The anti-Awakening crusade of Ron DeSantis, Florida Governor and likely Republican Party nominee for the White House in 2024, will stop at nothing, including the almighty Disney, the Sunshine State’s main employer. DeSantis has been targeting him The entertainment company has since its then-CEO Bob Chapek last year criticized an education law that bans the teaching of topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida schools up to the age of nine. His critics call this law “Sag nicht gay” (Don’t say gay).
DeSantis summoned the media in Lake Buena Vista on Monday to sign an executive order allowing him to take control of the governing body of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, an area just over 100 square kilometers which has been home to Disney World, the most famous amusement park in the world, since 1971. The location, renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, is no longer governed by a board composed of people close to the company, but by five members handpicked by the governor.
Ron DeSantis supporters protested on the road leading to Disney World last April. OCTAVIO JONES (Portal)
In preparation for a busy week that will continue Tuesday with the release of his second memoir, The Courage to Be Free, DeSantis said in announcing the announcement Monday, “There’s a new sheriff in this town.” He relishes the phrase he already uttered last week as the law passed the parliamentary process in a bicameral congress comfortably dominated by Republicans, allowing the governor to achieve the goals of his agenda in one go Hurry, before the foreseeable announcement of his presidential candidacy. DeSantis added, “The corporate empire has come to an end,” in an apparent reference to Disney World’s Magic Kingdom.
Under the rule of DeSantis, this ultra-conservative experiment being conducted in Florida, there is no respite for “wake-up culture,” a term the American right-wing has made its favorite insult and used to define those who are “woke.” ” are. on injustice, to fight against racism and inequality and for feminism, LGTBI rights or trans people. All of these groups have become the governor’s obsession, and he seems to have reaped great profits from them, as shown by the results of the last election in November, when he won by a margin of 1.5 million votes over his opponent.
“Disney was against something [la ley educativa] that he should only protect the little ones and make sure students can go to school to learn how to read, write, add, subtract, and not be told by a teacher that they can change their gender,” DeSantis said Monday. “I think most parents are okay with that.”
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The move against Disney, tough as it is, is only a partial victory for DeSantis. His original idea was to have the county go away by June 1, 2023, which would have been split between Orange and Osceola counties. Both would have had to take care of paying for municipal services such as electricity or water, as well as the costs of the police, ambulance or fire brigade, which the company has borne since 1967. They also inherited around $1 billion in debt. These small details made Florida lawmakers balk. And for a moment last fall, it seemed like the multinational and the state were poised to sign a peace after Bob Iger returned to control of Disney, replacing a struggling Chapek.
Though DeSantis couldn’t rob the Californian company of the tax benefits it enjoyed, the new board members will have the power to collect taxes, build infrastructure, and borrow money for theme park-related projects. The law also revokes unused permits that Disney had to build its own airport or even a nuclear power plant.
Profiles selected for the new board, which will meet for the first time next week, include Martin Garcia, a Tampa attorney whose investment firm contributed $50,000 to the governor’s re-election campaign, and Bridget Ziegler, founder of the Conservatives Organization Moms for Liberty, which is behind many book ban campaigns in libraries and curricula in the United States. Faced with the prospect, DeSantis, a Yale and Harvard grad who appears to have carved his rhetoric in a multiplex while watching 1980s movies, threatened Monday, “So buckle up.”
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