\n<\/p>\n
Ron DeSantis, Florida\u2019s Republican hard-right governor, will be termed out of office in barely 10 months\u2019 time. Civil rights groups watching a slew of new restrictive laws passing through the state\u2019s legislature say his bequest will be a \u201cpolice state\u201d, where government officials dictate what residents can do, say or believe.<\/p>\n
They point in particular to two House bills they say restrict free speech, and which have already found favor with Florida\u2019s veto-proof Republican majority:<\/p>\n
HB1471 would give a handful of state officials unprecedented power to designate as a \u201cterrorist group\u201d any organization whose aims and policies they do not like, including non-profits operating for religious, charitable and social justice purposes.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
HB945 creates a \u201ccounterintelligence and counterterrorism\u201d unit within the Florida department of law enforcement that critics say will be used to spy on groups or individuals whose \u201cactions, views, or opinions\u201d are deemed \u201ca threat or are inimical to the interests of this state\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But there are others: an education bill that blocks state funds from any campus where students \u201cadvocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism\u201d, such as the gun control walkouts that followed the 2018 mass shooting at Parkland\u2019s Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school.<\/p>\n
Another House bill that passed smoothly through committee scrutiny seeks to limit anonymous complaints against law enforcement, which will lead to \u201cfewer investigations and more coverups\u201d.<\/p>\n
And a \u201cforeign influence\u201d bill looks to outlaw certain groups that, among other criteria, are identified as engaging in \u201cpolitical activity\u201d in the state.<\/p>\n
Opponents see that proposal as an attempt to crystalize DeSantis\u2019s December executive order that designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a leading Muslim civil rights group in the US, as a \u201cforeign terrorist organization\u201d.<\/p>\n
In response, several of Florida\u2019s prominent civil rights and voter advocacy groups have aligned to challenge DeSantis\u2019s final-year agenda, and denounced the bills at a joint press conference this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is how a police state is built,\u201d said Amina Spahic, spokesperson for Florida For All.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegimes don\u2019t begin with mass execution. They begin by pressuring ordinary people into silence. We normalize surveillance, fear and punishment for dissent. Step by step, those in power have tested how far they can go.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been a long-time critic, and courtroom opponent, of many of DeSantis\u2019s extremist policies since he took office in January 2019, including repeated attacks on the transgender community, immigrants, voting rights and free speech.<\/p>\n
Its executive director, Bacardi Jackson, told the Guardian that she saw DeSantis attempting to round out his final term with a flurry of red-meat actions for the Republican base, perhaps intending to pursue another crack at the Republican presidential nomination after his 2024 flop.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis legacy overall, and certainly this legislative session, is a reflection of the climate he has built in this state and it\u2019s a climate of rolling back individual rights and freedoms, but also of concentrating power in the hands of a few in the state while also eviscerating local authority and rule,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bills that are here right now are deeply disturbing and concerning. Some of them feel a bit more dangerous, such as the domestic terrorist organization bill, which is taking us back to the Johns committee time in Florida, where we went on boogeyman hunts to basically go after people and organizations that the state didn\u2019t like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackson, and others, say it is no coincidence that Florida Republicans have developed an obsession with \u201cdomestic terrorism\u201d at the same time the Trump administration uses the phrase to smear opponents of its violent anti-immigration operations in Minnesota and elsewhere, including Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, two US citizen protestors shot and killed by federal agents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are still seeing that inclination rise again in Florida, and domestic terrorism is the one that really raised alarms for me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause once you can go after the infrastructure of people power, the organizations that help to organize and galvanize and support communities in their constitutional rights to assemble and to protest their government, then you\u2019re really moving into complete authoritarian control.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Equality Florida, the state\u2019s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, the terrorism bill is \u201cmanufactured crisis\u201d that distracts from last week\u2019s revelation that James Uthmeier, Florida\u2019s unelected attorney general and DeSantis\u2019s former chief of staff, was accepting $100,000 a year of public money for a two hour-a-week teaching role at the University of Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis political theater does real harm,\u201d said Jon Harris Maurer, the group\u2019s public policy director.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe legislation creates a dangerous new weapon that can be turned against any organization that falls out of favor with those in power, and once the governor and cabinet designate any organization a domestic terrorist organization the consequences, which include felony penalties, are swift and severe.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s the chilling part, there\u2019s no clear definition of what triggers that designation. Could it be a rally on the Capitol steps? An op-ed calling for someone\u2019s removal from office? Could it include something as simple as disagreeing with the surgeon general\u2019s views on abolishing vaccine policies in schools?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve already seen how this administration weaponizes power against dissent. Our attorney general has opened baseless investigations into anything from a wine bar operated by a political opponent to a statewide ballot initiative that he opposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeSantis\u2019s office did not respond to the Guardian\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n
Danny Alvarez, a state Republican congressman of Miami, who sponsored the surveillance bill creating the state\u2019s first counterterrorism unit, told the Florida Trident that he was \u201cvery, very aware\u201d of questions over first amendment protections, and was planning an amendment to address what the outlet said were \u201cdangers the bill posed to free speech and risks of political persecution\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut just understand, this is going after terrorists, nation state bad actors, not political speech,\u201d said Alvarez, who earlier this month demanded that a Florida high school principal who allowed students to join an immigration protest be stripped of her credentials.<\/p>\n
His assurance was rejected by Pamela Burch Fort, a representative of the Florida conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe totality of actions that we\u2019re seeing here today in Florida, the anti-protest bill passed a few years ago, the Halo Act, the counter-intelligence bill, and these domestic terrorism bills, harken back to the days of J Edgar Hoover and the Johns Commission,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt creates suspicion of legitimate activity and definitely imposes a chill and an air of intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ron DeSantis, Florida\u2019s Republican hard-right governor, will be termed out of office in barely 10 months\u2019 time. Civil rights groups watching a slew of new restrictive laws passing through the state\u2019s legislature say his bequest will be a \u201cpolice state\u201d, where government officials dictate what residents can do, say or believe. They point in particular<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3230,23483,10975,7055,5526,1551,10385,199,23482],"class_list":{"0":"post-45683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-creating","9":"tag-desantis","10":"tag-floridas","11":"tag-governor","12":"tag-legacy","13":"tag-police","14":"tag-ron","15":"tag-state","16":"tag-termlimited"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}