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

(light music continues) - Coming up right now on WEDU, abortion rights supporters say they are about halfway to their goal of getting enough signatures to put a pro-choice amendment on next year's ballot.

The new Florida Black history teaching regulations generate problems within the Republican party.

Governor DeSantis lays off about 1/3 of his presidential election campaign team.

And water temperatures in the Florida Keys reach what might be a world record, 100 degrees.

These stories and more next on "Florida This Week."

(dramatic music continues) Welcome back.

For the past several years, Republicans who are in control of the state legislature gradually have been restricting access to abortion here in the state.

(air whooshing) This year, the legislature passed and the governor signed in a private event a tough new law that would limit abortions to just the first six weeks of pregnancy, effectively banning abortion outright, because at six weeks, many women don't know they are pregnant.

A group called Floridians Protecting Freedom is fighting back and trying to get a proposed amendment on next year's ballot that would preserve access to abortion.

The amendment to limit government interference with abortion says this: "No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider."

Joining us now is Anna Hochkammer, the executive director of the Florida Women's Freedom Coalition and the vice mayor of Pinecrest, Florida.

Anna, welcome to the program.

- Thank you for having me.

- So I said that you're halfway there.

Are you halfway there are you a little bit beyond that?

- Beyond halfway there.

We've got more than 600,000 petitions, and we need just a hair under 900,000 to get on the ballot.

- [Rob] Okay, and you've gotta do that by when?

- December 31st of this year.

- The state legislature's made it very hard for citizens groups and nonprofits to amend the state constitution.

Are you surprised at how quickly, because you've done this in two months, how quickly you've gathered these signatures?

- Yeah, it's really fascinating.

We knew that the language was popular because it polls consistently at 70% approval, but we had no idea how much organic desire there was across the State of Florida to have the opportunity to sign it.

The response from the volunteer network that we have working with over 200 grassroots organizations across the state has already blown through our estimates of how many we would be able to get out of that network in the entire petition drive.

- Let me read something from the Florida Catholic bishops.

They came out in opposition to your petition drive and they said this: "This amendment is deeply concerning because it will allow all abortions to be obtained until viability and includes a broad health loophole, essentially allowing abortion on demand up to birth.

The amendment would hinder the Florida legislature's ability to protect women and children from abortion.

It could also nullify current laws requiring parental consent before minors obtain abortions and a 24-hour waiting period prior to abortions, as well as the 15-week and six-week abortion laws recently passed by the legislature."

Let me ask you about this idea.

The bishops say that you're gonna allow abortion up to viability.

What do you say back?

- I would say that it's very clear that this is not about giving abortion as a right in Florida.

It's about impeding interference between a patient and her healthcare provider.

The person who's going to make the determination as to whether or not the pregnancy is viable and whether or not an abortion is called for is the healthcare professional who's the appropriate person to make that decision with a patient, with her family, and they can make that decision based on their own personal beliefs and their own personal preferences and needs as a family.

It's inappropriate, we believe, for the government to have an active role in that decision.

I will point out that there is a factual misstatement in their assertions.

The second line of the petition and the ballot language, which you didn't read, says that explicitly, it does not change the legislature's constitutional authority to require parental or guardian consent before a minor would receive abortion services.

We are very explicitly talking about a single issue, and we make absolutely no bones about the fact that people should be free to vote their conscience and their decisions.

- If it is gonna be on the ballot next year, you've got the Florida Supreme Court that you have to pass through.

You've gotta get their okay essentially for it to appear on the 2024 November ballot.

- We do, and you know, we worked very, very hard at the language.

A huge cohort of attorneys and Supreme Court specialists and Florida Supreme Court specialists thought very, very carefully about every single word.

It's a single issue.

The language is very plain.

There's nothing confusing about the way that it's been written.

There's no false flag.

We're pretty confident that we will survive quite easily the scrutiny of the Florida Supreme Court.

- What about this idea that, you know, people are concerned about abortions in the third trimester.

And they're concerned that women would just suddenly decide after 23 or 24 weeks of pregnancy that they wanna have an abortion.

What do you say to that?

- I would say that, you know, there's this idea that third trimester abortion is somehow common.

