Funding Nemo? Florida GOP Takes Aim at Disney Perks
There’s a price to pay for declaring war on parents — and the company’s local autonomy might be one of them.
If Disney sounds like an island of woke delusion, that’s because — legally — it is. Thanks to a special legislative carve-out, the Magic Kingdom has been operating as its own self-governing district for more than half a century. They can approve their own construction projects, bypass local zoning laws, even install their own nuclear power plant without asking permission. It’s been a sweetheart of a deal for Disney, until now. Turns out, there’s a price to pay for declaring war on Florida parents — and the company’s local autonomy might be one of them.
“If I was Disney, I would certainly take this threat seriously,” warned Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor who’s studied the rules of the company’s special entity. She, like most people, was shocked to see the power Disney has to act as “a law unto itself.” But now, with CEO Bob Chapek and Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) at public loggerheads, every weapon is on the table for Florida Republicans, including stripping Disney of its unique, unsupervised status.
“Disney has alienated a lot of people now,” DeSantis said over the weekend. And yet, “Over many, many decades…they’ve gotten incredible treatment from the Florida legislature” — even, he argued, put on a “pedestal.” “That’s not something I’ve ever supported. But now, in the legislature, you see a movement to reevaluate those special privileges… And so at the end of the day, I think Disney has gotten over its skis on this.”
For Chapek, who stands to lose a lot more than face in his LGBT crusade, the news that legislators could put Disney’s 55-year-old deal on the chopping block had to be a reality check. After the last four weeks of groveling to his radical base, the CEO is being forced to reckon with the reality that they have, as DeSantis put it, “gotten out over their skis on this.” “[T]he political influence they’re used to wielding, I think, has dissipated. And the question is, ‘Why would you want to have special privileges in the law at all?’ And I don’t think that we should.”
Already, State Rep. Spencer Roach (R-Fla.) confirmed, elected officials have held two meetings about repealing the 1967 agreement known as the Reedy Creek Improvement Act. “If Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County,” he argued.
And that’s not the only perk at stake. Florida tax breaks and tech exemptions are also on the line, Republicans say. In the nation’s capital, there’s also a growing movement to rescind Disney’s copyrights — one of which, Mickey Mouse’s, is up for renewal in a year and a half. House Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks (R-Ind.) fired off a letter warning Chapek that fighting a law that stops classroom indoctrination has its consequences. “Given Disney’s continued work with a Communist Chinese regime that does not respect human rights or U.S. intellectual property and given your desire to influence young children with sexual material inappropriate for their age, I will not support further extensions applicable to your copyrights, which should become public domain,” Banks wrote. “Congress shouldn’t support Disney’s assault on American values.”
Meanwhile, company heiress Abigail Disney took to Twitter in an unhinged, 13-tweet rant, insisting that “this ‘anti-woke,’ Right-wing nonsense is unsupported by a large majority of Americans.” “In fact,” she claimed, “most Americans are offended by it and wish it would just go away.” Well, she’s right that Americans are offended — but not by DeSantis’s pushback. In brand new polling, Disney is on the wrong side of almost every demographic metric. Democrats support Florida’s law (55-29 percent). Suburban voters support Florida’s law (60-30 percent). Parents support Florida’s law (67-24 percent). People who have LGBT acquaintances support Florida’s law (61-28 percent). Even Biden voters support Florida’s law (53-30 percent). “If you think schools should be imposing these teachings upon elementary-aged children,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) fired back, “you’re the controversial one — not me.”
And yet, the Left continues to insist — as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did — that banning sex and gender conversations until the fourth grade is “discriminatory.” “It’s a form of bullying,” she fumed. “It’s horrific.” America is actually at a point where the extreme Left thinks it’s bullying to ask teachers not to talk about transgenderism and homosexuality in kindergarten. This is no longer a subtle, gradual shift. This has pulled the curtain back on a worldview untethered to any transcendent or even historical truth or morality. The culture is going off the rails.
