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

- [Narrator] "Florida This Week" is made possible in part by support from The Tampa Bay Times.

- [Rob] Coming up next, the DeSantis administration moves forward with punishing school districts that require mask wearing.

Some Afghan refugees are moving to the Tampa Bay area after the US ends its long war.

The redistricting process is beginning and will have a big impact on the makeup of the legislature and Florida's congressional delegation.

And as Labor Day approaches, we'll talk with a state labor leader.

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

(cinematic sound) - Welcome back.

Since the start of the pandemic early last year, more than 45,000 people in Florida have died from COVID-19.

The Centers for Disease Control reported that Florida's latest death toll is almost three times higher than one year ago.

The number of children hospitalized for COVID is rising, although still not as high as hospitalizations among older people.

About 60 children are being admitted per day to Florida hospitals for COVID according to the CDC, up from about five per day throughout much of the pandemic, even during the previous surges.

Overall, according to the federal government, about 230 children are currently hospitalized in the state with COVID-19, compared to just 20 in late June when the disease appeared to be waning.

The pediatric increase has come as schools have reopened and Governor Ron DeSantis has battled with school districts over whether masks should be required in classrooms.

12 of the state's 67 school districts, representing about half of the state's 2.8 million public school students, have now defied DeSantis' executive order.

And just last week, a judge threw out that executive order saying it was not consistent with the parent's Bill of Rights law.

DeSantis has said he will appeal, saying there is no scientific evidence or medical consensus that universal school masking prevents the spread of COVID-19 among children.

He believes the decision on whether a child wears a mask in school should be left to families and not to school boards.

The school district standing up to the governor face a threatened loss of funding from Tallahassee.

Also this week, with the US military exit from Afghanistan, refugee groups say they expect many Afghan refugees will be resettled here in the Bay area.

And this week, Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson said the legislature will take up a Texas style anti-abortion law at the beginning of next year.

Well as mentioned, the Leon County judge last week ruled that Governor DeSantis' blanket ban on mask mandates in schools violates the parent's Bill of Rights law, which allows school boards to infringe on the rights of parents if the board policy is narrowly tailored and serves a compelling state interest.

The governor's office has filed an appeal.

St. Petersburg Dr. Mona Mangat is an allergist and pediatric specialist and testified in the case in favor of keeping mask mandates in place, and she joins us now.

Dr., welcome to "Florida This Week".

- Thanks for having me, Rob.

- I wanna ask you about the governor who says that there is no scientific evidence or medical consensus that universal school masking prevents the spread of COVID-19 among children.

What do you say to that?

- Well, I say what I said when I testified that that's patently false, it's a false statement, and we have data that we presented that shows that masking is definitely effective.

I specifically spoke about, during the trial, a study that was done where there was a particulate matter sent from one person, we'll call it the source, to the target.

And the study was to see whether masking made a difference on how much particulate matter reached the other side, and wearing masking, independent of what kind of mask it was or how far apart you were, it prevented the transmission of those particles by 99%.

And this is not just one study.

There have been multiple studies that show that, and unfortunately the governor's office really chose to cherry pick some data, and it's data that even the authors of those articles, in their discussions, recommended that universal masking was clearly effective.

- And even the judge agreed with you when it came to the science.

What are you saying- - Yeah, it was science.

It wasn't an opinion.

This was science, this was data, and that's, I think, why we prevailed in this lawsuit.

- What do you see in your practice?

A lot of people say kids, if they get it, COVID isn't that dangerous to them.

What are you seeing in your practice when it comes to kids?

- So I take care of children and adults that have chronic lung diseases, as well as immunodeficient patients, and I'm seeing a lot more COVID in children as compared to even three months ago.

Last year, it was a rare occurrence for me to see a child with COVID, and now I'm definitely seeing more.

I'm seeing more multi exposures in the household.

So before, if we had one person with COVID, sometimes it was just that one person.

Now, we're seeing a child and a parent, and so that becomes a little bit more problematic.

And I don't care for patients in the hospital, and so my exposure is primarily outpatient with these children, but my colleagues are overwhelmed in the hospital.

Our local hospital, All Children's, is full of pediatric patients that have COVID, which is something we were not seeing even two or three months ago.

- So what's the best advice that you give to parents and children that you see in your office about mitigating the risk of COVID?

What do you tell them when they come into your office and their concern now that school has restarted, how do you prevent the spread when you go to school besides masks, or what do you tell them?

- Well, I think it's really important to think about prevention as a multi-layered process.

And so, there's nothing that gives us 100% protection, but there are combinations of things that we can do to make children's safer.

So obviously if your child is 12 years of age or older than that, they should receive a COVID vaccine.

And whether they're COVID vaccinated or not, they should be masking when they're in school.

