Ron DeSantis won his war against Disney today as he officially stripped the company of its 55-year-old special privileges that effectively allowed self-government.
The Florida governor wrote into law the plan which scrapped the Reedy Creek Improvement District, meaning the firm will no longer be able self operate.
The Republican gave a rousing speech and smiled as he passed the bill alongside a crowd of clapping schoolchildren this afternoon.
He slammed the firm for ‘marshalling your economic might to attack the parents of my state’, adding: ‘We view that as a provocation, and we’re going to fight back against that.’
The move could have huge tax implications for Disney but there is scope for the district to be reestablished – leaving an avenue to renegotiate its future.
The bill will also impact a handful of other similar districts by June 2023, with voting rights groups today suing the state over the new congressional map changes.
They claimed it will diminish Black representation and benefit Republicans as they staged a sit-in on the House floor, prayed and sang ‘We Shall Overcome’ in protest.
Meanwhile the White House again tried to muscle in, with Joe Biden last night slamming the ‘ugly’ GOP for targeting Disney and claiming it has been taken over by the ‘far right’.
The toxic war with Disney started when the company blasted a new law barring instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in pre-school through to third grade.
The firm said in March it would suspend political donations in the state and added it would in turn support organizations working to oppose the new law.
But DeSantis and his fellow Republicans lashed out at the Orlando resort – defending the law – before moving to strip it of its special privileges.
At the bill signing ceremony Friday, DeSantis said Disney lied about the content of the education law but he viewed the company’s vow to fight the law as unacceptable.
He said: ‘You’re a corporation based in Burbank, California, and you’re gonna marshal your economic might to attack the parents of my state. We view that as a provocation, and we’re going to fight back against that.’
President Biden waded into the argument again last night as he tried to skewer DeSantis and the Republican party in a speech on the West Coast.
He told a high-dollar fundraiser at the Portland Yacht Club: ‘This is not your father’s Republican Party. This is the MAGA party.’
He said the Republican Party is ‘not even conservative in the traditional sense of conservatism’ and took aim at the war with Disney over their opposition to the so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill.
He continued: ‘I mean it’s ugly. I mean, look at what’s happening now in Florida. Christ, they’re going after Mickey Mouse.’
He made similar pro-Disney remarks at his second fundraiser in Seattle, headlining an affair at the lakefront home of Mary Snapp and Spencer Frazer.
He told the crowd last night: ‘There’s nothing conservative about throwing Disney out of its current posture… over saying gay?’
Earlier Thursday, Florida Republicans started the process of dissolving Disney’s special status that allowed Walt Disney World to act as its own government in a move that lead to a huge tax increase for Floridians.
Disney publicly criticized the Parental Rights Bill and enraged DeSantis for weighing into politics. Biden’s trip out west marked the first time he traveled to raise campaign dollars since becoming president.
The two fundraisers benefited the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund, the Democratic National Committee’s political action committee, in advance of the 2022 November midterm races.
Both polls and historical precedent suggest that Democrats could be in for a beating this fall and lose control of their narrow majorities in the House and Senate.
But in Portland Biden pushed that winning was simply a matter of letting people know where the Democrats versus Republicans stand – and believed Democrats could pick up two Senate seats.
We’ve done a hell of a job,’ he boasted at the Portland Yacht Club. But ‘because things have moved so rapidly, so profoundly’ the American people ‘don’t know a lot about what we’ve already done.’
He cited some statistics like the creation of 7.9 million jobs, including 430,000 manufacturing jobs, a shrinking unemployment rate and deficit reduction.
‘We can’t afford to lose the House, we can’t afford to lose the Senate,’ he warned attendees in Seattle, including Washington’s Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee.
But the president admitted there was economic anxiety due to higher-than-normal gas prices and inflation that could hurt Democrats on the ballot.
‘People are angry and don’t quite know what to do,’ Biden said.
In Portland, he tore into a plan pushed by Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott – who’s in charge of the National Republican Senatorial Committee this cycle – that sunsets all federal laws after five years.
Democrats, including Biden at the fundraiser, have jumped on that to suggest it means the end of Social Security and Medicare.
‘If you want a copy of it, I’ll send it to you,’ the president told attendees of Scott’s 11-point agenda. ‘That’s what they’re running on.’
Biden recalled how Democrats successfully won back the House of Representatives in 2018, telling the crowd he went into 56 districts – and Democrats won 46.
‘We won all those seats back in 2018 because they kept for 500 times trying to do away with Obamacare,’ he said. ‘But what people didn’t know – and the point I’m about to get to, they don’t know a lot about what we’ve already done.’
‘We said do you know why, if you have a pre-existing condition, you can’t be denied insurance? Because of Obamacare. Nobody knew it. We won all of those races,’ he continued.
He then said he was ‘worried’ going into the midterms, that the American people didn’t know what he’d done.
The Portland fundraiser was originally supposed to take place at the home of McCormack and Butler, but the alt-weekly Willamette Week reported that it was moved due to popular demand.
Biden was introduced by Columbia Sportwear’s Joe Boyle.
He opened by telling the Democratic donors he was there to thank them and closed by promising to get out more ‘and mak[e] the case for what we’ve done.’
Earlier, he delivered an infrastructure-related speech at the Portland International Airport, touting the bipartisan bill he signed into law last year.
On Wednesday night, the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement Cedric Richmond – speaking at an event hosted by the White House Correspondents’ Association and the Bipartisan Policy Center – suggested that at some point the president would make a ‘pivot’ and care more about the midterms.
‘I think that at some point you’ve got to make that pivot, but right now this is a president who cares more about other people than 1. his political future and 2. getting credit,’ Richmond told the crowd.
‘We all recognize that at some point we’ll take a deep breath from all those things were trying to do at once and tell the American people what we’ve been focused on doing and how we’ve achieved that,’ he continued. ‘And I think we’ve got some really great stories to tell.’
He also assured Democrats watching on C-SPAN: ‘The prediction of our demise, I think, is premature.’
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