>>This week on NewsNight, a move to reshape the board of a Florida liberal arts college signals a renewed effort by the DeSantis administration to transform the state's higher education institutions.

Plus, two members of Florida's delegation are appointed to lead a congressional panel on gun violence as legislators in Tallahassee mull a potential loosening of the state's firearms laws.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort and welcome to NewsNight, where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in central Florida and how they affect all of us.

We want to start tonight with education.

The president of the Florida college system released a statement at this week's Board of Education meeting, throwing their support behind Governor DeSantis's plans for a higher ed system, “free from indoctrination, ” promising to remove all woke positions and ideologies by February 1st, FCS colleges include the College of Central Florida, Daytona State, Eastern Florida, Lake Sumter, Seminole State, Valencia and Polk State Colleges.

It comes amid fresh moves by Governor DeSantis to tackle what he calls woke or trendy ideology in public colleges and universities in Florida.

>>We must ensure school systems are responsive to parents and to students, not partisan interest groups.

And we must ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideologies.

>>Well the governor recently took a number of steps on higher education, including the appointment of six new conservative members of the Board of Trustees at a liberal arts college in Sarasota.

The reshaping of the New College of Florida, which says it, “values equity and is actively working toward eliminating outcome disparities for underrepresented and underserved groups, ” indicates a willingness by the DeSantis administration to take on colleges it views as too woke.

It's reported the governor wants to model the school on conservative liberal arts colleges, including Hillsdale, a private Christian college in Michigan.

Appointments to the board include Christopher Rufo, a leading opponent of critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute.

Well, we asked a professor of gender studies at New College all about it.

>>I hope that the new board members are going to be interested in coming to New College to finding out about our academic program.

What we offer to Florida students in terms of options for public education in the state of Florida.

I hope that the new board will do its job, which means helping us to do better.

What we already do quite well, which is offer talented and independent thinking students the opportunity to pursue the topics of interest to them.

We offer a rigorous liberal arts curriculum that is in line with the academic curriculum at the best colleges and universities across the country.

>>All right.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining us in the studio this week, Joe Mario Pedersen from 90.7.

WMFE News, thank you so much for coming in, Joe.

Really appreciate it returning to the program, and Kirstin Delgado from WFTV, Channel 9, you're the morning anchor at WFTV.

I appreciate you coming in and spending a part of your morning with us.

Joe Mario, let me start with you on this one.

How unusual is it for six new board members to get appointed essentially at the same time and all of them conservatives?

>>Right.

Right.

So unusual?

Definitely.

Surprising?

Probably not.

The governor has voiced very vocally his opposition to universities.

Seeing them as liberal breeding grounds is how he's described them.

And many have seen the governor's actions henceforth since those words as going to war with universities.

To put it nicely, he's interested in dismantling these breeding grounds, so to speak, right?

Now, there are there are those who see this as rather disturbing, this appointment of of six different people onto the board.

Right.

There is the United Faculty of Florida Union, the president of which described that as disturbing, that all six of these people very much appear to have a politically motivated ideology.

Right.

However, not everybody is on that same ship.

The president of the New College of Florida very much welcomes this change.

They're saying that this is very much in the virtue of the school and embracing challenging ideas, and they're looking forward to seeing where that could possibly go.

>>Kirstin and I mean, this is a quite a small school, right?

I think only about about 700 students or thereabouts.

But does this sort of draw a line in the sand, broadly speaking, for the higher education community in Florida?

Because this could eventually, if you extrapolate it forward, affect a lot of larger schools.

>>Right.

So specifically, we're talking about New College of Florida.

That's in Sarasota.

And as you mentioned, it does have a very small population, student bodys under 700 students.

Right.

So to say small was an understatement.

Right.

As far as colleges go.

It is a liberal arts college.

The student body there does lean left.

There's a lot of LGBTQ resources on campuses.

Right.

So when you have characters like Christopher Rufo, he's a conservative activist, he's been put appointed, right.

One of the six.

And so I'm going to read off here what he says on his website.

It says, I'm a writer, filmmaker and activist, challenging critical race theory and gender identity in America's institutions.

Right?

So when you have.

>>Pretty clear where he stands.

