(serious music) - [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Peterburg, Sarasota.

- [Rob] Next on WEDU, the legislature quickly approves new Congressional maps that give a big advantage to Republicans; the Governor goes after the Disney Corporation for its opposition to the "Don't Say Gay" Law; math textbooks are being banned in Florida for allegedly containing critical race theory; and tenure at Florida's universities has scale back.

All this and more next on "Florida This Week".

(theatrical music) Welcome back.

After a tense and angry debate during a special session of the legislature on Thursday, the Republican controlled body gave its approval to a new Congressional map drawn by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis' office that will swing Florida's representation in Washington even further toward the GOP.

- Members, we are back in session.

(woman shouting in protest) As is obvious we have members who decided they wanted to hijack our process today.

- Black Democrats angry over what was about to happen staged a sit-in on the House floor briefly interrupting the process.

- Ron DeSantis is a bully.

- [Man] Yep.

- Ron DeSantis does not care about Black people.

I will not buy my tone.

There is an incessant attack on Black people in the state of Florida.

- Republicans argued that district should not be drawn based on race.

- See, when we guarantee that a group of people gets to select the candidate of their choice, what we're saying is we're guaranteeing those who aren't part of that group get no say.

- Democrats say the new map's are being gerrymandered to favor the Republican party.

- But what I do know is you all found a way to divide and carve a 50/50 state into a 20 to 8 partisan gerrymander.

That's what before us right now.

And you found a way to cut minority represation in half at the same time.

- [Rob] The DeSantis map gives Republicans a likely 20-8 advantage over Florida's Congressional seats even though Florida is divided almost equally between Republicans and Democrats.

And the new map takes away two Congressional seats that have been represented by African-Americans.

In the Tampa Bay area, the Pinellas Congressional seat will now be split and have a larger number of Republican voters added with some Black in more liberal precincts in St. Peterburg being melded across the bay into the district now represented by Tampa Democrat Kathy Castor.

Cecile Scoon is the president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.

The league has been monitoring this week's special session.

And Cecile welcome back.

- Good to be here.

- So Cecile I understand the league has filed a lawsuit over this new map.

Tell us why you filed the lawsuit and what you're saying in the suit.

- Well the league cannot stand back and allow the Governor and the legislators to obliterate the voting power of African-Americans.

That voting power was set in place by our Fair Districts and was approved by our voters Supreme Court.

- The Governor says that 14th Amendment to the US Constitution says that you can't draw maps based on race.

That's his interpretation of the amendment.

What do you say?

- Well I think his got his understanding incorrect.

It's turned it up on his head.

The 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment were established primarily to give African-Americans, who've been enslaved for hundred of years, equal rights.

And you can use remedial legislation and remedial tools to try to undo the centuries of discrimination.

And the intentional limiting of Black voting and Black voices, that is lawful and that is the law.

- The two districts that are represented now by African-Americans that stand to be eliminated under this new map are Al Lawson's district in North Florida and Val Demings' district in the Orlando area.

The Lawson District seems to spread from Tallahasee over to Jacksonville and the critics of that district say it's too big.

It's too long.

And under Fair Districts you're supposed to have compact districts.

What do you say?

- Well, guess what?

If people read the actual Fair Districts, there are priorities.

The priority in Fair Districts is to give the opportunity for minority and racial minorities and language minorities to be able to select representatives of their choice.

Again, this is a remedial statute to try to undo intentional discrimination and violence that was prevented people from voting and feeling comfortable.

So, it is appropriate and it is in accordance with the law to draw the lines the way they have been drawn.

And the compactness is secondary to creating this opportunities for racial minorities to be able to have a voice.

- So Cecile, you file the lawsuit in State Court, right?

- Correct.

- So the Republicans have a majority of members of the Florida Supreme Court.

Do you expect that they will give a fair reading to your lawsuit?

- We are hopeful that they will follow the law if the law is very clear.

It was specifically written to say to give this opportunities for Black and brown and minority groups.

It also has a very strict, black and white, basically letter law in the statute that says that you cannot diminish the voting rights and the representation of a minority.

And clearly on its face, going from four Congressional districts to two is a diminishment.

That does not require intent.

It's simply, you cannot make it smaller.

And the Governor's maps do that directly.

They are clear violation of the law.

- It looks like the Governor's game plan, though, is to eventually get in to the Federal courts and have the US Supreme Court take a look at it.