Masking helps protect you as the wearer, as well as the person that's across from you who may or may not be vaccinated.

And I think it's important that families sort of model that behavior and talk to their children about they're not just protecting themselves, but they're trying to help protect their classmates or their teacher or their classmate's families, things like that.

And I think also, trying to talk about good hygiene at school, and sometimes with younger children that's more difficult, but talking about good hand washing and making sure that we are using hand sanitizer when possible.

I think social distancing is something we should also discuss with our children.

We should practice what we preach.

This is the time to think about, my kid's having a birthday party.

Do we wanna have 20 kids inside at Laser Tag or do we wanna do a pool party outside with 10 kids?

So just trying to make smarter choices, understanding that we're trying to mitigate risks with multiple different approaches.

- Well Dr. Mangat, thanks a lot.

It's great to see you again.

Thanks for coming on the program.

- Good to see you.

Thanks, Rob.

- With so many Afghan refugees needing a place to resettle now that the US Military has left the country, we'll find out how many of those refugees are heading for central Florida in a moment.

(cinematic music) The rapid withdrawal of US troops and the Taliban's quick return to power in Afghanistan has led to a full-scale refugee crisis.

The US, and about a hundred other countries, have said that they would accept fleeing Afghans, but they faced numerous roadblocks.

Ghadir Kassab is the executive director of Radiant Hands.

That's a group based in Tampa, that's assisting in resettling and integrating refugees, and she joins us now.

And Ghadir, welcome to the program.

- Thank you so much, Rob, and thank you for having me for this special code.

- Tell me, how many refugees from Afghanistan do you anticipate coming to central Florida or to the Tampa Bay area?

- So, unfortunately we don't have definite numbers.

We've been hearing a lot of things from the resettlement agencies and from officials from Afghani community who's have some connections back there in their home countries.

They're obviously trying to contact them.

But we are anticipating about a thousand individuals to come in in the coming 12 weeks.

That's a number that somehow we heard it, but we're not a hundred percent sure.

It's might be a little bit less, it depends on the status they will come in with.

- What's the biggest need you think they'll have and how will they be integrated into society when they come here?

- So thank you for this question.

So usually the refugees come in into the country through the chain of the resettlement agency after they have the international organization process them.

They will be admitted into the country by the contracted resettlement agency is contracted by the government, and for the past five years, because we've worked with all the refugees whose been admitted to Tampa, we work directly with the resettlement agency.

They used to have an allocation of cases, and this is how they communicated also to community organization to provide the support.

Later on, when it comes to Afghanis, unfortunately we heard that a lot of them will be coming on humanitarian parole, with that humanitarian evacuation, that means probably not everyone will be eligible for help from resettlement agency.

So there's a lot of dependence on the community organizations, and this is why we are getting prepared.

The assistance, we'll start it from the welcoming, going all the way through having them in their houses, furniture, food even, and meals.

We are having now teams.

We have already started building up volunteer teams, which consists, we ended up having eight so far.

Those teams will do the main resettlement relief.

The challenges are a lot, it depends on how many we will receive.

We are trying to be as diligent in making sure that if the maximum number to expect in a week is 80, then let's get to prepare ahead of time for 80 individuals coming in every week.

Further, we have also called out, reach out with our community.

We started building up connections so we can get some support, donations, support in collecting the items.

We called for furniture last week and we have a lot of people reaching out to provide furniture.

We called for support with hygiene items.

We have a lot of people collecting hygiene items for us.

So it's a process, it's a longer process and the challenges are a lot, but let me tell you about the most important one, it's housing.

So when it comes to housing, because of what is happening in Tampa right now, everyone knows that it's really difficult to find the proper housing easily, and it's becoming very expensive.

- So in other words, this isn't a government program.

Largely, it's nonprofit's such as yours, Jewish Family Services, maybe Lutheran Services.

It's all private nonprofits that are helping this resettlement effort.

How can people help out if they wanna help out?

- So we're looking obviously for a lot of donations.

We called for volunteers, we had so far over 120 volunteers who signed up with us in the last few days.

We have a volunteer form on our website, so people can sign in to volunteer.

We have a donation link.

It's on our website, it's also radianthand.org.

Please go ahead and chip anything.

It's gonna help us.

Also, you can reach out to our office, calling our office and people will lead you through a process of helping.

We have a lot of things that you can contribute to.

Thank you so much.

- Well, Ghadir Kassab, thank you very much for coming on the program.

- Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

- Next up, how will redistricting affects the balance of power in the legislature and Congress?

That's coming up next.

(cinematic sound) Well, the decision by the US Supreme Court this week upholding the New Abortion Law in Texas is a good example of the importance of elections.

Not only does the President select people to be on the Supreme Court, but legislatures could decide to enact more liberal or more conservative laws, and redistricting or redrawing of legislative and congressional seats is set to begin this month in Florida.

