- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(upbeat music) - Coming up next, the governor indicates he plans to challenge Florida's Fair District amendments, the Don't Say Gay bill forces Democrats to change their plans for a fundraiser at Disney, the AARP wants the governor to veto the nursing home bill, and what's Tallahassee doing about the housing crisis?

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

(upbeat music) - Welcome back.

Joining us this week on our panel, Rosemary Goudreau O'Hara is the former editorial page editor at the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Eric Deggans is the TV critic for National Public Radio, Barry Edwards is a political talk show host on WHBO radio in Tampa, and Diane Roberts is a writer for the Florida Phoenix and a professor at Florida State University.

So great to have you all here.

It's nice to see you.

- [Panel Member] Good to see you.

- Well, the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper reports, that Governor Ron DeSantis is preparing for a courtroom fight over Florida's Fair District amendments.

- [Announcer] The Fair District amendments are citizens' initiatives passed by Florida voters in 2010, designed to take much of the politics out of the drawing of legislative and congressional districts.

This year, the state legislature passed new maps that lawmakers said were designed to comply with the Fair District amendments by preserving minority seats.

However, the governor wants fewer minority seats in Congress from Florida, so he issued his own map.

It was ignored by the legislature.

Now the governor says he will veto the congressional maps passed by the legislature.

That's sure to lead to a fight in the federal courts, and the governor hopes the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court will back him up.

- So, Barry, is it clear that the governor wants to see the Fair District amendments overthrown?

And we haven't gotten to the special session where the congressional maps will be hashed out one more time, but will there be a special session and is the governor's ultimate aim to throw out Fair Districts?

- I think it's even bigger than that.

I think, first of all, this is a national issue.

Steve Bannon was criticizing the governor, Governor DeSantis, on the conservative talk shows that he was on, and within 10 days, the governor produced a map saying he wasn't doing enough.

And one of the things we ought to look at is, everybody thought the Republicans were gonna have a great redistricting.

The California governor and the New York governor had panels, independent panels that weren't quite that independent, so right now, with five states left to go, the Democrats have gained 11 seats, the Republicans have gained six, so the Democrats have a net gain of five.

So that's bad, if you've already got five, that means the Republicans have to take 10 to get the majority.

So he's doing this to try to build up conservative credibility, but I think it's bigger than the Fair Districts of Florida, which is very vague as Justice Kagan said in her dissent when they had the 2017 ruling.

What we ought to look at is, he wants to get rid of minority access seats, federally, once and for all, and by doing that, then you can do partisan gerrymanders if race isn't a factor.

So this is much bigger than Fair Districts.

This is all about...

He said the 14th Amendment means that the Al Lawson congressional district in Tallahassee to Jacksonville, violates the Equal Protection Clause, and because of that, that you couldn't have minority access seats anywhere, so that would give the Republican states carte blanche to do what he wants.

- So Rosemary, is there gonna be a special session and will the governor win in a special session that has got a congressional map that removes at least two minority seats in Florida?

- The governor has won on just about everything he wants, so far.

It is remarkable that the Florida, or the Republican legislature did stand up to him on this.

No one I know on either side of the aisle, thinks, "Boy, I sure hope governor DeSantis blows up the Fair District's amendment which was supported by 62% of Floridians, keeps our districts compact, and ensures that minorities get to elect people who look like them."

To me, it's a naked political play.

It doesn't serve Floridians.

It's gonna cost millions of dollars, and it's gonna throw our elections in chaos because it's gonna take so long to know what district is whose.

It will be, because they did stand up to him.

it'll be an interesting power play.

- Eric, I think the governor's counting on the us Supreme Court to back him up, to say, ""Look, you can't take into account people's race when you're drawing these districts," so the governor thinks he's got a sure one here, I think.

- Yeah, well, we have seen the Supreme Court strike down redistricting plans that created majority-minority districts in Alabama and Wisconsin, so he might not be wrong about that.

