A fas­cist to the core. It’s the chill­ing­ly fit­ting descrip­tion of Don­ald Trump from none oth­er than retired US gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley, who direct­ly served Trump as the chair of joint chiefs of staff, as described in Bob Wood­ward’s upcom­ing book. As Mil­ley put it, “He is the most dan­ger­ous per­son ever. I had sus­pi­cions when I talked to you about his men­tal decline and so forth, but now I real­ize he’s a total fas­cist. He is now the most dan­ger­ous per­son to this coun­try.” Yep. That he is. And with the most dan­ger­ous per­son to this coun­try on the cusp of get­ting elect­ed to a sec­ond term in office, ques­tions about the impli­ca­tions of putting the most dan­ger­ous per­son in Amer­i­ca back in the White House are loom­ing larg­er and larg­er.

But, of course, those dan­gers aren’t just loom­ing larg­er for elites like Mil­ley who have found them­selves the tar­get of Trump’s per­son­al ire. A sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion isn’t just a fas­cist oppor­tu­ni­ty for Trump, after all. There’s a whole MAGA coali­tion prepar­ing to join in on the fun. That’s what the whole Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme is all about. A nation­al fas­cist purge car­ried out by the theo­crat­ic move­ments behind the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP), the key enti­ty that helped orga­nize and exe­cute the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. A fas­cist purge that will be in keep­ing with the decades-long Domin­ion­ist goals of this move­ment. For all the very legit­i­mate fears about what a fas­cist Trump might do when giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty, Trump is far from the only ‘total fas­cist’ Amer­i­cans need to be wor­ried about. The far right reli­gious move­ment joined at the hip with Trump is very intent on impos­ing its will on the pub­lic at large. In oth­er words, ‘total fas­cist’ preach­ers and the large orga­ni­za­tions behind them have big plans for the next Trump admin­is­tra­tion too. And not just plans for ‘elites’ like Mark Mil­ley.

This isn’t just spec­u­la­tion. Sure, there’s inevitably a spec­u­la­tive ele­ment in try­ing to guess the con­se­quences of empow­er­ing a ‘total fas­cist’. But, again, Trump isn’t the only politi­cian joined at the hip with CNP. And some of these oth­er politi­cians are already in office and duti­ful­ly car­ry­ing out the CNP’s will. We’re already get­ting pre­views. For exam­ple, take Flori­da gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis. As we’ve seen, DeSan­tis was more or less the CNP’s pre­ferred 2024 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, a role that used to be held by Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz, before Don­ald Trump stole the GOP spot­light in 2016. And as we’ve also seen, DeSan­tis has effec­tive­ly been imple­ment­ing a mini-Project 2025 of his own in the state of Flori­da with one pol­i­cy after anoth­er that is straight from the CNP’s play­book, most promi­nent­ly his ‘war on woke’ cru­sade to purge pub­lic edu­ca­tion of any­thing that could be defined as ‘crit­i­cal race the­o­ry’, includ­ing the active purg­ing of ‘wok­e­ness’ out of the lib­er­al New Col­lege pub­lic state col­lege. Not only is Ron DeSan­tis not afraid to use the pow­er of the state to impose the CNP’s moral­i­ty on the pub­lic at large but he’s effec­tive­ly built his polit­i­cal brand around it.

And that all brings us to the lat­est pre­view from Ron DeSan­tis’s Flori­da about what we can expect from ‘total fas­cist’ sec­ond Trump term. A sec­ond term that won’t just be defined by fas­cist actions in the White House. Gov­er­nors like Ron DeSan­tis are going to be more empow­ered than ever, after all. It’s going to be fed­er­al fas­cism for all, but those those unlucky enough to have a ‘total fas­cist’ gov­er­nor, it’ll be state fas­cism too. Sort of a ‘fed­er­al­ism of fas­cism’ for Amer­i­ca’s com­ing New Nor­mal. Whether or not Amer­i­cans wit­ness the kinds of bru­tal­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with Nazi Ger­many remains to be seen, although Trump’s recent com­ments on the cam­paign trail about the “ene­my with­in” does­n’t bode well. But some sort of ‘soft’ fas­cism is more or less guar­an­teed. The kind of soft fas­cism that makes it very clear to the pub­lic at large that there are cer­tain lines that are not to be crossed if you know what’s good for you. Intim­i­da­tion, but soft intim­i­da­tion, at least at first.

The kind of soft intim­i­da­tion res­i­dents of Flori­da have been wit­ness­ing for months now, in response to a bal­lot ini­tia­tive Gov­er­nor DeSan­tis would rather see off the bal­lot: Amend­ment 4, a bal­lot ini­tia­tive that, if passed, would enshrined the right to an abor­tion for the res­i­dents of Flori­da up to the moment of fetal via­bil­i­ty. It’s an amend­ment that effec­tive­ly serves as a rebuke to Flori­da’s new abor­tion law that just came into effect in May of this year. An abor­tion law that leaves preg­nant women with just a six week win­dow to read­i­ly access an abor­tion. Keep in mind that many women don’t even know they are preg­nant at six weeks. And while the new law does per­mit abor­tions after six weeks in the case of a med­ical emer­gency that pos­es a risk to the health of the moth­er, those are the kinds of ‘excep­tions’ that often have excep­tions of their own. And doc­tors who par­tic­i­pate in a non-approved abor­tion can them­selves face crim­i­nal charges. As one Flori­da doc­tor describe, the state of Flori­da has ascribed her and her col­leagues a “super­hu­man abil­i­ty to pre­dict out­comes that we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have that abil­i­ty to pre­dict,” result­ing in sit­u­a­tions where “physi­cians are choos­ing to keep them­selves safe over help­ing moms.”

Flori­da’s new rules are so con­fus­ing and murky that the Flori­da Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion end­ed up issu­ing a set of tem­po­rary emer­gency rules in an attempt to clar­i­fy the sit­u­a­tion, spec­i­fy­ing three con­di­tions that the state rec­og­nized as pos­ing a risk to the health of a moth­er: pre­ma­ture rup­ture of mem­branes, ectopic preg­nan­cy and molar preg­nan­cy. As we might expect, this attempt at clar­i­ty just mud­dled the sit­u­a­tion even more, rais­ing all sorts of ques­tions about every oth­er med­ical com­pli­ca­tion that could pos­si­bly arise. As that same Flori­da doc­tor put it, “Here we are with lay­er upon lay­er of rules and lay­er upon lay­er of gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion, which is not result­ing in bet­ter clar­i­ty or bet­ter care.”

That per­va­sive con­fu­sion over Flori­da’s new abor­tion law and what con­sti­tutes a valid health excep­tion is part of what makes Amend­ment 4 the kind of bal­lot mea­sure Ron DeSan­tis would pre­fer vot­ers did­n’t have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote on in this elec­tion. It’s not a mat­ter of spec­u­la­tion. DeSan­tis’s admin­is­tra­tion has made this abun­dant­ly clear, in Flori­da’s courts in par­tic­u­lar, as it has tak­en one step after anoth­er to neu­tral­ize Amend­ment 4. It start­ed with a legal chal­lenge to get the bal­lot mea­sure thrown off the bal­lot entire­ly. When that failed in the courts, the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion launched an unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion into the sig­na­tures col­lect­ed to get Amend­ment 4 on the bal­lot in the first place. An inves­ti­ga­tion that assumed local elec­tion super­vi­sors had val­i­dat­ed fraud­u­lent peti­tion sig­na­tures and involved police show­ing up at the homes of peti­tion sign­ers, ask­ing them to con­firm they signed the peti­tion.

That’s right, ran­dom peo­ple who signed the peti­tion to get Amend­ment 4 on Flori­da’s bal­lot this year had police show up at their doors to ques­tion them about it. Even worse is the fact that, even if the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion is cor­rect in its declared sus­pi­cions that tens of thou­sands of sig­na­tures were actu­al­ly fraud­u­lent, the peti­tion still have over 100,000 sig­na­tures beyond the required 891,000 nec­es­sary to get it put bal­lot. The unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion in peti­tion sig­na­ture fraud can’t suc­ceed. And yet it hap­pened, with police show­ing up at the doors of peti­tion sign­ers. It’s a pre­view of the kind of ‘soft’ fas­cism we can expect a lot more of under a nation­al Project 2025 par­a­digm.

But the offi­cial intim­i­da­tion did­n’t stop there. The DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion has also been spend­ing tax-pay­er funds on a pub­lic mes­sage cam­paign that includes tele­vi­sion and radio ads, along with a web­site fea­tur­ing mes­sages like “Flori­da is Pro­tect­ing Life” and “Don’t let the fear­mon­gers lie to you.” This end­ed up with the group behind Amend­ment 4 suing the state and accus­ing it of wag­ing a state-backed “dirty tricks” cam­paign that is ille­gal­ly using tax-pay­er mon­ey to finance a pub­lic mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign. As we’re going to see, a judge recent­ly tossed the law­suit for rather iron­ic rea­sons, rul­ing that the case is “not jus­ti­cia­ble by courts because polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot,” adding that courts “must trust the peo­ple to decide what infor­ma­tion is impor­tant to them.” It’s a rather iron­ic rul­ing because, as we’re also going to see, the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion has been threat­en­ing the employ­ees of local tele­vi­sion sta­tion with crim­i­nal charges should they air a pro-Amend­ment 4 ad. Even worse, the legal threats against the tele­vi­sion sta­tion employ­ees were issued on Octo­ber 3, just a few days after that court rul­ing. So the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion win a legal case on the basis that “polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot”, and imme­di­ate­ly pro­ceeds to issue legal threats against the air­ing of an ad it does­n’t like.

So what is the basis for the legal threats against tele­vi­sion sta­tion employ­ees over air­ing of a pro-Amend­ment 4 ad? Well, the rea­son­ing appar­ent­ly being that the ad spread mis­in­for­ma­tion about the health dan­gers posed by Flori­da’s new abor­tion laws because there are no dan­gers thanks to Flori­da’s med­ical excep­tions. The chair of the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (FCC) has already come out against the legal threats, point­ing out that threats “against broad­cast sta­tions for air­ing con­tent that con­flicts with the government’s views are dan­ger­ous and under­mine the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of free speech.”

The alleged­ly crim­i­nal ad in ques­tion describes the sto­ry of a real Flori­da woman who was fac­ing a med­ical night­mare in 2022. The kind of med­ical night­mare that could be life threat­en­ing under the new six week abor­tion law. 18 weeks into her preg­nan­cy, the woman began los­ing her abil­i­ty to speak. Even­tu­al­ly she learned she had an incur­able brain tumor of such sever­i­ty that only sev­en per­cent of patients with her con­di­tion sur­vive more than 5 years. In oth­er words, there was no med­ical treat­ment that could pos­si­bly save her life. Only extend it. How would such a case be han­dled under Flori­da’s new law? After all, when the Flori­da Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion issued its tem­po­rary set of emer­gency med­ical sit­u­a­tions that would auto­mat­i­cal­ly allow for an abor­tion, they did­n’t list ter­mi­nal ill­ness­es. It’s a real gray area. Beyond that, as we’re going to see, a recent report by Physi­cians for Human Rights described the expe­ri­ences of a ter­mi­nal­ly ill Flori­da woman fac­ing a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion after the new law has tak­en effect. The woman, deal­ing with ter­mi­nal pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, found her­self unex­pect­ed­ly preg­nant. It was espe­cial­ly unex­pect­ed because she had been off and on chemother­a­py for the past five years. Imme­di­ate­ly upon learn­ing about her preg­nan­cy, her doc­tor sus­pend­ing chemother­a­py because it could harm the fetus. The woman was even­tu­al­ly able to secure the right to an abor­tion, but only after her doc­tor had to spend more than a week try­ing to get the prop­er forms to file for a waiv­er. Then, after get­ting approval, the only health care provider they could find who would pro­vide the abor­tion was a four hour dri­ve from the wom­an’s home. The kind of dri­ve that a ter­mi­nal­ly ill preg­nant can­cer patient prob­a­bly should be avoid­ing if pos­si­ble for obvi­ous rea­sons.

So at the same time the state of Flori­da has had a law­suit over its anti-Amend­ment 4 mes­sag­ing cam­paign pro­tect­ed under the rea­son­ing that “polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot”, we have the state of Flori­da threat­en­ing tele­vi­sion sta­tion employ­ees with crim­i­nal charges if they air a pro-Amend­ment 4 ad. And that’s on top of an unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged peti­tion sig­na­ture fraud that end­ed up send­ing police to the homes of peti­tion sign­ers. It’s soft fas­cism, Flori­da style. The kind of soft fas­cism that, again, is pre­sum­ably going to get a lot hard­er should Trump return to office and begin imple­ment­ing the Project 2025 agen­da. It’s Ron DeSan­tis’s agen­da too, after all.

