Welcome back.
In a flurry of activity,
the Florida legislature wrapped up its session Friday,
cramming through a long list of bills that had died
but were resurrected at the last moment.
One of those bills is a measure
to ban transgender athletes from competing
in high school and college sports.
Now, this has never been a problem in Florida.
There have been just 11 instances
in six years of trans athletes in sports.
Yet it polls well and strikes a chord
with conservative voters looking
for so-called culture war issues.
And so it became a priority for governor Ron DeSantis,
who's looking ahead to a 2024 presidential run.
Critics argue this bill is intentionally cruel
and seeks to stigmatize and demonize a group
of vulnerable kids for political purposes.
During the Senate debate last week,
state Senator Victor Torres, a Democrat from Orlando,
brought his colleagues to tears
as he spoke about the bill.
I'm a grandfather to a transgender granddaughter.
(speaks foreign language), which means grandfather,
so you don't know.
With such love and such (speaks foreign language)
and sweet kid and these are the things
that I look at as she's growing up.
But I'm going to read what my daughter,
Amy, and most of you know, Amy Mercado.
This bill came up last session
when my daughter was a representative over there
and she fought tooth and nail to kill this
because I know what my daughter
went through for her daughter.
These are children. These are children.
They grow up with us. We see them grow up.
We see them develop and they're smart and they do things.
We don't need this! (speaks foreign language)
We don't need to destroy the lives
of those children and their futures.
If they want to play athlet, let them play!
There's nothing to stop them.
They're in our armed forces right now.
I'm a veteran! They were all over!
They have developed. They are part of society.
I ask you, please, please kill this!
We don't need this! We thought it was dead!
But, obviously some don't care. Some don't care.
And we have to care! Because you know what?
In life you don't know what's going
to develop in your own family.
And then, you're going to realize the hardships,
the consequences that families go through
like my daughter and my son-in-law have gone through
for my granddaughter and we love her so dearly.
She's a beautiful child.
I ask you, all of you, stand with me.
Kill this bill. Thank you, Mr. President.
Despite that impassioned plea, Republicans passed the bill
and the governor said he was eager to sign it into law.
On Thursday evening, while the Senate was in a short recess,
I was able to interview State Senators Lauren Book
and Jason Pizzo on the floor of the Senate
about this mad dash to the end.
Well, right now we're in recess.
We're waiting for some bills
to come back over from the house.
We have about 50 more minutes
'til we're going to be back in session.
We just sent the voting bill back
across the hall where they're working on to the,
some of our house colleagues are working on trying
to get some amendments back on that bill.
And then, it'll be coming back over this way.
It's been a really long day and a really long week
but we're still fighting.
But, this is the crazy period where bills
that we thought were dead suddenly come back
to life like zombies, you know?
We saw that with the transgender bill.
We saw that with the Key West bill.
Let's talk about the transgender bill for a second.
It was a very emotional day yesterday.
Talk to me about, Lauren,
talk to me about that for a second.
Yesterday was a really long and painful day.
When we think that we had a victory
in having that transgender bill die, and then it coming back
in house messages was really, really difficult.
It was hard on everybody really in this chamber.
Democrats and Republicans were visibly, visibly upset.
Some members had to come off the floor
because they were very visibly emotional.
Our own members of our caucus have family members
who are trans and so shared their stories
and it was very difficult and it is painful
but I think it was an opportunity where our caucus was able
to coalesce and tell stories and have some
of those truths put out there, which I think is important.
It's terrible. It's awful.
And this is the hardest part of the process.
When you think that you've kind of moved beyond an issue
and then it does come back in the 11th hour
and they are really detrimental for Floridians and people.
I understand what the language of the bill says
but what's really the purpose?
Why did we have the transgender bill to begin with?
I found it to be completely unnecessary.
It is, as you may suspect, and others will suspect,
on the same side or the other side, it's red meat.
It's something to talk about on a campaign trail.
I just don't know if it's a domestic campaign trail
or in another state and so it's unnecessary
and the reason why I say it's unnecessary,
it's not necessary to invoke that kind of pain
on kids who are already let's, let's be honest,
part of a class of kids that are already suffering
from identity issues, perhaps not being able
to tell their families about how they feel
and how they identify.
But we're talking about this taking place 11 times
since 2015, the reports show.
So I sort of characterize it yesterday
as 11 people over 2015,
this is what we're spending time on?
But we've had tens of thousands that have died from COVID,
millions that have suffered from other unemployment woes,
housing security issues, food security issues,
and this is what we're spending our time on?