Barry Edwards is a political talk show host at WHBO Radio 820 in Tampa, who was involved in the previous redistricting process a decade ago and he joins us now.

Barry, nice to see you.

- Thank you for having me.

- So Barry, I wanna ask, what's likely to happen when redistricting takes place this year?

Will Republicans pick up seats, will it be a breakeven, or will Democrats pick up seats?

- Well, so let me set the table here.

It's gonna be a little different than it was 10 years ago.

First, we've had two important court decisions.

One, we had Shelby County versus Holder, which eliminated pre-clearance which means you had to go to the Justice Department if you had a history of racism.

Hillsborough County was a pre-clearance county, so Florida was a pre-clearance state.

And that was in 2013, but in 2019, we had root versus common cause.

And this Supreme Court, July of 2019, said the partisan gerrymandering was legal and that the framers of the constitution understood that there was gonna be partisan gerrymandering.

And that eliminated all federal challenges, and they had two cases.

They had a North Carolina case where the Republicans had screwed the Democrats, and a Maryland case where the Democrats had screwed the Republicans.

They sent them back and they said, "You're good to go."

So it's a very different table than we had 10 years ago.

And in the root versus common cause, Justice Kagan made disparaging remarks in her dissent about the fair district that they were vague essentially, and so that has got most people that are involved with the processing.

And that this Supreme Court, remember, had seven members, three of which are still there that voted to uphold the maps that got overturned in 2016, that produce what we have today.

The one of the people that was working for Attorney General Bondi and argued for the maps that got overturned is now on the court, and the two new justices are very conservative and replace liberal justices who believe in legislative deference.

So I think that the Republicans are gonna have a much more robust constitutionally acceptable maps this time.

So, yes, I think that you're probably looking at two to three seats in Congress, the new seat being a Republican seat, the Democrats losing two incumbents in the Senate, probably two seats in the Senate.

In the House, It's a matter of how much does a House wanna feed, and do they wanna take a risk?

'Cause remember these seats are for 10 years.

If they say they could get an 85, that makes the margins and all these House seats very thin.

If they stick at 80, they could probably ride out the decade and hold the majority.

- So what you're saying is that, essentially, the US Supreme Court, with a super majority of conservators, that method of challenging Florida's maps is kind of blocked off based on the previous - Correct.

- court decisions.

And the Democrats only hope is to go to the Florida Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court leans very heavily to the right.

So that method is probably not gonna work for the Democrats this time.

- Arguably you could say that the old Supreme Court, before Ron DeSantis was the most liberal in the country.

And I think it's very easy to argue today that the Florida Supreme Court is the most conservative court in the country, so it's been a totally diametric shift, and as chaired by Justice Kennedy which is interesting that his wife is running in Lakeland for the Florida House.

- So what happens to the congressional district 13 seat, which is currently held by Charlie Crist, how do you predict it is gonna be changed under redistricting?

- Well there's two ways you could do it.

Remember we had a 3-4 vote that said it was acceptable by the old Supreme Court.

So they could either resend and say that you could go back across water and put the African-American section, the south St. Pete section of St. Petersburg back with Kathy Castor, and then she'd have to shed some people.

Or at the very minimum, you have to add, I think, 25,000 people to the district and you just go north.

And the problem for the Democrats is when you go north, the Democrats are really encapsulated in a few areas in Pinellas County.

When you go north you'd get Republicans, and that in itself could shift the district to a much more competitive seat.

- And Barry, we just have 30 seconds, but this could all change.

I mean, the Democrats' prospects could improve if they increase their voter turnout.

In terms of party registration, Democrats were ahead a year ago and five years ago, what is party registration?

Where's it going here in Florida right now?

- Well, unfortunately for the Democrats, since the election, they've lost about another 70,000.

As of July 31st, the voter registration advantage for Democrats in Florida was down to 54,046, that's the smallest number that has ever been in history.

So it was about 120,000 and book closing last year, so there's a steady trend over about eight to 10,000 per month, net Republican registered.

So the Democrats really need to get on that.

But also, one of the big caveats is that about two-thirds of the people that are eligible to register to vote in Florida are white, and 70% of the voter registered in Florida since the last election who are white have registered Republican.

- All right, Barry Edwards, thanks a lot for coming on "Florida This Week".

- Thank you.

- Well, as we approach Labor Day, how is organized labor doing in Florida?

We'll hear from a state labor leader next.

(cinematic music) A judge ruled this week that Governor Ron DeSantis did not violate the law when he stopped taking federal money to provide additional unemployment benefits.

The Governor ended those $300 weekly federal benefits two months early in June.

Rich Templin is the director of politics and public policy for the Florida AFL-CIO, and supported keeping those benefits in place.

And Rich, welcome back to the program.

