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- [Rob] Coming up next on WEDU.

As the legislature wraps up the 2022 session, we'll look at what's been accomplished so far.

The Conservative Political Action Committee holds its annual convention in Orlando, and the Governor's message telling young people to remove their masks goes viral.

All this and more right now on "Florida This Week".

(theatrical music) Welcome back.

This week our panelists are: Amy Hollyfield is the Senior Deputy Editor for the Tampa Bay Times; Trimmel Gomes is the host of The Rotunda podcast and President of Gomes Media Strategies; Steve Bousquet is the Editorial Page Editor for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel; and Emily Mahoney is the Political Editor for the Tampa Bay Times.

And it's so great to have you all here.

Thank you for coming.

The legislative session heads for its final day next Friday, with limits on abortion, limits on classroom instruction, limits on local home rule, limits on solar energy, immigration, redistricting, and more changes to election laws all on the table.

Some have dubbed this session, the culture wars session, because many of the laws making their way through are designed to appeal to the socially conservative Republican base.

Issues such to the rising cost of housing and rent, the sharp rise in insurance prices, sea level rise, access to healthcare, and protecting Florida's endangered environment are not at the top of this year's agenda.

Well, last week, let me make a correction.

I mistakenly said the session was about to end this week.

I misspoke it.

It's scheduled at the end next Friday, March 11th.

And Amy, let's start with you.

The Abortion Bill has passed.

15-week limit on abortions, and it's likely to be signed by the Governor.

- It will be signed by the Governor.

(Rob laughs) - So, how does that change things here in Florida?

Right now, abortions are legal up until the 24th week.

- Yeah, it'll be dramatic, (chuckles) but it's totally expected.

This was a top priority.

It's obviously a big issue across the country.

You're seeing this happening.

There were a lot of tries to make this bill have some exceptions in it for rape and incest, and those were set aside.

We've written some heartbreaking stories about people who've faced this issue, not for health reasons of the child, of the fetus, and had to do an abortion after 15 weeks and what the options are there, which aren't very good.

So it's a big thing, but I expected nothing less from Florida and Republicans who've just been at the forefront of conservative ideas and topics, and this is certainly a top priority.

- And there was a suggestion that there'd be an exception for mental health or human trafficking, too.

Did the legislature consider those?

- There hasn't been much conversation over any kind of exceptions.

- Okay.

So no exceptions.

And we don't know what the US Supreme Court is gonna do.

- Yeah, that's still an open question.

There's still the lawsuit outta Texas, and we'll have to see what happens with that, but this is, I mean, we've seen it for years now.

A very march forward toward Roe V. Wade and what that looks like across the country.

- Emily, another issue that's going through the legislature are limits on critical race theory and it's teaching in Florida.

It's not being taught anywhere in Florida in K through 12, but they wanna limit it anyway.

But this idea now that you'll be able to sue if you're a business and part of the training is involves something akin to CRT, or if you're parent and your kids are taught something akin to CRT in schools.

That's a new idea.

- Right, and at a conference that I listened to earlier this year by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, they noted that lawsuits have become the enforcement mechanism of choice when it comes to these kind of conservative culture issues that you're talking about.

And I think that it really hits the nail on the head that Republicans see lawsuits by parents, by employees, as a way to enforce these laws.

But it's creating some strange bedfellows in the legislature.

- Republicans didn't like lawsuits.

- Right, well that's been a huge complaint by the big business lobby for years.

That Florida was an overly litigious state.

That we have too many lawsuits in Florida and it's actually driving big business away from locating to the state.

But with this year, you see, like you said, the rise of lawsuits as an enforcement mechanism and that makes the business lobby not so happy, which is unusual for Republican led agenda.

And it makes trial lawyers happy, which is also unusual because they're usually kind of the foe of Republicans who say there are too many lawsuits.

- Also, the biggest financial donors usually to the Democratic party here in Florida.

The trial lawyers.

- Right.

- Trimmel, the Don't Say Gay Bill, or the Parental Rights Bill too, does it look like it's on its way to passage?

- It looks like it's very much on its way to passage.

But what we saw this week was a show of force and opposition from students from across the state.

They came out and droves, somewhere even at the Capitol, protesting.

And as lawmakers entered the chambers, they were standing there, chanting, and in opposition and saying, "Say gay".

So there was a lot of unrest with students, particularly who really came out this week and voiced their opposition to this bill.

- And Trimmel, a lot of those students there at the Capitol and around the State, in places like Hillsborough County, and Flagler County, and Miami Dade, big protests by high school students.

You don't often see high school students protesting on an issue.

- On occasion, things do pop up.

Like when we saw with the mass shooting at schools, students came in force here at the Capitol and they did.

Their impact made change.

It didn't go far enough, they would say, and they tried it again this time.