Can we expect Amend­ment 4 to pass? That’s unclear. While polls sug­gest the Amend­ment has the sup­port of a major­i­ty of vot­ers, bal­lot ini­tia­tives need 60 per­cent sup­port in Flori­da and it’s very pos­si­ble it won’t get that lev­el of sup­port. It’s also pos­si­ble that will hap­pen, which is part of the con­text this sto­ry. Every vote counts on this issue. Which means every intim­i­dat­ed non-vote counts too.

But also keep in mind that find­ing means of neu­tral­iz­ing abor­tion as a polit­i­cal issue isn’t just a key polit­i­cal goal for Ron DeSan­tis now that he’s imposed an abor­tion law that prob­a­bly does­n’t have the sup­port of a major­i­ty of Florid­i­ans. Neu­tral­iz­ing abor­tion as a polit­i­cal issue is one of the most press­ing chal­lenges for the entire Repub­li­can Par­ty at this point. Beyond that, the theo­crat­ic CNP has to find a way of both neu­tral­iz­ing the issue while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pres­sur­ing Repub­li­cans like DeSan­tis to pass even more restric­tive abor­tion mea­sures in one state after anoth­er. Don’t for­get how it was the Her­itage Foun­da­tion — the enti­ty tech­ni­cal­ly lead­ing the Project 2025 ini­tia­tive — that was press­ing for a ‘Heart­beat or bet­ter’ stance on abor­tion from the next Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, mean­ing they want a nom­i­nee who will sign a nation­al abor­tion law of six weeks or less. The post-Roe polit­i­cal fights over abor­tion have only begun. And ever since the fall of Roe scram­bled one of the most potent polit­i­cal light­ning rods of the last gen­er­a­tion, one of the biggest ques­tions fac­ing the Domin­ion­ist ‘Reli­gious Right’ that forms the core of the con­tem­po­rary GOP’s pow­er struc­ture is the ques­tion of how they are plan­ning on polit­i­cal­ly neu­tral­iz­ing abor­tion as a pro­gres­sive mobi­liz­ing issue. Ron DeSan­tis’s qui­et war on Amend­ment 4 is a tem­plate.

It’s all a grim reminder that Don­ald Trump is the only total fas­cist who will find him­self with unchecked pow­er dur­ing a sec­ond Trump term. All of his theo­crat­ic fel­low trav­el­ers get to flex their fas­cist mus­cles too. So if the idea of a fas­cist Trump unleashed has you on edge, try adding an army of fas­cist preach­ers to the list of things to wor­ry about. Because that’s a very real dan­ger. Trump is look­ing increas­ing­ly old and frail, after all. Some­thing is going to fol­low him.

Ok, here’s a quick review of the arti­cles we’re going to cov­er in the post:

* Octo­ber 11, 2024: Mark Mil­ley fears being court-mar­tialed if Trump wins, Wood­ward book says

In case you for­got that the guy about to be elect­ed to a term in office real­ly is a com­plete fas­cist, we got anoth­er reminder. This time from Bob Wood­ward’s lat­est book that includes some note­wor­thy rec­ol­lec­tions for retired Gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley. Rec­ol­lec­tions about how Don­ald Trump behaved behind the scenes. Which hap­pened to be like a “fas­cist to the core” and “he most dan­ger­ous per­son to this coun­try.” The kind of fas­cist who was very seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing forc­ing a retired gen­er­al who pub­licly crit­i­cized Trump out of retire­ment and back into ser­vice just so Trump could court mar­tial him and strip him of all his retire­ment ben­e­fits. As Mil­ley recounts, he was only able to talk Trump out of this plan after Mil­ley assured Trump the gen­er­al would be ‘tak­en care of’ by Mil­ley.

* June 14, 2024: Why providers say abor­tion ban excep­tions con­tin­ue to cause con­fu­sion

While the prospects of a sec­ond Trump term remain para­mount, the peo­ple of Flori­da have been wrestling with one of con­se­quences of the first Trump term thanks to Ron DeSan­tis’s new 6 week abor­tion ban that came into effect back in May. An abor­tion ban that promis­es to pro­tect the lives of preg­nant women fac­ing health risk with excep­tions to the six week ban. Excep­tions that, as Flori­da doc­tors are voic­ing, can be excep­tion­al­ly dif­fi­cult for doc­tors to know how to imple­ment. And with crim­i­nal charges poten­tial­ly fac­ing doc­tors who play a role in an abor­tion deemed to be unsanc­tioned, doc­tors are now find­ing them­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where they have to choose between the health of their patients and their own per­son­al legal risks. And when the state issue an emer­gency set of clar­i­fi­ca­tions spec­i­fy­ing dif­fer­ent types of com­pli­ca­tions that would be con­sid­ered a call for an excep­tion — like an ectopic preg­nan­cy — it only end­ed up cre­at­ing even more gray areas for all the oth­er med­ical sit­u­a­tions that could poten­tial­ly emerge.

* Octo­ber 7, 2024: DeSan­tis Threat­en­ing Jail Time for Run­ning Abor­tion Rights Ads in Flori­da

Flori­da’s abor­tion New Nor­mal isn’t just a com­pli­cat­ed, messy issue filled with med­ical gray areas that leg­is­la­tor can’t real­is­ti­cal­ly pre­dict and leg­is­late around. It’s a com­pli­cat­ed, messy issue filled with med­ical gray areas that will end up putting preg­nant women at risk of seri­ous med­ical com­pli­ca­tions or worse. But don’t let the state of Flori­da hear you say­ing that, lest you end up the fac­ing crim­i­nal charges for spread­ing dan­ger­ous mis­in­for­ma­tion that puts the pub­lic at risk. That real­ly is hap­pen­ing in Flori­da. And as Josh Mar­shall notes, it’s not like we haven’t seen one case after anoth­er of women across the US post-Roe of women hav­ing to wait until a med­ical com­pli­ca­tion becomes dead­ly before doc­tors feel legal­ly safe to per­form an abor­tion. The idea that the excep­tions in Flori­da’s new law are some­how not going to lead to those same kinds of sit­u­a­tions is absurd. And yet the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion is insist­ing that any such sug­ges­tion is dan­ger­ous mis­in­for­ma­tion that pos­es a threat to pub­lic health. As Mar­shall also notes, this is the kind of soft fas­cism we should expect a lot more of dur­ing a sec­ond Trump term. Because we’re already see­ing it in Ron DeSan­tis’s Flori­da. What hap­pens in Flori­da isn’t going to stay in Flori­da under a sec­ond Trump term. This isn’t Vegas. This is the Flori­da tem­plate for soft fas­cism. It’ll get worse, obvi­ous­ly. But it’s already off to a soft start in Flori­da.

* Octo­ber 8, 2024: Flori­da is threat­en­ing to pros­e­cute TV sta­tions over an abor­tion rights ad. The FCC chief calls it ‘dan­ger­ous’

The head of the FCC unsur­pris­ing­ly con­demned Flori­da’s crim­i­nal threats over the air­ing of an ad crit­i­ciz­ing the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion’s new abor­tion law. But it’s impor­tant to real­ize that these threats aren’t com­ing from a gov­ern­ment that is oth­er­wise play­ing a neu­tral role on this issue. The DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion is already spend­ing tax-pay­ing funds on tele­vi­sion and radio ads on top of a web­site that accus­es the pro-Amend­ment 4 groups of lies and fear­mon­ger­ing.

* Octo­ber 8, 2024: DeSan­tis Seeks to Silence Brain Can­cer Patient Speak­ing Out About Her Abor­tion

The illic­it ad in ques­tion isn’t about some pure hypo­thet­i­cal unlike­ly to ever occur. The woman in the ad is a real woman sim­ply shar­ing her med­ical real­i­ty and the fact that it’s unclear what hap­pens to oth­er women in her posi­tion under Flori­da’s new six week ban. What kinds of obsta­cles will ter­mi­nal­ly ill patients like her face under the new law should they dis­cov­er they’re preg­nant? Her brain tumor only gives or a sev­en per­cent chance of a five year sur­vival. There are no life sav­ing treat­ments avail­able. Gray areas about. And yet, rais­ing the fact that Flori­da’s new abor­tion law can’t eas­i­ly han­dle these sit­u­a­tions appar­ent­ly ques­tion pos­es a pub­lic health threat wor­thy of crim­i­nal sanc­tions, accord­ing to the DeSan­tis gov­ern­ment.

* Sep­tem­ber 13, 2024: Flori­da sued for using tax­pay­er mon­ey on web­site pro­mot­ing GOP spin on abor­tion ini­tia­tive

But the law­suits and legal threats aren’t just going in one direc­tion. Back in Sep­tem­ber, weeks before the legal threats were issued over the pro-Amend­ment 4 ad, Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom, the group behind Amend­ment 4, filed a law­suit of its own, accus­ing the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion of using tax­pay­ing fund­ing to fuel a pub­lic mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign of its own.

* Sep­tem­ber 17, 2024: What to know about Florida’s abor­tion peti­tion inves­ti­ga­tion

This isn’t just a sto­ry about law­suits and accu­sa­tions of pub­lic mis­in­for­ma­tion. Or legal threats against tele­vi­sion sta­tions. The DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion has been engaged in what sure looks like a weaponized inves­ti­ga­tion into the Amend­ment 4 peti­tion itself. An inves­ti­ga­tion that focus­es not on reject­ed peti­tion sig­na­tures but instead the accept­ed sig­na­tures, with an eye on find­ing rea­sons to inval­i­date pre­vi­ous­ly val­i­dat­ed sig­na­tures. It’s the kind of inves­ti­ga­tion into peti­tion sig­na­tures that elec­tion supervisor’s offices describe as unprece­dent­ed.

* Sep­tem­ber 10, 2024: Flori­da law enforcers are inves­ti­gat­ing the state’s abor­tion bal­lot ini­tia­tive. Here’s what to know

And as we’ve learned, the unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion into the Amend­ment 4 peti­tion sig­na­tures is more or less guar­an­teed to fail. Even if the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tions declared sus­pi­cions of tens of thou­sands of fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures is true, the ini­tia­tive exceed­ed the required sig­na­ture count by around 100,000 sig­na­tures. It can only suc­ceed as a form of pub­lic intim­i­da­tion. And as we’ve learned, a focus of the inves­ti­ga­tion has been the sig­na­tures val­i­dat­ed by local elec­tion super­vi­sors. In oth­er words, local elec­tion super­vi­sors are get­ting the mes­sage, “you are under sus­pi­cion for fraud” from the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion. But it’s not just elec­tion super­vi­sors fac­ing the intim­i­da­tion. Police have been show­ing up at the homes of peti­tion sign­ers, ask­ing them to ver­i­fy they signed the peti­tion. Noth­ing like this has hap­pened before. But it’s hap­pen­ing now.

* Octo­ber 2, 2024: Judge won’t block Flori­da agency from dis­sem­i­nat­ing ‘mis­in­for­ma­tion’ about abor­tion

Final­ly, we got a res­o­lu­tion to the law­suit over Flori­da’s tax-pay­ing financed anti-Amend­ment 4 pub­lic mes­sag­ing cam­paign: it can con­tin­ue because the case isn’t “jus­ti­cia­ble”. In oth­er words, the judge con­clud­ed that the courts have no say in this mat­ter at all. Why? Well, accord­ing to the judge, the case is “not jus­ti­cia­ble by courts because polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot” and that “polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot”. Keep in mind that it was rough­ly a week after this rul­ing that we first start­ed learn­ing about the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion’s cease-and-desist legal threats against tele­vi­sion sta­tions over the air­ing of that ad. In fact, the cease-and-desist let­ters were sent Octo­ber 3. So almost imme­di­ate­ly after this rul­ing, the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion threat­ened tele­vi­sion sta­tion employ­ees with crim­i­nal charges if they aired that ad.

“A fascist to the core.”

