- [Narrator] This is a production of WEDU PBS.

Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Coming up next with Florida's COVID cases surging, some activists have a few questions for Governor DeSantis.

What's the latest on the Florida citrus industry decimated by a deadly disease.

Will it ever recover?

And we'll talk with Florida historian ay Arsenault, about the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol All coming up next on Florida This Week.

(upbeat music) Welcome back.

Florida is once again seeing a jump and coronavirus cases.

Hospital admissions are also up.

Governor DeSantis has kept a low profile since December 17th.

- [Rob] He emerged and did hold several press conferences this week.

And at one in Kissimmee, he appeared to be short of breath.

- We also have Chancellor Henry Mack from the Florida Department of Education, Brad Ferguson, Senior VP and General Managers SkyWater, Florida.

- [Rob] On new Year's Eve, he was at a masculine evangelical event along with his wife who was being treated for cancer.

- Lord you raised up godly men and women to stand up for our rights as the church and to stand up for the constitution.

- Why I'm I being handcuffed?

- [Rob] In Jacksonville on Tuesday, police arrested a community activist who showed up before the governor was about to hold a press conference in a public building.

Ben Frazier, president and founder of the North Side Coalition of Jacksonville wanted to challenge the governor's handling of Corona virus.

- We are here to hold the governor accountable.

- [Female Voice] Yes we are.

- But there are proper ways to do it.

- What's the proper way, sir?

Not to follow our First Amendment rights?

- [Rob] Frazier was cited for trespassing and released on his own recognizance.

- Laura Cassels is a reporter for the Florida Phoenix.

She's a former statehouse bureau chief and city editor in Tallahassee, and she covers the legislature.

Laura, thanks for joining us.

- Thank you for inviting me.

- So with so many people having COVID, so many cases of COVID on the rise here in Florida, a lot of people want to get tested.

I know I went out this week because somebody I know wanting to get a test.

We've searched the drug stores and could only find one in a five mile area.

It's hard to get tests.

You wrote a story this week about the fact that the governor has a million tests.

His administration has a billion tests and the tests are expiring.

Tell us what the story is.

- Well, this was brought up early in December by Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Commissioner, Nikki Fried.

They said that she had reason to believe that there was a stockpile of about a million COVID at home tests, turns out they're Abbot test and that matters and that they were due to expire at the end of the year.

Division of Emergency Management Director, Kevin Guthrie confirmed that on Wednesday I believe it was, at one of the press conferences.

So what happened was that they apparently were on track to expire in September.

Mr. Guthrie got and a three month extension on those and requested another three-month extension.

But as of now, the end of December, those million Abbott tests have expired and are not authorized to be used.

So the first of course is why were those not distributed in early December when we saw Omicron coming?

And I do want to inject here that there, one of the other things that was announced this week was that the governor and the DEM are going to send a million at home COVID test to nursing homes.

That is a different set of test than the expired ones that we've been discussing since early December.

It's a new set.

This was confirmed to me by Samantha Becker at the Division of Emergency Management.

She told me that yesterday.

So they're not sending expire tests to nursing homes just to clarify.

- And do we know why the administration sat on those tests and held them back?

- Mr. Guthrie again at Division of Emergency Management said that the reason was that there was not much demand for testing in the fall when those tests were scheduled to expire.

He said he tried to give them out and that people just didn't want to get tested in the fall.

Now, the question that Commissioner Fried has raised and other people have raised, is why were those tests given that they were about to expire December 30 even on an overtime authorization, why were those not distributed early to the usual suspects so that they would be readily available when Omicron hit here and we knew it was coming.

- And you said the Abbot test is significant.

Why is it significant to know what kind of test it is?

- Because the other type of test is a completely different brand.

And I have heard it reported that the expired test are the ones that have been sent to the nursing homes.

And according to my sources, that is not the case.

- So I played a soundbite where the governor had trouble breathing, do we know what the governor's vaccination or booster statuses is?

Has he said?

- We don't know what it is.

He has declined to say.

His press secretary, Christine Fisher, has declined to say, and because he is entitled to the same patient, HIPAA Privacy Rights as the rest of us he doesn't have to say.

Certainly there is a lot of pressure for him to indicate whether he's tested or not, but given his stance and Surgeon General Ladapo, general stance against a widespread testing, you can sort of see why he may not be sharing that information.

- The governor was pretty quiet around the holidays.

So this week he re-emerged.

And I'm wondering, what is he saying now about vaccines and what is he saying about other modalities?

- He and the surgeon general nominee who has yet to be confirmed by the Senate and that probably will turn into an interesting story too, have said that they think that the feds have spun up a mentality of frequent testing.

I think a lot of people in the medical community would completely dispute that.

I think that the contact tracers, the public health officials really value frequent testing, but Surgeon General Ladapo says he intends to unwind that mentality and DeSantis agrees.

