Good Warning America: Florida Sends Disney (and Friends) a Message
Disney’s prized possession — a special self-governing status — is gone.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek wasn’t the only one waking up to an uncomfortable new reality Friday morning. Across corporate America, Chapek’s counterparts probably all had the same uneasy feeling about what had transpired in Tallahassee the day before. Conservatives have exacted a pound of flesh in the woke wars — and not just any pound of flesh, but a gash in the credibility of one of the biggest entertainment brands in the world. The message was simple: if woke companies want to carry the water for the Left and declare war on parents, then at least in Florida, lawmakers are going to side with parents.
When the legislature called Disney’s bluff and stripped the entertainment titan of its sweetheart deal in Orlando, Democrats weren’t the only ones who were surprised. For years, Americans have watched the same storyline play out. Big Business threatens Republicans. Republicans wither under the pressure and back down. Some leaders might grumble or put out a few solid soundbites first, but surrender is almost always inevitable. Recent history is littered with examples of leaders that conservatives assumed were made of stronger stuff: people like Mike Pence, Kristi Noem, Eric Holcomb. Not until Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) took on Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, and Delta — and won — did the movement finally find its voice.
And while the Left (and some Republicans) are blasting Florida for retaliating against Disney, the reality is this: Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) didn’t pick this fight. The state was just going about its business, trying to protect parents’ rights. It’s Chapek’s company, NRO’s Rich Lowry argues, who was the aggressor. They’re the ones who barged in (late), lied about the law, and vowed to repeal it. “Like so many companies before, Disney calculated the risk/reward of gratuitously taking up a left-wing political and cultural fight and considered it all reward, no risk. The Florida legislature decided to convince it that it was wrong.”
And they succeeded. With DeSantis’s signature on the dotted line, Disney’s prized possession — a special self-governing status that’s helped the company avoid taxes and regulation for a half-century — will be gone. Chapek’s territory will return to the fold of mere mortals, who answer to state and local leaders.
But incredibly, not everyone in the Republican Establishment is thrilled that corporate America finally got what was coming to it. Never Trumpers, who apparently think conservatives should Never Play Hardball, have tried to paint DeSantis as an enemy of free speech — creating a phony comparison between what Disney did and what San Antonio liberals tried to have done to Chick-fil-A for its “anti-LGBT stance” (which was ironic, we found out later, since Chick-fil-A was actually funding LGBT extremism at the Southern Poverty Law Center and Drag Queen Story Hour). Regardless, the comparison is a faulty one. Chick-fil-A wasn’t demanding special treatment at the San Antonio airport. It wasn’t using its chicken business to attack public policy in San Antonio. It was asking for the opportunity to do business — for the chance to exist in a consumer space.
DeSantis isn’t shutting down Disney — or even silencing their voice in the public square (a tactic the Left has tried repeatedly on conservatives). He’s simply stripping Chapek’s kingdom of a unique privilege they forfeited when they bit the hand that fed them. “If Disney wants to make war on families in Florida,” John Daniel Davidson insists, “then the proper role of a democratically elected government is to go after Disney with every power at its disposal… Disney does not serve the public interest in Florida, and Floridians owe it nothing.
As Florida State Senator Dennis Baxley (R) explained on "Washington Watch,” Disney is a huge employer for the state of Florida. But “their brand is in serious decay.” And when they brought the full force of their brand against voters’ collective wishes — on an issue that had nothing to do with Disney whatsoever — then Florida was right to “look back at what our agreements are and what kind of authorities [we can exercise] with them.” Quite frankly, Baxley said, Disney miscalculated.
And now they’re paying for it. Not only is the state moving full-steam ahead on parents’ rights, but they’ve also taken a major step to end the kind of radical experimentation on children that Disney is so zealously promoting. Thanks to a brand new memo from the Florida Department of Health, the state has drawn a line in the sand on hormone therapy and mutilating gender surgeries for children, insisting that they should not even be “treatment options” for kids under 18. Likewise, the state announces, “social gender transitions” (i.e. preferred names and pronouns at school, mixed-gender bathrooms, etc.) should also be prohibited.
If Disney was hoping its tantrum would throw cold water on any transgender pushback in Florida, it sure backfired. A conservative fire has been lit — and Republicans in every other state should follow suit.
Originally published here.
CDC Control Towers Over Average Fliers
America’s most notorious COVID troll has reemerged to demand everyone crossing his bridge must pay his toll. As the Biden administration officially appeals its overturned mask mandate, Dr. Anthony Fauci came out of hiding long enough to admit that the federal government’s transportation mask mandate is really about power and control. “We are concerned,” said Fauci, “about courts getting involved in things that are unequivocally public health issues.”
Fauci should have stopped there, but he kept talking. “This is a CDC issue, it should not have been a court issue,” he added. “This is a CDC decision, and that’s very bad precedent when you have courts making a decision.” Here are some bad precedents: pretending “public health” overrides every constitutional right, pretending “public health” overrides every other public policy consideration, pretending an unelected group of “public health experts” should run Americans’ daily lives, pretending those “public health experts” don’t make mistakes. Last but not least, saying that courts shouldn’t be able to review the CDC’s decisions is to pretend the agency is above the law.
Over the last two years, the mask has come to symbolize the oppressive overreach of all kinds of government COVID restrictions. Freedom-loving Americans were given a reprieve when a federal judge in Florida struck down the Biden administration’s mask mandate for public transportation. However, the Biden administration is not backing off from its desire for authoritarian control.
The Biden administration is on the record trying to calcify their authoritarian power: “To protect CDC’s public health authority beyond the ongoing assessment announced last week, CDC has asked DOJ to proceed with an appeal,” the CDC said in a recent statement. “CDC believes this is a lawful order, well within CDC’s legal authority to protect public health.” Bottom line — this is no longer about the current mandate, but rather the ability of the federal government to retain this authority in perpetuity. First, it’s mask mandates, then it’s closing churches — we know their playbook.
It’s not just public health officials flexing their newfound authoritarian muscles. When asked why the Justice Department appealed the ruling, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki answered, “because they think that, for current and future public health crises, we want to preserve that authority for the CDC.” “How scary is that?” exclaimed Congressman Randy Weber (R-Texas). They want to preserve the authority to ride herd over Americans’ free will.“
To add insult to injury, the Biden administration insists on blind submission to the dictates of public health officials, even though "the science” disagrees, as FRC Action argued in its own lawsuit against the mandate. Given what we have learned over the past two years, this overreaching government mask mandate on the 2.9 million Americans who fly in a typical day is not based on science. In fact, science has shown that the air passengers breathe on a commercial airline is among the cleanest and safest of any environment on earth. “It’s funny that they refer to ‘the science’ on the mask mandate” and completely ignore it on the transgender issue, noted Weber. “They forget about that science,” but “want to shove masks almost up the American people’s nose.”
The Freedom Doomsday Clock stands at 11:59 pm. We are not just one generation away from the extermination of freedom; we are just one court decision away from executive agencies of the federal government getting to enact whatever arbitrary and capricious directives tickle their fancy, all in the name of public health. And if “the experts” get their way, they’ll do it without being answerable to the courts, to the Congress, or to the people.
This isn’t about forcing everyone to take off their masks. If people feel safer continuing to wear masks, they should be free to do so. That’s what freedom means — allowing people to make their own decisions and act according to their own judgment. Arbitrary mandates that are left unchallenged will become the norm for future public health emergencies. So, we must use the freedoms that we have now to preserve these fundamental freedoms for the future.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
