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

- Coming up right now on WEDU, a debate over freedom in Florida.

This week, governor Ron DeSantis released a new book called The Courage to Be Free.

In it, he touts the ways he believes he's expanded freedom in Florida.

But how free are we as a state and is the governor's definition of freedom One that most Floridians would agree with?

A debate over freedom in the Sunshine State next on Florida This Week.

(dramatic music) Welcome back this week.

Our panel members are Eric Deggans, is an author and the television critic for National Public Radio.

Adam Goodman is the Edward R Murrow Senior Fellow for Tufts University, a political consultant and a republican.

Darryl Paulson is a professor emeritus of government and politics at USF St. Petersburg.

And Ryan Wiggins is the chief of staff for the Lincoln Project, and it's great to see you all.

Thank you for doing the program.

Well, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has just come out with a political memoir called The Courage to Be Free, Florida's Blueprint for Survival.

It's widely believed that the book and his book tour will be another step in garnering national publicity for a run for the 2024 Republican nomination for President.

Courage to be Free covers his landslide win in last November's election in which he did better than most pollsters have predicted.

It also calls on Republicans to get deeply involved in every level of government to ensure that government policies conform to conservative ideology.

DeSantis makes clear he has nothing but contempt for what he calls the woke legacy media socialists, Democrats, technology companies, and efforts by corporations to diversify or adopt EIG, environmental, social, and governance standards.

- You do have to fight the woke in the halls of government and in legislative chambers, and we have super majorities as Republicans of Florida, so we will win all those fights.

But you also have to be willing to defend your folks against this agenda being shoved down their throat from all these other institutions where these people aren't necessarily coming up for elections.

So you talk about things with like the young kids and, and with Disney, and I see that not just through the eyes of a governor, but also through the eyes of a dad.

You know, we have a six, a four and a two year old at home, and we just believe as parents, we should be able to send our kids to school, have 'em watch cartoons without having somebody's sexual agenda shove down their throats.

- Right?

This is really a call.

His book is really a call for more activist government.

It used to be that Republicans wanted smaller government less intrusion.

Ronald Reagan said, "man is not free unless government is limited.

As government expands liberty contracts."

Is Ron DeSantis veering away from that Reagan philosophy?

- Oh, I think absolutely he is.

I mean, I think his book would've been better titled Courage to Be a Fascist.

You know, you see fascism on the march with a lot of his, the things that he's prioritizing this year, especially the threats to the First Amendment.

So, I mean, you see him wanting to end the Democratic Party.

That legislation was filed this week.

You have seen him wanting to register anyone who reports on him that is not a member of the standard press, a blogger or anyone else.

He is trying to block their rights to freedom of speech.

He has filed.

There's another bill that was filed this week where you cannot accuse people of being racist or homophobic or anything, even if their own tweets claimed that they are without a minimum of a $35,000 lawsuit.

So, I mean, there's a lot going on in Florida right now, but none of it has anything to do with freedom.

- Hmm, Adam, the governor is using the power of government to go after his perceived political enemies.

You know, it, you know, Brian just mentioned this, this bill to outlaw the Democratic party blazing Golia has put it up there there's another bill that would require bloggers who write about the governor to register with the state.

If they failed to register, they have to pay a $25 fine.

And there's all these, what do you think's going on?

I mean, is the governor really fighting for freedom or is he expanding government to go after his enemies?

- He is trying to engage everyone in a new conversation about freedom.

I wish everyone could see the rest of that interview.

I think it was about 13 minutes long with Mark Levin.

It's fascinating, which, and I think the way he not only expressed his points of view, the way he holds himself, it wasn't a feeling of over aggressiveness, belligerence, hatred.

It was a sense of we have to engage and let's talk about freedom for a second.

I mean, that's the topic, right?

Americans want freedom.

They want freedom from want, you know, we had two outta three Americans, paycheck to paycheck.

They want freedom from fear.

The rising crime rates, and a lot of Americans', major cities, is led to the Chicago election we saw, and they threw out the mayor after one term.

It never happened in 40 years.

They also want freedom to be able to express themselves.

I think there's such intolerance in today's world.