They're very rare.

Most people I know who work in the reproductive space have never performed one and don't know anyone who would.

So I can't even imagine the sort of circumstances that would lead a person to need a third trimester abortion.

That said, we specifically crafted the language to make it clear that we're talking about pregnancy before viability.

Viability's been defined in Florida statutes since 1979.

It's not a confusing concept for healthcare providers or nor should it be for legislators, since it's been defined by our law for many, many years.

Most people understand that viability depends on a lot of circumstances.

Health of the mother, where you are, what kind of specialists are around.

But pregnancy is something that is very hard to measure, and so we all understand that there's going to be some gray area and that's exactly where the judgment of a healthcare provider and the healthcare needs of the patient- - And generally speaking- - Should be in play.

- Where does viability occur?

- It occurs somewhere in maybe week 21, 22, 23.

It really does depend on what's wrong with the fetus, what is the health risk that the mother is experiencing.

Where is she?

Is she in the middle of a metropolitan area with specialists around?

Or is she in a rural health clinic where she might have an RN and doesn't have any access to specialty services.

- So access to healthcare is a big factor.

- Access is a huge part of determining viability.

- Yeah, let me put up a statistic.

This is from the CDC.

"In 2020, 93% of abortions occurred during the first trimester- that is, at or before 13 weeks of gestation.

An additional 6% occurred between 14 and 20 weeks of pregnancy, and only 1% were performed at 21 weeks or more of gestation."

So and I read too that women oftentimes are either concerned about the health of the fetus or concerned about their health, and that's why in the last stage of pregnancy, they get an abortion.

- Yeah, I mean, listen, there have been circumstances, and people, I think all women in the State of Florida have had that experience of sitting around a table after a family dinner with their cousins or their grandma or their best friends and listening to the stories of really, really complicated and difficult pregnancies that either resulted in tragic outcomes or could have been really, really difficult to manage and could've put a woman's health in risk.

This is part of being a woman.

Pregnancy can be a very complicated and dangerous thing.

All women of every ethnicity, from every socioeconomic background, across the political spectrum know that this is true.

And it's one of the reasons why the six-week ban is rejected outright by 75% of Floridians and why 70% of Floridians consistently approve of the language in this petition and they approve the ballot language.

Even over 60% of Republicans consistently support the language, 57% of Trump voters support the language.

Americans and Floridians are very sophisticated about what abortion is and what it means, because every family in Florida has to deal with pregnancy and the health of the mother and the possibility of negative outcomes at some point.

And every single woman understands that pregnancy brings with it risks.

As a result, we know that Floridians believe that these are decisions that can be complicated, that need to be made by women with their families and with their healthcare providers.

It's really not appropriate for the government to pass these sorts of extreme bans and interject itself where, frankly it doesn't belong.

- Anna Hochkammer, thank you for coming by the studio.

- Thank you.

(light music) - Joining us on the panel for this week, Deborah Tamargo is the immediate past president of the Florida Federation of Republican Women, Reverend J.C. Pritchett is the president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Florida and the executive director of the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club, and Patrick Manteiga is the editor and publisher of "La Gaceta" newspaper in Tampa and a Democrat.

So nice to see all of you.

Thank you for coming.

- Good to see you.

- Glad to be here.

- Well, the only Black Republican member of Florida's congressional delegation fought online with the DeSantis administration this week over the newly adopted teaching standard that requires middle schoolers learn that some African Americans benefited from slavery.

(air whooshing) Representative Byron Donalds, whose district includes Naples and Cape Coral, and who has endorsed former President Donald Trump for president, posted on social media Wednesday that, "The attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong and needs to be adjusted."

Politico reports that Donalds said in his tweet that the new African American learning standards generally are robust and accurate.

But he added that highlighting the benefits of slavery was not the goal.

He says, "I have faith that the Department of Education will correct this."

Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. responded saying the state will not change the teaching standards "at the behest of a woke @WhiteHouse, nor at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman."

And Governor DeSantis' spokesperson Jeremy Redfern attacked Donalds, posting on social media that, "Supposed conservatives in the federal government are pushing the same false narrative that originated from the @WhiteHouse."

