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(gentle music) - Right now on WEDU, former President Trump is indicted in Miami.

The DeSantis presidential campaign uses artificial intelligence to distort Trump's record, pro-choice supporters are off to a quick start as they try to put abortion rights on next year's ballot, and Tallahassee takes another step to diminish the power of local government.

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

(uplifting music) Welcome back.

For several years now, the state legislature's been taking away power from local governments and giving it to Tallahassee.

On issues ranging from rent control, to the minimum wage, to blocking development in environmentally sensitive areas, the state government in Tallahassee has been saying it knows best.

Among the latest examples, the battle over controlling Gainesville Regional Utilities.

That's a multi-service company owned by the city of Gainesville, which provides electric, natural gas, water, wastewater, and telecommunications to Gainesville and surrounding areas.

This year, the legislature passed a bill, taking away control of the local utility from the city and giving it to a new board controlled by the governor.

And joining us now is the Mayor of Gainesville, Florida, Harvey Ward, Jr. Harvey, nice to see you, thank you for coming on.

- Rob, thanks so much for the invitation.

- All right, so you're opposed to this idea.

Why are you opposed?

Why is it a bad idea?

- So it is a bad idea for a number of reasons, the greatest of which is that it takes away the control of our municipal utility from the people of Gainesville.

For more than 100 years, the people of Gainesville have selected the board of our utility, which is the City Commission of the city of Gainesville.

When people are displeased with Gainesville Regional Utilities, they let me know in the checkout line at the grocery store, they let me know in the line to pick up my kids at school, they have direct access to the board of their utility.

I think that's a big deal.

This takes all that local control away.

All the ability to speak truth to power just evaporates and goes directly into the hands of Governor DeSantis.

- Okay, but there are some people locally in the Gainesville area who are upset at GRU.

They say that they've got high bills, inaccurate meter readings, bills not being sent to customers for three months, garbage not being picked up, there's a call to boycott the utility a few years ago.

Will the governor's takeover fix those problems?

- So the governor's takeover, this Bill 1645 has absolutely nothing to do with addressing any of those issues.

By the way, the garbage pickup is not a GRU service.

There are legitimate issues that people have with our utility, and they raise them to me and to the rest of the commission on a regular basis.

And that gives them direct hiring and firing control over the board of this utility.

And I absolutely want to address whatever issues there are with our utility, but pretty sure they're not gonna be addressed by a board that is not to anyone in the community.

- Now, this proposed takeover, the governor hasn't signed the bill yet, but when he does, and we're expecting him to sign it, it's already costing you money.

Tell us how it's costing the City of Gainesville money.

- Sure.

Utilities like ours, any utility, I think, but certainly a municipal utility like ours.

Our capital needs are generally funded through regular issues of new bonds, which are all part of the financial plan for our utility, and again, any utility.

Just yesterday, we issued new bonds for some capital needs, and those bonds cost us $2.9 million over a three-year period more than they would have had the uncertainty created by this bill not existed.

And the bank literally told us that.

The bank that we would have used was unwilling to do business with us on this because of the uncertainty that this bill creates.

- Are rates generally lower for utilities that are owned by municipalities?

- Not necessarily.

Matter of fact, very often, they're not.

We provide, I think, better service.

Matter of fact, I know we provide excellent electric service, excellent water, wastewater service, excellent natural gas service.

We're a good utility.

We started a little over a decade ago investing in renewable energy.

Right now, about 1/3 of the energy that we produce somewhere between 30 and 35% on a quarterly basis is renewable.

And the Florida average for renewable energy production is 4%.

So that's something our community cares about.

So our utility, through our City Commission, has invested in that over the years.

And that's not the least expensive way to produce energy.

It is becoming far more cost-effective.

And we believe that that is the future.

But it came at a cost when we started to invest in it.

Our community has that as a value, we appreciate it.

And it's cost a little more money, which means the rates are a little more.

Our water/wastewater utility is middle of the pack for Florida.