What the governor's trying to do is engage everybody in that conversation, but not with rhetoric and hyperbole.

Let's talk about it.

But just bringing it up gets everyone's, not everyone's, but a lot of people's hair on fire that somehow it is anti-free.

Now, the governor of California is rooting for this.

He ran ads against that, the governor and Florida saying, if you want freedom, come to California.

But I'll take the Florida story every day of the week over California - You're quoting FDR too, when you're talking about freedoms there.

But Eric, I wanna ask you, the governor's taking the stand though.

Adam talks about engaging the governor's taking a stand.

He's gonna appear on places like Fox News with Mark Levin, but he's not gonna talk to the New York Times.

He's not gonna talk to the legacy media.

The traditional media, is this the start of an important conversation?

Is the governor doing it right?

- No, it's not.

Ron DeSantis says he is doing one thing, and he actually does other things.

He says he's about freedom, but he's extending the authoritarian rule of Tallahassee and the governor's office.

He says he wants a conversation, but he bullies and silences anyone who disagrees with him.

He says he wants to create more freedom, but he installs people who support him in schools.

He takes away the power of local school boards.

He takes away the power of local college boards and forces them to follow directives that come from his office that are part of his agenda.

He doesn't want a conversation.

And it's obvious he's never really talked to people in an open setting who disagree with him.

So this is not about freedom.

And, you know, what he's doing is he's harnessing the frustration and the fear and the anger that people have about crime, about how the schools handled and the state handled, and the nation handled the covid epidemic and, and some of the lockdowns that were required because of that and some of the pain that people went through.

He's channeling that to serve his own political interests.

These initiatives that he's doing aren't improving life for anybody, and they're addressing, they're addressing problems that don't exist.

I would love to see somebody do something about affordable housing in the state.

I would love to see somebody do something about making sure we can still have insurance in our homes because of everything we've gone through with hurricanes.

I would love to see somebody do something about making sure that people can earn a living wage.

I don't understand why he is usurping the power of locally elected school boards to determine what kids should learn and replacing it with stuff that comes from Tallahassee.

- All right.

let's talk a little bit specifically about what the governor's doing.

The laws that he has assigned have already led to book banning in some school districts, last year, the state banned the purchase of some math textbooks because they allegedly were trying to indoctrinate Florida students because they supposedly included critical race theory and other outlawed topics.

The governor also signed the parental rights and education law, which prohibits classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through grade three, or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

Opponents call that, the don't say gay bill and the Governor's Department of Education recently rejected the college board's Advanced Placement African-American studies classes that drew a major protest last week in Tallahassee.

Finally, there's a new bill being considered in the state capitol that would block public colleges and universities from offering major or minor degrees in gender studies, intersectionality or critical race theory.

And Daryl, as we know, the governor has appointed a new conservative majority at New College.

But this is what Christopher Rufa, one of the national conservative activists who was appointed to take over New College said, he said, "this is going to be a place where equality, merit and colorblindness are the law of the land".

So that sounds like a good goal that the governor and his allies are aiming for.

- Yeah.

And so the first thing you do is fire the president and put in the close ally of the governor at twice the salary of the former president, even though they haven't pointed out why they needed to remove that president.

I mean, what she had literally done wrong.

So, once again, I think this is a case as, as long as they do what I want to do, I'm happy with it.

If they do anything different, I'm not happy with it.

And so many of his policies, as we talked about, traditionally conservatives and Republicans have, have wanted limited government.

DeSantis is just the other way around.

He wants an expansive government, but he wants to be in control of everything.

And if he's not in control, he doesn't like it.

I mean, he has to appoint the boards of all of these colleges and universities.

He has to fire the Reedy Creek District and for, for Disney and create a new district and put in, once again, his own people to control that.

So as long as he's in complete control, he's happy.

If he's not in complete control, it's a disaster.

- Darrell you taught for many years at USF St. Pete.

- Yeah.

- Is is it a place where people are being indoctrinated and conservatives are afraid to speak out and there's only one kind of ideology taught at the university?

- Well, you know, I've written, in fact for the St. Pete Times, I did a piece about discrimination against conservatives in universities.

And I do think it's not a myth.