And what's interesting to me is that the state has 28 districts, and we're talking about, in the new plan, there would've been four that were majority-minority (chuckles), and he got rid of two of them.

(laughs) I mean, it's not as if there's a ton of representation for people of color, as it is.

And what's also remarkable to me is that the GOP and conservatives in Florida spend a lot of time talking about empowering parents and giving average people a voice.

Well, the people spoke, and they asked for a way of dealing with these districts by voting for the Fair Districts plan, and in that case, the governor has decided to disregard their wishes and do what makes him look good on a national stage, and by the way, even further disenfranchise people of color in the state.

It's kind of remarkable.

- And Diane, those two districts that the governor wants to erase, are Val Demings' district in Central Florida, near Orlando, and then Al Lawson's district in Tallahassee, two African American members of Congress.

- Yeah, funny, that.

The Republicans have stopped, at least Ron DeSantis Republicans, have stopped pretending they're interested in any minority except, possibly, certain varieties of Latinos.

They figure they're not gonna get black votes, they don't need black votes, and why not just eliminate as many minority districts as possible.

This is also evidence of the governor's deep hostility to democracy.

He really doesn't like it, he's shown us that.

The legislature's not that keen on it either, given the way that they ignore amendments to our constitution passed, excuse me, passed by large majorities of people, that we still don't have an implementation of classroom size, we still don't have the amendment that protects conservation lands.

People voted on that.

They ignore it.

They're not interested in what we think, really.

They're just interested in whipping up enough votes to get back into power.

- Barry, I think it's clear though, that people nationwide wanna take all the politics, they probably wanna take the race out of drawing districts, they wanna just have districts that are, as Rosemary said, in the original Fair Districts, - Right.

- compact, and- - Represent your community.

- represent your community, but people want the politics out of it, right, out of district draw, so how do we get to that point?

- It's tough 'cause the independent commissions don't appear to be able to do any better, because they're not truly independent.

In California, the governor gets to appoint the Republicans, so therefore, he's gonna pick Republicans that are, like Mac Stipanovich, Never Trumpers.

One of the things, I think, from my sources, I've talked to some of the Senate leadership and House leadership, they think they have power over the governor for the first time this session in that they have the budget, that he wants the redistricting, they want the budget passed, so if he takes the budget and doesn't do a bunch of line-item vetoes, they'll come back in special session, because they haven't sent the congressional maps to him yet, and the governor only signs congressional, he doesn't have anything to do with the House or Senate, which are now approved.

So once he does the budget, if he doesn't do too much damage, they'll come back in special session and pass his maps.

- All right.

- So he's got leverage.

- Well, the decision by the state legislature to pass the Parental Rights bill, also known as that Don't Say Gay bill, has had national implications.

Other states with Republican-controlled legislatures say they may follow suit.

- [Announcer] There have been protests here in Florida and around the country, although the planned walkout at Disney World this week was much smaller than expected.

LGBTQ supporters and company employees have criticized Disney for not taking an early stance against the Parental Rights and Education bill, so this week, the state Democratic Party suddenly canceled its biggest annual fundraiser, which had been set for Disney World.

The cancellation came after the party's LGBTQ caucus and other top Democrats threatened to boycott the event.

The party's leadership was criticized for being tone-deaf, for even scheduling an event at Disney.

The bill bans classroom instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity for young school children.

Democratic lawmakers staunchly opposed it, and the Disney company did not publicly push back against it until after the GOP-led legislature approved it.

- Eric, Disney has a lot of lobbyists in Tallahassee.

Did they have the power, though, to stop this bill in the legislature?

- No, they probably didn't.

But the point is that their LGBTQ employees and the people who do business with them, including the stars that make movies for them, wanted them to take a stand and wanted them to speak publicly.

And in fact, Disney is in the middle of a bit of an identity crisis.

It has a new CEO after many years of Bob Iger running the company.

Iger has spoken out against similar laws, and in fact, even though he was retired, he spoke out against the law in Florida.