And on Thursday, in Iowa, Governor DeSantis himself said this: "So, at the end of the day, you've got to choose.

Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and the liberal media outlets?

Or are you going to side with the State of Florida?

And I think it's very clear that these guys did a good job in those standards.

It wasn't anything that was politically motivated."

So J.C., the governor's standing firm and he's now backing the standards.

Towards the beginning of the week, he said he had nothing to do with the standards.

It was up to the DOE.

But now he's backing 'em.

- Well, you know, Black history is American history.

Slavery ripped Black families apart.

Black bodies worked under horrible conditions.

Black bodies breastfed the children of others, and Black bodies were raped.

Emmett Till was killed because a Black boy looking at a white woman was a white supremacist nightmare.

But the descendants of Africa built colleges and hospitals and universities and organizations, and they thrived and survived.

And why wouldn't someone want this history shared, an American story of success?

Why remove books about these incredible patriots who moved America forward and built this country?

- Deborah, Congressman Donalds is saying, "Look, especially this one section, it says that there were benefits from slavery.

That oughta be removed."

He doesn't object to the rest of the standards.

You know, I don't know what he thinks about saying the Rosewood massacre was in part due to Black people, but he just wants some small changes.

And the governor's standing firm.

- Well, I think Kamala just misinterpreted.

She gave a interpretation of what the line was that offensive.

I read it.

I didn't find offense to it.

Everything the reverend said is absolutely true, and it's all in the Black history.

You know, they latched on to one thing.

They spinned it and so forth.

But you know, she didn't have the Black experience, nor did her descendants.

She's Indian.

She's Jamaican.

Nor did, you know, Obama.

He was raised in a affluent family in Hawaii and- - But what about this idea that there were benefits to slavery?

- Well, I think there's (laughing) benefits from when you're a Latin family and you had 10 kids and they were slaves working in the field and the dairies and so forth.

And you learn from every experience, however horrendous it is.

We learn from experiences.

So no one, no one is negating the fact that slavery was wrong.

That's what we teach.

And you know, the people that survived and went on to be just notable, successful, and so forth.

And so I think that's the balance and it was in there.

And the people writing the standard, he was a descendant of slaves, the Professor Emeritus Smith.

And Lieutenant Colonel Frances Presley Rice, raised in an impoverished family, went on to be a very successful, both Blacks, and Ron DeSantis is right.

He did not write- - Okay, so but- - A panel did.

- Patrick, the objection that Congressman Donalds has is especially to this phrase that there were benefits from slavery.

- These are Florida standards.

These standards should be what Floridians want as their education standards.

Obviously, this is a very controversial, and obviously, most of us believe it's wrong.

I mean, I do not think this is how you wanna spin the slavery, "Oh, well there were some good points about it," ridiculous.

It's ridiculous.

So you know, why doesn't the governor back off?

It's 'cause the governor's a bully.

He just will not back off of anything.

He wants to make these education standards part of the culture war.

They shouldn't be.

Teaching our children should be about teaching 'em what the history is, and history's always gonna be controversial.

You're never gonna get it right the first time.

And for somebody to think that they got the standards right the first time is ridiculous.

Of course they're gonna need to be tweaked.

Of course, as we start to develop this, educators are gonna look at it and say, "Listen, we think this is wrong.

We should do this, that, and the other."

I just find it ridiculous that the governor wants to die on this hill.

And the hill is such a ridiculous one.

There is no defense of the fact that somehow, you know, you got a lotta life skills coming outta slavery.

If you did, you certainly weren't able to use 'em afterwards 'cause you had a repressive society that wouldn't let you open up a carpentry shop and to sell things on Main Street, you know?

Whatever you got, you still had a repressive society.

So even if you had some skills coming out of this, you still couldn't use 'em the way a white person could.

- I think it's important also to lift up what is offensive.

It's offensive to say that persons who have mixed parents are somehow have a different experience than others who have African American parents.

Whether you have mixed parents or not, you get mixed bodies because of rape, slave owners like Jefferson who raped women and created mixed families.

And so the same Republican playbook that was used on Michelle Obama is being used on the vice president to somehow say who is Black, who's not Black, who's Black enough.