I think it's a reality in many cases.

I've been, certainly got my own examples that I could point to and did point to in this article.

So I do think there's substance there, but I, I don't think it's every person at the university is, is a staunch liberal, so to speak.

Well.

- Marxist or socialist, - I think you need that diversity.

I mean, everyone wants that diversity, but how you get it is another question.

You don't want it imposed.

He keeps talking about the liberal elites, and he talks about his education at Harvard and Yale as the Scarlet Letters, his political Scarlet Letters.

That's how he refers to it in his new book out.

And yet he was the one that applied to go to those universities.

You know, people might ask him why, you know, if you thought this was the case, why did you apply to Harvard and Yale universities?

And he probably thought, - I think a lot of actual leftists would be really surprised to hear that Harvard and Yale are some sort of bastion of radical thought.

And the idea is, if you're concerned about conservatives not being able to express themselves in certain spaces, then why are you creating spaces where liberals can't express themselves?

Why are you creating spaces where the, the accuracy of history is being denied?

Why are you using an insulting term like woke to refer to people who are just interested in equality?

Why are people being painted with this brush, this broad, insulting brush when they don't agree with you?

That doesn't cause a dialogue, that causes a fight.

- Let's look at the case of a person who suffered because of a video that they took in Jacksonville.

Brian Covey, a full-time substitute math teacher, was fired after posting a video of empty bookshelves.

- I walked in and saw shelves that were empty.

That's exactly what people were saying weren't happening.

So I just wanted to share into the abyss of social media what was the reality that I could see with my own two eyes.

They told me that my services were no longer required in Duval County or period.

And it was because I violated their social media and cell phone policy.

They had received multiple complaints.

This is the first time I'd heard about it.

I had no communication from them or anybody in the school board.

- Governor DeSantis called Covey's Video, misinformation.

Yet, according to a new state law signed by the governor, millions of books on school shelves must all be reviewed by a librarian or a media specialist to determine whether they contain pornography or other prohibited topics before they can again be made available to students.

Ryan, other people in Florida have lost their jobs because they disagree with the direction that the governor's taking the state.

Covey's just one example.

What do you think of that?

- I think this is another example of him suppressing people's First Amendment rights.

I mean, it's misinformation.

When it makes Ron DeSantis look bad, anything that makes him look bad is misinformation in Pensacola, Florida, which is probably outside of Jacksonville, his strongest hold in the state.

This past week, a teacher had Curious George removed from the classroom.

And I mean, I think it, I wanna go back to something you were talking about a minute ago when you were talking about, you know, the woke being in indoctrination, being shoved down people's throats.

I have elementary school kids, it's not happening.

And you know, when they're talking about, you know, sexualizing little kids, what they're doing is talking about what a family dynamic is.

So my child has a mommy and a daddy and a little and an older brother.

You know, other parents, other kids have two mommies or have two daddies.

So you're trying to just teach family dynamics.

And I mean, I think this was all blown out of proportion.

I think it's been blown out of proportion to stoke fear in the base because that's what the base feeds on, and there's no easier way to control a bunch of people than having them scared to death.

- Hmm.

- And that is what he's trying to do with all of this woke stuff.

I wish he'd focus on the things that really do scare Floridians to death, like their property insurance.

- But Right.

And the governor would say, look, I just don't want this, this kind of family dynamic to be taught in school through third grade, and we just don't discuss it.

- This is life.

This is what people, these kids, some of these kids, this is their life.

This is what they live every day.

They go home to two mommies or they go home to two daddies, you know, and so they don't have a place in school?

I mean, you know, what happens when, you know, both dads or both moms wanna volunteer to help in the classroom.

I know that teachers are constantly looking for help.

So by banishing talking about any of this and other, and other family dynamics and what a nuclear family looks like, right now, you're excluding a bunch of kids in the classroom and being able to participate in a conversation that teaches them about basic things you learn in early elementary school.

What does a family look like?

What is a family?

Who is your family?

- Yeah, Adam, one group that's very close to the governor, Moms for Liberty, has lobbied for more than 150 books to be removed from Florida school libraries, including The Color Purple and Handmaid's Tale.

There's also an activist in Florida who's with a group called No Left Turn, and he wants to ban 3,600 books.

We saw this guy who took video of the books that were removed from shelves for review.

They weren't banned, but they were removed for review.

What do you think, I mean, is this freedom.

- Okay, you used the word ban, right?

Book ban.

I already, I jumped to the words, you know, burning books, you know, and we've seen what happens when, you know, in history, when that happens, when you destroy intellectual education for everybody.

That's not what's happening.

But the shorthand on this is he's banning books.

What he's really saying is, we should take a look at what especially young kids are being exposed to.

I disagree with Ryan on, on the point of if you are, you have a, a child in kindergarten and having sex ed as a part of the curriculum, and that makes you feel uneasy.

You have a right to say something about that as opposed to we're just gonna be silenced.

And let me go back, if I can, the two comments, one from Eric, use the word bully.

It's very interesting.

I have a good friend who's the head of public opinion strategies.

'Cause this came out of the field and one of the findings he found nationally is that the majority of Democrats, like 73% feel Republicans are bullies.

74% of Republicans feel Democrats are bullies.

Everyone feels they're being bullied.

That's not a place for tolerance, that's not a place for open discussion.

That's not a place for feeling good, much less for, you know, for 30 years.

I think we've been in the wrong direction on the right, wrong direction question.

We even have 43% in that same poll saying they believe this country's headed to a civil war in the next 10 years.

Civil war in 10 years.

Now, to address something that Darrell talked about in the article, I'm sorry I didn't read.

I will read Darrell, I think conservatives are, are definitely being dismissed and being suppressed on college campuses around the country.

I get this from a lot of professors.

I have a good friend teaches at UVA's Darden School Business School.

She's a moderate Republican, a pro-choice, moderate Republican.

She feels nervous about what to say or not to say in her class of graduate students looking to get into the world of business because of this.

Everyone is looking for something to pick on.

I disagree with one other thing that's been contended here.

This is not a personal agenda, the governor, this is an agenda that America, I think should fully and openly discuss.

If we're gonna get out from under what is leading us down the path of, we might be ahead to civil war or maybe the state.

If you're in a blue state, we should succeed from the union.

53% of Democrats, if you're in a red state, we should succeed from the union.

70% of Republican.

Something is terribly wrong.

And I think having a discussion about this is not wrong.

It is right.

I ask only it be open and not judgemental.

- Yeah, my concern is, - I have to interject here.

I have to, there are just a couple go things that Adam just said that absolutely have to be addressed.

One, sex education is not being taught in elementary schools anywhere in Florida was not being taught in elementary schools before this bill passed.

That is completely wrong.

It is not happening.

It was a fear tactic by the Republicans.

Second of all, the reason that the Civil War conversation is even happening right now is because Marjorie Taylor Green and Don Jr. And a lot of the others, Matt Gates are all pushing for this.

They are Republicans, not Democrats.

So that could not go without me correcting your record on this.

- Hey, Ryan.

Ryan, over 25% of Democrats said they think the country's headed to a civil war.

This isn't a partisan issue.

- They probably do believe that.

It's all over the news where Marjorie Taylor Green is talking about this and has been pushing it and so has Fox News for the past week.

- One of my bottom lines here though, is if we were having a discussion, that would be great.

We're not having a discussion.

People are getting fired.

Legislation is being passed, books are being pulled off of the shelves, and academics across the state are feeling intimidated.

They feel like they're gonna lose their jobs.

If they say anything that the governor disagrees with, he could diffuse that with a single speech.

And he hasn't, because that's what he wants.

He wants people intimidated.

- I think what people are concerned with is the process.

And the process.

I don't like, I mean, I think it's, it's fed by fear because people see what's happening in Florida already.

If people do certain things, they're fined or potentially fined.

If a book is objectionable to a parent, then it's removed.

Who's gonna decide what's the standard?

I mean, if one parent object, is that gonna be taken out of the library?

Do you need 10 parents?

Who's the committee gonna be?

Is the governor, once again, like he's done in all the other cases, gonna appoint five members who are his supporters to review this and decide, okay, this book is gonna be pitched.

We're gonna end up with no books in the library or very few books.

