The Supreme Court of Florida appears ready to impose a fetal personhood law on the state – via a ruling that'd classify zygotes, embryos and fetuses as people under the state constitution.

I say that because 6 of the court’s 7 justices just signaled support for fetal rights...🧵 To explain: As anyone who follows Florida politics knows, the state Supreme Court issued two seismic rulings on abortion this week.

A bit of budget intrigue:

Florida lawmakers may be growing skeptical of Ron DeSantis' attempt to turn New College of Florida into an explicitly conservative institution (and an easy landing spot for DeSantis administration allies in need of high-paying jobs).... Yesterday evening, lawmakers negotiating a final state budget proposed giving an extra $382 million to fund operations at Florida's 12 public universities.

In a last-minute maneuver, the Florida Senate wants to stop cities and counties from imposing any kind of restrictions on gas-powered leaf blowers for at least the next year.

Senate budget negotiators just proposed adding the issue to a budget-related bill: The Senate also wants to add $100,000 to the budget to pay for a study comparing the life cycles of gas-powered leaf blowers vs. electric/battery-powered ones:

Ron DeSantis has come back to Florida...and state lawmakers are poised to give him essentially unlimited military power. The bill makes a bunch of changes around the "Florida State Guard," the governor-controlled militia that lawmakers resurrected in 2022 at DeSantis' request.

But it does two big things, in particular.

A Republican lawmaker in Florida wants to let kids drop out of school and start working full-time instead the moment they reach their 16th birthday.

The idea is tucked inside a proposed amendment to a controversial bill (HB 49) rolling back Florida's child-labor laws. Records show the original version of the bill –was written by a billionaire-funded group trying to weaken child-labor laws across the U.S.

It would have let companies make some high-school students work overnight shifts, 12-hour days or 40-hour workweeks during the school year

The sponsor of a bill in Florida to let businesses make 16- and 17-year-olds work overnight on a school night or 40+ hours during a school week, just said she filed the bill partly to provide more labor for the tourism industry. "Being in a tourist area of Florida and knowing the needs of the hospitality industry…..I felt this was a common sense bill," said Rep. Linda Chaney (R-St. Pete Beach).

The Republican-controlled Florida House of Representatives just filed sweeping legislation that would block efforts in communities all across the state to make businesses pay higher wages, provide better benefits or ensure safer workplaces. The bill would dissolve local living wage laws, allowing contractors to slash pay for tens of thousands of workers at places like airports and construction sites.

Via @lmower3: An internal investigation found that the guy Ron DeSantis personally picked to run Florida's affordable housing agency:

1. Screamed at his staff, made sexist comments, talked about employees' weight and threatened their jobs.

More... 2. Is simultaneously serving on the board of a company that contracts with the agency.

*Three* general counsels said that was a conflict of interest. But DeSantis' guy refused to give up his board seat and instead says conflict-of-interest policies are "outdated."

More...

Two weeks before he launched his campaign for president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a big union-busting bill.

This bill was bad: Five Republican senators crossed DeSantis and voted against it.

But I don’t think most folks realize just how bad it is...

🧵 To start with, Senate Bill 256 is designed to make it much harder for public-sector workers in Florida to band together in unions and collectively bargain for things like pay, better insurance, paid sick leave, predictable schedules and so on.

Back in May, NBC News reported that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had his taxpayer-paid staff pressuring Tallahassee lobbyists to donate to DeSantis' presidential campaign – right as DeSantis was debating whether to sign or veto bills and budget projects:

nbcnews.com/politics/2024-… That pressure campaign seems to have paid off. A review of DeSantis' first fundraising report as a presidential candidate shows that he raised at least $290,000 from Florida lobbyists seeking favors from his administration:

jasongarcia.substack.com/p/records-show…

So…just before the end of this year’s session of the Florida Legislature, state lawmakers slipped a new issue into the state budget: A law making it harder for local communities to regulate the sale or use of lawn fertilizer (which contributes to water pollution). Nobody had any idea at the time where this idea came from.

After all, legislative leaders basically hid it from the public until day 55 of their 60-day session.