And that maybe that reflects the fact that the tests are just not readily available and they just want to align with that reality or Surgeon General Ladapo has a lot of unconventional thoughts that do not align with the CDC, the FDA or the National Institutes of Health.

So this is pretty typical for him to be out of step with those preeminent experts in infectious diseases.

- Florida ranks 36.

In the percentage of the population that has received their booster shots.

So we're kind of near the bottom when it comes, when measured against the rest of the country, how much emphasis did the governor make this week on vaccines and boosters?

- None.

He did not emphasize vaccines or boosters at all.

The story that I ran today was talking about how we have a moderate to average rate of vaccinations, vaccinations in Florida.

Our booster rate is quite low and I don't think that, you know, the governor is the only source of recommendation to get vaccinated.

So it's not entirely on him, but he certainly, and Dr. Ladapo has certainly been pitching alternatives, well therapies, over vaccines.

I would say yeah, they didn't talk about vaccines at all this week.

- Well, Laura Cassels, thank you for coming on Florida This Week.

- Thank you very much.

And I did want to add just one more thing, which is that on the monoclonal antibodies.

There has been so much confusion.

There are two monoclonal antibody treatments.

Regeneron, which the governor is obtaining and Ely Lilly brand.

Those have been determined by the CDC to not be effective against Omicron which is dominant.

So that is the problem with the dispute over the monoclonal antibody therapy.

So people really need to talk to, I think, doctors and make sure that they're getting, you know, a therapy that's actually going to help them.

- Getting the right one.

All right, Laura thanks a lot.

- The right one.

All right, thank you.

(upbeat music) - Now that the cooler weather is here, it's time for the annual harvest of citrus.

Citrus fruit, especially oranges have long been the state's most famous product.

- [Rob] More than a half million acres of land in central and south Florida are dedicated to citrus production with Polk County being number one for citrus in the state.

Oranges decorate our license plates, welcome people as they drive into Florida, it's the name of the second oldest bowl game in the country and the juice has long been hailed for containing high amounts of vitamin C. But for the past several years, a disease, citrus greening, has been devastating the crop.

Citrus greening is a bacterial disease carried and spread by an Asian insect that kills both the fruit and the trees.

The US Department of Agriculture recently forecast that Florida growers would produce only 47 million boxes of oranges this season.

That's down 11 percent from last season and only a fraction of what the state produced during the peak years in the late 1990s.

And here with an update about what's happening in the industry is Matt Joyner, the director of government relations for Florida Citrus Mutual.

He's a graduate of the University of South Florida and served as chief of staff for US congressman Adam Putnam, as well as serving in the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs.

And Matt Joyner, welcome to Florida This Week.

- Thanks for having me, Rob.

I'm thrilled to be on to talk about one of my favorite subjects, Florida citrus.

- Good to have you here.

47 million boxes of oranges, is that just about a 20 or 25 percent of what was being produced in the late 1990s?

- That's correct.

We're down probably a 75 percent from our peak.

And I would say that we haven't been quite this low since the 40s, the late 40s.

That's right.

- And is it all because of citrus greening?

- So it's primarily because of citrus greening.

Growers are facing some of the greatest challenges of their history as a result of this bacterial disease that ultimately infects and will kill trees and has really taken its toll on our production.

Now, certainly we've seen urban development, even the impacts of multiple hurricanes over the last decade and a half that have also taken its toll on our production.

And frankly, the number of acres that we have in the production is citrus right now.

- So, are scientists making any gains in the battle against citrus greening?

Are you seeing the light at the end of the tunnel?

Are there new varieties of oranges that are coming out that can withstand citrus greening?

- You know, I think we are seeing some exciting things as a result of science.

We were really starting at at zero a decade and a half ago when the growers started assessing themselves for research.

And since then the state of Florida as well as the United States Department of Agriculture have also chipped in to help us in this pursuit of a solution to greening.

Obviously a tree that's resistant through breeding is sort of the long-term goal so that we have trees that can grow even in the presence of greening.

But, you know, there's a shorter term objective which is what are the strategies we can develop as we learn more about greening to produce citrus even in the face of it, knowing that we've just got to keep these trees healthier, longer and into production until we have that greening tolerant tree that we hope will come.

- You hope will come, so we don't have that magic tree, that magic bullet yet that's gonna survive citrus greening?

- We do not have that tree yet.

I will say that breeding has come a long way.

Obviously when you're talking about a tree crop, you have to develop the tree, plant the tree.

In citrus case, it's a good five years to get it up to productivity.

And then really you need multiple years after that to see that that a tree, a new variety of tree is gonna be productive for the longterm.

So this is a long-term prospect.