Ok, let’s get start­ed with this look at soft fas­cism Flori­da-style. But first, here’s a reminder of the larg­er con­text for this sto­ry. The con­text being that a “total fas­cist” is about to return to the White House, on a plat­form of polit­i­cal vengeance. Now, at this point, it might feel like the vengeance will be direct­ed at ‘elites’ like Mil­ley. But let’s not for­get that Trump is going to be return­ing to the White House with the full back of Amer­i­ca’s orga­nized theo­crat­ic fas­cists at the CNP and plans to imple­ment a Sched­ule F/Project 2025 nation­al purge. The kind of nation­al purge that prob­a­bly isn’t going to be very pop­u­lar with a major­i­ty of pub­lic. In oth­er words, the kind of nation­al purge that is going to make pub­lic intim­i­da­tion a much more impor­tant ‘pol­i­cy tool’ for not just Trump but gov­er­nors across the US. Because as Ron DeSan­tis is mak­ing clear in Flori­da, Trump isn’t the only aspir­ing fas­cist the Amer­i­can pub­lic needs to be wor­ry­ing about:

The Guardian

Mark Mil­ley fears being court-mar­tialed if Trump wins, Wood­ward book says

Retired US army gen­er­al fears unusu­al action of being recalled to uni­form for ret­ri­bu­tion, vet­er­an reporter writes

Mar­tin Pen­gel­ly in Wash­ing­ton
Fri 11 Oct 2024 08.53 EDT

Mark Mil­ley, a retired US army gen­er­al who was chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Don­ald Trump and Joe Biden, fears being recalled to uni­form and court-mar­tialed should Trump defeat Kamala Har­ris next month and return to pow­er.

“He is a walk­ing, talk­ing adver­tise­ment of what he’s going to try to do,” Mil­ley recent­ly “warned for­mer col­leagues”, the vet­er­an Wash­ing­ton Post reporter Bob Wood­ward writes in an upcom­ing book. “He’s say­ing it and it’s not just him, it’s the peo­ple around him.”

Wood­ward cites Steve Ban­non, Trump’s for­mer cam­paign chair and White House strate­gist now jailed for con­tempt of Con­gress, as say­ing of Mil­ley: “We’re gonna hold him account­able.”

Trump’s wish to recall and court-mar­tial retired senior offi­cers who crit­i­cized him in print has been report­ed before, includ­ing by Mark Esper, Trump’s sec­ond sec­re­tary of defense. In Woodward’s telling, in a 2020 Oval Office meet­ing with Mil­ley and Esper, Trump “yelled” and “shout­ed” about William McRaven, a for­mer admi­ral who led the 2011 raid in Pak­istan in which US spe­cial forces killed Osama bin Laden and Stan­ley McChrys­tal, the retired spe­cial forces gen­er­al whose men killed anoth­er al-Qai­da leader, Abu Musab al-Zar­qawi, in Iraq in 2006.

Mil­ley was able to per­suade Trump to back down, Wood­ward writes, but fears no such guardrails will be in place if Trump is re-elect­ed.

Wood­ward also describes Mil­ley receiv­ing “a non-stop bar­rage of death threats” since his retire­ment last year, and quotes the for­mer gen­er­al as telling him, of Trump: “No one has ever been as dan­ger­ous to this coun­try.”

Mil­ley spoke to Wood­ward for his pre­vi­ous report­ing. Wood­ward now reports the for­mer gen­er­al as say­ing: “He is the most dan­ger­ous per­son ever. I had sus­pi­cions when I talked to you about his men­tal decline and so forth, but now I real­ize he’s a total fas­cist. He is now the most dan­ger­ous per­son to this coun­try.

“A fas­cist to the core.”

...

Mil­ley was chair of the joint chiefs of staff from 2019 to 2023. His attempts to cope with Trump have been wide­ly report­ed – par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to Trump’s demands for mil­i­tary action against pro­test­ers for racial jus­tice in the sum­mer of 2020 and, lat­er that year, Trump’s attempt to stay in pow­er despite los­ing the elec­tion to Biden.

Last year, mark­ing his retire­ment, Mil­ley appeared to take a direct swipe at Trump, then a can­di­date for a third suc­ces­sive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant or a dic­ta­tor, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dic­ta­tor,” Mil­ley told a mil­i­tary audi­ence at Joint Base Myer-Hen­der­son Hall in Arling­ton, Vir­ginia. “We don’t take an oath to an indi­vid­ual. We take an oath to the con­sti­tu­tion, and we take an oath to the idea that is Amer­i­ca, and we’re will­ing to die to pro­tect it.”

Since then, Trump has brushed aside Repub­li­can rivals to seize the nom­i­na­tion, cam­paigned against first Biden then Har­ris, and sur­vived two assas­si­na­tion attempts. Less than a month from elec­tion day, he and Har­ris are locked in a tight race.

In office, Trump mem­o­rably insist­ed senior mil­i­tary offi­cers owed their loy­al­ty to him, even report­ed­ly telling his sec­ond chief of staff, the retired marine gen­er­al John Kel­ly, US gen­er­als should “be like the Ger­man gen­er­als” who Trump insist­ed were “total­ly loy­al” to Adolf Hitler dur­ing the sec­ond world war. Kel­ly men­tioned mil­i­tary assas­si­na­tion plots against Hitler but Trump was not con­vinced.

As told by Wood­ward, in 2020 Trump became enraged by pieces McRaven wrote for the Wash­ing­ton Post and the New York Times – writ­ing in the Post that “there is noth­ing left to stop the tri­umph of evil” – and com­ments McChrys­tal made on CNN, call­ing Trump “immoral” and “dis­hon­est”.

“As com­man­der-in-chief” of US armed forces, Wood­ward writes, “Trump had extra­or­di­nary pow­er over retired com­mis­sioned offi­cers. It was with­in his author­i­ty to recall them to active duty and court-mar­tial them. But it had only been done a few times in Amer­i­can his­to­ry and for very seri­ous crimes. For instance, when a retired two-star [gen­er­al] was charged in 2017 with six counts of rap­ing a minor while on active duty in the 1980s.”

So Trump sum­moned Mil­ley and Esper. The pres­i­dent demand­ed action but the two men told him not to seek to pun­ish McRaven and McChrys­tal, because they had a right to voice their opin­ions and because it would back­fire, draw­ing atten­tion to their words.

“The pres­i­dent didn’t want to hear it,” Wood­ward writes.

So Mil­ley switched tack.

“‘Mr Pres­i­dent,’ Mil­ley said. ‘I’m the senior mil­i­tary offi­cer respon­si­ble for the good order and dis­ci­pline of gen­er­al offi­cers and I’ll take care of this.’

“Trump’s head whipped round. ‘You real­ly will?’ he asked skep­ti­cal­ly.

“‘Absolute­ly,’ Mil­ley assured him.

“‘OK, you take care of it,’ Pres­i­dent Trump said.”

Such dra­mat­ic Oval Office scenes are famil­iar from pre­vi­ous books by Wood­ward and legions of com­pet­ing reporters and for­mer Trump offi­cials. Accord­ing to Woodward’s new report­ing, Mil­ley did take action after fend­ing Trump off, call­ing McRaven and McChrys­tal and warn­ing them to “step off the pub­lic stage”.

“‘Pull it back,’ Mil­ley said. If Trump actu­al­ly used his author­i­ty to recall them to duty, there was lit­tle Mil­ley could do.”

...

Trump has giv­en such fig­ures plen­ty of rea­son to wor­ry. Among pro­lif­er­at­ing cam­paign-trail con­tro­ver­sies, the for­mer pres­i­dent has fre­quent­ly voiced his desire for revenge on oppo­nents and crit­ics, includ­ing by using the FBI and Depart­ment of Jus­tice to mount polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions. At ral­lies, Trump has fre­quent­ly told crowds: “I am your ret­ri­bu­tion.”

The Utah sen­a­tor Mitt Rom­ney, the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee in 2012, was recent­ly asked about pos­si­ble con­se­quences of his own oppo­si­tion to Trump includ­ing votes to con­vict in both his impeach­ment tri­als.

“I think he has shown by his pri­or actions that you can take him at his word,” a “sud­den­ly sub­dued” Rom­ney told the Atlantic. “So I would take him at his word.”

...

“Since retir­ing, Mil­ley had received a non-stop bar­rage of death threats that he, at least in part, attrib­uted to Trump’s repeat­ed attempts to dis­cred­it him.

“‘He is incit­ing peo­ple to vio­lence with vio­lent rhetoric,’ Mil­ley told his wife. ‘But he does it in such a way it’s through the pow­er of sug­ges­tion, which is exact­ly what he did on 6 Jan­u­ary” 2021, the day Trump incit­ed sup­port­ers to attack Con­gress, in hope of over­turn­ing his elec­tion defeat.

“As a for­mer chair­man, Mil­ley was pro­vid­ed round-the-clock gov­ern­ment secu­ri­ty for two years. But he had tak­en addi­tion­al pre­cau­tions at sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al expense, installing bul­let-proof glass and blast-proof cur­tains at his home.”

————

“Mark Mil­ley fears being court-mar­tialed if Trump wins, Wood­ward book says” by Mar­tin Pen­gel­ly; The Guardian; 10/11/2024

““A fas­cist to the core.””

A fas­cist threat like nev­er before. A total fas­cist who is now the most dan­ger­ous per­son in the Unit­ed States. Gen­er­al Mil­ley was­n’t minc­ing his words. The kind of words that will very pos­si­bil­i­ty illic­it a form of exec­u­tive ret­ri­bu­tion should Trump return to office:

...
Wood­ward also describes Mil­ley receiv­ing “a non-stop bar­rage of death threats” since his retire­ment last year, and quotes the for­mer gen­er­al as telling him, of Trump: “No one has ever been as dan­ger­ous to this coun­try.”

Mil­ley spoke to Wood­ward for his pre­vi­ous report­ing. Wood­ward now reports the for­mer gen­er­al as say­ing: “He is the most dan­ger­ous per­son ever. I had sus­pi­cions when I talked to you about his men­tal decline and so forth, but now I real­ize he’s a total fas­cist. He is now the most dan­ger­ous per­son to this coun­try.

...

In office, Trump mem­o­rably insist­ed senior mil­i­tary offi­cers owed their loy­al­ty to him, even report­ed­ly telling his sec­ond chief of staff, the retired marine gen­er­al John Kel­ly, US gen­er­als should “be like the Ger­man gen­er­als” who Trump insist­ed were “total­ly loy­al” to Adolf Hitler dur­ing the sec­ond world war. Kel­ly men­tioned mil­i­tary assas­si­na­tion plots against Hitler but Trump was not con­vinced.
...

But Mil­ley isn’t the only high rank­ing mil­i­tary fac­ing the prospect of Trump’s vengeance. Retired admi­ral William McRaven was almost recalled back in to duty just so Trump could court-mar­tial him in response to McRaven’s anti-Trump edi­to­ri­als. Mil­ley even­tu­al­ly con­vinced Trump that he was ‘take care of it’ on behalf of Trump. And while McRaven was­n’t court-mar­tialed, he was warned by Mil­ley to “step off the pub­lic stage”. The same warn­ing Mil­ley also issued to retired gen­er­al Stan­ley McChrys­tal:

...
Trump’s wish to recall and court-mar­tial retired senior offi­cers who crit­i­cized him in print has been report­ed before, includ­ing by Mark Esper, Trump’s sec­ond sec­re­tary of defense. In Woodward’s telling, in a 2020 Oval Office meet­ing with Mil­ley and Esper, Trump “yelled” and “shout­ed” about William McRaven, a for­mer admi­ral who led the 2011 raid in Pak­istan in which US spe­cial forces killed Osama bin Laden and Stan­ley McChrys­tal, the retired spe­cial forces gen­er­al whose men killed anoth­er al-Qai­da leader, Abu Musab al-Zar­qawi, in Iraq in 2006.

Mil­ley was able to per­suade Trump to back down, Wood­ward writes, but fears no such guardrails will be in place if Trump is re-elect­ed.

...

As told by Wood­ward, in 2020 Trump became enraged by pieces McRaven wrote for the Wash­ing­ton Post and the New York Times – writ­ing in the Post that “there is noth­ing left to stop the tri­umph of evil” – and com­ments McChrys­tal made on CNN, call­ing Trump “immoral” and “dis­hon­est”.

“As com­man­der-in-chief” of US armed forces, Wood­ward writes, “Trump had extra­or­di­nary pow­er over retired com­mis­sioned offi­cers. It was with­in his author­i­ty to recall them to active duty and court-mar­tial them. But it had only been done a few times in Amer­i­can his­to­ry and for very seri­ous crimes. For instance, when a retired two-star [gen­er­al] was charged in 2017 with six counts of rap­ing a minor while on active duty in the 1980s.”

So Trump sum­moned Mil­ley and Esper. The pres­i­dent demand­ed action but the two men told him not to seek to pun­ish McRaven and McChrys­tal, because they had a right to voice their opin­ions and because it would back­fire, draw­ing atten­tion to their words.

“The pres­i­dent didn’t want to hear it,” Wood­ward writes.

So Mil­ley switched tack.

“‘Mr Pres­i­dent,’ Mil­ley said. ‘I’m the senior mil­i­tary offi­cer respon­si­ble for the good order and dis­ci­pline of gen­er­al offi­cers and I’ll take care of this.’

“Trump’s head whipped round. ‘You real­ly will?’ he asked skep­ti­cal­ly.

“‘Absolute­ly,’ Mil­ley assured him.