>>Correct, so when you have a student body that leans left and is more liberal, right, and has LGBTQ resources on campus, for those students who take advantage of those resources, it would be for them that his presence on the College Board of Trustees would be a natural opposition to their rights as gay citizens on campus, right?

I mean, also he has a relationship with Hillsdale College that is a Christian liberal arts school up in Michigan, also very small, about 1600 students there.

But his relationship with that school is that he writes for the school's Free Speech Digest.

It's called Endprimis.

Im sorry, Imprimis is what it's called.

And so he'll write all these issues, write on, issues regarding critical race theory and gender identity in America.

And so when you have those conservative viewpoints, it seems that a more liberal student body would be naturally averse to that type of person being in control of what happens on their campus.

Right.

>>So and there has been some reporting, of course, that Hillsdale might be a model for the governor as to something he'd like to achieve in Florida.

I mean, Joe Mario, I mean, the governor's budget office required all state universities right to detail their spending on on DEI programs, also on critical race theory.

That was last Friday.

I mean, is this the governor's way, do we think, of still being able to pursue this like war on woke, given that a federal judge, in fact, blocked the stop woke law implementation on campuses?

>>Yeah, it would very much say that that is the case.

You know, he's as we said before, he's been very vocal about this is something that he wants his base to know that he's actively pursuing.

And this is as he's painted it, the enemy.

So he very much wants to have that strong front and keep on pursuing that enemy for that strong base.

Right?

>>Yeah.

Is there any idea of what the consequences might be for these higher education institutions should the state look sort of look askance at their DEI programs?

>>Well, so.

Specifically, I can't say for sure, but we can look to other states and get an idea of what he could do.

Right.

So looking at other states, he could very much draft a bill that would defund any diversity office that was receiving public funding for violating anything that his administration might see as too liberal leaning or anything that they don't exactly agree with.

Something else that they could do is take a play out of Texas playbook and give individuals who don't necessarily attend the university the power to sue the university if there is a potential violation.

>>Interesting.

Kirstin I mean, last year, the state sort of moved on this issue of tenure as well.

And this has been very controversial amongst all of tenured faculty.

They have to appear before sort of a politically appointed board of trustees, a university every five years.

Now, unions have basically raised this as sort of a First Amendment issue.

But in terms of the way the state works, there's very little to stop the state weighing in on the hiring process of faculty.

Right?

>>In this case, that would be the situation.

But the reality is that I think a lot of people rely on the First Amendment right to say it allows me and it guarantees me to say what it is that I need to say.

But the First Amendment applies, well its implication the way it's written, is to the press and to the people to protest their redress of grievances.

And it says in the First Amendment.

And so while the process itself is kind of written in a specific way, that doesn't mean that individuals can't voice their concerns in a way that they feel represents them, right?

In this case, it's is this fair?

Am I being punished for my viewpoints as a professor on X campus?

>>Yeah, it's a very interesting topic, I'm sure, one that will be addressing a lot more down the road.

A reminder you can find much more content on our website, including past episodes of the program and full length interviews.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight.

Well, as we've discussed before on the program, the governor's focus on woke ideology extends beyond the classroom and into the economy.

This week, he announced the state would act to make sure its investment decisions do not take into consideration environmental, social and corporate governance known as ESG.

Socially responsible investing has been a growing trend on Wall Street, but has been the target of some GOP controlled states.

And of course, the other big corporate foe of the governor is Disney.

For its opposition to what opponent's call Florida's Don't Say Gay Law.

Last week, we told you about plans for a state takeover of Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District.

Governor DeSantis reiterating that goal at an event last week in the Villages.

>>It's going to be a state control board.

There is absolutely there's absolutely going to be accountability.

The corporate kingdom has come to an end, and that will be the case when this is enacted.

The DeSantis administration had bristled at reports it might do a U-turn on last year's decision by the legislature to abolish Reedy Creek.

But despite the uncertainty over control of the special taxing district and whether its debt would be assumed by local taxpayers, the Orlando Sentinel reports the current Reedy Creek board is laying the groundwork for a potential new Disney park by 2032 on some 850 acres of available space.

Kirstin let me come to you with it first on this.

What did you make of that proposal for the state to take control of Reedy Creek?

>>Okay.

So the issue here in terms of legality it comes down to trying to figure out if the state needs Disney's permission to actually appoint these people to the board.

Right.

That's where it becomes a legal challenge.

And the reality is that's just unknown at this time.

And the other factor, this is avoiding the debt to Osceola and Orange County taxpayers.

Right.

There's an enormous debt here.

And that wasn't something it seems, that the administration was taking into account when they made this proposal to get rid of Creek and then they reversed that.

And they're keeping it in.

They're trying to change it up now.

So now a court would have to decide whether it is that permission from Disney is actually going to be needed to make those changes on the board.

Now, we had WFTV went to a legal analyst who specializes in local government.

And what we were told about this issue is that there's a couple of options here at Disney could decide to actually sue the state, at which point they would be arguing their First Amendment right to do and say what they wish.

Right.

Or they can take other options.

They could just back off immediately and say, okay, yes, you can make those changes to the board for a couple of reasons.

One, they don't want to be involved in this political discussion anymore.

Such a large platform.

And two, there could be a compromise in which the state and the DeSantis administration does decide who's on the board, but that Disney still has control of those board members.

And so it kind of keeps everyone happy.

And there's a kind of a happy medium there.

So there are options here, but it's just a big gray area right now still.

>>Yeah, a lot of unknown questions, Joe Mario, I mean that the Reedy Creek issue is sort of part of the governor's focus right on sort of woke ideology at Disney and other corporations.

This week it took another step to try to take on those woke corporations.

Tell us about that.

>>Yeah, that's true.

So recently, he's taken steps to codify language that would ban ESG, which you mentioned earlier, meaning environment, social and corporate governance.

Right.

So really what that means is what he's trying to do is prevent companies from using public funding and investing in individuals or in companies and taking certain considerations.

Those ESG is in making those decisions and who they would invest in.

So those ESG is those considerations, meaning something like taking a look at climate change goals or certain social goals.

You know, do are they keeping track of carbon emissions?

Are they keeping track of where products are coming from?

Is illegal child labor being used?

Right.

So that's sort of what ESG has kind of keep track of.

Right.

And these companies have been using that to make make their decisions.

So what he's done is he's banned that kind of consideration into these companies or into individuals using public funding.

Right.

So he's he's interested in making sure that these companies focus on what decisions will maximize profit rather than these ESGs as he's described them.

>>I mean, this is a trend on Wall Street, so-called woke investments, as some conservatives call them.

I mean, given that states like Florida and Texas are making a point here, is that likely to sort of change the course of the ship on Wall Street?

>>At the end of the day?

No, I think Wall Street, like anything else, is driven by where the money goes.

You know, who can make the most profit.

It's we obviously live in a capitalistic system.

And so at the end of the day, I think it's going to the money.

You have to follow the money and the decisions are going to be made by where the money is coming from and how it can be obtained.

And if this is going to get in the way of that.

And I don't think it is, it's just not going to make a difference at the end of the day.

>>Could some of this be more of the governor's sort of attempt to appeal to maybe his base, given that it's widely reported that he's considering running for president?

>>I think that's a large part of it.

You know, I think he wants to make sure that he speaks to a specific set of people who believe in a specific thing, who that he speaks against the popular majority, if you will.

And and he wants to speak to those communities and say, I'm with you.

I hear you.

Here's where you stand.

Here's where I stand.

And once he makes himself known that way out of Florida on a national platform, it's going to make it so much easier for him to say, this is who I am and how I represent you in America.

All the flyover states that people say don't matter and that are forgotten and that sort of thing.

So I think that it's very much a play at his presidential aspirations.

>>Certainly his name recognition does seem to be growing across the country for sure.

Well, be sure to join this conversation on social media.

We are at WUCFTV, on Facebook, Twitter, and also on Instagram.

All right.

Next tonight, a potential loosening in Florida's gun laws.

Leading lawmakers in Tallahassee are calling for passage of a bill to allow Floridians to carry a firearm without a permit, so-called constitutional carry.

There are moves afoot to prevent businesses from tracking firearm and ammo purchases in Florida.

Well recently, Orlando Congressman and former March for our Lives organizer Maxwell Frost was named to a congressional taskforce on gun violence, and I spoke to him about it this week.

>>God forbid if you have a child and God forbid that they pass away early in this country, the most likely reason that a child would die in this country is by being shot.

The leading cause of death for children in the United States of America is gun violence.

And so it's important that we keep that in mind as we get into this issue.

There's a lot that needs to be done.

Number one, in terms of gun regulation, we got to make sure that guns don't fall in the wrong hands and that we do everything we can to be proactive about solving the solution.

But the next thing that's not talked about a lot is we have to deal with the root causes of gun violence.

And what statistics show us is that most crimes are crimes of condition when it comes to guns, people using a weapon to either get ahead or feed their family or etc..

So when we pass things like ensuring everybody has health care, people have a dignified, thriveable wage, people have the resources they need.

So we're not in a scarcity mindset.

Less people will feel the need to use a gun to solve their problems.

>>But legislators in Florida seem to be moving in the opposite direction, don't they, Congressman?

With an eye to loosening some of the laws in place here.

Arent the Democrats losing that battle?

>>When we look at polls and we talk to Floridians, we're not losing this battle.

Right?

The majority of people in this state are for common sense, gun reform.

They don't want things like a permit-less carry in this state.

But when it does come down to what's being passed in the state, we are not winning.

Yeah, we are losing that battle right now.

A lot of that has to do with a lot of the institutional barriers that are keeping our people from being able to have their voices being heard vis a vis gerrymandering.

Unfair representation in the state legislature.

And so there's just there's a lot of work that needs to be done in the state, a lot of organizing that needs to be done.

I, for one, will be continue to be at the forefront of that.

And we have to pass laws at the federal level, too.

>>Is there really any way for you to work across the aisle to get any of your priorities moving, given the power of those on the right wing of the Republican Party in the House?

>>Democrats in our caucus, we are eager to work with Republicans to actually deliver for people.

If you look at the past two years, there's a lot of bold, transformational legislation that was passed.

Is that everything we need?

No.

Is it more than we've seen in a long time?

Yes.

And sometimes, you know, you can hold multiple truths.

And those are the ones we need to hold, whether it's the bipartisan gun safety package, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act that's going to bring, you know, jobs here to this country.

We've seen it all.

Last year, Congress and the president passed the most money in modern history that any country is dedicated to combating the climate crisis as an existential threat.

That's going to hurt Florida really, really the most and the forefront here.

And so we're wanting to continue that work for like for people, for our people at home.

But the fact of the matter is, what we saw from the speaker's vote is that Republicans in Congress don't have their thing.

They're not ready to govern.

You know, it seems like even their own agenda, they're going to have a hard time passing with a lot of the division that they have in their caucus.

So I'm not too optimistic about it, to be honest, and I'm honest about it with my people.

You know, a lot of these are big transformational bills we saw passed.

I don't think we're going to see that same type of legislation over the next two years.

And so what I'm going to focus on and where I think we can really have a change is in the district work that we do here through our constituent services, the way we interact with the community and build power.

And also we're all going to do good work in D.C. and bringing money back home and distributing it in an equitable way.

But we have to be honest about the landscape.

We can't we can't lie to our people about the current state of Congress, and it's not good.

>>Congressman Maxwell Frost, Kristin let me come to you on this one.

Let's start with this so-called constitutional carry.

What does that entail?

>>Okay.

So last year, this all came up when the governor announced that before he ends his term as governor, this is before the election and he was reelected, that he wants to put in place constitutional carry in Florida.

What does that mean?

That no permit would be required to have a walk around with a gun.

Right now in Florida, current law states a concealed permit license is required to carry around a gun with you.

Right.

And while for some people this might sound extreme, it's not exactly breaking news for the most of the country.

About half the states already have constitutional carry.

Our neighboring states, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama, already have it.

So it would mean that people can just walk around freely with a gun without a permit.

And it is going to take up in this legislative session in 2023 that starts March 7th.

So we're talking about five or six weeks before this is kind of taken, underway and discussed.

And the governor has made it clear that he expects it to pass in this legislative session.

>>I mean, Kirstin alluded to that.

Is it likely that it's going to pass in this session, Joe Mario?

>>Yes.

Next question.

Yeah, I do think it is.

It's extremely likely.

As Kirstin pointed out, you know, this has been something on the governor's plate that he's very strongly pushed.

This is a very important item for him.

And he's he's publicly stated more than once that this is something that he wants to see, get done before he leaves office.

And as we've been talking about, it seems to be the case that he will probably make a presidential run.