Our natural gas utility is among the least expensive in Florida, but our electric utility is a little more expensive.

- So do you think this is a step toward a private takeover of the utility?

- That's exactly what I think.

Folks from FPL have been very interested in the territory.

I'm not sure that they want the generating capacity that we have, but they absolutely would like to run an interconnect line through here, and the cheapest way to do that is to have the legislature take our utility over.

I can't prove that, but that's certainly what it feels like.

- And I wanna ask you about this general idea of preemption, where local governments are giving up their control, the control's being taken away by Tallahassee to do a variety of things.

Is this happening in other cities in Florida and around the country?

It's happening here in Florida, but is it happening around the country?

- It seems to be a common trend, particularly in the Southeast.

I was just at the US Conference of Mayors meeting, talked with mayors in Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, St. Louis.

They've all been experiencing similar takeovers, and the script is always the same.

"The city of blank is about to go bankrupt because blank.

And we, the legislature and the governor, must save the people of this city."

There's rarely any truth to it, but that's always the script.

- Well, Mayor Harvey Ward, Jr., thanks a lot.

Thanks for coming on "Florida This Week."

- Rob, thanks so much.

I appreciate it.

(pensive music) - Joining us on the panel this week, Fentrice Driskell is the Representative for House District 67 in Hillsborough County and a Democrat, Yacob Reyes is a Tampa Bay reporter for Axios, and Ryan Wiggins is the Chief of Staff for The Lincoln Project, and she's in Pensacola.

And good to see all of you, thank you for doing the program.

Well, Miami This Week, Donald Trump became the first former president to face federal criminal charges.

He pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts, many under the Espionage Act, that accuse him of illegally storing classified documents in his bedroom, bathroom, shower, and other locations at his Mar-a-Lago property on Palm Beach, and trying to hide them from the Justice Department as investigators demanded the papers back.

Hundreds of supporters and a few opponents gathered outside the courtroom building in the midday heat to mark the historic moment.

Governor DeSantis sided with the former president by claiming that the Justice Department had been weaponized and promised a house cleaning on his first day as president if he's elected.

- We actually have already put out a lot of plans about what we'll do starting day one.

With me, you don't have to worry about it.

You have a new FBI director on day one, you have a house cleaning on day one in these agencies, and we will use our full Article II powers to ensure that the weaponization of government in this country ends.

- Ryan, why do you think Republicans are so unified on this issue?

There was an ABC News/Ipsos poll that found that 80% of polled Republicans say that they believe the charges against Trump are politically motivated.

Why are they so unified?

- Republicans are always unified.

They are really good at sticking on one message, and finding it, and getting around it.

But in this case, it's because they're afraid of their base.

I mean, the base is almost cult-like at this point.

It is all Trump all the time.

MAGA owns the GOP at this stage.

And so if they do not get on board with him, then their political careers are over.

So that is what you're seeing as far as the electeds who are jumping on board, as far as voters who are jumping on board.

The Republicans are listening to Fox News.

They get their talking points from Netflix, or not Netflix, Newsmax, and all of that.

So they're getting OAN and Fox News.

So what you're seeing here is people repeating the talking points that are being repeated to them because unfortunately, a lot of the GOP are not willing to think on their own.

It's become like college football.

You pick your team and you stick with your team.

- Fentrice, so the governor says the Justice Department has been weaponized and he's gonna change it on day one if he becomes the president.

What do you make of that?

- I make of that as a warning to America, and I frequently say, as Democratic leader in the Florida House, "Watch what's been happening here in Florida.

If we don't want Florida's present reality to become America's future, we cannot let Ron DeSantis become president."

Because what he's done in Florida is expand the executive power of the governor to the point where he's reshaping our institutions, whether it's state agencies, or you look at our universities and our institutions of higher education.

Ron DeSantis is inserting himself everywhere that he can as governor, and we don't want that as president.

What we need to do is have a trial that is free from the pressures and passions of the public, we need to follow the facts, and make sure that Trump gets a fair trial, just like any American would be entitled to.

