May 12 | 2023

(fanfare) - [Voiceover] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- [Rob] Right now in WEDU, abortion right supporters launch a statewide petition campaign.

The state rejects dozens of textbooks because of content that violates new state standards.

Florida plans to expand its out-of-state migrant relocation program.

And Disney suggests it might not go ahead with new investments at the Central Florida theme Park.

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

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) Welcome back, joining us on the panel this week, Rosemary Goudreau O'Hara is the former editorial page editor for the South Florida "Sun Sentinel."

Travis Horn is the president and CEO of Bullhorn Communications and a Republican.

Sean Shaw is an attorney, a former state legislator, and a Democrat.

And Steve Busque is the opinion editor for the South Florida "Sun Sentinel."

Nice to have all of you here.

- [Rosemary] Nice to be here.

- Well, this week a coalition of women's rights and Civil Liberties groups announced a new drive to put an amendment on the ballot next year asking voters to preserve access to abortion.

It comes after the legislature and governor approved a near-total abortion ban earlier this year.

The proposed ballot language states, "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."

Viability historically has been interpreted as the ability of a fetus to survive outside the uterus.

That's usually after 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The effort will not be easy, in recent years, it's become harder to pass citizens' initiatives in Florida.

Supporters will have to get nearly 900,000 signatures of voters by February 1st.

The language must also be cleared by the Republican-controlled state Supreme Court, and it must get 60% of the vote in the November, 2024 election.

- The legislature continues to pass bans on abortion in Florida that are restricting our ability to have our own freedom of decision making, with regard to the most personal, medical decisions of our lives.

- Rosemary, this is really gonna be an uphill battle for these abortion rights activists.

It's harder to amend the Florida Constitution than it's ever been.

- Yeah, very much so.

You know, this is really, if you support a woman's right to choose in Florida, this is really your only and your best option to make it happen.

Because Florida's legislature is gonna be run by Republicans for a long, long time.

But as you said, it's gonna be tough, because Florida lawmakers have erected so many barriers to passing constitutional amendments.

As you said it, they've narrowed the window for getting close to 1 million verified signatures.

They've limited who can gather those signatures.

You've gotta go before the DeSantis's appointees on the Florida Supreme Court to get the ballot language approved.

And you've gotta get 60% now, of voters, to approve it.

In other states with similar measures, nobody has reached 60%.

In Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, it's been between 50% and 59%.

Before the midterm, USF polls said that 57% of Floridians disagreed with the US Supreme Court's ruling in the overturning Roe v. Wade.

But also what happened to Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Charlie Crist, he got blown out of the water by Governor DeSantis.

And he ran on the issue of abortion.

But in March, the University of North Florida published a poll that said 75% of Floridians disagree with this six-week ban that DeSantis went on to sign late at night and doesn't talk about now.

If this does get on the ballot it's gonna fire people up, especially Democrats.

We saw that happen in Kansas and in Ohio and in Wisconsin.

I don't think though that the boost will be enough to help Biden win Florida, but I do think it could impact legislative races.

- Travis, I think that's the key.

I think Democrats hope that this will draw out voters who are more liberal, more progressive, and help them in the down ballot races.

- Which is it, is it too hard to pass an amendment, or is it gonna fire people up?

Didn't weed pass with more than 60%?

I mean, haven't we enshrined pigs in our state constitution?

Unfortunately, here in the state of Florida?

- [Rob] That was before the 60% rule.

- I mean, so see, I mean, we use that same metric in the legislature when it comes to passage of certain legislations.

So if, you know, Florida being a red state, I do believe that if it gets on the ballot, it could potentially impact turnout, and in favor of Democrats possibly.

I have heard people talk about the differentiation between the 6 weeks versus 24 weeks, or as they call it, viability.

But it'll be interesting to watch.

- And I think groups that are anti-abortion also want to try to get a similar anti-abortion amendment on the Florida ballot.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I wouldn't be surprised if you could actually come up with...

