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

- [Announcer] Coming up next, the governor's staff fights to block his travel records from public view.

There's a call for the state's top health official to resign over his handling of the measles outbreak in Florida.

A Tampa media consultant is arrested for allegedly illegally hacking into Fox News.

And some Republicans attacked the Senate president for not advancing the GOP agenda in the state legislature.

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

(inspiring music) - Welcome back.

The Tampa Bay Times reported this week about efforts by the governor's office to block the release of some 600 government records related to his travel on a state airplane.

- [Announcer] A former top official with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement alleges DeSantis' staff stopped the release of the records that would've revealed who traveled with the governor on the state plane and where it went.

When he and other officials pushed back on the decision, one staffer was denied a promotion, another was placed on leave and one was forced to resign.

The department denied the public records request citing a new state law shielding the governor's travel records.

- Well, the Tampa Bay Times reporter covering the story is Lawrence Mower, and he joins us right now.

Hey, Lawrence, good to have you back.

- Thanks for having me, Rob.

- So, is it fair to say that reporters are trying to find out if the governor used the state plane for his presidential campaign?

- Well, that's part of it.

You know, the records request at issue here was filed, you know, earlier last year, of course, when it was no secret that the governor was gonna run for president.

But really the issue is not just the campaign.

It's also, you know, where has the governor been going within the state with this plane, who has been on board?

That's a really big question.

We've heard some anecdotes about, you know, legislators being on board and whatnot, but were lobbyists on board?

Who else was on these planes?

And so, you know, there's basically lots of questions about this.

It may not be a scandal at all if these records were released, but we just don't know.

- So Florida has a pretty good public records law.

Why is it so difficult to get these records?

- Well, for these records in particular, when people started in news outlets in this particular case, this was the Washington Post had made this request.

But, you know, basically when news outlets started asking for information about where the governor was going on the state plane, the legislature last year at DeSantis' request moved to make these records private, secret.

Now, these are records that previous governors had, you know, had openly released, and sometimes it led to scandals.

But, in this case, you know, they shielded these particular records relating to his travel.

But the big issue here is that the governor has really made it really hard to get all kinds of records from his agencies.

You know, I find that I often have to send repeated requests over and over again just to get state agencies to respond to our records requests.

And what this case has revealed is that the governor has really taken a very hands-on approach about all records requests from media outlets, basically requiring state agencies to tell the governor's office when somebody is sending a records request, what it is, and when the agency compiles the records to have the governor have the final say on whether those records are released.

- So I imagine there's a safety concern about the governor's future travel.

You don't want the public to know every place that the governor's gonna be, but my understanding is that we're talking about past travel records, travel that's already been accomplished.

- That's exactly right.

And the these do not apply to future travel records.

You know, when we were requesting these records before the ban on making these, or before they were made secret, you know, we wouldn't get these records, you know, for months and months after the fact.

So there was really no chance we were finding out whether or not, you know, where he was going in the future.

The excuse that was of course given was that, oh, well this could jeopardize, you know, if you know what airport he's going to, maybe this could jeopardize his future travel.

That was always kind of a flimsy excuse.

Nobody really had good justification for it or any specific examples to cite here.

And in fact, in this case, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's chief of staff also said that this was not a legitimate excuse, for this safety reason.

Of course, FDLE is responsible for the governor's safety, and the chief of staff is the second highest ranking person in FDLE.

And he thought that this is not a threat and in fact, this is something that taxpayers should know about.

- So several state employees have paid a price for standing up to the governor's staff.

The state employees say these records should be made public.

The governor's staff says no.

What price have the state employees paid?

- Yeah, that's exactly right.

The chief of staff told the Washington Post, "We're gonna release these records."

The governor's office said, "No, you won't."

And basically he was let go.

He was basically forced to resign.

Another person who was a lawyer in the office who was advocating for releasing these records was denied a promotion.

And another person who signed off on that promotion was denied or basically was fired after the fact.

She was placed on leave and then later fired, she says.

- We just have a minute left, but where does this stand now?

Is it in the courts and how far along is it to get these records public?

- Yes, this case is in the courts.

It's in Leon County local court here, and we don't know what the status is.

The judge just recused herself from the case this week.

And so presumably it will be reassigned and potentially, you know, drag out for quite a bit longer.

- Well, it's certainly a fascinating story, Lawrence Mower, thanks a lot for coming on "Florida This Week."

- Happy to be here.

(soft music) - Joining us now on our panel this week, Howard Simon is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

Kimberly Leonard is the politics reporter and author of the "Florida Playbook" for Politico.

And April Schiff is a Republican consultant with Strategic Solutions of Florida and the Hillsborough County Republican State Committeewoman.

Nice to see all of you.

Thank you for doing the program.

Well, a Florida member of Congress is calling on the state's top health officer to step down.