We've made great strides and we may be very, very close, but we're gonna be a number of years that determining if some of these new rootstocks and varieties are gonna hold the promise that we think they make.

- Well, that raises the question.

There's gotta be a lot of pressure on the growers to sell out and give up citrus production.

Is that, I mean, is that what you're seeing and are they giving it up or they're converting to other crops?

What's going on in the Heartland when it comes to citrus production when the growers say, I can't make money on oranges?

- Well, certainly the margins have gotten tighter for producers.

No doubt about it.

And we've seen contraction in the industry already.

You know, the production costs have tripled, whereas the productivity of a tree has really declined substantially from when they were healthy.

So obviously that does put pressure on growers, but I think that what we're experiencing now is that most of the growers that are still in the industry are committed.

We're seeing that propagations for new plantings are the highest they've been in five years.

And so growers are optimistic.

I think about some of the new rootstocks that seem to be tolerant, not completely resistant but tolerant.

And they understand that in order to play to win they have to keep putting trees in the ground and they're using a lot of the therapies and different things in terms of nutritionals and other things that we've gleaned through research to see are successful and keeping a tree healthier and productive longer.

- And how important are kind of these specialty plantings like organic fruit and how important is that to the industry?

- So it's obviously an important segment of the industry, but certainly organic agriculture poses its problems when it comes to dealing with pest and disease like what we're seeing with greening.

And so they're a little more limited in the strategies that they can employ.

But nonetheless, we have a good robust segment of the industry that this doing well in that.

It's a small niche of our overall juice industry, but nonetheless, we do have that.

- Well, Matt, thanks for coming on Florida This Week.

Do you expect production to go up next year or do you think the downward trend is gonna continue?

- Well, I'm the eternal optimist.

I would like to think that maybe we'll see an inch back up.

You know, it is still farming, so even with greening we also have weather events that can impact the production, you know, a bloom.

There's a lot of things that can impact the production.

So I'm optimistic that maybe we've kind of gotten to the bottom and possibly we'll see a little bit of an uptick.

But certainly the fight's not over and our growers are doing everything thing they can to make sure that we're going to continue to produce Florida signature crop that is so critical to the state's economy and to many of the rural communities throughout the Heartland of Florida.

- Matt Joyner, thanks a lot.

Thanks for coming on Florida This Week.

- Thank you, Rob.

(upbeat music) - This past Thursday, marked the one-year anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.

(crowd chanting) - [Rob] The violent break in at the Capitol temporarily halted the process of certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Five people died during the insurrection, about 150 law enforcement officers were injured and hundreds of workers, staff and members of congress were traumatized by the mob.

So far more than 700 of the participants in the break-in have been charged with crimes.

Florida leads the nation with the number of residents who've been arrested for the attack, 76, more than any other state.

The assault raised questions about whether our democracy is strong and whether it could withstand another attack on our Congress and our constitution, or whether our 224 year history of the peaceful transfer of power is over.

- We saw with our own eyes riders menace these halls.

Threatening the life of the speaker of the house.

Literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America.

What did we not see?

We didn't see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack sitting in the private dining room, off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing.

- Ray Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History Emeritus at the university of South Florida in St. Petersburg.

He's an award-winning author and lecturer and has been writing about the history of the civil rights movement, Florida and the US for decades.

His books include "Freedom Riders", "Arthur Ashe" and "The Sound of Freedom", about the singer Marian Anderson and Ray welcome back.

- Thank you.

Glad to be back.

- I want to read a quote this from Jimmy Carter, he wrote this for the New York Times on Wednesday.

He said, "Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss.

Without immediate action, we are genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy."

Ray I want to ask you, do you think that that Carter's on track is he overdoing it?

What are your thoughts about that?

- Well, sadly, I think he is on track.

He's not a man given to hyperbole.

So I think when he said something, you know, he thinks about it, he's deliberative.

and I agree with him.

I'm not sure we're at the point where there should be talk about an impending civil war, but certainly civil conflict and the culture war I think it's never been more alive or more dangerous.

- We've had times where the country was in peril before, we had the Civil War, we had the War of 1812, but nothing quite like this.

- I think that's right.

I mean, I've spent a lot of my career, early career anyway, studying Southern demagogues.

So these wild and wooly characters from the Backwoods South, and, you know, they were always fulminating about one enemy or conspiracy or another, but it never had an kind of national bent.

You know, it didn't really intrude into national politics very much.

I mean, it did obviously affect public policy but there was never any sense that it might actually involve something like attacking the Capitol in Washington or that a president of the United States would endorse it.

It just, that was unthinkable, I think until very recently.

- Ray, I want to put up on the screen some photos from a federal indictment.

Florida, as you know has the most number of people arrested for participating in the attack on the Capitol.

This shows two members of the oath keepers.

One is a Florida resident, Kenneth Harrelson.