I don't think that the parameters at the window of time, between now, and here in May and February, is...

I mean, if we could do it for weed, or if we could do it for pigs, we could probably do it for an issue that is as hot-button as this one.

- Sean, even if they get the 900,000 verified signatures they still gotta pass it through the Florida Supreme Court.

And that's not an easy lift either.

- Well, you gotta pass it through the Supreme Court and the way, you know, Travis is right.

The rules are such now that you have to raise the money prior to knowing if the court approves the amendment.

So good luck.

I mean, I want it to be there, but to go to a donor and to say, "I need you to give us $20 million, and I can't guarantee you that the language we're asking you to donate to now, will pass Supreme Court muster."

That's a heck of a thing to ask donors to do.

But that is kind of the procedure that the legislature has set up now to make it harder to do these.

But if you're a Democrat, you can think, some of the only statewide wins we have are these.

It's minimum wage, it's Amendment 4, the restoration of rights.

The people have shown a willingness to pass some of these progressive things, but the rules have gotten harder and harder and harder since we've passed those.

So it's gonna be tough, but I think it'll be great for turnout.

I was at a, you know, we had a Democratic party rally here in Tampa this weekend, and this was the thing that everyone was excited about.

- Steve, do you think donors are gonna pony up that $20 million, or I've heard even $30 million, it's gonna cost the to get the signatures collected by February 1st?

- Yes, I think they can find some people willing to do that.

This issue is that important to some people.

Two quick points, number one, there's a legislative session between now and the 2024 election.

And it would not surprise me to see the Republicans in Tallahassee put on a more conservative, but a basically a counter-bailing, a competing ballot proposal, which of course, would confuse voters, which is just the point.

I also think this, if this thing gets on the ballot in a high turnout presidential election, it is more likely to pass than fail.

For that reason, you're gonna see an unprecedented political and legal effort, as Sean Shaw has just said, to keep this thing off the ballot.

The battle here is not at the ballot box.

The first big battle is before the Supreme Court.

- Okay, well, the Florida Department of Education has rejected nearly 35% of social studies textbooks submitted by school book publishers.

Including those that reference social justice and other information that was not aligned with Florida law.

The move comes as Republicans in Tallahassee, including Governor Ron DeSantis, have restricted how racism and history are taught in schools.

Among the examples of content of which the state disapproves, a paragraph that references how parents should talk with their children about the national anthem.

And explaining "taking a knee" to protest police brutality for grades K through 5.

Also taken out, a section discussing the social justice and Black Lives Matter movement for grades 6 through 8.

And one asking that the phrase "social justice issues" be changed to the term "key principles" when discussing what is in the Hebrew Bible for grades 6 through 8.

Sean this is a continuation of what's been going on in Florida for the last year or so.

Books are being banned at the local level, and now we've got textbooks being banned by state screeners.

- You know, this is not the Florida I grew up in.

I can disagree with Republicans on tax issues, environmental issues, and all this, but this is very insidious.

We are not gonna ignore our way to racial harmony, right?

The way that you heal the wound that is racism in this country is you talk about it.

And you talk about it at that age.

I was thinking about this when I was driving up here today.

First time I got called the N-word was in fourth grade.

It was on a bus in Tallahassee in North Florida.

And I went home and I asked my dad what that word meant.

Fourth grade.

If you think kids are only talking about "SpongeBob," and unicorns in K through 5, you're woefully ignorant.

They're talking about these things.

All of, you know, their friends are of different races, they want to know what's going on.

And to try to ignore what this country's history is does a disservice to where we are.

And I think that that, what we've overcome to get where we are, I think is what is the greatest thing about this country.

And you're taking away a huge part of our greatness and what we've achieved, if you just ignore the racial strife that existed in this country for a long time.

And that's what I think is the most troublesome.

- Travis?

- I don't think anyone's trying to tell anyone to ignore the racial strife.

I think it's clear, the history is clear.

I, you know, this has two sides, there's two sides to this coin on the woke battle, right?

So there's semantics, and you know, I'll tell you when I was pedaling my bicycle around the University of Florida to get journal articles for law professors who were writing about this thing called CRT.

I kept seeing this thing called CRT, it kept coming up.

And essentially it boiled down to the very antithesis of what we were supposed to be learning there at the law school, which was the respect for the rule of law and using the legislative process to achieve your means.

And it's a battle that's going continue.

It's not one that's going to go away.

I certainly don't think that we're not going to talk about the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, or things like that in school.

I mean, information with these things is more prolific than ever before.

The one thing I wanna learn is how to limit my child's access to information on these devices.

But I think, you know, we can agree on, and I see Sean nod his head on that.

So there are things we can agree on.

And this is gonna be a continued semantic battle, though, with some of these things.

Especially out of the the strife we saw with the Black Lives Matter movement, as it were.

- Steve, I'm wonder, Florida is such a big buyer of textbooks, and we're the third largest state, this is having an impact on other states too, when Florida rejects certain content in certain textbooks.

- Yes, it is.

And insidious is the right word that Sean used.

And this has the potential to get a lot worse.

We've seen these episodic situations pop up in different parts of the state.

You know, this began, you may remember, when the Department of Education instructed media specialists and school librarians to quote, "Err on the side of caution."

That is open season to tear books off the shelves and away from kids.

And so that's how this thing becomes so pernicious, as it works its way through 67 different school districts.

- Rosemary, you know, the question is, are we limiting the teaching of things like Black history, or are we giving kids just the facts and refraining from any sort of spin?

I mean, what's your take on this?

- I think that there have been excesses, especially on college campuses.

But to me, what this reminds me of, is that famous Winston Churchill quote, which is, "History is written by the victors."

And in this case, history should be written by historians, not by a government editor who's uncomfortable with uncomfortable truths.

And so I can't answer the question, will Florida allow students to learn that our constitution once classified Blacks as three-fourths of a person?

- An important question.

Alright, well, governor DeSantis is set to resume a state program to transport migrants from the Texas border to Democratic-run cities.

It's a continuation of a program from last year, in which the governor spent more than $1 million tax dollars to fly 50, mostly Venezuelan migrants, from Texas to Martha's Vineyard.

Their local residents helped the newcomers and criticized the politicians who sent them.

- And they're willing to use humans, children, women, families, as political pawns for their own game.

It is depraved, it is evil, it is wrong.

But what makes America great is what we see here today, which is an island community, and the state in Massachusetts is coming together to support the people here.

- [Rob] Governor DeSantis also signed into law a bill this week that has $12 million to continue the migrant relocation program.

As well as a series of additional measures that aim to crack down on illegal immigration and large companies that hire illegal immigrants.

Steve, we do see people massing at the Southern border of the Texas border.

So will what the governor in Tallahassee, and the legislature have done, will do anything to solve that problem of people coming here?

- No, not really.

And I think this is the issue that, I have to say, I think Republicans have the potential for the greatest political advantage.

A lot of Americans are alarmed by what they're seeing in Brownsville, Texas, and on the border; it hasn't been managed well.

Congress has failed miserably to come up with a meaningful, long-term, bipartisan solution to immigration, everybody knows that.

But it should not, and we know this too, this should not be handled on a state-by-state basis.

People should never forget that Florida is filled with immigrants and immigrant labor, and immigrants who work very hard to support their families.

And without immigrant labor, two pillars of the state's economy would fall to pieces overnight.

And that's agriculture and tourism.

- So Rosemary, I've been looking at reports from Central Florida, there's a lot of building projects in Central Florida.

Contractors in Central Florida say that many employees have not showed up to work because they fear deportation.

And also Central Florida Builders Group says that they can't find enough construction workers to do the jobs.

- You know, that's the irony, is that industry is facing labor shortages, and we need workers.

I mean, heck, even Mar-a-Lago is hiring waitresses from Eastern Europe, because supposedly there are no waitresses in West Palm Beach, if you believe that.