Bob Chapek, the guy who took over Disney from him, said he was working behind the scenes to try to affect change, but I think people who opposed the bill thought that that didn't seem right, it didn't make sense, it didn't seem as if he was doing much.

And by not taking a visible stance and using their voice...

I mean, as Diane mentioned, when you're in a situation where the state legislature and the governor is not listening to people who oppose them, it makes your voice even more important, and Disney, as the largest employer in the state, could have used its voice to at least let the world know that it didn't support this bill before it was too late.

Now we'll never know for sure if they could have made a difference because they didn't try.

- Barry, do you think Disney's being unfairly singled out on this?

- Absolutely; I think that businesses need to concentrate on their business.

It's like the NRA is so powerful 'cause they concentrate on guns.

They don't care anything else except for guns.

And I think for Disney, they lose leverage on other things that they've wanted, which are employee rights and benefits.

They were the first... With Senator Malcolm in the 90s, Disney championed her bill of telling you about if you had harmful chemicals and things like that, handling harmful chemicals, so they've been a leader, and a progressive leader, but I think that they're being punished 'cause they can be punished.

They really would've had no impact whatsoever.

And the way you achieve compromise in Tallahassee is not to do it publicly, is do it behind the scenes, and the Republican majority wanted to do this, and they did it.

so I don't think it would've accomplished very much.

- Diane, do you think Disney's really been punished for this or they just had a day or two of bad publicity?

- I think they've had a day or two of bad publicity, and it'd be all right with me if they had some more of that, as well as a lot of other corporations who talk a big game about how they're all interested in fairness, and they will not contribute to people who do things that are obviously harmful.

We saw that with all of those companies claiming after January the 6th that no, no, they will not give any donations to people who supported that sort of thing, the Congress people that supported that insurrection.

Disney, I'm sure, will survive this just fine.

but it's all right that people feel empowered to call them out.

It'd be nice if people called out many more corporations for sheer hypocrisy and cluelessness.

- Rosemary, I wanna ask you, this Parental Rights bill says that instruction to people K through third grade should not really deal with sexual identity or gender.

I'm wondering, how often, in Florida, is that an issue or a problem?

How many times are kids instructed on any of those in K through three that the legislature actually had to write a bill about it.

- It reminds me of the whole dustup, cultural wars dustup, about critical race theory.

It wasn't being taught in Florida, and yet it dominated so much of our politics.

Neither is sexual identity being taught in the curriculum of K through third grade.

What it though, does, like now, prohibit...

There's this little book, and it's like, "Heather Has Two Mommies".

and little kids learn respect and learn to discriminate, really, at a young age.

This would prohibit a teacher from saying that Heather's two mommies is a different kind of family unit that deserves respect.

She couldn't even say something like that without violating the law and allowing parents to sue her and the school district, so she just has to say, "Go home and ask your mom."

Sometimes mom and dads don't really know how to answer these questions.

Kids learn things at school, kids learn things from other kids, and they learn discrimination early.

So it was a solution in search of a problem.

- Okay.

- I think that if from a raw political point of view, if the people protesting Disney would actually go out and help the Florida Democratic Party elect people, they'd be able to stop this more.

- All right, Eric, the last word.

- If I could break in for just a second, I'd point out that number one, Bob Chapek, the new head of Disney, this is a big deal for him, because it is pointing out another self-inflicted wound as a leader.

He's had others, including a lawsuit from Scarlett Johansson.

So Disney is gonna be damaged by this in ways that may not seem apparent.

I'm kind of astonished that the legislature had the bandwidth to pass this bill, but they couldn't pass the budget, and they couldn't pass redistricting (chuckles), and they couldn't pass affordable housing.

They couldn't pass things that actually help Floridians, but they could find the time to pass this bill, which kind of is astonishing to me.

And Disney gives money to legislators that supported this bill, so Disney is already acting politically to support people who supported this bill, so demanding that they stop doing that makes all kinds of sense.

- All right, well that leads us to the next topic.