“‘OK, you take care of it,’ Pres­i­dent Trump said.”

Such dra­mat­ic Oval Office scenes are famil­iar from pre­vi­ous books by Wood­ward and legions of com­pet­ing reporters and for­mer Trump offi­cials. Accord­ing to Woodward’s new report­ing, Mil­ley did take action after fend­ing Trump off, call­ing McRaven and McChrys­tal and warn­ing them to “step off the pub­lic stage”.

“‘Pull it back,’ Mil­ley said. If Trump actu­al­ly used his author­i­ty to recall them to duty, there was lit­tle Mil­ley could do.”
...

And then there’s the real­i­ty that any­one in a posi­tion of promi­nence who earns Trump’s ire ends up get­ting swarmed with death threats. It’s a mul­ti-faceted intim­i­da­tion-based par­a­digm for con­trol. Every­one ‘gets the mes­sage’, one way or anoth­er:

...
“Since retir­ing, Mil­ley had received a non-stop bar­rage of death threats that he, at least in part, attrib­uted to Trump’s repeat­ed attempts to dis­cred­it him.

“‘He is incit­ing peo­ple to vio­lence with vio­lent rhetoric,’ Mil­ley told his wife. ‘But he does it in such a way it’s through the pow­er of sug­ges­tion, which is exact­ly what he did on 6 Jan­u­ary” 2021, the day Trump incit­ed sup­port­ers to attack Con­gress, in hope of over­turn­ing his elec­tion defeat.

“As a for­mer chair­man, Mil­ley was pro­vid­ed round-the-clock gov­ern­ment secu­ri­ty for two years. But he had tak­en addi­tion­al pre­cau­tions at sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al expense, installing bul­let-proof glass and blast-proof cur­tains at his home.”
...

But as chill­ing as Gen­er­al Mil­ley’s account may be, there’s also the fact that fig­ures like Mil­ley, McChrys­tal, and McRaven are very promi­nent pub­lic fig­ures. These aren’t ran­dom vot­ers fac­ing ret­ri­bu­tion for sim­ply not vot­ing for Trump. It’s the kind of dis­tinc­tion that can make it very tempt­ing to assume the kind of abus­es of state pow­er for polit­i­cal ret­ri­bu­tion would only appy to ‘elites’. Maybe pun­dits or celebri­ties could face con­se­quences for speak­ing out, but not aver­age ran­dom peo­ple, right?

Florida’s Abortion New Normal. Coming to a State Near You

Well, as we’re going to see in the rest of this post, not only should aver­age peo­ple be con­cerned about the pow­er of the state being used against them for polit­i­cal ret­ri­bu­tion, but we don’t have to spec­u­late about what that might look like. We’re already get­ting a pre­view. In Flori­da, thanks to Flori­da gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis and the array of unprece­dent­ed legal actions cur­rent­ly under­way in oppo­si­tion to Amend­ment 4, a pro­posed amend­ment the Flori­da state con­sti­tu­tion that would pro­tect abor­tion rights up to the moment of via­bil­i­ty. If passed, the new amend­ment would effec­tive­ly be a pow­er­ful rebuke of the new Flori­da state law that came into effect back in May. A law that impos­es a six week lim­it on abor­tion — which hap­pens to be before many women even real­ize they are preg­nant — but also includes some excep­tions — for the health of the moth­er, as well as rape or incest — up to 15 weeks, as long as two doc­tors can be found to ver­i­fy the cir­cum­stances.

The law is a promi­nent exam­ple of the post-Roe ‘new Nor­mal’ fac­ing women in states across the US, includ­ing the real­i­ty that get­ting those excep­tion in the case of a health emer­gency can be eas­i­er said than done. For exam­ple, what hap­pens if a women under­go­ing can­cer treat­ment for ter­mi­nal can­cer gets preg­nant? Can the can­cer treat­ments which will harm the fetus be allowed to con­tin­ue under Flori­da’s new law? Keep in mind that the law states the excep­tions to the abor­tion restric­tions are only allowed when they save the life of the moth­er. Ter­mi­nal­ly ill can­cer patients aren’t hav­ing their lives saved with their can­cer ther­a­py. Just extend­ed. Would a ter­mi­nal­ly woman who can only have her life extend­ed even qual­i­fy for the excep­tion under Flori­da’s new law? It’s no longer a hypo­thet­i­cal ambi­gu­i­ty, as Flori­da doc­tors were warn­ing in the months fol­low­ing Flori­da’s new six week abor­tion ban:

Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

Why providers say abor­tion ban excep­tions con­tin­ue to cause con­fu­sion

By Regan McCarthy
June 14, 2024 1:34 PM ET

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — When Dr. Rachel Humphrey went to med­ical school, she says she nev­er imag­ined car­ing for her patients could land her in prison. These days, that isn’t out of the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty.

“I’ve got to be care­ful because I’m tak­ing care of moms that have life-threat­en­ing con­di­tions,” Humphrey says. “I’ve got to make sure that I do not run afoul of this law.”

As of last month, Flori­da bans most abor­tions after six weeks. That law includes an excep­tion that allows an abor­tion lat­er in a preg­nan­cy if it’s need­ed to save “a major bod­i­ly func­tion,” or the life of the preg­nant per­son — oth­er than for men­tal health rea­sons. And, doc­tors who par­tic­i­pate in an abor­tion, oth­er than what’s allowed by law, could face felony crim­i­nal charges.

Many doc­tors say the law isn’t clear and with such steep penal­ties, Humphrey says it’s cre­at­ing a chill­ing effect.

“Which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, means that physi­cians are choos­ing to keep them­selves safe over help­ing moms,” Humphrey says.

Humphrey says an exemp­tion to pro­tect a preg­nant person’s life makes sense on the sur­face, but that it means the state has ascribed her and her col­leagues a “super­hu­man abil­i­ty to pre­dict out­comes that we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have that abil­i­ty to pre­dict.”

The Flori­da Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion issued a set of tem­po­rary emer­gency rules, in an attempt, offi­cials say, to clear up con­fu­sion.

The rules list three con­di­tions that could put a preg­nant person’s life at risk: pre­ma­ture rup­ture of mem­branes, ectopic preg­nan­cy and molar preg­nan­cy. The rules say ter­mi­na­tion of a preg­nan­cy for those con­di­tions is not con­sid­ered, or report­ed as, an abor­tion. Some doc­tors are ques­tion­ing what that means for con­di­tions not cov­ered by the emer­gency rules and what hap­pens when the rules expire. Humphrey says it’s just made things more con­fus­ing.

“Here we are with lay­er upon lay­er of rules and lay­er upon lay­er of gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion, which is not result­ing in bet­ter clar­i­ty or bet­ter care,” Humphrey says.

When do Florida’s excep­tions apply?

Humphrey says a woman under her care had sur­vived a heart attack not long before becom­ing preg­nant and that con­di­tions com­mon in preg­nan­cy, like hyper­ten­sion and bleed­ing, could pose a threat to the patient’s life. But Humphrey says she can­not say how great that risk is, and even if she could, it’s unclear what the risk thresh­old is for Florida’s excep­tions to apply.

“Let’s say that this patient who’s had heart attacks actu­al­ly has chil­dren at home” and has a great fear of dying because her moth­er died in her mid-40s, Humphrey says. “Is it right to say politi­cians know bet­ter in any spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stance and this patient has to take risks?”

It’s a con­cern that’s risen to Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers at the high­est lev­el, like Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris. She spoke in Jack­sonville when Florida’s six-week abor­tion ban took effect at the begin­ning of May. Har­ris says the con­fu­sion doc­tors are fac­ing is putting patients in dan­ger.

“Since Roe was over­turned, I have met women who were refused care dur­ing a mis­car­riage,” Har­ris said. “ I met a woman who was turned away from an emer­gency room and it was only when she devel­oped sep­sis that she received care.”

Oppo­nents argue con­cerns over con­fu­sion are a polit­i­cal talk­ing point

But some abor­tion oppo­nents say con­fu­sion about the life of the moth­er excep­tion is caused by state­ments like Har­ris’. Kelsey Pritchard, with the group Susan B. Antho­ny Pro-Life Amer­i­ca, says that’s the rea­son doc­tors and patients are afraid. “I wish we could all just come to the agree­ment that it is not okay to put women’s lives in dan­ger for polit­i­cal rea­sons,” she says.

The Flori­da Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion declined a request for an inter­view, but in a post on social media, Sec­re­tary Jason Wei­da wrote that clar­i­fi­ca­tion through the emer­gency rules was need­ed because abor­tion access advo­cates are “lying for polit­i­cal gain.”

Pritchard agrees.

“It’s pret­ty clear when you lis­ten to any Demo­c­rat talk about the issue of abor­tion why it’s need­ed,” Pritchard says. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s because they’ve been rely­ing on this false talk­ing point that women will die if you don’t vote the way they want you to vote — or if you put in place a heart­beat law.”

...

Poten­tial­ly mil­lions of vot­ers will have the chance to weigh in on abor­tion access in Novem­ber, includ­ing in Flori­da where a pro­posed state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment could cod­i­fy the right to abor­tion access up to via­bil­i­ty. It’s some­thing Humphrey hopes will res­onate with vot­ers across the state.

...

The pro­posed amend­ment would need approval from 60% of vot­ers to pass.

————

“Why providers say abor­tion ban excep­tions con­tin­ue to cause con­fu­sion” By Regan McCarthy; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 06/14/2024

“As of last month, Flori­da bans most abor­tions after six weeks. That law includes an excep­tion that allows an abor­tion lat­er in a preg­nan­cy if it’s need­ed to save “a major bod­i­ly func­tion,” or the life of the preg­nant per­son — oth­er than for men­tal health rea­sons. And, doc­tors who par­tic­i­pate in an abor­tion, oth­er than what’s allowed by law, could face felony crim­i­nal charges.”

As we can see, doc­tors had bet­ter be extreme sure a patient absolute­ly needs an abor­tion to save their life. Oth­er­wise crim­i­nal penal­ties could fol­low. And sure, there’s going to be some med­ical cir­cum­stances where the answer is very clear. But what should be expect to hap­pen when it’s not one of those med­ical­ly clear cir­cum­stances? A woman with a fam­i­ly his­to­ry that sug­gests an enhanced risk for life-threat­en­ing com­pli­ca­tions, for exam­ple. As one Flori­da doc­tor warns, you should expect doc­tors to keep them­selves safe from the law, instead of help­ing moms stay healthy. That may not be ide­al, but it’s a very human response to being placed in a moral­ly ambigu­ous no win sit­u­a­tion. This is the New Nor­mal for Flori­da doc­tors, along with all Flori­da females of child­bear­ing age, thanks to Ron DeSan­tis’s new six week abor­tion ban that just came into effect back in May. It’s a brave new world for preg­nan­cy in Flori­da:

...
Many doc­tors say the law isn’t clear and with such steep penal­ties, Humphrey says it’s cre­at­ing a chill­ing effect.

“Which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, means that physi­cians are choos­ing to keep them­selves safe over help­ing moms,” Humphrey says.

Humphrey says an exemp­tion to pro­tect a preg­nant person’s life makes sense on the sur­face, but that it means the state has ascribed her and her col­leagues a “super­hu­man abil­i­ty to pre­dict out­comes that we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have that abil­i­ty to pre­dict.”

...

Humphrey says a woman under her care had sur­vived a heart attack not long before becom­ing preg­nant and that con­di­tions com­mon in preg­nan­cy, like hyper­ten­sion and bleed­ing, could pose a threat to the patient’s life. But Humphrey says she can­not say how great that risk is, and even if she could, it’s unclear what the risk thresh­old is for Florida’s excep­tions to apply.

“Let’s say that this patient who’s had heart attacks actu­al­ly has chil­dren at home” and has a great fear of dying because her moth­er died in her mid-40s, Humphrey says. “Is it right to say politi­cians know bet­ter in any spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stance and this patient has to take risks?”
...

And then there’s the appar­ent attempt by the Flori­da state gov­ern­ment to clar­i­fy these ambi­gu­i­ties, lay­ing out three spe­cif­ic cas­es where an abor­tion was unam­bigu­ous­ly allowed after 6 weeks. And yet, as we can see, all those clar­i­fi­ca­tions did was exac­er­bate the ambi­gu­i­ties about all the oth­er cir­cum­stances where an abor­tion might be nec­es­sary. It was the kind of clar­i­fi­ca­tion that mere­ly clar­i­fied the prob­lem:

...
The Flori­da Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion issued a set of tem­po­rary emer­gency rules, in an attempt, offi­cials say, to clear up con­fu­sion.