Immigration is a tough challenge, as Steve said, that Congress refuses to tackle, including when DeSantis was in Congress.

And we saw what happened when former Senator, Mel Martinez, tried to tackle this issue.

He got squeezed out of the Senate.

But leadership isn't on the national level.

It's not about sending a plane to take people from Texas to Maine.

It's about standing up and saying, "We gotta do something here.

And here's how I see the path forward."

And after two decades of failure to do it, you know, let us see some leadership, Mr.

Governor.

- Travis, go ahead.

- You know, look, immigrants have built this nation from our inception until modern day.

We've got great people here making an impact for our country.

And I think this this Florida program, obviously, is just a drop in the bucket.

I mean, I could probably throw a rock outside of your studio and accidentally hit a illegal.

You know, there are people here illegally, you know?

Steve was right, to a degree, that, you know, obviously Congress has not yet found a middle ground.

But right now the Biden administration is failing America.

There is a full-blown crisis at the Southern border, and it's not being addressed.

And I think that is what is pushing others to want to, for lack of a better way to say it, get in on it.

The optics of it are really bad for them, worse than shipping a plain load of folks to Martha's Vineyard.

- So Sean, that is a, I mean, the visuals of the Southern border are pretty tough on President Biden.

Let me just say too- - I've never been to the Florida-Texas border, but maybe y'all have.

(everyone laughs) - Well, one other thing is that the largest group of immigrants over the past year at the border has been Mexican immigrants.

Second and third-largest, or fourth and fifth, really close to the top, Cubans and Venezuelans.

These folks populate most of South Florida.

I mean, a huge number of Cubans and Venezuelan immigrants live there.

Suddenly there's this national outcry against immigration including Cubans and Venezuelans.

- Right, but that's not what this was about.

This was Venezuelan immigrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, that has nothing to do with Florida.

He then got $12 million in the budget for this program.

I've been in the legislature, you know how hard it is to get $12 million to do something for your district?

That's five or six Girls & Boys Clubs.

That is a ton of cops.

That's more teachers in some... That is a school being built.

Instead, that's $12 million for performance art.

That's what I think is so frustrating to people.

This is so performative.

And it's so gross and callous, because of, when you see the people that get to Martha's Vineyard, that are starving, that are thirsty, it's kids.

It's just, you don't do that.

Like if you have a problem with how Congress is handling immigration, I don't disagree with any of that.

They're handling it awful, Democrats and Republicans.

This is a really callous way to try to deal with it, if you're the governor of Florida, and not the governor of Texas, not the governor of Massachusetts, and not in Congress.

- Okay, well, the CEO of the Walt Disney Company aimed some harsh words at the governor of this week.

Disney CEO, Bob Iger, said Florida Governor DeSantis's attacks on the company threatened its plans for $17 billion of new investment, and 13,000 new jobs at Disney World over the next 10 years.

In comments made during a call with investors this week, Iger defended the Disney company, as Florida continues to try to take away control of the special taxing district overseeing Disney World's property.

The issue started when Disney spoke out against Florida's parental rights, or "Don't Say Gay" law.

Iger said Florida is acting unfairly to the company, and asked, "Does the state want us to invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes or not?"

And Travis, let me put this up on the screen.

The Governor's war on woke is not as popular nationally as he's pushing this idea.

But this is what a Yahoo News poll out this week shows, that most Americans care far less about the so-called war on woke than Governor DeSantis.

The survey of almost 1,600 people is conducted from May 5th to 8th.

It finds that fewer consider wokeness a big problem in America today than any other option provided, including inflation, breaching the debt ceiling, border security.

Racism also ranks wokeness, as do new abortion restrictions and book-banning in schools.

So the governor has carried this to the point where he and Disney are on the front pages of newspapers across the country.

- Yeah, I mean he has, but you know, there's more to this.

I think, you know, I grew up, I jokingly say "I'm from Disney," you know, when people ask me.