It was just bizarre.
Nothing would that we're doing here
in this rapid end to session, Jim,
has anything to do with improving people's lives.
How does that improve anyone's life?
It satisfies and checks off a box
of some rhetoric someone wants to say
but that bill's not gonna improve anyone's life
It's hard when you're in the middle
of this in these final hours,
literally hours, of the session.
But, if you can, just try to take a step back
and look over the past 58, 59 days.
Who was served by by what you're doing there
in Tallahassee this year?
What do you think the, what will we look back on and say,
"This was what this year's session was about."
I think big interest money.
This was not about everyday Floridians.
This was not about protecting children.
I mean, you know, you'd hear some people
on the floor yesterday in that very instance talk
about safety and women's safety in sports, right?
Really, you know, those kids are just trying
to survive just to get to tomorrow
and we should not be taking away any outlet for them
but you see that across the board.
I mean, our partners across the hall
wouldn't raise unemployment by a hundred dollars.
It came out of this chamber unanimously.
You saw with some of the insurance issues.
Time and time again, it's about larger interests
and money over people.
Let me just sort of stay with Lauren for a second
because you sponsored one of the things
that actually got passed with regard
to expanding a small portion of Medicaid
for pregnant women so that their benefits,
their health benefits would go from two months to a year
and I know that you suddenly picked up Republican support.
Do you have a theory as to why suddenly
that small portion of Medicaid expansion sought
ended up getting approval from Republicans
and getting picked up when it hadn't in the past?
You know, I would also point out
that my bill never was heard.
It never got it, not one committee hearing.
It became a Republican issue and I'm glad
that the speaker took it on
and that it's something that we're funding.
I'm happy for that.
I do think that it has something to do with life
that we're going to give them
and we're going to give them this gift of care for a year.
It's only for a year.
I mean, I'm glad that we're doing that, but let's,
we should be doing so much more than what we currently are.
Well, it's, is the idea, almost in a sense
that this was adopted by this cause became a,
not for you, but for some on the right,
as being a way of promoting an anti-abortion agenda
whereby if we bribe a woman and say, "If you keep your baby,
you'll get a year of health insurance".
I mean, you'll take what you can get,
but do you think that was a driving motivator
for the Republicans?
I think that that's a good look at the equation.
And why didn't we do a much broader expanse of Medicaid
since the federal government is chiming so much money in?
Lauren, I'm going to stick with you on this
'cause I talked to Jason a little bit about this last week.
Why can't we get Medicaid expansion
for the 800,000 Floridians who are
without health insurance today?
This, I don't know.
I feel sometimes like we bang our heads against the wall.
It does not make any sense.
And it's something that we should be doing.
It's what's right.
I mean, we've got unemployment through the roof.
We've come through a terribly, terribly bad year
with COVID, surviving in a pandemic and beyond.
And we, I mean, we have responsibility to do better.
And again, even in the Senate,
when we're talking about this postpartum care,
this is a bill that never got a hearing, never.
Never made its way out of health policy.
Didn't follow the process.
It was never heard.
The voting bill that you're in the midst of right now,
Jason, what are we expecting?
I mean, I've talked to Senator Shevrin Jones
and he refers to it as Georgia-lite.
It's not as bad as Georgia
but that doesn't make it a good thing in his opinion.
Where do you think this is going to end up?
Probably by the time this airs,
we will have a resolved issue on the voting bill
if it passes, but where do you think
we're likely to end up on this?
Well, Senator Book actually had asked staff today
for the caucus to prepare a side-by-side with other States.
So we did a side-by-side with Georgia, Maryland,
Virginia, New York, and New Jersey
and we found that that the latest iteration,
not crazy about it, we both voted against it today,
but the latest iteration does not deviate too far
from States that are even Left
and states that are even Right, so to speak.
Lauren, my impression is is
that really what it's going to do is it's just going
to make the lives of election supervisors harder.
That they're going to have to hire people
to man boxes as opposed to having video surveillance.
They're going to have to be more
in line to make sure they get the ballots out
and go through a yearly process for it.
Am I wrong in how I'm looking at it?
You're not wrong at all.
More expensive, but I think, again,
it underscores the big lie, the big myth.
We had a very successful election.
Again, to Senator Pizzo's point multiple times,
we're wasting our time focusing
on things that don't and aren't real issues for Floridians.
Focusing on a terrible bad election
where fraud was happening that never occurred.
But, again, everyday Floridians
don't have 100 more dollars for unemployment.
People are suffering and we are spending time
on things that we should otherwise be focusing on.