- [Announcer] Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of South Florida is calling for the state Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo to resign from office.

In a letter this month, Ladapo gave some controversial advice to parents after a measles outbreak in a Broward County School.

He said parents have a choice whether they send their unvaccinated children to school amidst the outbreak, but that is counter to federal recommendations.

The CDC advises that unvaccinated students should stay home from school for three weeks if they've been exposed.

Wasserman Schultz called the state health official's recommendation irresponsible.

- Surgeon General Ladapo is a misinformation super spreader.

So I'm calling for his immediate termination.

Measles is a public health threat to Florida and so is Joe Ladapo.

He repeatedly endangers lives, contradicts public health expertise for political points.

- [Announcer] The Florida Department of Health issued a statement to Fox News saying in part for the Surgeon General's current guidance ensures that parents or guardians are able to make the best decisions for their families regarding school attendance.

More than 20 years ago, health officials declared victory in the battle to eradicate measles, a highly contagious disease, which can cause pneumonia and encephalitis.

But here in the US and around the world, measles is making a comeback.

The Centers for Disease Control says the US has already documented 35 cases in the first seven weeks of this year compared with 56 cases for all of last year.

Florida, with 10 cases has the most in the country.

- So April, we learned at the end of this week too that Orlando now has four measles cases.

So the outbreak continues.

So what do you make of Wasserman Schultz calling for Ladapo to resign?

- It's nothing new, it's not unusual.

The Democrats have called for Ladapo to resign since the day he was appointed.

They don't like the fact that he constantly defers to the parents to make better decisions for their children, whether they're enforcing regulations, but that's the way he operates, that's his belief that it should be a parental responsibility to do it.

It's unfortunate that we have a large group of people that are not vaccinating their children, but hopefully we don't see this continue to spread and get worse, because then of course somebody's gonna have to do something to stop it, because the measles are deadly or can be deadly to children.

- Howard, how do you see this?

I mean, parental rights, that's a freedom issue, but also the issue to be free from disease once you put your kids in school, that's a freedom issue too.

- Well, I'm glad to hear that.

It's unfortunate that some parents aren't getting their children vaccinated, but the very least that the Surgeon General could have done was to encourage parents to get their kids va- I mean, we do defer to the rights of parents, but he could have asked parents to do the right thing and get their kids vaccinated.

But to send kids to, to allow parents to send their kids to school is to spread disease.

And we have an increasing epidemic of measles in the country and in Florida.

And people, you know, first of all, I think I wanna say that the congresswoman's anger is misplaced.

It's not at the Surgeon General.

It should be at the governor.

The governor created the Surgeon General.

The governor hired him because he's a disinformation campaign for medical information.

The governor hired him and he is now, I have to say, endangering the lives of the children of the families of Florida.

- Let me go back to April on that question.

Do you think the governor, along with the Surgeon General are endangering the lives of kids here in Florida?

- Not intentionally, whatsoever, absolutely not.

I think that they believe that they're doing the right thing, which is why they're doing what they're doing.

And the governor has long supported Dr. Ladapo, so... - Yeah, Kimberly, lemme bring you in on this.

I mean, one of the hallmarks of the DeSantis administration is parental rights.

And I'm wondering, you know, at the same time, some parents are worried that kids who are unvaccinated may help spread the disease in their school.

How strong is that parental rights movement in Tallahassee where you are?

And, you know, this is really consistent though with the governor's stand on parental rights.

- Sure, but I will say, so first of all, parental rights here in Tallahassee is definitely like the third rail of Florida politics, you know?

And we're really seeing that even here with the social media bill, for example, and the backlash over that, questions over whether there was enough carve out given for parental rights.

But I think one of the things that's really interesting when it comes to the MMR vaccine, which, first of all, I've been covering healthcare policy prior to covering politics for 10 years.

And so it has always been this controversial thing, but usually among more left-leaning parents who improperly and falsely believed that it was connected to autism.

That seems to have sort of switched where we have a little more vaccine skepticism created on the right due to the COVID-19 vaccine skepticism that was created.

But it does, I wouldn't necessarily assume, first of all, that parents didn't vaccinate because they were skeptical.

You know, maybe they just got off schedule, maybe they just didn't have time.

There's a lot of reasons that people don't necessarily keep up with immunizations.

But the thing that I kept on thinking back to was when there was that round table in the Palm Beach area that the governor and a bunch of other health experts did about COVID-19 vaccine skepticism.

And one thing they said repeatedly throughout that round table was, "We're not recommending against other vaccines.

We only have an issue with the COVID-19 vaccine," but it seems like that message clearly got muddled.

- Okay.

Well, Tampa media consultant, Tim Burke, was charged and arrested last week with 14 federal crimes related to alleged computer hacks into Fox News internal videos.