“I think this is a wake-up call for parents,” FRC’s David Closson insisted on “Washington Watch.” “[It’s] what the Bible talks about in Deuteronomy 6 — that parents are to be the chief disciple-makers in their homes.” Not Disney. Not the culture. Not schools. “We should normalize praying. We should normalize family devotionals, family worship… I think Christian parents absolutely need to take back this mantle, this understanding that sees them as first and foremost the disciplers of their children… And if we’re not purposeful about [their] environments… the wrong things [become normalized].”
Disney has been in the business of cultivating radical worldviews in young America for too long. It’s time for parents to rise up and reclaim their role, outlined in Proverbs 22:6, of training up children in “the way they should go.”
Originally published here.
KBJ’s Defining Moment: What It Means for Washington
Regardless of how Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings go, it’s safe to say they’ll be remembered for one thing: her inability (or outright refusal) to define the word “woman.” Jackson’s “I’m-not-a-biologist” answer has been memed, parodied, and mocked the world over. But it’s also, one news outlet warns, contagious. Just how deep does this gender illiteracy go? All the way through the Biden administration, a survey of agencies shows.
It was a simple question. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) had even signaled to Jackson the day before that she would be asking it. But an extra 24 hours didn’t seem to help Joe Biden’s nominee reach any conclusions, and she nervously chuckled that she couldn’t define a woman “in this context.” Taken aback, Blackburn — along with the rest of the GOP — wondered in the days that followed how Jackson could possibly sit on America’s highest court and rule on cases about Title IX and Title VII without a basic understanding of gender?
“If sex is unknowable, how can a law against sex discrimination be enforced?” the Federalist’s Kyle Sammin wondered. “If trial courts need to call expert ‘biologists’ every time the subject of sex comes up, it is hard to see how justice can be done.”
And unfortunately, it’s not just Biden’s Supreme Court pick who’s feigning ignorance on a question of basic humanity. Fox News’s Timothy Nerozzi called up a long list of federal agencies, asking for their answer to the same question: “What is a woman?” Not one responded. Incredibly, the Departments of Justice, Education, Housing and Urban Development, National Institutes of Health, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons all refused to answer. With the exception of NIH, who pointed Nerozzi to a webpage on woke gender identity, “None of the agencies provided their definition or criteria for an individual to be categorized as a ‘woman,’” he wrote in amazement.
Of course, this was all inevitable from the moment President Biden stepped into office and began to systematically “obliterate sex as a distinct category,” Kara Dansky, president of Women’s Declaration International, argued. As far as they’re concerned, “women no longer exist as a coherent category as a matter of federal administrative law.”
Now, more than a year into Biden’s first term, it’s obvious that the president’s only true passion is turning the world upside down for transgenderism. Last week, during the so-called “Transgender Day of Visibility,” Biden devoted a 702-word proclamation to this attack on science, parents, privacy, and public health. In it, he “celebrated the activism and determination that have fueled the fight for… equality.” He bashes states that have risen up to oppose the mutilation of children or the Left’s twisted interpretation of girls’ sports. “These bills are wrong,” Biden argued before claiming that they’re “damaging to the mental health and well-being of transgender youth.”
To America’s kids, who deserve to be shielded from this sort of harmful propaganda, the president says, “You are so brave. You belong. I have your back.” To most parents, including Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), that kind of affirmation is “disturbing.” It puts people of all ages — but especially younger generations — on a path to personal suffering. These are “broken individuals,” he sympathized on “Washington Watch.” They need our help, not our validation. “I personally believe, and I think most of the people across Montana believe that any time that you take a child and you subject them to this type of surgery or treatment, that the people that are responsible for it should be charged with child abuse. I really believe it is that simple.”
Meanwhile, it seems Jackson’s unresponsiveness also extends to other matters of national importance — like natural rights. In written questioning, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked the nominee to explain, in her own words, “the theory prevalent among members of the Founding Fathers’ generation that humans possess natural rights that are inherent or inalienable.” Do you agree, Cruz continued? Jackson replied, “I do not hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights.”
“This is stunning,” Cruz posted with a picture of the response. “The Declaration of Independence proclaims: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights…’ KBJ says she has ‘no position’ on whether this is true.”
But then, should anyone be surprised? Once you turn your back on the simplest realities, the other truths are quick to follow.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