I always wondered how'd they get this sweetheart deal?

You know, what happened to the classic liberals in the Democrat party who are against crony capitalism?

Now again, this evolved out of a speech issue, right?

And so the corporations have to know, if you speak, the people can speak, the government officials can speak.

And Governor DeSantis has spoken on this and pretty forcefully.

I haven't heard a lot of folks in Central Florida who are very sympathetic to Disney's plight, despite what Iger is saying to his shareholders.

Now, they're probably concerned, and they should be.

If it, you know, impacts their bottom line, with respect to the Reedy Creek district, and them having to pay a lot more in taxes.

I don't think that the citizens locally are gonna get hosed, like has been continually, you know, talked about.

I don't think that's going to be an end result.

- Rosemary, is this retaliation against Disney for free-speech rights, or is this simply tit-for-tat?

The governor, I mean, Disney spoke, and now the government spoke.

- Yeah, no, unquestionably it's retaliation.

And they've been singled out, and let it be a lesson, not only to big business, but to average Jane and Joe.

You know, government has unlimited resources to go after you if you disagree with their opinion, you know, in what is supposedly a free state.

This is a free speech issue, and we're supposedly a free state of Florida.

And yet for speaking their mind on a political issue they have been singled out.

- Okay, well, before we go, what other news story should we be paying attention to?

Rosemary, let's start with you, we go right back to you.

- Okay, well it's not a big news story, but it's big news in my life.

Next week I'm going to be celebrating my 50th high school reunion in Tampa.

And I attended Leto High School, in what was then the booming northwest suburb of town and country.

It was the same year that Hillsborough Schools closed Middleton High School.

And bused their student population, largely Black student population, across the city.

So my junior year we had more than 1,100 kids in my high school class.

So they split our class in two, into double sessions, and called the afternoon class the new Jefferson High School.

So next week, the class of '73 of Leto and Jefferson High Schools will be having, what we believe, is the first time that two high schools have held a joint reunion.

And we'll get a tour of Jefferson, where a lot of my classmates graduated, but never got to set foot.

- Wow, congratulations to you.

- Thank you.

- Travis, your other big big story?

- The big story is, you've seen the CNN Town Hall with Trump, and as many Americans did.

Look for whether or not Governor DeSantis will wade into that arena and follow suit,.

Whether there will be a Governor Ron DeSantis Town Hall on CNN.

- [Rob] Do you think he should do it on CNN?

- I absolutely think he should speak to that audience.

I think he should.

- Sean, your other big story.

- Yeah, I mean, I saw a poll, it was one poll, but it had Trump beating DeSantis 59 to 31 in Florida.

That's the big deal.

- And Steve, your other big story.

- Yeah, you know who else is on the ballot next year in Florida besides the presidential race?

It's Senator Rick Scott, who has said many times, he would only run for two terms, this is term two.

Democrats have started to talk increasingly about trying to find a outside-the-box moonshot-type candidate.

And they're talking about Grant Hill, who was a former star basketball player for the Orlando Magic, went to Duke, lives in Orlando.

Well-known to anybody in Florida, I think.

And can probably write a check from his personal funds that would compete with whatever Rick Scott has.

So it's an intriguing idea, he's got no political background but Democrats showed by this that they're starting to think a little bit more imaginatively, you know?

And maybe for once Rick Scott is gonna get an opponent that he can't overwhelm with money.

- All right, and I gotta ask Sean and Rosemary, do you have thoughts about Grant Hill?

- No, I'd love it, I just have gotten indications that he's leaning, "No," but that is exactly, I think as Steve says, the kind of candidate that we would need.

The Rock, or Dwayne Wade, or Grant Hill, or somebody like that.

- The big name.

- Yeah.

- All right, well, thank you all for a great show.

It's so great to see you all.

And thank you for joining us, send us your comments at ftwwedu.org.

Please like us on Facebook, you can do this and past shows online, at wedu.org or on the PBS app.

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

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

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

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