He believes, I think it's fair to say, that the US Supreme Court will throw out Florida's Fair District Amendments.

- That's interesting because in the Rucho Case, which is a United States Supreme Court case in 2017, the United States Supreme Court literally cited our Fair Districts Amendments.

Literally cited the League of Women Voters lawsuit that won in 2015 and said that our Fair Districts Amendments were clear, they were enforceable, and they were the way to go.

It literally said, "Hey, the rest of you state, if you wanna prevent political gerrymandering you need to create Fair Districts just like Florida did."

Literally citing to our law and saying it's clear, enforceable, and the rest of you states, do what Florida did.

So that will be a real about face for them to negate in any way the law that they held out to the other states, all the other states.

They say do what Florida did.

This is the way to go.

- And Cecile, this up against the calendar for both sides.

The election is this November for Congress, but the primaries in August and the qualifying period's in June.

So would you expect that this is gonna move quickly through the courts and make it to the Supreme Court pretty quickly?

- Well this is a state issue.

What's going on with the violation of our Constitution by the Governor and the complicity of the legislators is purely a state law issue.

That should be resolved in state court.

There are other issues that may appear, but right now this should be handled in state court.

It is the Florida Supreme Court ruled our Fair Districts before, the law is clear as day, the Governor has admitted that what he's doing is not in compliance with the law as it stands, and we are hopeful and expectant that our Florida Supreme Court will abide by the clear standards of the law that were given to us by citizens initiative in 2010.

- Cecile Scoon of the Florida League of Women Voters.

Thank you for coming on the program.

- Thank you.

(serious music) - Joining us now in our panel; Mary Ellen Klas is the Capital Bureau Chief for The Tampa Bay Times and The Miami Herald, State Senator Jeff Brandes represents District 24 in the Tampa Bay area and is a Republican, and Joe Henderson is a columnist for Floridapolitics.com.

Welcome everybody.

Great to see you.

Senator Brandes, I wanna start with you.

What your reaction of what Cecile Scoon said, essentially, I think it's fair to say that she says that the state legislature this week did not follow the Fair District Amendments when it came to Congressional districts.

What would you say?

- Well I think there's no doubt that no matter what happen with this Congressional maps they will end up in court.

I think the key is that there have been multiple Supreme Court and state court rulings since then that kind of cloud the issue of constitutionality here.

And so what we believe is that the maps we passed where constitutional.

The original maps were constitutional, these maps are constitutional as well based on our attorneys comments, based on Governor's attorneys comments, and frankly the members are left with a decision to make whether to vote for or against what the experts are telling us are constitutional maps.

So I believe these are constitutional maps.

I have no doubt that they will be challenged.

They are challenged last time as well.

And we'll see what the court decides going forward.

- The legislature did pass a maps earlier in the regular session that both Republicans and Democrats said conform the Fair Districts.

Why take this step now?

Why agree with the Governor's maps?

Because I think it's fair to say the Governor wants to challenge Fair Districts in the federal court.

- I absolutely agree that that's where this is headed towards.

But I think he's doing it based on Supreme Court rulings from both state and federal level.

And listen, the legislature is asked to deal with just the maps in front of us.

We didn't have any alternative maps to even look at this cycle.

We had one map to look at and with the attorneys telling us it was constitutional, we had a choice to make whether to vote for or against it.

And based on the representation of council we decided to vote for it.

- Mary Ellen, where does this put the state of Florida when it comes to the elections?

The elections are roaring right in our face.

They're coming up soon.

Where does this put the state of Florida?

- Well first of all, the Governor's gonna sign the map, or sign the bill that enacts the maps and when that happens we're going to see the political dominoes starting to fall.

There's already some indication that certain Congressman are going to run in different districts and identify what those districts are.

We will also watch as some legislators will run for Congress and then that will lead to House members running for the Senate, and you know, county officials running for various seats.

The key thing here is that the supervisors of elections really need this district lines fixed pretty quickly.

And that is important because any one who wants the petition to run for a Congressional office has until May 15th, or 17th, to put to have their petition finish and then qualifyling for all of these elected offices and in the middle of June, on June 17th.

And so all of that has to happen.

So if there is any kind of an attempt to stop this map from becoming law it's gonna happen within days.

- And could all the legal challenges be done in time to hold the election as scheduled and meet the qualifying dates for instance.

- You know, Florida has a history of having courts change the dates of qualifying because of redistricting.