- [Announcer] According to the Tampa Bay Times, the indictment charges Burke with one count of conspiracy, six counts of accessing a protected computer without authorization, and seven counts of intercepting or disclosing wire, oral or electronic communications.

Burke runs a media and political consulting company.

He produces video content for high profile clients like HBO and ESPN.

Previously, he worked for the online news sites, Deadspin and The Daily Beast.

A letter from a prosecutor obtained by the Times said the allegedly wrongfully obtained material related to footage of an antisemitic rant from Kanye West and behind the scenes footage of Tucker Carlson from his now canceled Fox Cable show.

Burke's lawyers argue that he did not violate any laws because finding and helping publish videos is digital journalism and protected by the US Constitution.

- And Howard, I think one of the big questions here is, did Tim Burke stumble upon this information legally, or did he obtain it illegally by breaking some law?

- Well, that's what trials are all about.

We'll have to find that out.

I think the prosecution is gonna have a big hill to climb in trying to nail him on this, because he claims, and it looks like there's no reason not to believe this, that he surfaced the web, surfaced the internet, and found passwords, found IDs, and used it to collect information.

If that's the case, then I'm not sure that accessing information in that way is a crime.

The prosecution is gonna have a very difficult time here.

And, I think, but this is a case that may define what journalism is like in the digital age.

- One of the concerns that reporters have is that the federal government seems to be saying that Tim Burke is not a reporter.

He's not an actual reporter.

He is a media consultant and that doesn't come under the protection of the First Amendment.

- Well, this is a case, as I say, is gonna define journalism in a digital age, define who is a journalist.

But, I think the prosecution is gonna have a very difficult time.

You know, the Pentagon Papers case was maybe the landmark case in which it was not a crime to publish information that was illegally obtained by Daniel Ellsberg, then given to the Washington Post and New York Times, and the First Amendment protected that.

I'm not even clear, it's not even clear now that he illegally obtained this information, but, you know, I don't...

If people incompetently encrypted their passwords and their ID and he got hold of that and then used that to access information, I'm not sure that that's gonna be found to be a crime.

Why should you be held criminally responsible because I incompetently put out my ID and my password on the internet.

You found it, you got it, you accessed it and you accessed my computer.

Did he steal a computer?

Did he hack into somebody's computer?

It doesn't look like he did that.

- Do you think this will be as big as the Pentagon Papers, in terms of the impact on journalists?

- Well, a few cases are as big as the Pentagon Papers, but this is a case that has the capacity to define who's a journalist in the digital age and what constitutes digital journalism.

- Yeah, April, there's another aspect of this.

Tim Burke is married to a Tampa City councilwoman, one of the most progressive members on Tampa City Council.

How do you think that impacts her?

How do you think this arrest impacts her?

- It's going to impact her, particularly if it's still ongoing when she gets into a campaign mode.

But I think that she's gonna face some questions from her constituents, and she's gonna have to answer to that, but at the end of the day, she didn't do it.

However, we know that in politics, that doesn't really matter, that people hold you responsible for things that your family has done and things that people close to you do.

So I think that she has some challenges ahead, and she needs to be prepared for that.

- Okay.

Well, Florida Senate President, Kathleen Passidomo is being attacked by far right members of her own political party.

According to Florida politics, the Lake County Republican Party has passed a resolution censuring the Senate president.

- [Announcer] The Lake County GOP chair, current congressional candidate, and former state representative Anthony Sabatini attacked Passidomo as a spineless rhino, and later the Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida inducted Passidomo into its oath breakers Hall of Shame.

Passidomo's crime, apparently not doing enough to pass the party's agenda.

Earlier this month, the Florida GOP issued a list of its top 10 priorities in the current legislative session.

After the list was made public, Passidomo told reporters that that list would not guide the legislative process.

And at this point, the top seven bills on the Republican list appear dead in the Senate, including bills imposing term limits for county commissioners, barring nonprofits from gender sensitivity training, banning pride flags on public property, protecting Confederate monuments, making gold and silver legal tender, reducing the buying age for all guns to 18, and prohibiting gender changes on driver's licenses.

- So Kimberly, you are the reporter here in Florida that broke this story initially in the middle of the month.

I'm wondering, Passidomo is a conservative, and she says, look, she supports speaker Renner, she supports the governor.

Why is she being attacked?

- Well, and it's very interesting because if you look at her records, she really has a conservative record, right?

I mean, they passed universal school vouchers.

They passed a six week abortion ban under her leadership.

And they've done a lot to really give to the conservative movement.

This time around, her priorities are really, you know, I think they feel like they got a lot of what they wanted.

Her priorities have really been on healthcare reform in the state.

And one of the things that she kept on pointing out, because she has been asked about the list repeatedly, is she's saying, "Look, we're in charge here.