They were removing a cache of weapons from a hotel, not far from the US Capitol on the day after the insurrection.

We've had many demonstrations in the country.

We've had civil rights and labor and antiwar and anti-nuclear demonstrations.

None of those rallies had people arrested for stashing guns.

These guys were arrested for having the stash of guns.

- Yes and I fact, I happen to believe and I think a number of people may agree with me that they should be charged with insurrection.

Then I think the charges that have been, you know, levied so far really don't go far enough to encompass what happened on January 6th.

Maybe it's because I take it personally since January 6th is my birthday and they forever changed the view of January 6th.

But it was I couldn't help but take it personally.

But I think it was, if that wasn't an insurrection, I don't know what would be.

- And to some people, the people that participated in the insurrection are heroes.

There were parties in some parts of the country celebrating January 6th as a positive thing.

At that attack on the Capitol people were yelling racist epithets and anti-semitic epithets.

They had symbols of antisemitism and symbols of racism that they carried into the Capitol.

In some ways, I mean, if you're going to cheer this is a good thing are they normalizing racism?

Are they normalizing antisemitism?

- I think they are.

And I think it is a form of fascism frankly.

I didn't think I'd ever be able to say that about American politics.

In fact, many years ago, I wrote about the Southern demagogues and argue that they didn't have really enough of a theory of the state.

They were more interested in politics than government.

They didn't really have the kind of ideology that we associate with the totalitarians of Europe of the mid 20th century.

But I think many of these people do.

I mean, I think it really does amount to a kind of a fascist insurrection insurgency.

It has all the earmarks of of course what happened in Nazi Germany in the early 1930s and what to some degree what happened in Franco Spain and Mussolini's Italy and many other European, and of course in the militaries of Japan.

That kind of autocracy which has no respect whatsoever for the democratic ethos.

And I think that's what we're seeing.

In some respects, what has happened since January 6th is more troubling than what happened on that day in my view.

I really thought that this would be the end of Donald Trump's political career and that the Republican Party would repudiate him.

I now feel that I was naive.

I didn't realize how deep this went or how the so-called big lie could affect people's opinions and their lack of respect for our society which I thought they really believed in.

I really thought that despite the differences between Democrats and Republicans, that everyone believed in democracy with a small D Now, you know, throughout American history we've never had a pure democracy.

We really didn't have anything even approaching it until 1965 with the Voting Rights Act.

We often disfranchised groups and acted very undemocratically, but since 1965 I think we've had a good argument that we were approaching a true democracy.

Perhaps not the beloved community that John Lewis talked about and what was the king talked about but something to be proud of.

And I think now we're in a very, very dark place and difficult situation.

- So what is say that there are hotbeds of this kind of anti-government activity here in Florida.

That a lot of the people that were arrested to the Capitol came from Florida.

Brevard County has a significant number of people who were arrested in the Capitol attack.

Sarasota County has also attracted a large number of people who are interested in the kind of conspiracy theories that led to this attack.

Why Florida?

Why does Florida stand out?

It's smaller than New York, smaller than California, smaller than Texas or New York I guess is now smaller than us.

But, you know, we're not, we're number three in size yet we heavily participated in that Capitol attack.

- Well, Florida has always had a kind of cultural orientation towards what we sometimes call it the, the Last Chance Gulch phenomenon.

People come here when they failed elsewhere or where they've given up on other parts of the United States and they think they'll get a fresh start.

That the rules are different here as one of the tourist bureaus talked about a few years ago.

You know, we often lead the nation in alcoholism and divorce and car theft and any number of things.

Murders in some cases.

So I think, I mean, I love Florida in many ways, but it has attracted a certain type of person who maybe we have more than our share of some of this.

That used to be thought of that, you know, California was the Bellwether State for the United States, a vision of the future but sadly I think Florida may be in fact that.

Although I would say, I'm not sure how deep it goes culturally or socially.

There's a lot of evidence, political sociologists and historians have done a lot of work on this that individual people are very susceptible to political cues.

You can't really change their religion from the top but you can change their politics.

And so whether or not you encourage the better angels of their nature or the devils of their nature makes a huge difference.

And I really blame former President Trump and Governor DeSantis, I think they both been unconscionably demagogic and have given all the wrong cues and brought out the worst in people.

And so I think Florida unfortunately, has become a center of that with ex president Trump, living here and with such an irresponsible and being spirited governor.

- Ray Arsenault.

Thanks a lot for coming on the program.

And we've got to have you back to talk about the way out of this.

But Ray, thanks.

Good to see you.

- It's my pleasure.

Let's hope we can find a way out.

(upbeat music) - Thanks for watching.

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From all of us here at WEDU have a great weekend.

(upbeat music) - [Announer] Florida This week is a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for it's content.

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