The rules list three con­di­tions that could put a preg­nant person’s life at risk: pre­ma­ture rup­ture of mem­branes, ectopic preg­nan­cy and molar preg­nan­cy. The rules say ter­mi­na­tion of a preg­nan­cy for those con­di­tions is not con­sid­ered, or report­ed as, an abor­tion. Some doc­tors are ques­tion­ing what that means for con­di­tions not cov­ered by the emer­gency rules and what hap­pens when the rules expire. Humphrey says it’s just made things more con­fus­ing.

“Here we are with lay­er upon lay­er of rules and lay­er upon lay­er of gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion, which is not result­ing in bet­ter clar­i­ty or bet­ter care,” Humphrey says.

...

The Flori­da Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion declined a request for an inter­view, but in a post on social media, Sec­re­tary Jason Wei­da wrote that clar­i­fi­ca­tion through the emer­gency rules was need­ed because abor­tion access advo­cates are “lying for polit­i­cal gain.”
...

And then we can the com­ments from some of the main pro­po­nents of Flori­da’s new abor­tion law, like Kelsey Pritchard, speak­ing on behalf of the Susan B. Antho­ny Pro-Life Amer­i­ca. Pritchard goes on to lament how unfair it is to sug­gest that a “heart­beat law” would could wom­en’s lives at risk, char­ac­ter­iz­ing such claims as the real rea­son doc­tors are con­fused about what’s allowed under new laws. A “heart­beat law” is, of course, the kind of law Flori­da just enact­ed since 6 weeks is the typ­i­cal start of a fetal heart­beat. This is a good time to recall the key role the Susan B. Antho­ny Pro-Life Amer­i­ca group played in for­mu­lat­ing the new Flori­da law in the first place. First, recall how the the group is effec­tive­ly an arm of the CNP. Not only is the group’s pres­i­dent, Mar­jorie Dan­nen­felser, a CNP mem­ber (and also a board mem­ber of key CNP enti­ty Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom where House Speak­er Mike John­son got his start), but the min­utes for CNP meet­ings have revealed how the group implores mem­bers to vol­un­teer and con­tribute “to key can­di­dates and orga­ni­za­tions (Free­dom­Works, Tea Par­ty Patri­ots, [anti-abor­tion group] Susan B. Antho­ny List) that are engaged in turn­ing out vot­ers” for the midterms.” Also recall how Den­nen­felser was stand­ing next to Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham when Gra­ham announced his ‘com­pro­mise’ pro­pos­al for the GOP’s nation­al pol­i­cy on abor­tion fol­low­ing the over­turn­ing of Roe back in Octo­ber of 2022. A a 15-week nation­al ban, with the now famil­iar excep­tions — rape, incest, health of the moth­er sim­i­lar to Flori­da’s cur­rent law. And as the Her­itage Foun­da­tion warned at the time, they were inter­est­ed in ‘heart­beat or bet­ter’ stances on nation­al abor­tion poli­cies by who­ev­er the GOP select­ed for its pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee in 2024. In oth­er words, we should expect the con­ser­v­a­tive estab­lish­men­t’s goals as ‘heart­beat or bet­ter’ when the oppor­tu­ni­ty aris­es. And as we’re learn­ing with Flori­da, those excep­tions can have excep­tions of their own. Gray areas that make doc­tors uncer­tain about whether or not they want to risk pro­vid­ing any sort of care for preg­nant women at all or even con­tin­ue work­ing in these states. It’s a reminder that legal gray areas at the heart of this sto­ry about the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion con­test­ing the idea that its abor­tion pol­i­cy puts women at risk are like­ly com­ing to every state should we see a Repub­li­can sweep of the White House and Con­gress by the time this elec­tion plays out. When ‘heart­beat or bet­ter’ goes nation­al, it’s Flori­da every­where for preg­nant women in the Unit­ed States. So when Pritchard declares how the real rea­son doc­tors and patients fear Flori­da’s law puts wom­en’s health at risk is because of “false talk­ing point that women will die if you don’t vote the way they want you to vote — or if you put in place a heart­beat law,” he’s remind­ing us that ‘heart­beat or bet­ter’ real­ly is the nation­al plan. It’s a qui­et admis­sion of some very sig­nif­i­cant plans for a sec­ond Trump term:

...
It’s a con­cern that’s risen to Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers at the high­est lev­el, like Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris. She spoke in Jack­sonville when Florida’s six-week abor­tion ban took effect at the begin­ning of May. Har­ris says the con­fu­sion doc­tors are fac­ing is putting patients in dan­ger.

“Since Roe was over­turned, I have met women who were refused care dur­ing a mis­car­riage,” Har­ris said. “ I met a woman who was turned away from an emer­gency room and it was only when she devel­oped sep­sis that she received care.”

Oppo­nents argue con­cerns over con­fu­sion are a polit­i­cal talk­ing point

But some abor­tion oppo­nents say con­fu­sion about the life of the moth­er excep­tion is caused by state­ments like Har­ris’. Kelsey Pritchard, with the group Susan B. Antho­ny Pro-Life Amer­i­ca, says that’s the rea­son doc­tors and patients are afraid. “I wish we could all just come to the agree­ment that it is not okay to put women’s lives in dan­ger for polit­i­cal rea­sons,” she says.

...

“It’s pret­ty clear when you lis­ten to any Demo­c­rat talk about the issue of abor­tion why it’s need­ed,” Pritchard says. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s because they’ve been rely­ing on this false talk­ing point that women will die if you don’t vote the way they want you to vote — or if you put in place a heart­beat law.”
...

And then the arti­cle brings us to the top­ic that’s a focus of this post: the bal­lot ini­tia­tive Flori­da vot­ers are going to be vot­ing on too this elec­tion. An ini­tia­tive to enshrine abor­tion rights in Flori­da’s con­sti­tu­tion up to the moment of via­bil­i­ty. Which is obvi­ous­ly a lot lat­er than 6 weeks. It’s the kind of ini­tia­tive that, polls sug­gest, a major­i­ty of vot­ers — nation­al­ly or in Flori­da alone — sup­port. But pass­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment bal­lot in Flori­da isn’t a sim­ple major­i­ty vote. 60% sup­port is required. And vot­ers may or may not sup­port Amend­ment 4 at that lev­el, depend­ing on the poll. That’s also part of the con­text of this sto­ry. The bat­tle over Amend­ment 4 is one where every vote counts. Which means every intim­i­da­tion tac­tic counts too:

...
Poten­tial­ly mil­lions of vot­ers will have the chance to weigh in on abor­tion access in Novem­ber, includ­ing in Flori­da where a pro­posed state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment could cod­i­fy the right to abor­tion access up to via­bil­i­ty. It’s some­thing Humphrey hopes will res­onate with vot­ers across the state.
...

It’s that abor­tion access amend­ment that we’re going to be look­ing at in the rest of this post. Or rather, the extra­or­di­nary steps tak­en by the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion to derail the bal­lot mea­sure. Extra­or­di­nary steps that include not just a law­suit to get the mea­sure thrown off the bal­lot entire­ly but, when those attempts were reject­ed by the courts, threat­en­ing local tele­vi­sion sta­tions with crim­i­nal sanc­tions if they air a pro-Amend­ment 4 ad.

Ron DeSantis’s Soft Fascism Preview: Florida’s New Abortion Laws are so Safe for Women It’s a Crime to Suggest Otherwise

Yep, the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion’s Flori­da State Depart­ment of Health has been issu­ing legal threats in response to the air­ing of an Amend­ment 4 ad that basi­cal­ly describes to view­ers these kinds of legal ambi­gu­i­ties now in effect in Flori­da under the new 6 week abor­tion ban. The ad focus­es on the sto­ry of a real Flori­da woman who was fac­ing a med­ical night­mare in 2022. 18 weeks into her preg­nan­cy, the woman began los­ing her abil­i­ty to speak, only to learn she had an incur­able brain tumor with just a sev­en per­cent chance of sur­viv­ing more than five years. Incur­able, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly imme­di­ate­ly lethal. How would such a case be han­dled under Flori­da’s new law? Well, as a recent report by Physi­cians for Human Rights described, a ter­mi­nal­ly ill Flori­da woman has already faced a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion under the new law. The woman was even­tu­al­ly able to secure the right to an abor­tion, but only after her doc­tor had to spend more than a week try­ing to get the prop­er forms to file for a waiv­er. Then, after get­ting approval, the only health care provider they could find who would pro­vide the abor­tion was a four hour dri­ve from the wom­an’s home.

And yet, despite that real­i­ty of the med­ical risks inher­ent in Flori­da’s ‘new nor­mal’ for abor­tion access, Flori­da State Depart­ment of Health is insist­ing that the pro-Amend­ment 4 ad describ­ing the expe­ri­ence of deal­ing with abor­tion restric­tions for ter­mi­nal­ly ill can­cer patients con­sti­tutes a threat to pub­lic health and there­fore crim­i­nal charges could be filed against sta­tion employ­ees who air the ad. And as Josh Mar­shall describes below, this isn’t just a sto­ry about the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion using the pow­er of the state to silence crit­ics. This is a pre­view for what the kind of overt author­i­tar­i­an­ism we can expect at a nation­al lev­el under a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy. The kind of author­i­tar­i­an­ism that makes sure it’s not just ‘lib­er­al elites’ who are feel­ing the intim­i­da­tion:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Edi­tor’s Blog

DeSan­tis Threat­en­ing Jail Time for Run­ning Abor­tion Rights Ads in Flori­da

By Josh Mar­shall
Octo­ber 7, 2024 11:28 p.m.

Flori­da has become the state where ele­ments of a future, sec­ond-Trump-pres­i­den­cy Amer­i­ca already come into view. We’re see­ing some of these things hap­pen­ing right now in Flori­da. The exam­ple I’m about to share with you legit­i­mate­ly shocked me. (That’s a high bar.) It’s about the pro-choice bal­lot amend­ment which would restore Roe pro­tec­tions in Flori­da if it gets the sup­port of 60% of vot­ers. As in most oth­er states, get­ting to 50% isn’t that dif­fi­cult. 60% is much hard­er. To head off even the chance that the bal­lot ini­tia­tive might hit that chal­leng­ing high bar, the state of Flori­da is already spend­ing a sub­stan­tial amount of tax pay­er dol­lars cam­paign­ing against the ini­tia­tive. Now we learn that the state is quite lit­er­al­ly threat­en­ing jail time for the employ­ees of sta­tions that agree to run one of the ads for the pro-choice amend­ment. You heard that right — not sue under some claim of defama­tion but actu­al crim­i­nal charges.

When I first read this I thought it was one of those civ­il suits. Oppos­ing cam­paigns will occa­sion­al­ly do this to scare sta­tions out of run­ning their opponent’s ads. I’ve nev­er seen a state gov­ern­ment do it, but par­tic­u­lar­ly liti­gious cam­paigns occa­sion­al­ly do. But it’s not a civ­il suit. They’re threat­en­ing crim­i­nal charges.

...

Flori­da cur­rent­ly has a six-week abor­tion ban. The ad claims that the law endan­gers women who have a press­ing med­ical need for an abor­tion and can’t get one in the state. The Flori­da State Depart­ment of Health, the agency threat­en­ing pros­e­cu­tion, says the law has excep­tions for any­one in this sit­u­a­tion. Tech­ni­cal­ly, it does. If you’ve fol­lowed these cas­es, though, you’ll know it’s not that sim­ple. The law can state an excep­tion for the “life of the moth­er.” But just what kind of dan­ger gets you into that cat­e­go­ry is nev­er explained. What’s more, doc­tors are leery of act­ing on their inter­pre­ta­tion of the law for fear they could be pros­e­cut­ed for manslaugh­ter or mur­der if the state dis­agrees. That’s a big risk. Put sim­ply, the penum­bra of legal jeop­ardy that hangs over these deci­sions fre­quent­ly forces women to get per­ilous­ly close to dying or actu­al­ly go past the point they can be saved before doc­tors will treat them. We’ve seen ver­sions of this sto­ry in red states around the coun­try. It’s that issue. The state of Flori­da says that air­ing this ad, mak­ing that demon­stra­bly accu­rate claim, is a crim­i­nal offense because it con­fus­es women about state law and might lead them not to seek care.

...

This would pret­ty clear­ly nev­er pass muster in court. But the sta­tion employ­ees are being threat­ened with going to jail for 60 days. When you’re the one who might go to jail, con­fi­dence that a court will even­tu­al­ly toss the charges isn’t that reas­sur­ing. The First Amend­ment gives pret­ty ample pro­tec­tions even for demon­stra­bly false claims, cer­tain­ly in the realm of polit­i­cal speech. But what’s being claimed here is clear­ly accu­rate. If you were being as gen­er­ous as pos­si­ble to the state of Flori­da, you would still have to say that both sides of the fac­tu­al dis­pute have a good-faith belief that their argu­ment is cor­rect. That’s a text­book exam­ple of a case where it’s pre­cise­ly the polit­i­cal process which is the place to sort out the dis­agree­ment.