When you start with zero, you have to go back and say, "look at every single book in a library and determine whether or not it should be allowed in the library".

I think that's the wrong standard.

You ought to start any other way wrong.

- That's assuming that they haven't been vetted already.

They have been, yeah.

- Right.

Let me ask you about another area of freedom that the governor boasts about, and that is medical freedom.

The governor is a proponent of medical freedom.

He launched a prescribed freedom campaign in January.

The proposes permanently limited covid 19 vaccination and mask requirements and giving cover to physicians whose medical views depart from scientific consensus.

He also plans to set up a panel to review recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and called for a state grand jury to investigate crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the Covid vaccine.

The governor says, look, you guys were wrong about the Covid vaccine and the covid crisis.

What do you say?

- I think that's insanity.

There are a million Americans who are not here with us anymore because of covid.

How can you claim that this was not a major issue?

We are still dealing with all sorts of repercussions from Covid, you know, and to, again, to permanently limit access to covid vaccinations.

How is that protecting my freedom and the freedom of my children and my husband and other people who would want those things?

I mean, listen, I have never been a mandatory vaccination person.

I believe very strongly in my body my choice, and that is across the board.

But I do believe that when your decisions are impacting other people, that that's where your rights stop and theirs start.

And I think that, you know, with the mask wearing, with all of the things that we were doing to try to prevent this crisis and to keep it from dragging out as long as it dragged out and having the impact to our economy and our supply chains and everything else that it had, how, why in the world would you limit that going forward?

I mean, no one saw Covid coming.

No one did.

You know, it came out of nowhere.

Who's to say that the next one won't too, and it won't take more people.

Like, it's just incredibly shortsighted.

And again, it's giving into culture wars, and it is feeding the, the crazies that are conspiracy theorists and are worried that, you know, there are some sort of magnetic implant that they're putting into the vaccines.

You don't want credibility to that.

- Adam, what, what about the governor's stance on what he calls medical freedom?

- I wish Ryan had stopped about a minute earlier.

I was with her when she said, my body by choice, right?

And then she got into crazies and the conspiracy theories, whatever else.

We didn't know what to do when this, when the pandemic hit, we had a weak infrastructure.

The CDC proved frankly, to be inadequate.

I actually am a fan of Dr. Fauci.

I think he did his best, given what he was confronted with, but he had all sorts of shoals he had to get through.

I think we had to figure out how best to handle it moving forward.

And I think hopefully that's what the governor's getting to.

Just like we, we have learned through tough experience how to handle hurricanes.

What do you do in a hurricane?

What do you do before a hurricane?

How do you minimize damage?

How do you take care of people after a hurricane?

I think this is something that, again, should be openly discussed about and using Covid as an example.

'Cause you know, God forbid we go that way again, but there's a good chance we will.

- Eric, there's been a lot of talk here about open discussion, but where does that discussion take place?

Because the networks are entrenched.

You know, if you've got liberal networks, you've got conservative networks.

Where does that discussion across the board take place where people who disagree on these issues and wanna have an open conversation, where do you do it?

- Well, it could take place in universities if people were allowed to express dissenting views.

That's typically where they happen.

I teach at Duke University.

We're always trying to have constructive discussions about these kinds of issues.

But it's hard to do that if you have the sense that if you express an opinion that the governor doesn't like, he will find a way to get you removed from your job, removed from your position, or demonized as a member of the woke left.

This is not a governor who is starting discussions.

This is a governor who is implementing policies and strategies and trying to position himself so that he can run for president.

And it doesn't matter.

It doesn't seem to matter that a lot of these issues are not the most pressing issues that Floridians are facing.

We're forced to have these debates.

We already have a system where you can, as a parent, go to a school board meeting and talk to your elected local representatives about what is happening in your schools.

That already exists.

We already have experts at schools, local schools that review every book that's put in a library.

Why do we need people from Tallahassee doing this?

- All right, - We don't.

- Thank you all for a great discussion.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at ftwedu.org.

We give you this and past shows online at wedu.org or on the PBS app and Florida This Week is now available as a podcast.

And from all of us here at WEDU.

Have a great weekend.

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