We're the ones who pass the laws.

And it's fine if the Republican Party of Florida wants to put their agenda out there, but, you know, this is what we're doing."

I will say that if you look at some of the bills being passed in the house, there are more in line with what the Republican Party of Florida put out.

Some of them are going through the legislature today, Friday.

And, but the tension that has existed there, she's kind of blowing it off and she's saying, "You know, I'm the boss.

This is what we're doing."

And some of the bills that were listed actually have not even been introduced in the Senate.

So she kind of has that way to say, "Well, there's no process to even take the bill up, so there's no reason to do it."

- April, would you agree that a lot of the issues, and you were there when this list was compiled, but a lot of these are cultural issues, or so-called culture war issues, and you know, insurance is not on there, or housing affordability or transportation, none of that stuff is on.

So, is Passidomo kind of a block for the party from going too far to the right?

- No, I don't think so.

I think that what has happened here is that, historically we've always seen that the Senate body itself acts a little bit more moderately than the house, and that's just reality, that's what's happened.

But this came out of the RPOF after the annual meeting.

It had come through the legislative committee and was presented at the annual meeting on the eighth.

It was adopted.

A lot of the topics and the bills that were listed on that legislative agenda that we adopted were already progressing or not progressing through the house.

So some of that is just a matter of timing and consequences.

I think that it's unfortunate that these, and we're seeing a whole lot of it in the Republican party is the county executive committees adopting these resolutions, making demands and criticizing elected officials for things that they've done or not done.

And it's just proliferating at, they don't accomplish a lot.

And this Sabatini is one of the leaders in that process of the resolution process.

And I mean, you know, he's a former state rep.

He's running the second time for Congress.

And so, part of it is he's getting his name out there and doing this, but he is been a leader in this trend for more and more resolutions to either reprimand or call on our elected officials to do more and more things.

But the name calling, you know, name calling is the lowest form of debate.

So that is totally unnecessary and it's unfortunate that it's happening in the Republican party.

- Howard, a lot of these issues I think are culture issues.

What do you make of Passidomo standing in the way of them being passed?

- Well, I'm here on behalf of the non-partisan ACLU.

We're a non-partisan Bill of Rights defense organization.

This is a family scramble within the Republican party.

They gotta decide whether or not they're a Sabatini party and they're all in on culture war, or they're a Passidomo party that is trying to come up with, I think, on her, I mean, she's a conservative, I disagree with her on many things, but at least she has put forth Republican efforts to solve issues of healthcare crisis that we have in the state over development, housing crisis.

There are Republican solutions to serious problems that we have in the state of Florida.

But the Sabatini agenda, which I guess now is the state Republican party agenda of things like protecting confederate monuments, banning pride flags, creating a new crime of driving while transgender, I mean, that this is...

If that's what the Republican Party wants to go towards, it'll probably never win a popular vote in this country.

- April, in 10 seconds, I want to ask you, is there a Passidomo wing?

Is it on the rise?

Is there a Sabatini wing and is it on the rise?

- I would say no.

- No to both?

- Right.

- Okay, thank you.

Thanks for wrapping it up so quickly.

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

And Howard, let's start with you.

The other big story of the week.

- You mean of the week coming up?

- Yeah, or the last week.

- Or the weeks coming up?

No, this is coming up.

I think the most significant story in Florida next week or the week after coming up is the Florida Supreme Court decision on whether they are going to allow the people of Florida to vote on amending their own constitution to protect abortion rights.

There was an important hearing in the Supreme Court a few weeks ago.

Many of the judges who may personally oppose abortion recognize that this is not what the case is about.

It's about whether or not the people have a right to vote on amending their own constitution.

This is gonna be an issue of judicial integrity, not on the merits of the issue.

That's for the voters to decide about abortion, but about whether the people will be allowed to vote on their own constitution.

- Kimberly, your other big story of the week.

- Yeah, I've really, now that I'm no longer really covering the presidential race as much, I am focused a lot on the congressional races and the US Senate race here in Florida.

And so I think it's worth tuning in, seeing what the different issues are that are emerging.

In the US Senate race, I'm really seeing, you know, a lot more discussion, obviously about abortion rights, but also IVF based on, you know, what happened in Alabama and what's being argued out on Capitol Hill.

So that's really where a lot of my attention is, is gonna be in the months ahead.

- Alright, April, your other big story.

- Big news, McConnell stepping down as the GOP leader in the Senate and look forward to Rick Scott moving forward to take that position and... - He's got a chance, you think?

- Absolutely.

- Will trump back him?

- Can't answer that question.

You gotta ask Trump.

(April laughing) - Hey, thank you all.

Howard Simon, Kimberly Leonard, and April Schiff, thank you all for being here, and thank you for watching.

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

(inspiring music)