So he could be leaving office sooner rather than later.

Now, as to how that how he could push this forward.

Well, the Republicans have a supermajority in the legislature and the House speaker has already voiced his support for loosening gun laws.

Right.

So as far as when - as far as if it will happen, I think we know the answer to that.

It's more about when it will happen.

And some have even voiced that this could happen even before the next session begins, that a special session could even convene and we could see it happen earlier.

>>You kind of alluded to this a little bit.

I mean, is this quite common in other states?

>>For sure.

I mean, about half the country already has this in place.

Like I said earlier, our neighboring states, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, already have it in place.

It brings up a lot of issues for people, though, in terms of how do you figure out who is legally carrying.

Right.

Because there is a process in place for that, regardless of this particular permit.

But is it going to be easier for people to have illegal guns now and not be checked out for them?

Because we'll have this kind of open policy where it's not something that needs to be necessarily checked by police?

It there's a lot of argument saying that for law enforcement officers it's going to be more difficult for them to ascertain if someone has a gun legally or not.

>>Yeah.

What about the other development in the gun issue, the focus of the new agriculture commissioner, Wilson Simpson, one of his first legislative proposals, has been to try to prevent businesses from tracking firearm and ammo purchases in Florida.

What does he want the legislature to do?

>>Okay, so this is interesting.

So this would prohibit credit card companies from collecting data on ammunition, ammunition, ammunition sales, excuse me, and on gun sales.

This is actually in reaction to a new standard where it's an international standard as well, too, where it was required that the specific identification code be used in these types of sales for guns and for ammo.

Right.

And the argument coming from that viewpoint, the opposite viewpoint is this is actually leaving gun owners and purchasers of guns and animals more vulnerable to being tracked because you can easily track those purchases now with this special identification code.

So Commissioner Simpson is, according to him, is trying to protect Florida gun owners from being penalized for exercising a constitutional right.

So the concern here is stop trying to track people who buy guns and ammunition.

It's it's the same concept of people pushing against background checks.

Why?

I don't want to be in some state system or some federal system in which it's being tracked, what I purchase and why.

And so that is in the same vein, which the state is trying to accomplish here with this bill.

>>Yeah.

Joe Mario, I mean, where do law enforcement officials stand on these loosening of gun laws?

>>So that's that's a bit nuanced, right?

There's no real blanket statement for that here in the state.

I believe it was actually Broward County Sheriff Tony Gregory who stated that, you know, there is a philosophy in in South Florida that loosening gun laws is a bad idea.

But as soon as you move north of Orlando, that philosophy very much changes.

But the sheriff has been very active, very vocal in his opposition about loosening gun laws.

But, you know, as as he's alluded to, it's hard to imagine that most other sheriffs in the state feel the same.

Sheriff Wayne Ivey identifies here, identifies as a constitutional sheriff, and he's a very big proponent of the governor.

So it would be pretty easy to leap in logic to see if, you know, he would very much support that idea of open carry or loosening gun laws, at least.

>>And of course, Broward is where Parkland is.

So you might expect that from the sheriff's office there.

But it does speak, doesn't it, Kirstin to the sort of sea change in views here in Florida when it comes to whether we should be tightening or loosening gun laws, because the legislature, of course, acted after Parkland to implement restrictions.

>>They did.

And we've seen the result of those restrictions with red flag laws being in place.

You know, I went down to Parkland and I was there a day after everything happened.

And so I know that area is going to have a much different perspective on this matter because they saw such tragedy in their lives there.

You know, their lives are marked by what happened at in Parkland.

And so it's understandable that their perspective can be different.

But like you said, South Florida versus North Florida is very different.

And our own Brevard County sheriff, Wayne Ivey, has spoken to this end in saying, I do want this to be the case.

He's all for it.

And so I think when it comes to guns and the restrictions and the loosening of them in Florida, I think there's always a high likelihood.

>>And of course, the sheriffs, unlike police chiefs, are elected often.

So they also have to bear in mind the public opinion on these issues.

Be sure to check out my full interview with Congressman Frost on our website at wucf.org/NewsNight.

But that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Joe Mario Pedersan, 90.7 WMFE News.

Thanks for coming in.

And Kristin Delgado from WFTV, Channel 9, really appreciate your time.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

From all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.