Florida tries to make dissent illegal, sanction bigotry
Among other bad ideas
Welcome to a Wednesday night edition of Progress Report.
President Donald Trump could be days away from launching an illegal war aimed at regime change in Iran, less than two months after ordering an unsanctioned attack on Venezuela that resulted in the kidnapping of that country’s leader. This, from the “No New Wars” president.
It’s one battle after another right now, both at home and abroad. And I mean that literally, especially in Florida, where Republicans have declared war on all forms of diversity. More on that below.
Note: The far-right’s fascist takeover of this country is being aided by the media’s total capitulation to Trump’s extortion. It’s never been more critical to have a bold independent media willing to speak up against the powerful. That’s what I’m trying to do here at Progress Report.
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The culture war crackdown is escalating once again in the Free State of Florida.
Internecine fighting between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-dominated legislature threw some sand in the gears of the Sunshine State’s right-wing culture war machine last year. Unfortunately, the legislature is taking another crack at passing a raft of far-right bills intended to silence political enemies and punish everyday Floridians.
On Tuesday, a state Senate subcommittee voted to advance SB 1134, a bill that takes aim at local governments’ embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion (or the bogeyman known as DEI). The broad language is no accident: the bill would act as a blanket prohibition on taking action to address disparities based on race, color, sex, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
To put a finer point on it, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Equality Florida, the bill would “effectively ban local governments from a range of actions like hosting or supporting Prides, offering LGBTQ+ cultural competency training, recognizing Black History Month, or having women and minority-owned business programs.”
Local officials who violate that ban could be removed from office, while residents would be able to sue municipalities for perceived transgressions against the forced cultural erasure.
Lawmakers also advanced HB 641, which would essentially bless hostile workplaces across the state and prevent even modest efforts to foster an inclusive environment at the office.
Specifically, the bill would ban employers from disciplining workers due to their “deeply held religious, moral, conscience-based, or biology-based beliefs against gender ideology,” which translates to allowing harassment and mistreatment of trans workers, including refusing to acknowledge their preferred gender identity. HB 641 also prevents employers from including a non-binary option on job applications and bans state and local government employers and contractors from requiring training on gender identity or sexual orientation.
The most concerning of the proposed laws, SB 1632, wouldn’t just prohibit acknowledging diversity, it would essentially criminalize any political organization or activity that the cops don’t like.
The Ideologies Inconsistent with American Principles Act — a name that would make George Orwell blush — would give the Florida Department of Law Enforcement the power designate domestic and foreign terrorist organizations based on vague criteria vulnerable to political manipulation.
According to the bill’s sponsor, an organization can be designated a domestic terrorism group if it “is engaging in terrorist activities that either involve illegal acts dangerous to human life, or that are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”
The vague wording does little to obfuscate the intention: “influencing the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion” sounds a lot like applying political pressure, and the far-right frequently accuses progressives of trying to “intimidate” during peaceful protests. The bill makes knowingly becoming a member of a state-designated “terrorist” organization a felony, and allows for the expulsion of any student found to be aligned with a group that “earns” the terrorism designation.
As if to further underscore the targets here, SB 1632 also bans “Sharia Law,” which has once again become an obsession for cynical far-right politicians and paranoids, and comes months after DeSantis designed the state’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) a domestic terrorism organization.
CAIR is simply an advocacy and lobbying group; the Ohio chapter just filed a lawsuit in conjunction with the ACLU, seeking to stop the state from purging voter rolls. In Florida, such activism would now be considered domestic terrorism.
The proposal mirrors executive action in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott also declared CAIR a domestic terrorist organization, as well as at the national level, with the White House increasingly using that term both colloquially — casually labeling Alex Pretti and Renee Good as such in Minneapolis last month — and in legal proceedings.
President Trump “formally” designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist group in September, bringing multiple right-wing fantasies full circle. The designation was followed by a national security directive called “NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” which gives the government broad leeway to persecute and prosecute protestors, organizers, antagonists, and journalists based on their beliefs. NSPM-7 was first revealed by the independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein.
The Department of Justice is currently using that designation in prosecuting anti-ICE protestors in Texas.
The charges stem from a noise demonstration outside a federal immigration facility in Prarieland last year, which the government alleges was part of a ploy to lure and attack police officers. Aggressive FBI raids and digital subpoenas have led to charges against nearly two dozen people, including some that were not present at the rally. One defendant was hit with charges for removing somebody from a Signal chat.
Opposition to the Florida bill has been mounting since it advanced in the House last week, and it’s been loud enough to give sponsors second thoughts: initially scheduled to be debated on the floor of the state Senate on Wednesday, SB 1632 was pulled from the calendar, at least temporarily.
Well that was pretty dismal, so how about we balance it out with some good news?
⛰️ 🗳️ Liberal activists in Colorado are pushing a ballot initiative that would allow the state to temporarily discard its independent redistricting system and draw a new Congressional map for the 2028 and 2030 elections. While it’s become a solid blue state, Colorado’s delegation currently includes four Democrats and four Republicans; any new map would be likely to give Democrats a 7-1 advantage.
👪 💰 Democrats in Colorado — it’s a good news week in the Centennial State — are aiming to repeal business tax breaks to fund a low-income family tax credit. Because Colorado tax policy mirrors that of the federal government, businesses in Colorado got a double boost from the Big Beautiful Bill. That cost the state $1.2 billion last year and triggered the suspension of the Family Affordability Tax Credit, which goes to families who make up to $95,000 a year but is tied to state tax revenue. This bill would create a similar tax credit that would operate independent of Colorado’s annual revenue.
🪫 🏭 Speaking of suspending business tax breaks, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wants to put a moratorium on incentives for the construction of data centers. The proposal would pause Illinois’s statewide data center tax incentive program, ostensibly to ensure that projects that receive funding are “financially sustainable over time, protect consumers from soaring energy costs and ensure fair allocation of resources,” according to NBC News. The move comes as backlash to the resource-hogging behemoths is growing among voters on both sides of the aisle, and is the sort of proposal that could play well in a presidential campaign, especially one mounted by a billionaire who needs to present as a populist.
🌲💳 And on the subject of populism, lawmakers in the Washington state Senate just approved a new tax on millionaires, bringing the contentious proposal one step closer to passage. The proposal would levy a 9.9% tax on income over $1 million, which is estimated to hit 30,000 residents and bring in $3.5 billion per year.
Washington, which has never had an income tax, recently enacted a capital gains tax, which has been productive enough to inspire another modest and long-overdue tweak to a system long exploited by very wealthy tech executives and investors. The rest of the journey toward Gov. Bob Ferguson’s desk is likely to be a bit rocky, not least because Ferguson himself has shown signs of wavering on an idea that he once supported, at least as it was initially proposed in the legislature.
🥬 🚬 Cannabis has been legal to possess in Virginia since 2020. Six years later, the state is finally moving toward making it legal to buy and sell the drug, ending what has been an illogical legal limbo imposed by former Gov. Glenn Youngkin. With support from new Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, the legislature passed a bill that creates parameters and regulations around cannabis sales, and once the governor signs it, the market is likely to officially open on November 1st.
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Very concerning.
Thank you for the reporting on Florida. I read the long list of horrendous bills being proposed at Jason Garcia's substack Seeking Rents. It's a nightmare. Florida under DeSantis has been in the forefront of the nation's descent into authoritarianism and kleptocracy.