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Sine die done: Here are the winners and losers of the 2024 Florida Legislative Session
Florida Today
March 8, 2024
What flourished and what flopped at the end of the Sunshine State's annual 60-day legislative get-together.
Every legislative session is different, but one thing was the same this year: When the governor’s not happy, nobody’s happy. And at the end of the day, the man in the mansion’s got to be a winner.
Ron DeSantis started the session as a presidential candidate, becoming an un-candidate just two weeks in. The speculation started: Would he exert as much control over the process as he had last session?
Well, sort of.
The closest Florida lawmakers got to a hullabaloo in 2024 was over the effort to keep kids under 16 off social media. They pushed the measure known as HB 1 to passage then found out DeSantis wasn’t kidding about how much the social media minor ban caught him crosswise because of parents’ rights and anonymous speech concerns.
So legislative leadership went bill rewriting, pulling a related measure (HB 3) out of the dustbin of session and tossing in “similar, slightly less sweeping restrictions,” as the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida reported, creating an exception for 14- and 15-year-olds who get a parent's or guardian’s permission.
Efforts to continue to remake the state into a conservative paradise were a bit of a mixed bag. Some bills, like the one to protect Confederate memorials, sputtered and fell into the black hole of dead legislative dreams. Others, ahem, streaked through: A bill to raise the minimum age to be a stripper in Florida to 21, up from 18.
The social media bill was House Speaker Paul Renner’s priority, and a wide-ranging health care plan to boost the number of health care providers sailed through, a legacy of Senate President Kathleen Passidomo.
Oh, but there were losers a-plenty. What follows is a ragtag list of winners and losers – Crimson Tides and Deacon Blues for Steely Dan fans – of the 2024 legislative session:
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During a Friday afternoon press conference, Renner said the bill was a "product of compromise" and "even better" than the vetoed one.
Florida Today
By Douglas Soule
March 1, 2024
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday vetoed legislation that would have banned social media for minors younger than 16 and required age verification to access pornographic websites.
But both he and lawmakers promised "a different, superior bill" that he would approve.
DeSantis said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that "protecting children from harms associated with social media is important, as is supporting parents’ rights and maintaining the ability of adults to engage in anonymous speech. I anticipate the new bill will recognize these priorities and will be signed into law soon."
The governor has been negotiating with House Speaker Paul Renner in recent days and lawmakers are already pushing forward another proposal with a big concession to DeSantis’ parental rights concerns.
During a Friday afternoon press conference, Renner said the bill was a "product of compromise" and "even better" than the vetoed one.
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Defamation reforms, alarming to news business, on verge of failure in FL Legislature
The Florida Pheonix
By Michael Moline
February 27, 2024
Sponsor: ‘There’s nothing to trade, nothing to negotiate on. President Passidomo is going to kill it.’
The House and Senate sponsors of legislation to tighten Florida’s defamation law against media organizations conceded Tuesday that the measure is falling short as the regular session winds to a close.
“Dead,” Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur said when asked about the bill’s prospects.
Brodeur, representing Seminole and part of Orange counties, added a caveat: “As far as I know. But that’s going to be up to the presiding officer” — meaning Senate President Kathleen Passidomo.
The House sponsor, Alex Andrade, a Republican whose district include parts of Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, also acknowledged the writing on the wall.
“President Passidomo doesn’t want to hear it. It depends on how much anybody else cares about it. Like, I don’t negotiate with President Passidomo,” Andrade told the Phoenix.
Additionally, “the speaker [of the House, Paul Renner] doesn’t want it. The governor doesn’t have the bandwidth to negotiate for it,” he added. “There’s nothing to trade, nothing to negotiate on. President Passidomo is going to kill it.”
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Separating Fact from Fiction on Florida’s Defamation Bills
The National Review
By Jim Schwartzel
February 27, 2024
Florida legislators have identified a real problem, but they are responding to it with bills that would harm free speech.
A pair of proposed laws in Florida would threaten free speech by opening up conservative media outlets to liability and a torrent of lawsuits. But the proposals come from an unlikely source: supposedly tort-reforming, small-government Republicans in the Florida legislature.
Ironically, the laws would threaten the very center-right outlets — including my family-owned radio station — these Republicans rely on to communicate their message and circumvent the chokehold that liberal media would otherwise have on the state. While the bills are intended to go after outlets such as the New York Times, conservative outlets would be hardest hit.
The sponsors of these bills, H.B. 757 and S.B. 1780, have downplayed their impact. But an examination of the legislators’ claims against the facts, and the text of the legislation, reveals a stark reality: These proposed laws, under the guise of fairness and accountability, threaten to erode fundamental conservative values and the very essence of free speech.
Here are some claims that state representative Alex Andrade and other supporters of the bills have made, followed by the facts.
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Indictment of journalist raises serious First Amendment concerns
Freedom of the Press Foundation
By the Freedom of the Press Foundation Staff
February 22, 2024
Federal prosecutors in Florida have obtained a disturbing indictment against well-known journalist Tim Burke. The indictment could have significant implications for press freedom, not only by putting digital journalists at risk of prosecution but by allowing the government to permanently seize a journalist’s computers.
While the indictment is short on facts, it reportedly arises, in part, from Burke’s dissemination of outtakes from a 2022 Tucker Carlson interview with Ye, formerly Kanye West, where Ye made antisemitic remarks that Fox News chose not to air. Ye’s antisemitism has been global news ever since. The indictment, which also alludes to sports-related content Burke allegedly intercepted, charges Burke with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and with intentionally disclosing illegally intercepted communications.
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