- Hmm, Yacob, this is still a red state governor.

DeSantis won it by 19 percentage points when he ran a few years ago.

This is gonna be...

I mean, if the trial does go forward, the jury is likely to contain a lot of Trump supporters.

- No, definitely.

And I think that what we've seen to a degree is that DeSantis has been kind of unwilling to really hit Trump on this specific case.

I mean, he questioned Trump's character in the past, but when it comes to this specific case, he seems to align with the party, obviously, here.

And DeSantis has really flexed his executive power as governor and he's spoken about trying to clear out the bureaucracies, something that Trump has also tried to do and something that Trump is planning for his playbook if he wins office again, is using Schedule F to clear out the bureaucracy, clear out some of these people.

And I think we could see DeSantis kind of opening up that.

- Yeah, the tremendous mistrust of government on the part of Republicans.

Well, while DeSantis seemed to support Trump indictments over the mishandling of top-secret documents, he's going after Trump on another issue, COVID-19.

The DeSantis campaign has spread three images of the former president, supposedly embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci, who once headed the federal government's response to COVID-19.

The images, which are realistic-looking deepfakes, appear genuine.

They show Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Fauci, who's been a target of harsh criticism from DeSantis.

The three images here showing Trump hugging and kissing Fauci are the deepfakes.

Several public interest groups are condemning the use of deceptive computer-generated images and have called on campaigns not to use them.

Fentrice, campaigns can be rough, as you know.

What do you make of the use of deepfakes by Ron DeSantis, and should there be a line drawn against any use of deepfakes in campaigns?

- Well, yes, I think there should be a line drawn, and that line is when it comes to deceiving voters.

There's a reason why every campaign ad that you see, there's an authorization or a disclaimer put there by the candidate that they approved that ad, right?

We see that all the time in TV commercials, "I'm such and such and I approve this message," is because we wanna make sure that there's accurate information getting to voters.

When it comes to the use of these deepfakes, now that AI technology has evolved to the place that these computer-generated images look so real and they're deceptive to the human eye, we really have to think about the ethics of this.

Disinformation has become, I believe, one of the chief issues and problems in American elections, where the public gets so easily deceived.

And we know that Florida is one of the leading states for disinformation, particularly in South Florida and with Latino voters.

So I do think that we need to get some ethical rules around the use of deepfakes, just like we do with any other content, with political ads.

- And Yacob, that's a tough line, though, because there are free speech questions, and there's really no regulation of campaign ads, not much regulation of campaign ads when it comes to content.

- Yeah, and I mean, we've heard people say that in 2008 and 2012 with the Facebook elections.

The election coming up is very much going to be the artificial intelligence election.

And I mean, the DeSantis Administration and the DeSantis campaign has really pressed Trump hard with COVID, and this is obviously an escalation.

But Trump's also utilized this against DeSantis with Donald Trump, Jr. using a deepfake on the governor over the face of Steve Carell.

So I think that there's a lot of signs that this is a worsening issue.

- And Ryan, I mean, this kind of opens the door this year.

The technology is everywhere.

So what do you think the future holds for deepfakes in presidential or even local campaigns?

- I, day to day, run a super PAC that is mainly an ad agency trying to save democracy.

And so this one hits home for us.

We have put out things before that were very clearly AI and we have put a disclaimer at the very beginning, saying that AI was used to generate this.

We never wanna deceive.

And when it comes to Trump and DeSantis, there's so much real stuff out there to attack them on.

There's no reason to go into AI, there's no reason to draft an ad hitting them on fake stuff.

There's plenty of real stuff to go after them on.

- Okay.

Well, there was another sign of tension this week between DeSantis and supporters of former President Trump.

The Tampa Bay Times reported on Friday that Governor Ron DeSantis took his veto pen to the state budget on Thursday, scratching off millions of dollars in programs to address gun violence and Black history, and millions more in a district where a key Republican senator endorsed his presidential primary opponent, Donald Trump.