But @craigtimes eventually figured it out.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just signed a bill sought by billionaire owners of Major League Baseball teams that cuts minor league baseball players off from the minimum wage. One day after this legislation was filed in Tallahassee, Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade whose kids own the Chicago Cubs, gave DeSantis a $1 million donation.

A Florida House committee just approved a bill (HB 715) that would cut between $40 million and $100 million a year from education funding in order to give more money to stores that sell lottery tickets.

A lobbyist for 7-Eleven testified in support of it. The sponsor of the bill – Rep. Jim Mooney, a Republican from the Florida Keys – repeatedly claimed that the bill wouldn’t impact education funding.

He ought to think about reading the staff analysis for his own bill:

The Florida Senate starts to move today on a 6-week abortion ban meant to strengthen Gov. Ron DeSantis’ position in the Republican presidential primary.

As they do, here’s an example of how sensitive DeSantis and his staff are to charges that their abortion bans are anti-women: Just before the end of last year’s session, DeSantis’ senior leadership team began plotting out the public bill-signing rallies and ceremonies they could hold around the state to attract more news coverage for the governor.

At the risk of being Charlie Brown and the football, here's some promising news from Tallahassee:

House Bill 5 (House Speaker Paul Renner's bill to abolish Enterprise Florida and a bunch of tax incentive programs) would finally eliminate the single worst tax break in Florida. That tax break is the "Urban High Crime Area Jobs Tax Credit Program."

It was created in the 1990s, championed by Black lawmakers looking to help crime- and poverty-stricken communities around Florida.

It has instead become an ongoing subsidy for Universal Studios.

The bills to protect car dealers and high-interest loan companies passed unanimously.

Bipartisanship!

https://twitter.com/Jason_Garcia/status/1640308477737291778

In related news, the Florida Automobile Dealers Association (lobbyists for car dealers) and the Florida Financial Services Association (lobbyists for high-interest installment lenders) have been showering campaign contributions on lawmakers in both parties.

Florida House Speaker Paul Renner just acknowledged that the defamation bill moving through the Legislature that would make it much easier to sue news organizations – another bill that began with Ron DeSantis – is intentionally unconstitutional. The goal, he said, is to provoke a showdown before the United States Supreme Court and potentially overturn a landmark case (New York Times v. Sullivan) that sets a very high bar for defamation suits brought by public figures.

The Florida Senate is going to take up an aggressively anti-union piece of legislation later today that Gov. Ron DeSantis is driving through the Legislature this session (SB 256). The Orlando Weekly's @SheCarriesOn has done some really good deep dives into the legislation.

But the bottom-line goal here is to destabilize, defund and, ultimately, decertify unions that collectively bargain on behalf of most public-sector workers.

orlandoweekly.com/news/floridas-…

Big day for billionaire Major League Baseball team owners in Tallahassee!

Committees in the House and the Senate are hearing bills to screw minor league players out of the state minimum wage.

Records show just how hands-on MLB and its lobbyists have been with these bills. Here's a lobbyist for Major League Baseball (who also happens to be Ron DeSantis' former chief of staff) sending a white paper explaining the legislation to the office of Sen. Jonathan Martin (R-Fort Myers), who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate:

A coalition of public-interest attorneys from across Florida has come out against vendor-driven bills moving through the Legislature this spring that would ensure landlords can charge tenants perpetual, unlimited & nonrefundable fees instead of a refundable security deposit. In a letter sent yesterday to members of the Senate Community Affairs Committee (which will vote on the bill later this morning), the Public Interest Law Section of the Florida Bar rips the "scheme" being pushed primarily by a real-estate tech company called LeaseLock.

Here's a fun little bit of hypocrisy: The Florida House and Senate start moving bills today meant to force all public employers (state agencies, cities, counties, universities, school districts, etc.) to prioritize work experience over higher education when hiring people. The bills (House Bill 1109 and Senate Bill 1310) are being branded as the "Expanding Public Sector Career Opportunities Act."

Among other things, they would generally bar any government from not hiring someone because they don't have a college or university degree: