got measles.

Around 4,000 died.

40 to 50,000 ended up in the hospital and somewhere around 4 to 5000 also ended up with irreversible brain damage.

A lot of children with measles get pneumonia and severe diarrhea.

It is not a disease to be trifled with.

In many ways, I'm much more afraid of measles than than I am about flu or COVID.

>>All right, Chris.

I mean, this issue has really brought into question the state's response.

It didn't require parents to keep their unvaccinated kids at home, the in the affected school there.

But the state has been pretty firm, right, in saying that it got this right.

>>I mean, the state got this right insofar as nothing went horribly wrong.

The state did not follow what is conventional guidance from medical professionals.

The state did its own thing.

The state was saved by the fact that where this outbreak happened in South Florida, you had a very, very high vaccination rate both within the school and within the community.

And so you had herd immunity built in there.

You had enough natural buffers in there.

What happens when this happens again in an area where the vaccination rate has fallen to 95% or lower than that and you don't quite have that same herd immunity?

You know, you can pat yourself on the back.

The fact that we got through this and there really weren't any, you know, horrible stories coming out of it.

But the next time it happens in a place where it's not maybe as well vaccinated, we're going to have some of those stories happen.

And it's just one of those things where it's like these are all preventable and yet we're choosing not to.

>>I mean, the administration says, Greg, that it took a page out of its COVID playbook when it was deciding on its response to this sort of allowing parents to make decisions.

Do you think state officials really see this outcome here as a success or they got lucky?

>>I think it's a little bit of both.

I think they got lucky.

But they also see it as the right approach.

Like Chris was kind of saying, the fact that, you know, for them, the one mantra is parental rights, parental rights, whatever we can do to make sure that it's the parents choosing not to have their kids vaccinating, it's the parents choosing to send their kids to school or to keep them home from school.

So I actually think it's a little bit of a mix that you know, they got lucky, but in their own eyes, they made the right call.

>>WMFE, Talia, has reported on the reasons for that decline in vaccination rates that we talked about before for sort of childhood diseases, some of which we thought were eradicated, such as measles.

Did COVID 19 misinformation, do we think have something to do with it or has this trend in vaccinations being declined go much further back?

>>I mean, overall, it kind of seems like the trend in vaccinations declining has slowly gone down.

But the COVID pandemic really exasperated that that problem with and I want to say that with the lockdown, the shutdown of the pandemic, a lot of people missed vaccination appointments and a lot of vaccines didn't weren't taken.

So just the fact of that and then also skepticism around the vaccine when it came to COVID that has kind of trickled into the measles situation now.

>>I mean, I feel like I've been reporting on this a long time.

Just before we came on the air, I was watching a piece that I did from 2011 about vaccine skepticism in Colorado.

>>Keep in mind this weekend, right, Saint Patrick's Day.

And that's when Florida had all the lockdowns.

You know, you hear there weren't lockdowns in Florida, but there actually were lockdowns and shutdowns.

Just go ask, what was at the nightclub right here near UCF that had business professional.

>>My kids came home for spring break and never went back to school.

So the whole idea that nothing got shut down?

No, I have two kids at home that tell you that it did.

>>And I remember Saint Patrick's Day was right around the point when the whole shutdown started to happen.

So four years ago.

So we're right here.

>>Well, let's just finish with you on this, Chris.

I mean, critics may blame Governor DeSantis and is his surgeon general sort of for the vaccine hesitancy or sowing vaccine hesitancy.

But Florida really is not alone, is it, in this sort of resurgence of measles?

I mean, it seems to cut across red and blue states.

>>There's almost like the horseshoe coming together on this one.

There's there's always been a contingent on the on the far left that's been very, you know, skeptical to vaccines of all stripes.

And there was always a contingent on the right that I think wasn't necessarily vaccine skeptical but was definitely government skeptical.

And we've seen kind of those two merge.

What's interesting about this is that after COVID, we've really seen this almost become a constituency when numbers are very small, it's just a small group.

You can ignore them, but when their numbers reach to a certain level, they become a constituency and then you start seeing policies tailored towards those people.

And listen again, it's not it's not for me to tell you what to do with your kids and how you raise them.

But we do need to take it moment back and say, okay, who are we listening to?

Who are we getting our information from?

And the government has a role in that.

Florida's chosen one path.

There's other paths out there.

>>It'll be interesting to see how other outbreaks kind of are handled as we go forward.

A reminder, you can always find this and other episodes of NewsNight on our website.

Visit us online at wucf.org/newsnight along the bottom of your screen.

But that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Christopher Heath, Greg Angel, Talia Blake.

Thanks so much for coming in, guys.

I appreciate your time today.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

From all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.