In a dire Trumpian future, you’re almost cer­tain­ly not going to have an end to elec­tions. They still have elec­tions in Hun­gary, Turkey, even Rus­sia. What you’d have is stuff like this, states act­ing as what amounts to an active bel­liger­ent in the polit­i­cal process by mobi­liz­ing state pow­er.

It’s already hap­pen­ing in Flori­da.

———-

“DeSan­tis Threat­en­ing Jail Time for Run­ning Abor­tion Rights Ads in Flori­da” By Josh Mar­shall; Talk­ing Points Memo; 10/07/2024

“In a dire Trumpian future, you’re almost cer­tain­ly not going to have an end to elec­tions. They still have elec­tions in Hun­gary, Turkey, even Rus­sia. What you’d have is stuff like this, states act­ing as what amounts to an active bel­liger­ent in the polit­i­cal process by mobi­liz­ing state pow­er.”

It’s a pre­view of what could be in store for every­day Amer­i­cans under a sec­ond Trump term. Sure, many of the out­lines of nor­mal­cy will still be there. Elec­tions will still be held. But at the same time, the force of the state will be wield­ed in unprece­dent­ed ways to steadi­ly nudge that the MAGA/CNP agen­da into real­i­ty. Legal intim­i­da­tion won’t just be a con­cern of elite polit­i­cal ene­mies of the site like Mark Mil­ley. Aver­age peo­ple are going to ‘get the mes­sage’ too, poten­tial­ly via threat of pros­e­cu­tion. For crimes that would have pre­vi­ous­ly been unthink­able. Like the ‘crime’ of a tele­vi­sion sta­tion air­ing an ad in favor of Amend­ment 4, the pro-abor­tion rights bal­lot ini­tia­tive that, if passed, would enshrine abor­tion pro­tec­tions in the Flori­da state con­sti­tu­tion. An amend­ment that gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis does­n’t want to see the light of day. And he’s mak­ing it very clear to Flori­da vot­ers how he feels on the mat­ter, though an array of legal actions that crit­ics describe as a “dirty tricks” cam­paign designed to sink the amend­ment. The kind of dirty tricks cam­paign that, as we’ll see, does­n’t actu­al­ly have a real shot of remov­ing of the amend­ment from the bal­lot before the elec­tion. The only thing that can be actu­al­ly accom­plished is intim­i­da­tion. The intim­i­da­tion of aver­age Flori­da vot­ers who hap­pen to want to sup­port abor­tion rights. And as the fol­low­ing CNN piece describes, the threat of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for any tele­vi­sion sta­tions that air the pro-Amend­ment 4 ad has already drawn a rebuke from none oth­er than the head of the FCC. “Threats against broad­cast sta­tions for air­ing con­tent that con­flicts with the government’s views are dan­ger­ous and under­mine the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of free speech,” accord­ing to FCC chair Jes­si­ca Rosen­wor­cel:

CNN

Flori­da is threat­en­ing to pros­e­cute TV sta­tions over an abor­tion rights ad. The FCC chief calls it ‘dan­ger­ous’

By Bri­an Stel­ter and Liam Reil­ly, CNN
Pub­lished 7:35 PM EDT, Tue Octo­ber 8, 2024

In a move that crit­ics are call­ing a fla­grant abuse of pow­er, Florida’s Depart­ment of Health is threat­en­ing to bring crim­i­nal charges against local TV sta­tions air­ing a cam­paign ad to over­turn the state’s six-week abor­tion ban signed by Gov. Ron DeSan­tis.

The unusu­al warn­ing from the Repub­li­can-con­trolled state agency prompt­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic chair of the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion to step in on Tues­day.

Jes­si­ca Rosen­wor­cel, the FCC chair, said that sta­tions should not be intim­i­dat­ed for air­ing polit­i­cal ads.

“The right of broad­cast­ers to speak freely is root­ed in the First Amend­ment,” Rosen­wor­cel said in a state­ment. “Threats against broad­cast sta­tions for air­ing con­tent that con­flicts with the government’s views are dan­ger­ous and under­mine the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of free speech.”

...

The Flori­da Depart­ment of Health, how­ev­er, cit­ed local statutes in the cease-and-desist let­ters sent last week to WCJB in Gainesville and WFLA in Tam­pa.

The threat from the health depart­ment under­scores the inten­si­ty of the polit­i­cal bat­tle over Amend­ment 4, a bal­lot mea­sure that would enshrine abor­tion rights in Florida’s con­sti­tu­tion. The state gov­ern­ment led by DeSan­tis has cam­paigned aggres­sive­ly against the amend­ment, includ­ing by run­ning its own TV ads.

The cease-and-desist let­ters from John Wil­son, gen­er­al coun­sel for the state health depart­ment, appear to be part of that cam­paign. The let­ters were first report­ed by Orlan­do inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Jason Gar­cia and state news out­let Flori­da Pol­i­tics.

In the let­ters, Wil­son tar­get­ed an ad pro­duced by the group Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom, which is behind the “Yes on 4 Cam­paign” in favor of abor­tion rights.

The 30-sec­ond ad depicts a woman named Car­o­line who became preg­nant with her sec­ond child after a brain can­cer diag­no­sis.

“The doc­tors knew that if I did not end my preg­nan­cy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daugh­ter would lose her mom,” the woman says in the ad. “Flori­da has now banned abor­tions, even in cas­es like mine.”

The ad then encour­ages view­ers to vote for the amend­ment this fall.

Wilson’s let­ter says it is “cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly false” to claim that “cur­rent Flori­da law does not allow physi­cians to per­form abor­tions nec­es­sary to pre­serve the lives and health of preg­nant women.” Thus, he wrote, air­ing the ad is “dan­ger­ous” to the public’s health, and the health depart­ment could use its legal pow­ers to ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom respond­ed to Wilson’s let­ter by call­ing it “uncon­sti­tu­tion­al state action” and “a text­book exam­ple of gov­ern­ment coer­cion that vio­lates the First Amend­ment.”

...

———–

“Flori­da is threat­en­ing to pros­e­cute TV sta­tions over an abor­tion rights ad. The FCC chief calls it ‘dan­ger­ous’” By Bri­an Stel­ter and Liam Reil­ly; CNN; 10/08/2024

“Wilson’s let­ter says it is “cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly false” to claim that “cur­rent Flori­da law does not allow physi­cians to per­form abor­tions nec­es­sary to pre­serve the lives and health of preg­nant women.” Thus, he wrote, air­ing the ad is “dan­ger­ous” to the public’s health, and the health depart­ment could use its legal pow­ers to ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.”

The air­ing of ads in favor of Amend­ment 4 would so be “dan­ger­ous” to pub­lic health that any tv sta­tion employ­ees who air the ad should be crim­i­nal­ly pros­e­cut­ed. That was the legal threat issued in the cease-and-desist let­ters sent to two Flori­da tv sta­tions by the state health depart­ment. A legal threat that earned a rebuke from the FCC:

...
The unusu­al warn­ing from the Repub­li­can-con­trolled state agency prompt­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic chair of the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion to step in on Tues­day.

Jes­si­ca Rosen­wor­cel, the FCC chair, said that sta­tions should not be intim­i­dat­ed for air­ing polit­i­cal ads.

“The right of broad­cast­ers to speak freely is root­ed in the First Amend­ment,” Rosen­wor­cel said in a state­ment. “Threats against broad­cast sta­tions for air­ing con­tent that con­flicts with the government’s views are dan­ger­ous and under­mine the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of free speech.”

...

The threat from the health depart­ment under­scores the inten­si­ty of the polit­i­cal bat­tle over Amend­ment 4, a bal­lot mea­sure that would enshrine abor­tion rights in Florida’s con­sti­tu­tion. The state gov­ern­ment led by DeSan­tis has cam­paigned aggres­sive­ly against the amend­ment, includ­ing by run­ning its own TV ads.

The cease-and-desist let­ters from John Wil­son, gen­er­al coun­sel for the state health depart­ment, appear to be part of that cam­paign. The let­ters were first report­ed by Orlan­do inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Jason Gar­cia and state news out­let Flori­da Pol­i­tics.
...

So what was so dan­ger­ous about these ads? Well, they sug­gest­ed that the Flori­da’s 6 week abor­tion ban could pose a risk to the health of preg­nant women. Yep. That’s the big dan­ger. Now, it’s impor­tant to note that this arti­cle actu­al­ly mis­char­ac­ter­izes the con­tent of the ad, which depicts a woman who became preg­nant and then found out she was preg­nant. She did­n’t get preg­nant after learn­ing about her diag­no­sis as the arti­cle sug­gests. The ad essen­tial­ly high­lights the kind of implic­it dan­gers in try­ing to safe­ly bal­ance strict lim­its on abor­tion with health loop­holes. Loope­holes that can, them­selves, have their own poten­tial loop­holes, like a sce­nario involv­ing a slow grow­ing brain tumor which must be treat­ed but that does­n’t pose an imme­di­ate risk to the life of the moth­er

...
In the let­ters, Wil­son tar­get­ed an ad pro­duced by the group Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom, which is behind the “Yes on 4 Cam­paign” in favor of abor­tion rights.

The 30-sec­ond ad depicts a woman named Car­o­line who became preg­nant with her sec­ond child after a brain can­cer diag­no­sis.

“The doc­tors knew that if I did not end my preg­nan­cy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daugh­ter would lose her mom,” the woman says in the ad. “Flori­da has now banned abor­tions, even in cas­es like mine.”

The ad then encour­ages view­ers to vote for the amend­ment this fall.

...

Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom respond­ed to Wilson’s let­ter by call­ing it “uncon­sti­tu­tion­al state action” and “a text­book exam­ple of gov­ern­ment coer­cion that vio­lates the First Amend­ment.”
...

And as the fol­low­ing Rolling Stone piece describes, Car­o­line’s spe­cif­ic case isn’t some med­ical anom­aly. Ter­mi­nal­ly ill can­cer patients are in an obvi­ous legal gray area under Flori­da’s new law.

Terminal Illness Just Got Worse for Pregnant Women in Florida. But Don’t Talk About It

Yes, Car­o­line is ter­mi­nal­ly ill, with only 7 per­cent of peo­ple with her form of can­cer sur­viv­ing more than five years. There’s no cure. Just treat­ments that can extend her life and make it a lit­tle eas­i­er. Treat­ments that could pose a risk to a fetus like chemother­a­py, and which there­fore must come to a halt the moment a doc­tor dis­cov­ers a preg­nan­cy. In Car­o­line’s case, the new law was­n’t yet in effect. But as we’ll see, a recent report from Physi­cians for Human Rights has already doc­u­ment­ed a case of a Flori­da woman with ter­mi­nal pan­cre­at­ic can­cer who unex­pect­ed­ly became preg­nant. She was able to even­tu­al­ly get a health excep­tion waiv­er to Flori­da’s new abor­tion restric­tions, but only after her doc­tor had to spend more than a week try­ing to get the spe­cif­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion need­ed to sub­mit a request for a waiv­er. And then when the excep­tion was grant­ed, the only facil­i­ty avail­able to per­form the pro­ce­dure was a four hour dri­ve. The kind of dri­ve that is obvi­ous­ly not the kind of thing a doc­tor would rec­om­mend for a ter­mi­nal­ly ill preg­nant woman:

Rolling Stone

DeSan­tis Seeks to Silence Brain Can­cer Patient Speak­ing Out About Her Abor­tion

As Ron DeSan­tis tries to pro­tect his state’s abor­tion ban, his agency is threat­en­ing to pros­e­cute TV sta­tions for shar­ing a dying woman’s sto­ry

By Tes­sa Stu­art
Octo­ber 8, 2024

Flori­da Gov. Ron DeSan­tis is putting the full weight of the Flori­da gov­ern­ment behind an effort to defeat a bal­lot mea­sure that would pro­tect abor­tion access in the state — includ­ing by enlist­ing gov­ern­ment lawyers in a cam­paign to silence a young moth­er with ter­mi­nal brain can­cer who is warn­ing of the dan­ger Florida’s strict ban pos­es to women like her.

This Novem­ber, Flori­da res­i­dents will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote on Amend­ment 4; if passed, the mea­sure will enshrine the right to abor­tion “before via­bil­i­ty or when nec­es­sary to pro­tect the patient’s health” in Florida’s con­sti­tu­tion. The pitch is broad­ly pop­u­lar with Florid­i­ans: A Sep­tem­ber poll showed the mea­sure attract­ing sup­port from 76 per­cent of vot­ers.