They did pass a budget, but it's been six months since the Florida cabinet had a full meeting Florida's Democratic Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Nikki Fried, wants some big issues on the agenda for the next cabinet meeting.

- [Announcer] Fried, who is a candidate in the Dem%ocratic primary race for governor wants the state's housing affordability crisis, high property insurance rates, and inadequate inspections of condominium buildings, on the cabinet's agenda.

And Fried has been calling on the governor to divest $300 million of state funds that are now invested in Russia.

That request has fallen on deaf ears.

- So Dan, what are the chances that Nikki Fried, the lone Democrat on the cabinet, can even get the cabinet to deal with these issues?

- Well, I'd say, especially since she's running for governor, slim to none, but they're great political issues for her.

Maybe she thinks she's gonna get some traction on...

I mean, you'd think divesting from Russia would be a winner, also, for the governor if he felt like doing that.

That would show, well, some sort of consciousness of what's going on in the world, for one thing, and for another thing, that we are not propping up Vladimir Putin, which I don't think is a winner for much of anybody except Fox News, though they're the governor's favorite, favorite outfit, so maybe that's why.

But affordable housing, this is becoming a problem, given that we live and die on service jobs in this state.

Where are these people gonna live, other than in their cars, which is where they're living now?

The condo bill, that, again you would have thought was something that should take up a bit more space than bills about outing small children who want to maybe call themselves they rather than he or she.

That really has nothing to do with the way people actually have to live in Florida.

But the culture wars overtook everything, and the cabinet not meeting, again, shows the governor's dislike of, discomfort with, democracy.

(indistinct) He's there, and he rules the roost, and why should you have anybody else with any input?

It's his state.

- Rosemary, there's no doubt that there's an insurance cost, homeowner's insurance crisis, in the state.

There's a housing affordability crisis in the state.

The Russia issue came up late, so maybe you could say the legislature didn't have time to deal with it, but there are some important issues that this legislature didn't even address this session.

- And, you know, it's an election year, so it was supposed to be a quiet year, but instead became dominated by the cultural issues.

But you're right, I mean, I know people were having to put new roofs on their houses all of a sudden because of the cost of insurance.

On affordable housing, people, they've seen their rents double.

We've, in the past, seen Tallahassee deal with price gouging.

During the COVID crisis, the governor did put a moratorium on evictions, and that hurt landlords, and there were renters who took advantage of that, but this is another kind of crisis, and there is price gouging going on.

The Attorney General has powers to deal with price gouging, but we've not heard from Ashley Moody.

And when you think about those people who feel disaffected by our politics, who feel left behind by our politics, I think what's happening right now in the housing market and the lack of being able to afford it is going to accelerate the number of people who are feeling like politics are leaving us behind.

- Barry, you have strong ties to Tallahassee.

Why didn't they deal with some of these issues?

- Well, they did for the first time, I think, last time, that it was funded, but then the governor vetoed some of it.

The Sadowski Trust Fund did not get swept this year, so we're gonna put, like, a quarter of a billion dollars, and, well, that's a lot of money, but when you got 22 million people, it's not a lot of money in relative terms, and in absolute terms, it is.

I just think they haven't been into that.

But also, one of the things they could do, they all wanna do these tax cuts, Well, if my biggest tax increases this year were my homeowners insurance and my property taxes I'm a homesteader, so it only went up 3%.

If I'm a renter it's gonna go up 10, 20% for my unit that the landlord's gonna have to pay.

Why don't we expand the homestead to renters or something like that.

That we could do immediate tax breaks to help people with affordable housing, if the Republicans wanna do something.

- Well, the Florida AARP is urging Governor Ron DeSantis to veto a bill that would let nursing homes shift some professional resident care over to lesser-trained employees.

- [Announcer] The bill in question is HB 1239.

The senior advocacy group says that measure would reduce care for Florida's 71,000 nursing home residents by 20%.

The bill, which the governor has yet sign, would allow the roughly 700 facilities statewide to reduce the amount of time that certified nursing assistants are required to spend with patients each day.