DeSantis vetoed about $30 million in projects, including 20 million for a University of South Florida nursing campus in the Sarasota area that's represented by State Senator Joe Gruters, the former Chair of the Florida Republican Party.

Gruters lashed out at DeSantis afterwards.

He's running for president, as we know, saying in a text message that, "The governor is clearly upset.

I endorsed Donald Trump for president, and so he took it out on the people of Sarasota County."

Gruters said it was a sign of the difference... difference, rather, between DeSantis and the former president who understands that people come first.

Gruters says it's mean-spirited acts like this that are defining him here and across the country.

Fentrice, what do you think of the governor's vetoes and what did you think of that statement by Gruters, pretty tough on Governor DeSantis?

- Well, I think that a number of the governor's vetoes were mean-spirited because it's the people in the communities who suffer.

When I look at the funding that, let's say the Democrats got versus the Republicans, for example, the Republicans got so much more funding in that budget than Democrats did.

And then there were Democrats who got all of their budget priorities vetoed.

What's the point?

Democrats represent millions of Floridians, too, just like Republicans do, right?

And so what were the motivations behind these?

And then you see what happened with Joe Gruters, and you wonder if the governor took his veto pen harshly to Senator Gruters because he has endorsed Donald Trump.

And the answer is probably yes, because I think it's no secret that Ron DeSantis has been very vindictive of governor, and that's the rub with this guy.

He goes after people who disagree with him, whether it's Disney, whether it's a Democratic representative or Republican senator.

If you disagree with him in any way, he will come after you.

And America needs to know that because we cannot afford to have a president that governs in such a vindictive way.

- Right, and there's a deep division between Florida Republicans and Governor DeSantis.

All of Florida's congressional delegation, all the Republican members of Florida's congressional delegation, have endorsed President Trump, not Ron DeSantis.

and now you've got Joe Gruters, the former chair of the Florida Republican Party, taking a really strong stand against Ron DeSantis.

How bad is the division between DeSantis and leaders in the Florida Republican Party?

- Listen, it's like I was saying earlier, it's a cult.

And right now, Donald Trump has never fallen below 42% approval rating among the Republican party.

There is no way that anyone besides Trump is going to be the nominee for the Republicans.

I don't care if he's in jail, there is no way anyone besides Trump is going to be the nominee.

So what you're seeing is congressional members, and Joe Gruters, and several state electeds hedging their bets, and they're not wrong to do so.

It's wrong for the country to do so, but politically, they know what's coming.

And I don't see any way for any of these other candidates to top him.

I mean, if you look at it, that is why they're all coming to his defense.

When was the last time you saw a candidate running for office, and all of the people who are against him defending him, especially for an indictment, especially on espionage?

I mean, it's just unheard of.

- All right.

Well, group trying to get an abortion rights amendment on the Florida ballot next year is off to a fast start.

Floridians Protecting Freedom has collected more than 130,000 signatures since they began their effort just a month ago.

If the effort is successful, it will reverse Tallahassee's attempts to further restrict abortion.

It could also impact the turnout in Florida for the presidential election next year.

In order to actually make it on the ballot, abortion rights supporters need almost 900,000 signatures by this coming January.

The group says it's gathering signatures at a faster pace than expected.

The amendment says, "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."

Yacob, you've covered this story.

The folks that want this amendment on the ballot have had a good month, but 130,000 or 140,000 signatures is a long way from 900,000, which they need to get essentially by the end of the year.

What's their strategy for getting that many so quickly?

- I mean, they've set up these hubs, some of which are in very left-leaning communities, but also in these red strongholds.

They've set up these hubs so people can petition.

They're going to churches, they're going to campuses, they're doing all they can to make sure that people are getting this out.

And it's in no way, even though they had a good month, it's no way indicative that it's going to be on the ballot.

There's a lot of hurdles they have to go through.

- Hmm, and that's true, Fentrice, I mean, this group has a lot of hurdles, including the Florida Supreme Court.