And the massive organization that it took to organize this effort throughout the stage of seeing students in South Florida, Central Florida, here in Tallahassee, and all the way up to the Capitol, protests.

It was something to see.

- Steve, I wanna ask you about election law changes.

What election law changes are in the works as a result of a legislative session?

- Well, Rob, the most controversial and the most talked about changes this election's police force that Ron DeSantis wanted.

Sworn officers and FDLE agents with free reign to look into election irregularities and to follow up tips to a statewide hotline.

The League of Women Voters thinks this is potentially an open invitation to harass, intimidate voters, discourage them from voting, so forth.

There's also provisions in that bill that would greatly increase the fines on third party voter registration groups who have paperwork problems.

And so the critics think it's a thinly disguised attempt to make it harder to register new voters at a time when Republicans have just overtaken Democrats narrowly in the total number of voters in the State.

You know, Rob, the surprise would be if they passed an elections bill and it didn't end up in court.

Every election's changed in the last seven or eight years has been in court, and a federal judge right now is deciding the fate of the election's bill they passed last year.

- Steve, why would there be a move to hire these 50 or so staffers, the so-called elections police.

Why would there be a move to do that given that everybody, Republicans, Democrats, all the election supervisors said that last election was clean here in Florida.

No complaints, it wasn't part of Donald Trump's effort to overturn the election.

Why would we have something like that this year?

- Well, it's a good question.

and here's my answer.

Because first of all, the election supervisors didn't ask for this.

It was represented this week in legislative testimony that Secretary of State Laurel Lee is a proponent of the elections police, but she better be.

She works for Ron DeSantis.

This came about last fall because you had some hard right conservative supporters of Donald Trump who were calling for an audit of the election results in Florida, even though Trump won Florida easily in 2020.

The same sort of audit and shenanigans you saw, for example, in Arizona, some Republicans wanted to do here.

To his credit, DeSantis pushed back on those requests and there were no audits of the election results from 2020, but the compromise appears to be this, to appease some of the most conservative elements of the Republican party, this sort of police force to look at electional irregularities.

- Steve, I wanna ask you.

Another thing about elections of that is that it looks like there was bipartisan agreement about new legislative districts, but there is a problem when it comes to arriving at the new congressional districts after the maps were redrawn.

What's the problem?

What's the issue?

- The issue is that Governor DeSantis has injected himself into the congressional redistricting efforts of the legislature in a way that no previous governor did.

He does have the right to veto a congressional redistricting plan, and he tweeted out today that he's going to do just that if the legislature doesn't accept his changes.

The issue concerns mainly a Black majority congressional district along the Northern tier of the state from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, which DeSantis thinks is gerrymandered, but which the legislature drew to comply with both fair districts and to maximize minority voting opportunities.

Right now, Florida has four congressional districts that are drawn to maximize Black voter participation.

Under DeSantis' plan, that number would drop to two.

- And isn't it that against, I mean, theoretically, do the Democrats or the other side have the ability to challenge that because it violates the state constitution?

- Yeah.

The House, however, the House has capitulated to DeSantis' demands and the House Redistricting Chairman, Tom Leek, is quoted as saying, the Governor has the veto pen on the congressional districts.

The Governor cannot veto a legislative map, only the one for Congress.

DeSantis is a conservative Republican with higher political aspirations.

His motives are being questioned here as they should be.

This map was adopted by the legislature, and you'd expect, as we've seen in past cycles, you'd expect the loudest objections to come from League of Women Voters, Democratic party, others.

In this case, they're coming from the sitting Republican Governor.

- Let me go to Amy and Trimmel for this last question.

The Governor had a pretty big agenda at the start of this legislative session.

How much of it did he get?

How successful was the Governor this year in getting what he want pass?

Amy, let me start with you.

- He's getting a lot of it.

(laughs) Not everything, but a lot.

I mean, it's an election year.

(chuckles) He's got a future.

Everyone else has a future.

They're gonna ride his coattails, and it's happening as we expected.

- And Trimmel, how would you say the Governor did this year?

- He's getting a lot what he's wanted, just to what Amy just mentioned.

And if he's not getting what he wants, he has the bully pulpit.

He will be in front of the press conference and whatever is not going his way, he will make it seem like it's going his way.

That's what we've been seeing a lot from him throughout this cycle.

- Okay.

Well, this year's Conservative Political Action Committee, CPAC, its convention was held in Orlando.

The theme was Awake Not Woke and featured several prominent Florida politicians, including Governor DeSantis, both US Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, and North Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who's under investigation for possible sex trafficking of a minor.

Gaetz question US support for Ukraine.

- What about freedom here in this country?

What about our leaders actually standing up for freedom and liberty in America?

Why should Americans have to pay the cost of freedom elsewhere when our own leaders stand up for our freedom here?

- Emily, you covered CPAC this year.

Tell me how common was it for speakers to complain about USA to Ukraine, or US support for Ukraine?