- So Rosemary, I think if folks have family members in nursing homes, this sounds scary, that they're gonna get less care.

I mean, is that the way you look at this bill?

- A friend of mine's mother who broke her hip recently checked herself out of a nursing home because she was so upset about the lack of care she was getting.

She, for hours and hours, and needing to go to the bathroom, was pressing her button and pressing her button, and nobody came.

The day she checked herself out, the woman across the hall fell on the floor trying to get her own self to the bathroom.

And yet the ability to sue a nursing home and hold them accountable is so difficult because of the bill that was passed in 2001, which is the bill that this legislation seeks to blow up.

That bill said, okay, nursing home industry, we will give you all of these protections against lawsuits, and in return, you have to provide minimum care in terms of staffing ratio.

And they love the protections, but ever since then, they have been trying to undo the staffing limits.

This year, the legislature is saying, okay, you can provide less care.

In this election year, the governor would be wise to veto this bill.

- Which is what the AARP wants.

Well, before we go, what other news stories should we be paying attention to, and Rosemary, let's go back to you (Rosemary laughs) for the last moment here.

- Thank you.

- Okay.

- Your other big story of the week.

- This week, Tampa Mayor, Jane Castor, said that the Tampa Bay Rays ought to say where it is they wanna build their ballpark.

And she thinks it ought to be on the far side of Malfunction Junction, in Ybor City.

And I was really glad to see St. Pete Mayor, Ken Welch, say put Albert Whitted airport on the table.

In the early 2000s, when I was editorial page editor of the Tampa Tribune.

I remember the Tampa Bay Rays came in to make a presentation, their first pitch for a ballpark, and where did they wanna go?

Albert Whitted airport.

This thing is coming full circle, and I hope that if they can overcome the encumbrances and the finances, that they do get to build their ballpark on a newly-imagined downtown St. Pete waterfront.

- All right, Eric, your other big story of the week.

- Of course, the confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson dominated the news this week, and in particular, the racist and culturally insensitive attacks that she faced that were not rooted in good faith questions about her track record or what she might do as a judge on the Supreme Court.

And what was so debilitating about it, I mean, I didn't watch as much of the hearings as I planned, because it was so debilitating as a person of color to see what you get subjected to, and what you... She had to show a stiff upper lip and tolerate all these insulting insinuations and criticisms that had no basis, including her being lenient on sex offenders, or some idea that she's connected to critical race theory, probably just because she's black.

I couldn't believe it.

And beyond that, it gives people who hate this stuff a sense that you're powerless in the face of people who want to twist modern institutions into something that's not fair, and that is debilitating to watch.

- Well, all right.

Barry, your other big story?

- It's been 78 years since the greatest generation saved civilization, and as of today, 1,000 of the World War II generation are dying every day, and it's important for all of us to reach out.

I know we have a busy life.

Talk to one of them, they're in their 90s, and find out the history, because we're seeing with Putin and the Ukrainian revolution, how easily history repeats, and how we thought they had done their job and they did their job for 78 years.

and I bring that up because on the 10th, my dad will be 98.

Happy birthday, Dad, love you very much.

- All right, I'll second that.

And Diane, your other big story of the week?

- Well, I think we should all be reminded that once again, there are no votes in Florida for higher education.

Higher education does not swing an election one way or the other, so the attacks on universities by the legislature and the governor really are quite astonishing.

If I had a child of college age, I would not send that child to university in Florida because we are just destroying ourselves.

I don't know what will be left of us when we have more political appointees as university presidents enabled by the secrecy bill, when we characterize universities as places where people go to learn Marxism.

Boy, if we're teaching Marxism, we're doing a crap job of it, 'cause I don't see a Marxist vote in the state.

But just the general hostility to knowledge, to science, to education, in a broad sense, which we see from our Surgeon General, who has recently said that vaccinating children just doesn't need to happen, 'cause polio was a big time, lots of fun back in the day.

- Thank you all for a great show.

It's great to have you here.

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.

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And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend.

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