We went through this 30 years ago.

There've been other issues that have influence, you know, hurricanes and so forth, courts have changed the dates and somebody's election deadlines.

But I think the prevailing opinion is that this map once it be is signed by the Governor is going to be the map that is in place this election cycle.

And that is really important because it's a midterm.

It's pretty clear that the Governor, whether this is going to be sustained in court or not, the Governor wanted to move forward with this to give Republicans the advantage at the Congressional level were they need to gain 20 seats in order to caption majority.

- Well that's really the case of, Joe, if the Florida delegation now will have 20 Republicans and 8 Democrats.

What do you think of that?

- I think it's exactly what Governor DeSantis wanted.

He wanted the margin to tip the House to the Republican party in Washington and possibly set it up for him if he runs of president in '24 to have that kind of power up there.

I think that that has to be in the back of people's minds as they look at this maps.

- You know, I look up the voting for the Fair District Amendments, the two amendments that dealt with state seats and Congressional seats.

They passed by 63% of the vote in 2010.

So is there any blowback if now the legislature is saying, "Well we don't really like Fair District so we're gonna go against it."

If 63% of the voters voted for Fair Districts, any blowback?

- You know that is a great question and I've been wondering if, not just this issue but all the other issues, the culture issues that Governor DeSantis has championed this year.

Taken separately, maybe there's not enough power there to defeat him, but if minorities and women and all these other groups can come together there might be a little surprise down the road for the Governor.

- All right.

For our next topic, also in the special session this week, the legislature move to repeal a law allowing Walt Disney World to operate a private government over its property in the state escalating a feud with the entertainment giant over Disney's opposition to what critics called the "Don't Say Gay" Law.

The proposal could have huge tax implications for Disney whose series of theme parks have transformed Orlando into one of the world's most popular tourist destinations.

And Democrats have warned that the move could cost local homeowners to get hit with big tax bills if they have to absorb the bond debt from Disney, although details are far from clear.

The measure push by Governor DeSantis comes as the Governor battles with Disney after the company's criticism of a new state law barring discussion and instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through 3rd grade, as well as instruction that it's not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.

Well, Mary Ellen, let me start with you.

Has Disney said anything about this?

And doesn't Disney, under the current law, have a say over what happens whether or not it can devolve and go into the direction that the legislatures has said?

Has Disney said anything?

- Disney has been surprisingly quiet.

The statute does say that the members of the special district will have to vote on their own dissolution.

Since the members of this special district they're all Disney employees or Disney executives, the presumption is they won't vote to dismantle themselves.

However the way this law was written, it gives another year before any of this takes effect.

And we all know that that was intentional.

This is design to send a message to Disney, perhaps to quiet them in their opposition to the Governor.

And I do think that that's a long time before we'll see any real action that dismantles the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the special district that is Disney's governing structure.

- Joe, the Governor says that he's gonna take on this woke corporations that wanted to tell their, you know, have education on African-American history or have education on gay and lesbian issues.

He's gonna take on this woke corporations that are not gonna be able to have the freedom that they once have.

- Yeah, and let me just say it was a dark day in American history when Republicans started using the word woke all the time.

Anything they don't like is woke.

That's, to me, a clear First Amendment violation.

It's a Governor private businesses what they can and can't do.

And this whole fight over Disney right now is frankly petty.

It's payback.

It's bullying.

It's silly.

- There is a big protest outside of Disney World last Sunday, though.

I mean, there were hundreds of people there.

So Senator Brandes, did you vote against the changes to Disney's set-up in Orlando?

- I did.

I think I was the only Republican on my colleagues to do so.

But ultimately, nobody understands what the ramifications of this bill really are.

They don't understand the tax implications of it.

They don't understand actually how it would actually work as a plan.

(coughs) Excuse me.

Again, this is something that we saw on Tuesday morning and we're voting on by Tuesday afternoon.

(Rob and Sen. Brandes talking at the same time) - Is it possible that the residents nearby will have to take on the tax burden for paying off Disney's bonds?

- Absolutely.

I think there's that possibility.

But I think, ultimately, none of these actually ever plays out.

I think this is a bunch of Kabuki theater that just keeps, frankly if you believe that Governor is vying for president of the United States this simply would just allows him to stay on the news longer and keeps the cycle going here.

It's this kind of great theater.

But I don't think anybody really expects this is ultimately gonna play out where Reedy Creek is gonna go away.

