How an overtly 'authoritarian' Florida GOP bill is designed to silence anti-DeSantis bloggers: journalist

03 March 2023

MAGA Republicans suffered one disappointment after another in the 2022 midterms, which found Democrats slightly increasing their majority in the U.S. Senate while winning gubernatorial races in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. Republicans regained the U.S. House of Representatives, but only with a narrow single-digit majority. The massive red wave that far-right pundits at Fox News and Fox Business spent months predicting was a fantasy — except in Florida.

In the Sunshine State, the 2022 midterms were terrible news for Democrats in multiple ways. Gov. Ron DeSantis ran as a far-right culture warrior and was reelected by 19 percent, and Florida Republicans also enjoyed double-digit victories in both U.S. House and U.S. Senate races and Florida State Legislature races. Florida, post-midterms, is a GOP stronghold, and many of the Sunshine State Republicans of 2023 are not old-school conservatives like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — they are hyper-MAGA culture warriors with, critics say, a troubling authoritarian bent.

According to MAGA critics, authoritarianism in the Florida State Legislature is making its presence felt with two GOP-sponsored bills: Florida Senate Bill 1316 and the more trollish Ultimate Cancel Act.

Journalist Kartik Krishniaye, who publishes the liberal/progressive-leaning website The Florida Squeeze, takes aim at Florida SB 1316 in an op-ed published by the Daily Beast on March 2. Sponsored by pro-DeSantis Florida State Sen. Jason Brodeur, 1316 would, according to Krishniaye, "effectively force any blogger that writes about" Ron DeSantis or "any member of" the Florida State Legislature to "file registration paperwork with the state — or face fines."

"This would effectively force independent journalists to go through a similar process as paid lobbyists — who are retained by corporations and other entities with the specific purpose of influencing lawmaking," Krishniaye warns. "The legislation, Senate Bill 1316, is the latest apparent effort by DeSantis and his allies to stifle any sort of opposition within the state. Florida's GOP, which has grown accustomed to unchecked one-party rule, has long-sought to create a culture of conformity laced with fear around the state government."

Florida, Krishniaye notes, is also where State Rep. Alex Andrade, a MAGA Republican and DeSantis ally, has proposed a bill that would make it easier for politicians to sue journalists for defamation.

Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan, defamation is incredibly hard to prove. The plaintiff must show "actual malice," which is what Dominion Voting Systems has to prove in its $1.6 billion dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Ironically, attorneys for the very pro-DeSantis Fox News are using Sullivan as a defense at the same time Andrade — a Sullivan critic — is hoping to weaken its protections. Andrade is obviously hoping that the Roberts Court of 2023, which is way to the right of the Warren Court that unanimously handed down the Sullivan ruling 59 years ago, will reconsider Sullivan.

In his blistering op-ed, Krishniaye argues that DeSantis' "recent behavior looks more Stalinist than anything else" but also compares him to "authoritarian" Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

"It has been increasingly clear for a year or more that DeSantis looks abroad to the likes of Hungary's Viktor Orbán for inspiration," Krishniaye writes. "In Orbán, we observe a right-wing figure who mixes ethnocentric and religious hues with strict authoritarianism and a crackdown on a free press."

Another GOP-sponsored Florida bill that Krishniaye slams is the Ultimate Cancel Act, sponsored by State Sen. Blaise Ingolia and described by Krishniaye as designed to "effectively eliminate the Florida Democratic Party."

Ingolia's bill is the focus of an article published by Mother Jones on March 1. Mother Jones reporter Arianna Coghill notes that Ingolia's Ultimate Cancel Act of 2023 "doesn't mention the Democrats by name but would require the (Florida) Division of Elections to 'immediately cancel' the filings and official status of any political party whose platform had 'previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.'"

Before the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s, many members of the Democratic Party — especially southern Democrats — were unapologetic defenders of slavery. And after slavery was abolished, those southern Democrats defended segregationist Jim Crow laws (which were the U.S. equivalent of South Africa's apartheid laws).

The Republican Party was founded as an abolitionist party, and the United States' first GOP president, Abraham Lincoln, was inaugurated in March 1861. In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, many African-Americans living in northern cities like Philadelphia, Boston and New York were staunch Republicans. But the Black vote in general started to become Democratic in the 1930s during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency.

Political parties, however, evolve. And the Republican and Democratic Parties of 2023 are radically different from what they were 130 or 140 years ago — or even 60 or 70 years ago.

By the far-right MAGA standards of 2023, many Republicans who were considered arch-conservative during the 1960s and 1970s — Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, President Richard Nixon, President Gerald R. Ford — would be considered RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). Nonetheless, Ingolia is trollishly arguing, in effect, that 2023's Democrats need to be held accountable by the actions of pre-Civil War antebellum Democrats.

Coghill reports, "Under this bill, Democratic voters would be automatically reregistered as having 'no party affiliation.' The party itself would have to reregister under a 'substantially' different name. In a statement, Florida's Democrats called the bill a 'publicity stunt' and warned that it could disenfranchise nearly 5 million voters, many of them Black. State Sen. Linda Stewart said that in her five years in office, she's never seen a bill like this before and predicts that it won’t survive upcoming the legislative session."

Stewart, a Democrat, told Mother Jones, "First, I don't think it’s legal. But the other thing is that it just goes too far. I do not think that it’s going to go anywhere in the (Florida State) Senate. I know it’ll get assigned committees. If it gets heard by one committee, I’d be surprised if it goes anywhere else, because I can't imagine anybody thinking that this is a fair treatment of political parties…. We would no longer be a democracy if we do away with one (of) the major parties."

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