But DeSan­tis, who has signed two sep­a­rate abor­tion bans into law — restrict­ing the pro­ce­dure first at 15 weeks, then six weeks ges­ta­tion — is des­per­ate­ly try­ing to tank Amend­ment 4. First, he worked with the Her­itage Foun­da­tion to add lan­guage to the bal­lot mea­sure imply­ing that re-legal­iz­ing abor­tion would have a neg­a­tive fis­cal impact on the state. Amid that base­less warn­ing, state agen­cies began spend­ing pub­lic mon­ey on TV and radio ads ped­dling mis­in­for­ma­tion about the mea­sure, as well as a web­site that claims Amend­ment 4 “threat­ens women’s safe­ty.”

...

The first time she was preg­nant, Car­o­line was ter­ri­bly nau­seous all nine months. The sec­ond time start­ed off as a com­par­a­tive breeze. “She was such an easy preg­nan­cy — until every­thing hap­pened,” she says.

Car­o­line, whose last name Rolling Stone agreed to with­hold for pri­va­cy and safe­ty con­cerns, was 18 weeks along when she start­ed los­ing her speech. “I could read a book, under­stand it, but the words that came out of my mouth were dif­fer­ent,” she says. “At first I thought maybe preg­nan­cy brain, until it became so bad with­in one week that I was teach­ing a class, and it was very much like stroke symp­toms — I wasn’t able to talk, I wasn’t able to read, I was very con­fused, and my sis­ter, who is a nurse, told me to go to the hos­pi­tal.”

Because she was preg­nant, the hos­pi­tal was cau­tious: She couldn’t get a CT scan out of con­cern for her baby, but she could get an MRI — with­out the con­trast. The results came back, and they showed a large mass on the lan­guage sec­tor of her brain — but with­out the detail that con­trast might pro­vide, it was hard to tell what it was. Her doc­tors said it might be a hem­or­rhag­ic stroke or a brain bleed of some kind. Or it could be a tumor.

Caroline’s med­ical team advised her to wait, and see if what­ev­er the image showed might be reab­sorbed by her brain. “But with­in a week,” she says, “I got way worse. The mass grew a lot, and by then I wasn’t able to say what month it was, what day, who the pres­i­dent was — any­thing.”

She was advised to under­go surgery, which revealed a malig­nant tumor — a grade IV glioma. Glioblas­toma is the dead­liest form of brain can­cer; there is no cure, and treat­ment can only slow its pro­gres­sion. Less than sev­en per­cent of patients sur­vive five years after diag­no­sis, accord­ing to the Nation­al Brain Tumor Soci­ety.

It was at this point that Car­o­line under­stood that she would have to ter­mi­nate her preg­nan­cy to obtain treat­ment for her can­cer. “I just want­ed to see my lit­tle girl again,” she says. “I want­ed to keep my baby as well. But … I wouldn’t be able to do the chemo nor the radi­a­tion, and they want­ed me to get on that as soon as pos­si­ble, because my tumor was very fast-grow­ing.”

By the time she had an affir­ma­tive diag­no­sis, Car­o­line was 21 weeks along. It was 2022, and abor­tion was still legal in Flori­da, the state where she has lived for more than 20 years. The abor­tion was a two-day process and emo­tion­al­ly dev­as­tat­ing — “absolute­ly the hard­est deci­sion I’ve ever made in my life,” she says — but she was able to ter­mi­nate her preg­nan­cy at a facil­i­ty near her home.

Today, Flori­da has a six-week abor­tion ban — one of the harsh­est restric­tions in the nation, with extreme­ly lim­it­ed excep­tions and extra­or­di­nar­i­ly oner­ous require­ments to qual­i­fy for those excep­tions. (DeSan­tis signed the law into effect a lit­tle less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court over­turned Roe v. Wade, end­ing the fed­er­al right to abor­tion.)

...

The day after the ad began air­ing, DeSan­tis’ Depart­ment of Health, through its gen­er­al coun­sel, John Wil­son, dis­patched a let­ter to Flori­da-based tele­vi­sion sta­tions car­ry­ing the ad, call­ing Caroline’s asser­tions “false” and “dan­ger­ous,” and the ad itself a “san­i­tary nui­sance,” while threat­en­ing the TV sta­tions with crim­i­nal penal­ties if the ad was not tak­en down with­in 24 hours. (The “san­i­tary nui­sance” log­ic is cir­cuitous, but essen­tial­ly, Wil­son argues the ad puts the lives of Flori­da women in dan­ger, and thus con­sti­tutes a crime of the kind the health depart­ment is autho­rized to pros­e­cute.)

Wil­son claims Florida’s ban would not pre­vent women in Caroline’s sit­u­a­tion from obtain­ing an abor­tion — it would mere­ly make the process extreme­ly bur­den­some for a can­cer patient like her. “[A]n abor­tion may be per­formed if ‘two physi­cians cer­ti­fy in writ­ing that, in rea­son­able med­ical judg­ment the ter­mi­na­tion of the preg­nan­cy is nec­es­sary to save the preg­nant woman’s life or avert a seri­ous risk of sub­stan­tial and irre­versible phys­i­cal impair­ment of a major bod­i­ly func­tion of the preg­nant woman oth­er than a psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion,’” Wil­son writes.

A recent report from Physi­cians for Human Rights recount­ed sim­i­lar obsta­cles a patient suf­fer­ing from ter­mi­nal pan­cre­at­ic can­cer encoun­tered after she became unex­pect­ed­ly preg­nant. “Because she had been on and off chemother­a­py and radi­a­tion for the bet­ter part of five years, because of her recur­rences, her peri­ods had been irreg­u­lar for ages … She has always want­ed to be preg­nant, but nev­er could because of her treat­ments,” the woman’s OB-GYN told researchers. “Her oncol­o­gist said, ‘We have to stop treat­ment unless you have an abor­tion, essen­tial­ly because this pos­es a risk to the preg­nan­cy.’”

In that instance, it took more than a week for that doc­tor to get the spe­cif­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion that would jus­ti­fy a health excep­tion under Florida’s ban, then arrange for an abor­tion at a hos­pi­tal that could accom­mo­date her med­ical risks, a four-hour dri­ve from her home.

“You want to grab these Supreme Court judges and bring them in the room and say, ‘Look what you are doing to peo­ple,’” the woman’s doc­tor told PHR. “Let this woman be able to receive pal­lia­tive chemother­a­py, which is the least we can do for her, for Christ’s sake.”

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Amend­ment 4 are accus­ing the Depart­ment of Health of an “uncon­sti­tu­tion­al attempt to coerce the sta­tion into cen­sor­ing pro­tect­ed speech,” and demand­ing the sta­tions keep the ad up on the air. “This is not just an unfound­ed request, it is an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al state action,” lawyers with the Elias Law Group wrote. “The let­ter is a text­book exam­ple of gov­ern­ment coer­cion that vio­lates the First Amend­ment.”

...

Lawyers for Amend­ment 4 go on to dis­pute Wilson’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the ad. “Caroline’s diag­no­sis was ter­mi­nal. Prac­ti­cal­ly, that means that an abor­tion would not have saved her life, only extend­ed it,” they write, argu­ing that Florida’s ban does not include excep­tions for such cas­es, attach­ing a signed dec­la­ra­tion for a doc­tor attest­ing to that fact.

So far, DeSan­tis’ admin­is­tra­tion appears to be los­ing the argu­ment. As of Tues­day, no Flori­da tele­vi­sion sta­tions had agreed to take down Caroline’s ad.

————

“DeSan­tis Seeks to Silence Brain Can­cer Patient Speak­ing Out About Her Abor­tion” By Tes­sa Stu­art; Rolling Stone; 10/08/2024

“This Novem­ber, Flori­da res­i­dents will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote on Amend­ment 4; if passed, the mea­sure will enshrine the right to abor­tion “before via­bil­i­ty or when nec­es­sary to pro­tect the patient’s health” in Florida’s con­sti­tu­tion. The pitch is broad­ly pop­u­lar with Florid­i­ans: A Sep­tem­ber poll showed the mea­sure attract­ing sup­port from 76 per­cent of vot­ers.”

Abor­tion rights are unam­bigu­ous­ly pop­u­lar. And if that poll show­ing 76 per­cent sup­port for Amend­ment 4 is accu­rate, DeSan­tis and his allies have their work cut out for them. Allies that include the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, which worked with DeSan­tis in an attempt to neg­a­tive­ly mod­i­fy the lan­guage of the amend­ment. This is a good time to recall how the Her­itage Foun­da­tion was push­ing for a ‘Heart­beat or bet­ter’ stance on abor­tion from the next Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, mean­ing they want a nom­i­nee who will sign a nation­al abor­tion law of six weeks or less. It’s also a good time to recall how DeSan­tis has more or less been the lead­ing Repub­li­can gov­er­nor in imple­ment­ing the CNP’s broad­er agen­da, includ­ing gut­ting the ‘wok­e­ness’ out of lib­er­al New Col­lege, which was effec­tive­ly a Project 2025 pre­view:

...
But DeSan­tis, who has signed two sep­a­rate abor­tion bans into law — restrict­ing the pro­ce­dure first at 15 weeks, then six weeks ges­ta­tion — is des­per­ate­ly try­ing to tank Amend­ment 4. First, he worked with the Her­itage Foun­da­tion to add lan­guage to the bal­lot mea­sure imply­ing that re-legal­iz­ing abor­tion would have a neg­a­tive fis­cal impact on the state. Amid that base­less warn­ing, state agen­cies began spend­ing pub­lic mon­ey on TV and radio ads ped­dling mis­in­for­ma­tion about the mea­sure, as well as a web­site that claims Amend­ment 4 “threat­ens women’s safe­ty.”
...

And as we can see from the inter­view with the real Car­o­line, she was 18 weeks preg­nant when the symp­toms of her brain tumor start­ed man­i­fest­ing, even­tu­al­ly forc­ing her to get an MRI, reveal­ing a dead­ly brain tumor that can­not be cured. Car­o­line is ter­mi­nal­ly ill and preg­nant. Can­cer treat­ment would have ter­mi­nat­ed the preg­nan­cy with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of sav­ing her life. Only extend­ing it and mak­ing it more com­fort­able. Less than sev­en per­cent of patients sur­vive five years after diag­no­sis, mean­ing Car­o­line is like­ly going to die soon. And as lawyers for Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom argue, the excep­tions Flori­da’s new 6‑week ban don’t cov­er patients like Car­o­line. Point­ing that out is appar­ent­ly what Flori­da’s depart­ment of health is declar­ing to be dan­ger­ous mis­in­for­ma­tion:

...
The first time she was preg­nant, Car­o­line was ter­ri­bly nau­seous all nine months. The sec­ond time start­ed off as a com­par­a­tive breeze. “She was such an easy preg­nan­cy — until every­thing hap­pened,” she says.

Car­o­line, whose last name Rolling Stone agreed to with­hold for pri­va­cy and safe­ty con­cerns, was 18 weeks along when she start­ed los­ing her speech. “I could read a book, under­stand it, but the words that came out of my mouth were dif­fer­ent,” she says. “At first I thought maybe preg­nan­cy brain, until it became so bad with­in one week that I was teach­ing a class, and it was very much like stroke symp­toms — I wasn’t able to talk, I wasn’t able to read, I was very con­fused, and my sis­ter, who is a nurse, told me to go to the hos­pi­tal.”

Because she was preg­nant, the hos­pi­tal was cau­tious: She couldn’t get a CT scan out of con­cern for her baby, but she could get an MRI — with­out the con­trast. The results came back, and they showed a large mass on the lan­guage sec­tor of her brain — but with­out the detail that con­trast might pro­vide, it was hard to tell what it was. Her doc­tors said it might be a hem­or­rhag­ic stroke or a brain bleed of some kind. Or it could be a tumor.

Caroline’s med­ical team advised her to wait, and see if what­ev­er the image showed might be reab­sorbed by her brain. “But with­in a week,” she says, “I got way worse. The mass grew a lot, and by then I wasn’t able to say what month it was, what day, who the pres­i­dent was — any­thing.”

She was advised to under­go surgery, which revealed a malig­nant tumor — a grade IV glioma. Glioblas­toma is the dead­liest form of brain can­cer; there is no cure, and treat­ment can only slow its pro­gres­sion. Less than sev­en per­cent of patients sur­vive five years after diag­no­sis, accord­ing to the Nation­al Brain Tumor Soci­ety.

It was at this point that Car­o­line under­stood that she would have to ter­mi­nate her preg­nan­cy to obtain treat­ment for her can­cer. “I just want­ed to see my lit­tle girl again,” she says. “I want­ed to keep my baby as well. But … I wouldn’t be able to do the chemo nor the radi­a­tion, and they want­ed me to get on that as soon as pos­si­ble, because my tumor was very fast-grow­ing.”