- Thank you, Rob.

It's always great to be on with the legend that is Rob Lorei.

- Wow.

So Rich, two more federal programs are gonna be ended by the Governor on Monday.

Unemployment programs are gonna be ended by the Governor.

What's your take on this?

The Florida unemployment rate right now is 5.1%, national unemployment rate is 5.2%, the thinking was if we end the federal programs, more people will wanna go back into the workforce.

It doesn't look like that happen.

What's your take on what the Governor has done with the federal assistance?

- Well, the governor's decision on federal assistance is really quite barbaric (laughs) and ghastly.

Basically, the service industry went to the governor and said, "Look, we need to get people back to work."

And what they meant was we want you to starve them out so that they have no choice but to come back and work for us because we've got a shortage during our lunch hour or what have you, so really it was eliminating critical lifeline benefits for Florida families just to try to force people back into poverty level wages and short hours just to meet the need of the service industry.

We said all along and thousands of Floridians signed a petition to the Governor over two months ago, that the narrative that was being pushed out was verifiably false.

Nobody in Florida, during the pandemic, was getting $575 a week, and that's because most Floridians never qualified for a dime in state money because our unemployment insurance is so bad.

We have the lowest recipiency rate, we have the highest exhaustion rate, most Floridians did not qualify for Florida state benefits under the unemployment insurance system.

That means that we did have people that were applying for the federal dollars, and the max there was $300 a week, which is less than the minimum wage for some working.

So this idea that people were staying home, earning less than the minimum wage because they didn't wanna go back to work was flawed from the very beginning.

What has happened, and we gave the governor's office all of the data from other states that had already shut off their federal benefits, it had no increase in hiring at all.

The company Indeed, which of course does millions of job search, monitors this really carefully, issued numbers saying that they saw a downward trend in people seeking employment with the end of the federal benefits.

There was no increase.

We knew that going into this.

We tried to convince the governor, however, he was less interested in economic development, less interested in sound, economic policy, more interested in political soundbites.

Now, remember that $300 that was federal money, taxpayers weren't footing the bill at all other than federal tax payers in Florida were sending them money up to DC, we should be bringing it back to Florida.

That's economic stimulus.

Every dollar and unemployment benefits paid out is a $1.67 in economic activity at local cash registers.

Where can you get a 60% return on your investment?

That was money that was desperately needed in the communities for our small businesses to help bring the economy back.

But the Governor was not swayed by the arguments of sound economic development, and instead took a more political route.

- Rich, we only have a minute left, but what's the number one issue for organized labor in Florida as it stands now on Labor Day 2021?

- Well, unemployment is a big issue, but it really is more of a 30,000 foot view.

We're looking at a reset of the economy because of the COVID pandemic.

Florida's model of a labor market, which is really low wages with no benefits does not work anymore.

It's bad for the state, it's bad for the economy, it's bad for taxpayers.

And so what we're hoping is that we will continue to push a reset of the labor market so that we can put people back to work in a way that's meaningful, in a way that contributes to the overall economy of the state of Florida.

- Rich Templin of the Florida AFL-CIO, Happy labor day.

- Thank you, sir.

(cinematic music) - Thanks for joining us.

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

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

You can subscribe to it on our website or wherever you get your podcasts.

Finally, in The Tampa Bay Times this week, USF St. Pete Historian Ray Arsenault writes about the passing of two largely unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement who died this month, both were Freedom Riders, one black, one white.

Ernest "Rip" Patton rode on the segregated Greyhound buses in 1961 from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi.

He was arrested for sitting in the wrong section.

He spent a month in the brutal Parchman Prison and ultimately, lost a full scholarship to college.

He later became a jazz musician.

And Dave Myers, and his late wife Winonah, also rode the buses and were arrested for violating the segregation rules.

They both ended up in Parchman where Winonah spent almost six months behind bars.

The couple retired to a mobile home park in Bradenton, where they became pillars of their church and were frequent speakers to high school and college students.

We wanna honor their memory and the strength of their character and remember their commitment to making a better future.

Stay safe, take care of each other.

We'll see you next week.

(solemn music) ♪ Buses are a-comin' ♪ ♪ Oh yes ♪ ♪ Buses are a-comin' ♪ ♪ Oh yes ♪ ♪ Buses are a-comin' ♪ ♪ Buses are a-comin' ♪ ♪ Buses are a-comin' ♪ ♪ Oh yes ♪ ♪ They're rolling into Jackson ♪ ♪ Oh yes ♪ ♪ Rolling into Jackson ♪ ♪ Oh yes ♪ ♪ Rolling into Jackson ♪ ♪ Rolling into Jackson ♪ ♪ Rolling into Jackson ♪ ♪ Oh yes ♪ (cinematic music) - [Announcer] "Florida This Week" is a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.

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