This is all, in my opinion, just a lot of theater.

Ultimately, Disney's attorneys are probably better than Florida's attorneys.

They would hide something in court for a long, long time and ultimately the state of Florida will cry uncle, and Governor DeSantis would move on.

- Okay.

Well on our next story, the Florida Department of Education has rejected more than 50 math textbooks from next school year's curriculum citing critical race theory content among the reasons for the rejections.

In a news release, the Department said 54 out of 132 of the textbook submissions would not be added to the State's approved list because they did not adhere to Florida's new standards or contain topics that are prohibited by state government.

The list of rejected books is the largest in Florida's history.

There is some secrecy surrounding the decision.

So far, the State has not provided a complete list of prohibited passages contained in the text books.

It's also unclear who screen the books on behalf of the State.

And in another major step to change education in Florida, this week the Governor signed a bill that makes it harder for faculty at state universities to retain tenure, saying the legislation is another way that he and the legislature are working to prevent educators from bringing their political views into the classroom.

Joe, I think it's a surprise to a lot of people that critical race theory is embedded in math textbooks.

- (scoffs) Yep, if we only knew what critical race theory really was.

So, the headline on the news release about this issue out of the education department really said it all.

It says, "For the rejects, publishers attempt to indoctrinate students."

And that is just read me to the base even though it's another nonsense issue.

Math is math.

The Governor got his headline, he got what he wanted.

The folks in the village is left there, I'm sure.

But at the end of the day, it's just another nonsense issue, in my opinion.

Mary Ellen, how about transparency?

I mean, I requested some information from the State which I never got, but I was never sure who is behind the screening of these books.

And then, do we have a complete list of all the passages that engaged in prohibited teaching that were in this books?

I know that some passages have been released, but not all the passages.

- Well, the Department of Education has some authority to review these books and there's new legislation that has actually increased that ability.

But you're right.

They issued this claim that all these textbooks were somehow in violation of the new rules, but they offered no specifics.

And the more we learn the more we realize this was absolutely not an accident.

They intentionally didn't list the examples because yesterday they finally release some of the examples and the examples are sort of jaw-dropping.

One example, a colored bar chart shows the levels of racial bias can vary by age.

Okay?

That has been deemed inappropriate and violating the rules of their woke requirement.

And what was this for?

This was a simple brain teaser involving a polynomial model that is just in the bottom of one little page and the whole textbook was rejected.

So, I think when this goes under some scrutiny they're gonna have a lot more questions thrown at them.

But what I have found as a reporter when asking questions, we never get answers.

And that is how the remain not very transparent.

- We're running against the clock and yet I wanted to get to tenure professors, but I think we're gonna have to leave that for another day.

Before we go, what are the news stories should we be paying attention to?

And let's start with Senator Brandes.

Jeff, what are the big stories out there?

- I think the biggest story of Florida right now is what's going on in the property insurance crisis.

The fact that we have lost in insurance company every month for the last four months, the consumers are paying sometimes a 100% rate increases right now.

And that citizens is growing by 6,000 policies a week, we'll be over a million policies by the end of the year.

We are in full collapse in the property insurance world and unless the legislature fixes it then we people should expect double digit rate increase this is as far as the eye can see.

- And you call for a special session, you got it.

It's coming up next month, right?

- I do.

My hope is that we address simply that property insurance and we don't make it the Pandora's Box of other issues that could come out.

- All right.

Mary Ellen, your other big story.

- Well, I also think that there is another issue that needs some attention and that is what is happening with Condo Reform.

Unfortunately, the legislature drop that issue.

They don't have a good idea of where the Governor stands on this.

I think the failure of the Governor's office to take a position has led legislators to wonder where to go since he has such control over everything they do.

And that is an issue that is living a lot of condo owners and properties in limbo in the wake of the horrible tragedy last year.

- That surf side.

Yeah, that was a horrible.

And Joe, your other big story of the week.

- It's the Elon Musk attempted takeover of Twitter.

I'm fascinated by that.

And it will impact a lot of folks in Florida because we know how many people in the State use Twitter.

- [Rob] We sure do.

All right.

Well thank you all for a great show.

And thank you for joining us.

Please send us your comments at ftw@wedu.org.

You can view this and past shows online at wedu.org or on the PBS app.

And "Florida This Week" is now available as a podcast.

You can find it on our website or wherever you download your podcast.

And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend and happy Earth day.

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