And attacks on Black women is a consistent pattern in this country.

- Deborah, Congressman Donalds is considered to be a rising star here in Florida, one of the best Republicans in the State of Florida.

Some people suggest he might run for governor in a few years.

- I've heard that.

- Yet you've got this war between DeSantis and Donalds.

Should the governor back down?

- The governor didn't write the standards.

There was a panel, Black historians and so forth, quite capable, you know, professor emeritus, my goodness.

And the truth of the matter is, slavery existed throughout the world.

It was horrendous.

We all learned from it.

And to take one sentence out of the entire curriculum, which is a guideline, it does not say you must teach it exactly this way.

It's merely a guideline.

So I will just leave it there.

- Now Patrick, the governor is not backing down.

He's at war with a member of his own party.

- Yeah, it's, you know, it's gotta be really hard to be African American and be a Republican today.

You know, because they will not listen to reason.

And so, you know, you almost have to make a decision here.

Do you wanna, you know, do you wanna stay with your party and ignore your own history or do you wanna correct your history and have to, you know, get outta your party?

So, you know, I don't know why the governor is really wanting to alienate African Americans nationwide over this issue.

It's really an easy change.

- Okay.

- You know?

- Well, Governor DeSantis' presidential campaign is laying off more staff as he tries to get his primary bid back on track.

(air whooshing) The cuts, according to Politico, will amount to 38 jobs out of 90 staffers, or more than 1/3.

The cuts are the latest sign that the DeSantis team is turning into a slimmed down operation amid concerns over finances.

The campaign announced it had raised a healthy 20 million during the second quarter of this year.

However, it has already spent a good chunk of that money.

Much of it raised came from donors who had given the maximum amount and could not legally give more.

Deborah, so is the governor in trouble or is he just changing focus?

- I don't think so.

I think a businessman, you go into an election like a business, you go in with plan A.

And if plan A is not working out, you need to shift gears.

So the decrease in staff was a way of shifting gears.

You have to re-budget, prioritize, and so forth, get the most bang for your buck.

And so I think it was just a wise business decision.

You've seen it in Republican, Democrat campaigns, and typically, they rose to be the candidate when they refocused their energy.

So I think it was just a good business decision.

You just don't continue down the same path that's not resulting in, giving you the result you intended.

- J.C., does it look like the governor's in trouble - The governor is successful at subtraction.

Campaigns use addition when they are successful, where they have a plan for peoples, and where they have solutions for people's problem, and when they're honest about our past and they have inspiring words for the future.

That's when you get addition.

But the governor has been subtracting.

And Patrick's very right about the risk of continuing cultural wars and making Black bodies part of that risk.

As I've said to the staff here, I was a Republican into 2016.

In the past Congress, we had Republicans like John Maroney and Bob Milby and Dotty Ruggles, not this new MAGA white supremacist, grab women by the crotch, shoot people in the middle of the street, take papers home, lie, steal, crash the Capitol and say, "Let's hang Mike Pence."

I can't be a part of that.

And so the governor is losing successfully.

- Patrick, there was a new Morning Consult poll out this week that showed that in the last six months, Governor DeSantis' approval rating has dropped from, his disapproval rating has risen from 38 to 42% here in Florida in the last six months.

Is the governor in trouble?

- The emperor has no clothes.

You know, DeSantis wasn't a brilliant politician.

He was a guy who was a bully in the State of Florida, and if you opposed him, he would use the governor's office to attack you, whether you were state attorney, whether you were a school board member, whether you're Disney World.

And so he rules Florida and he rules Florida through fear.

And so while it looks like he's a brilliant politician, he really isn't.

So when you get to New Hampshire, when you get to South Carolina, and when you get to Iowa, they're not afraid of him 'cause he holds no power over them.

This guy's successful when he holds power over you, when he can wield it, when he can beat you with it.

And the rest of the country doesn't have this.

And what you're seeing is a guy, when he has to actually rely on his political skills, when he has to rely on the way he speaks, the way he looks, his ideas, he's falling flat.

And he's gonna continue to fall flat.

- All right, and this is gonna come up over and over again for the next few months.

(Deborah laughing) Well, the water temperature in the Florida Keys has hit 100 degrees.

