And Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature is poised to give racists a right to sue you for defamation if you call them racists.
Does that sound like infringing free speech to you? It does to me, too. And also to Rep. Corey Mills (R-FL), the Republican who represents a district between Daytona Beach and Orlando in Congress, who argues it’s beneath Florida to do something like that (read story here).
No, it’s not. Florida Gov. DeSantis, who wants to be president, and the state legislature, which has GOP supermajorities in both houses (see details here), went after LGBQT people first; now they’re determined to protect racists and institutionalize racism.
The Republican legislators pushing this bill admit it’s unconstitutional. In fact, it’s designed to violate free speech rights, they say. Their goal is to provoke a legal challenged against the law, to get before Trump Supreme Court, which they hope will take those rights away.
Let’s be clear about something: The post-Trump Republican Party is against freedom. They’re trying to brush aside elections, seize power, and eliminate individual rights. The end goal of all this is to put themselves in power, make it impossible to remove them from power, and dictate what Americans are allowed to think, say, and do. They don’t even pretend anymore to give us a choice.