- Yeah, that was interesting.

That was definitely one of the kind of splits that we saw, and the Ukraine news was all sort of breaking as CPAC was happening.

I would say it was about 50/50.

We heard people echoing what Matt Gaetz just said.

People saying, you know, there probably are Americans who can't even find Ukraine on a map, so why should we spend our resources addressing that when we have crisis at home.

And a lot of them talked about immigration on, like illegal immigration, as being sort of an invasion here at home.

And I think that that comes from Donald Trump.

I mean, he championed America First as being sort of his mantra for foreign policy and sort of this isolationism approach.

And then we sort of had the more traditional conservatives also at CPAC saying, communism anywhere is a threat and we need to address it, and if we let Putin continue to do what he's doing in Ukraine, then it'll only spread and will continue to threaten United States interests.

- It's clear that Governor Ron DeSantis would like to be president, but in his way is the Former President, Donald Trump.

I've talked to a few Republicans, not many, who say that Donald Trump's time has passed and they would like a new person to run for president in 2024.

What was your sense at CPAC about whether or not there's Trump fatigue?

- Yeah, it's a question that I think is sort of ongoing within in the Republican circles, but I would say that at least at CPAC, which is obviously a very active sort of engaged group of people who attend that.

So it's not necessarily a representative, but when Trump spoke, it was standing room only, and it was not like that for any other speaker.

He had the headlining slot and he won the straw up hole far in away.

I mean, DeSantis definitely had the second place slot, but he had, I think 20, 28 or 29%.

So not remotely close.

And I think that, perhaps in the strategist world and in sort of the political sphere, there's talk of it's DeSantis-Trump, but a little bit more clean cut.

Like little less of a baggage than Trump has.

But I think among the base, Trump is extremely popular.

People are still wearing MAGA hats and there was no sign of Trump fatigue at CPAC.

- And if you were to pick a theme of the convention, we saw the Awake Not Woke sign there, but if you were to pick a theme of the CPAC convention, what was it this year?

- There was a lot of talk about parents and parental rights, which I think is sort of a summarization of parents rising up against mask mandates in schools, against the teaching of what they're calling critical race theory in schools, against teaching LGBTQ themes in schools, and that's all sort of packaged together into talking about parents rights.

And that was a major theme of the convention.

A lot of speakers talked about parents going to the polls this November and having similar energy to the tea party.

That was a common comparison that was made.

- A lot of the issues that came up in the Florida legislature there at CPAC.

- (assents) Definitely.

- Well speaking of masks, while making an appearance at the University of South Florida this week in Tampa, Governor Ron DeSantis asked a group of Hillsborough County high school students standing behind him to remove their COVID-19 masks.

- You do not have to wear those masks.

I mean, please take them off.

(people laugh) Honestly, it's not doing anything.

And we gotta stop with this COVID theater.

So if you wanna wear it fine, but this is ridiculous.

- [Rob] In a video that was viewed millions of times, the Governor appeared agitated and called mask wearing COVID theater and ridiculous.

Some of the students did remove their masks.

Afterwards, some of the parents complaint to WFLA-TV that the Governor had bullied the children.

- It's just shocking that the Governor told these kids, "Take off your mask."

He pretty much said, "Take off your mask.

It's stupid".

And, "Take off your mask.

Your parents don't matter."

- His mother tells him to wear the mask.

I tell him it his choice.

So he made that choice and the Governor has no right to tell no kid or no one who they can or can't wear a mask.

- So Steve, to what extent is wearing a mask COVID theater?

- Well, you look at the Governor's behavior there at USF, and now you know why they call it a bully pulpit.

(Rob laughs) He was very disrespectful to those kids, but he's been consistently against masks.

He doesn't think masks do any good.

The Surgeon General Joe Ladapo came up this week and said that masks do not save lives.

That's contrary to what we've been told by the CDC for the last two years.

It's just that, he doesn't seem to have a real sense of the awesome power of words and actions when spoken by a governor.

There is no one else in the state, and we've talked about it on this program through the years, Rob.

There's no one else who's even close remotely to having the governor's ability to sort of control the dialogue and command the respect of people.

And so he should have shown much more respect to those kids.

- I gotta say, we're not out of the woods yet and we're gonna put a map up.

This shows the number of COVID cases where there really COVID case problems here in the State of Florida.

Hillsborough County led the state in cases per 100,000 people last week.

The county's there in the red are the cases where the outbreak is still pretty high and Hillsborough County's being one of those.

Trimmel, I wanna ask you about this bullying.

I mean, we in schools and as parents, we tell our kids not to bully.

What's been Tallahassee's attitude toward bullying?

And when the Governor did that to the kids, he was kind of, he was sending a message that, we, as parents, don't send to our kids.

- You're exactly right.

And it was very hypocritical of the Governor.