That's hot tub levels.

And it's hit that for several days in a row this week.

(air whooshing) Meteorologists say it could be the hottest sea water ever measured anywhere in the world.

Although some questions about the reading remain.

Scientists are already seeing devastating effects from prolonged hot water surrounding Florida, including coral bleaching and even the deaths of some corals in what had been one of the Florida Keys' most resilient reefs.

Climate change has also set temperature records across the globe this month.

The warmer water is also fuel for hurricanes.

So Patrick, in the Keys, we also reached 100 degrees in 2010 and 2017.

So this is not exactly new, but people are concerned that Florida isn't doing enough about climate change.

- You know, people should be concerned that we're way behind on doing something about climate change.

You know, we have a new reality here, and we're gonna have hot summers and we're gonna have hot water.

And you're gonna have more storms.

And you're starting to see this around the country, and it's gonna have a stark effect on our economy.

You're gonna have insurance companies are gonna say, "Florida's just not a place to bet your insurance money."

You're gonna have people are gonna have to adjust their vacation times because being down in the Keys at this time of year's gonna just be ridiculously hot.

You're gonna see property values drop in some areas because you can't get insurance, you can't get a mortgage if you don't have insurance.

And also, you know, being at the beach in some of these places is just not gonna be good.

This is a reality that, hopefully, those who've been on the sidelines saying, you know, "I'm denying this," are gonna say, "This is real."

And we really need to start moving.

This is our number one political priority.

- Deb, we just have 30 seconds, but in 30 seconds, should Florida be doing more about climate change?

- Well, we're always going to have climate change from the beginning of time.

And what you see with the insurance companies, blame it on the city councils, county commissioners, that zoned coastal properties should've never been built on.

Environmentally sensitive should've never been built on.

Kamala Harris says the solution in the United States is we have too many people, but yet, they opened the flood gates to let all the illegals coming in and destroy our economy and destroy our environment.

So no, I- - I didn't know it was a Mexican problem.

- Do not agree.

- I didn't know the Mexicans were coming over here- - It's definitely not a Mexican- - Messing up our economy.

- Definitely not a Mexican problem.

- Climate change.

- We need a longer show.

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

Deborah, your other big story of the week.

- Absolutely.

Well, I was at salon earlier today, had a little haircut, talking to the ladies.

The biggest issue is education.

The big issue is we're getting ready to start school again.

And particularly, in grades kindergarten through the fifth and sixth grades, they're really concerned about curriculum.

They're concerned with their little children coming home last year with words and meanings that they had not discussed and weren't ready to discuss.

So the suggestion was that parents need to get the syllabus upfront this year.

So go get the syllabus.

Talk to the teachers.

Learn what the rules are.

Also, safety concern, learn what precautions the schools are taking.

So parents, get very involved on the front end.

Don't wait for something to happen.

- All right, Reverend Pritchett?

- 60 years ago next month was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

This week, Alpha Phi Alpha, the fraternity that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. belonged to, canceled their 2025 convention that was scheduled for Orlando.

Watch for more organizations to follow the National Society of Black Engineers, the NAACP, this fraternity, and others in boycotting the State of Florida because the State of Florida has a governor that denies and disrespects Black bodies and Black history.

- And that convention was gonna bring in four to $5 million- - Yeah.

- To the State of Florida.

Patrick, your other big story?

- Well, we had the mayor announced a mobility study this week that said that we needed $2 billion to invest in the City of Tampa over the next 30 years for roads and public transit.

We had a study in Hillsborough County for fire, and they need new fire stations and new firemen and new equipment.

And the City of Tampa also had a study on its fire department.

And so what you're starting to see is, a lotta studies saying we gotta raise a lot more money, and this is in preparation for the fact that we have a renewal of the CIT tax coming up.

And everybody's getting ready to start making the case that we need to get additional taxes.

- All right, and that's gonna be a big debate on this show.

Thank you all for a great program.

- Thank you.

- It's nice to have you here.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at FTW@wedu.org.

You can view this and past shows online at wedu.org.

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

(dramatic music continues) - [Narrator] "Florida This Week" is a production of WEDU, who is solely responsible for its content.

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