What do you think the chances are that this abortion rights amendment makes it on the ballot in time for the 2024 presidential election?

- I think the chances are actually really good because there's great excitement on the ground, and I think it's bolstered by what happened with the extreme Republicans in the Florida legislature overreaching so much this past legislative session.

So there was a six-week abortion ban that was passed.

And depending on what happens with the Florida Supreme Court case, that may go into effect instantly.

And I think what most people recognize is that a six-week ban is effectively an outright ban because most women don't even know that they're pregnant by six weeks.

So the word is getting out there, the energy is high on the street.

This is bringing out young people, this is expanding the electorate and expanding what I think will be the base in the 2024 election.

So I think the chances are very good.

And keeping in mind that they need fewer than the 900,000, I believe, in order to have the Supreme Court review the language of the initiative.

So I think that they're on track to do that.

And once they clear that hurdle, sky's the limit.

- Right, you're a longtime Republican.

Where do Republican women stand on this issue of choice?

- First of all, I'm a former Republican.

(Ryan laughs) I switched with Trump.

But what I will tell you is I think the six-week ban went way too far.

I happen to be a pro-choice Republican, former Republican, but I think it went way too far.

I don't think Floridians are comfortable with it.

I don't think... One of the things we look at is where there can be movement, okay, in voters.

And what we see is husbands and dads for their daughters are going, "Wait a minute, wait a minute.

I don't wanna be a grandfather and I don't wanna restrict her ability to be sexual.

I don't want to hinder her rights in any way, shape, or form."

I think the Republicans took this too far.

I think you saw that in the 2022... Or I'm sorry, yeah, 2022 election cycle.

I think you saw it in Kansas, which is a Republican stronghold.

They are going too far with this, and I think it'll backfire.

I think it's really, really smart to try to get this on the ballot.

I think whether or not it gets on the ballot, the media around it getting on the ballot and the fights that the Republicans are gonna put up to try to keep this off the ballot is going to push away voters.

- All right, well, before we go, what other news stories should we be paying attention to?

And Fentrice, let's start with you.

The other big story of the week.

- Sure, I think we need to pay attention to what happens with DeSantis as he continues to pursue these migrant flights and inserts himself into the federal issue over immigration.

If he's not careful, he just might be the next presidential hopeful to face criminal charges.

This time, it would be for, perhaps, human trafficking.

- Yacob, your other big story?

- Yeah, so DeSantis signed a bill recently that would allow Hernando County School District to elect their superintendent as opposed to appointed.

And I mean, there's a lot going on in that district in terms of attempts to politicize local school board.

So I would stay tune to that.

- Okay.

And Ryan, your other big story of the week.

- My other big story is not just a Florida-based story, it's a national story.

It's about a group called No Labels that is trying to get a third party on the ballot.

They are actually a shill for the Republican party and they're trying to get on the ballot in Florida.

And so, I think it's very important to watch this.

These are people who are backed by a bunch of former Republican... or current Republican donors, and big hedge funds, and all of that.

So I think it's really important to watch that because in the instance that they get it on the ballot, the reason they're trying to get it on the ballot is to pull votes away from Joe Biden.

And that is a very, very dangerous thing for our country and our democracy.

- And do you think there's a good chance they get on the ballot in some states around the country?

- They already are on the ballot in some states around the country, Florida.

What would be interesting is Florida, it's up to the Secretary of State as to whether or not he gets on the ballot.

They're looking at Joe Manchin right now who is not a friend of the left at all.

And I think that what you're gonna see is you're gonna see that it's getting on the ballot in states where it can get on the ballot.

They're trying to get on states where they can get on the ballot.

So if the Secretary of State Florida, who is a huge Trump supporter and it was appointed by DeSantis, allows them on the ballot, it's gonna tell you everything you need to know about No Labels.

- Well, Ryan Wiggins, Representative Fentrice Driskell, and Yacob Reyes, thank you very much for being on the program.

And thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at ftw@wedu.org and like us on Facebook.

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

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

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