And what we saw this week as this gain national worldwide attention was like sort of like a bipartisan rebuke.

Not as much from the Republican ends who are like more supportive, but it was seeing that this Governor basically telling these kids in a way that he was once advocating on the other end for.

You saying, like, "Don't do this", but he just went out there and bullied these kids who are just trying to figure out the best way to survive and make it through this pandemic.

And they're following rules, and to see their confused faces, wondering what to do whether to follow his orders or follow what their parents are telling them to do, which is exactly what the Governor has been talking about.

Giving parents the power to be able to set their own rules for their families.

- That does seem to be a contradiction, Amy, that if you wanna give parents the choice, you can't take it away.

- It's a huge contradiction.

Especially because, I mean, that's been his talking point, right?

Everyone should be able to make a decision for themselves.

Here's the science, follow it as you want.

And then here he is coming in and telling someone what to do, which is quite frankly what he has told everyone not to do.

(laughs) Local government, I mean, that's been the whole story of the pandemic is let people decide for themselves.

And this was a very clear example of him making it clear that what he wants is just people to do what he's asked for instead of deciding for themselves.

- So- - Rob?

- I was gonna say the Governor's fundraising office, Steve, right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

With his attacks on Dr. Fauci and all the other stuff in the beer koozies.

The quick point I was gonna make was, and my colleagues on the panel certainly know this well, these events may look spontaneous, these events are very carefully stage managed ahead of time.

Very little is left to chance.

It's predetermined who's gonna be standing where behind the Governor, who gets to speak in what order, why some kids were picked to be on stage and others were not, making sure that the kids represented cross section, demographically, racially, culturally, nothing wrong with that.

But the point is, DeSantis surely knew when he walked out on stage that there were gonna be kids behind him wearing masks, which is why the real COVID theater here was carried out, not by the kids, but by the Governor.

- All right.

Well, before we go, what other news stories should we be paying attention to?

And Amy, let's start with you.

- There's a report out this week about Piney Point, the fertilizer plant in Manatee County, where there was a leak in the reservoir and more than 200 million gallons of polluted water went into Tampa Bay.

They're shutting it down.

They're gonna clean it up.

But we found out this week, it's gonna take until 2025 for that to happen, which means it's gonna remain a risk to our area for sometime.

- And Amy, the other big story too, at least in your world, is you're leaving the Tampa Bay Times and moving to Dallas to head up the newsroom there.

- I am.

Yeah.

It's been wonderful being in Tampa Bay and I'm just thankful to go to a state that has enough news and exciting politics as Florida does.

- We can't talk you out of it?

(Amy chuckles) Can we say don't go?

- No chance.

- All right.

Amy, we'll miss you.

- Thank you.

- And Steve, your other big story.

- Yeah.

Let's go back to elections very briefly because this is bizarre and disturbing, and it's true.

Ron DeSantis does not like ballot drop boxes.

The idea that voters can avoid personal contact with people because of COVID concerns or whatever, they can go to a remote location, open a receptacle, and drop their sealed ballot in a box.

Drop boxes are not going away, but the legislature is going to strake the term drop box from the statutes.

And election supervisors will not be allowed to promote or advertise them as drop boxes.

They're being converted into, believe it or not, get ready for this, secure ballot intake stations (Trimmel laughs) for the fall elections.

We are the only state in the country that doesn't call them drop boxes.

- Calling George Orwell, right?

So, and Trimmel, you're other big story.

- I would just ask people to focus on race relations in this country and around the world.

For those who often argue that it's a non-issue and why are you playing the race guard, we wouldn't have bills like we're seeing in the Florida legislature dealing with critical race theory.

We wouldn't see the issues with Africans and Black individuals at the borders of Ukraine not being able to pass or have to justify other means to be able to pass.

Race plays a big role in the fabric of this country and ignoring it lends us to be repeating the same things we've been seeing in history.

- And Emily, your other big story.

- Mine is also elections related.

I wanted to highlight some really great reporting that happened recently by the Miami Herald, which their reporters knocked on more than 300 doors down in South Florida to talk to clusters of voters where their party registration had recently changed.

Because they had noticed that there were trends, often in public housing buildings, where people had recently all changed their party registration recently, and they found more than a hundred people who told them, mostly elderly Spanish speaking folks, who told them that that change had not happened with their permission.

Almost all of them had changed from either Democrat or NPA to Republican, and almost all of the canvassers that were doing this work were working on behalf of the Republican party of Florida.

And so there's still a lot of questions about that.

The Republican party says that they follow all applicable laws, but I think that reporting just really deserves to be highlighted because as we're talking about election security, this issue is actually potentially an election security issue, and it's sort of gone under the radar.

- Well, I wonder if the election police will investigate.

Well, thank you all for great panels.

It's so wonderful to have you here.

Thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at ftw@wedu.org.

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

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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.

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