By the time she had an affir­ma­tive diag­no­sis, Car­o­line was 21 weeks along. It was 2022, and abor­tion was still legal in Flori­da, the state where she has lived for more than 20 years. The abor­tion was a two-day process and emo­tion­al­ly dev­as­tat­ing — “absolute­ly the hard­est deci­sion I’ve ever made in my life,” she says — but she was able to ter­mi­nate her preg­nan­cy at a facil­i­ty near her home.

Today, Flori­da has a six-week abor­tion ban — one of the harsh­est restric­tions in the nation, with extreme­ly lim­it­ed excep­tions and extra­or­di­nar­i­ly oner­ous require­ments to qual­i­fy for those excep­tions. (DeSan­tis signed the law into effect a lit­tle less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court over­turned Roe v. Wade, end­ing the fed­er­al right to abor­tion.)

...

Lawyers for Amend­ment 4 go on to dis­pute Wilson’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the ad. “Caroline’s diag­no­sis was ter­mi­nal. Prac­ti­cal­ly, that means that an abor­tion would not have saved her life, only extend­ed it,” they write, argu­ing that Florida’s ban does not include excep­tions for such cas­es, attach­ing a signed dec­la­ra­tion for a doc­tor attest­ing to that fact.
...

And as a recent report from Physi­cians for Human Rights makes clear, these kinds of cas­es are already hap­pen­ing in Flori­da under the new six week ban. In one case, a woman with ter­mi­nal pan­cre­at­ic can­cer had to stop her pal­lia­tive chemother­a­py for more than a week as her doc­tor tried to get the spe­cif­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion need to jus­ti­fy the health excep­tion. And then when the excep­tion was final­ly grant­ed, it only could hap­pen at a facil­i­ty that was a four hour dri­ve away. It’s under­scores how women in large states, geo­graph­i­cal­ly, with these kinds of abor­tion restric­tions are at extra risk of need­ing to tak­ing a long dri­ve once the waiv­er is grant­ed:

...
The day after the ad began air­ing, DeSan­tis’ Depart­ment of Health, through its gen­er­al coun­sel, John Wil­son, dis­patched a let­ter to Flori­da-based tele­vi­sion sta­tions car­ry­ing the ad, call­ing Caroline’s asser­tions “false” and “dan­ger­ous,” and the ad itself a “san­i­tary nui­sance,” while threat­en­ing the TV sta­tions with crim­i­nal penal­ties if the ad was not tak­en down with­in 24 hours. (The “san­i­tary nui­sance” log­ic is cir­cuitous, but essen­tial­ly, Wil­son argues the ad puts the lives of Flori­da women in dan­ger, and thus con­sti­tutes a crime of the kind the health depart­ment is autho­rized to pros­e­cute.)

Wil­son claims Florida’s ban would not pre­vent women in Caroline’s sit­u­a­tion from obtain­ing an abor­tion — it would mere­ly make the process extreme­ly bur­den­some for a can­cer patient like her. “[A]n abor­tion may be per­formed if ‘two physi­cians cer­ti­fy in writ­ing that, in rea­son­able med­ical judg­ment the ter­mi­na­tion of the preg­nan­cy is nec­es­sary to save the preg­nant woman’s life or avert a seri­ous risk of sub­stan­tial and irre­versible phys­i­cal impair­ment of a major bod­i­ly func­tion of the preg­nant woman oth­er than a psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion,’” Wil­son writes.

A recent report from Physi­cians for Human Rights recount­ed sim­i­lar obsta­cles a patient suf­fer­ing from ter­mi­nal pan­cre­at­ic can­cer encoun­tered after she became unex­pect­ed­ly preg­nant. “Because she had been on and off chemother­a­py and radi­a­tion for the bet­ter part of five years, because of her recur­rences, her peri­ods had been irreg­u­lar for ages … She has always want­ed to be preg­nant, but nev­er could because of her treat­ments,” the woman’s OB-GYN told researchers. “Her oncol­o­gist said, ‘We have to stop treat­ment unless you have an abor­tion, essen­tial­ly because this pos­es a risk to the preg­nan­cy.’”

In that instance, it took more than a week for that doc­tor to get the spe­cif­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion that would jus­ti­fy a health excep­tion under Florida’s ban, then arrange for an abor­tion at a hos­pi­tal that could accom­mo­date her med­ical risks, a four-hour dri­ve from her home.

“You want to grab these Supreme Court judges and bring them in the room and say, ‘Look what you are doing to peo­ple,’” the woman’s doc­tor told PHR. “Let this woman be able to receive pal­lia­tive chemother­a­py, which is the least we can do for her, for Christ’s sake.”
...

Is noti­fy­ing vot­ers about these very real legal obsta­cles to con­tin­u­ing can­cer treat­ment a risk to pub­lic health? Yes, accord­ing to Flori­da’s Depart­ment of State. It’s the kind of offi­cial stance on a sub­jec­tive issue that has many cry­ing foul over the Ron DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion’s action. Con­sti­tu­tion­al foul.

Ron DeSantis’s anti-Amendment 4 Political Actions Committee...Financed By the People of Florida

That’s all part of the con­text of Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom’s law­suit over Flori­da’s anti-Amend­ment 4 mes­sag­ing cam­paign. As the group argues in their law­suit, the DeSan­tis gov­ern­men­t’s anti-Amend­ment 4 cam­paign — which includes mes­sage like “Don’t let the fear­mon­gers lie to you” — is itself a tax-pay­er fund­ed mis­in­for­ma­tion mes­sag­ing cam­paign. And that law­suit is, of course, part of the con­text of the Flori­da State Depart­men­t’s cease-and-desist demands against tele­vi­sions that fol­lowed the fil­ing of this suit:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

Flori­da sued for using tax­pay­er mon­ey on web­site pro­mot­ing GOP spin on abor­tion ini­tia­tive

By KATE PAYNE
Updat­ed 11:24 AM CDT, Sep­tem­ber 13, 2024

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A polit­i­cal com­mit­tee behind the cam­paign to pass a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to abor­tion in Flori­da has filed a law­suit against a state health care agency that it alleges is car­ry­ing out a tax­pay­er-fund­ed “mis­in­for­ma­tion” cam­paign against the Novem­ber bal­lot mea­sure.

Crit­ics say the state-backed mes­sag­ing push is the lat­est “dirty trick” by Repub­li­can offi­cials in Flori­da to thwart the cit­i­zen-led ini­tia­tive to pro­tect abor­tion in the country’s third-largest state. Near­ly a mil­lion Florid­i­ans signed peti­tions to get the mea­sure known as Amend­ment 4 on the bal­lot, sur­pass­ing the more than 891,500 sig­na­tures required by the state.

The Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Flori­da and South­ern Legal Coun­sel filed the law­suit in a Leon Coun­ty cir­cuit court on Thurs­day on behalf of Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom, Inc., the orga­ni­za­tion behind Amend­ment 4.

The law­suit tar­gets a web­site, tele­vi­sion and radio ads cre­at­ed by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion to give Florid­i­ans “the truth” about the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment. If approved by at least 60% of Flori­da vot­ers, Amend­ment 4 would make abor­tions legal until the fetus is viable, as deter­mined by the patient’s health care provider.

The web­site launched this month states that “Amend­ment 4 threat­ens women’s safe­ty” and defends Florida’s cur­rent law, which bans most abor­tions after six weeks, under a ban­ner that reads “Flori­da is Pro­tect­ing Life” and “Don’t let the fear­mon­gers lie to you.”

In the legal fil­ing, attor­neys for the abor­tion rights cam­paign called on the court to imme­di­ate­ly halt the mes­sag­ing push and what they argue is the unlaw­ful use of tax­pay­er funds by state offi­cials in ser­vice of a polit­i­cal cam­paign, actions which they claim are infring­ing on the rights of Flori­da vot­ers.

“Florida’s gov­ern­ment has crossed a dan­ger­ous line by using pub­lic resources to mis­lead vot­ers and manip­u­late their choic­es in the upcom­ing elec­tion,” ACLU of Flori­da attor­ney Michelle Mor­ton said in a state­ment. “This law­suit aims to stop these uncon­sti­tu­tion­al efforts and restore integri­ty to our elec­toral process.”

...

In a post on the social media plat­form X before the law­suit was filed, AHCA Sec­re­tary Jason Wei­da tout­ed the agency’s new web­site.

To com­bat the lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing Florida’s abor­tion laws, @AHCA_FL has launched an improved trans­paren­cy page. The page fur­ther clar­i­fies the laws and reg­u­la­tions for abor­tion in Flori­da.

To see more please vis­it our web­site: https://t.co/BXPFulKag8

— Jason Wei­da (@JasonWeidaFL) Sep­tem­ber 5, 2024

“To com­bat the lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing Florida’s abor­tion laws, @AHCA_FL has launched an improved trans­paren­cy page,” Weida’s post reads. “To see more please vis­it our web­site.”

Repub­li­can Gov. Ron DeSan­tis has defend­ed the agency’s mes­sag­ing push — and a state inves­ti­ga­tion into tens of thou­sands of peti­tion sig­na­tures that were used to get Amend­ment 4 on the bal­lot. As a part of that probe, police have been show­ing up at the homes of some of the peo­ple who signed the peti­tion to ques­tion them.

Speak­ing to reporters before the law­suit was filed, DeSan­tis said the AHCA page is not polit­i­cal but is giv­ing Florid­i­ans “fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion” about the amend­ment.

“Every­thing that is put out is fac­tu­al. It is not elec­tion­eer­ing,” DeSan­tis said at a news con­fer­ence, adding, “I am glad they are doing it.”

———–

“Flori­da sued for using tax­pay­er mon­ey on web­site pro­mot­ing GOP spin on abor­tion ini­tia­tive” By KATE PAYNE; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 09/13/2024

“Crit­ics say the state-backed mes­sag­ing push is the lat­est “dirty trick” by Repub­li­can offi­cials in Flori­da to thwart the cit­i­zen-led ini­tia­tive to pro­tect abor­tion in the country’s third-largest state. Near­ly a mil­lion Florid­i­ans signed peti­tions to get the mea­sure known as Amend­ment 4 on the bal­lot, sur­pass­ing the more than 891,500 sig­na­tures required by the state.”

The lat­est dirty trick from DeSan­tis. That’s how Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom described the mes­sag­ing cam­paign rolled out by DeSan­tis’s office. A cam­paign financed with pub­lic funds fea­tur­ing slo­gans like “Don’t let the fear­mon­gers lie to you”:

...
The Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Flori­da and South­ern Legal Coun­sel filed the law­suit in a Leon Coun­ty cir­cuit court on Thurs­day on behalf of Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom, Inc., the orga­ni­za­tion behind Amend­ment 4.

The law­suit tar­gets a web­site, tele­vi­sion and radio ads cre­at­ed by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion to give Florid­i­ans “the truth” about the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment. If approved by at least 60% of Flori­da vot­ers, Amend­ment 4 would make abor­tions legal until the fetus is viable, as deter­mined by the patient’s health care provider.

The web­site launched this month states that “Amend­ment 4 threat­ens women’s safe­ty” and defends Florida’s cur­rent law, which bans most abor­tions after six weeks, under a ban­ner that reads “Flori­da is Pro­tect­ing Life” and “Don’t let the fear­mon­gers lie to you.”

In the legal fil­ing, attor­neys for the abor­tion rights cam­paign called on the court to imme­di­ate­ly halt the mes­sag­ing push and what they argue is the unlaw­ful use of tax­pay­er funds by state offi­cials in ser­vice of a polit­i­cal cam­paign, actions which they claim are infring­ing on the rights of Flori­da vot­ers.

“Florida’s gov­ern­ment has crossed a dan­ger­ous line by using pub­lic resources to mis­lead vot­ers and manip­u­late their choic­es in the upcom­ing elec­tion,” ACLU of Flori­da attor­ney Michelle Mor­ton said in a state­ment. “This law­suit aims to stop these uncon­sti­tu­tion­al efforts and restore integri­ty to our elec­toral process.”
...

But then there’s the rest of DeSan­tis’s efforts that aren’t per­sua­sion so much as intim­i­da­tion. Like the weird­ly aggres­sive state inves­ti­ga­tion into sig­na­ture fraud for the Amend­ment 4 peti­tion:

...
In a post on the social media plat­form X before the law­suit was filed, AHCA Sec­re­tary Jason Wei­da tout­ed the agency’s new web­site.

...

“To com­bat the lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing Florida’s abor­tion laws, @AHCA_FL has launched an improved trans­paren­cy page,” Weida’s post reads. “To see more please vis­it our web­site.”

Repub­li­can Gov. Ron DeSan­tis has defend­ed the agency’s mes­sag­ing push — and a state inves­ti­ga­tion into tens of thou­sands of peti­tion sig­na­tures that were used to get Amend­ment 4 on the bal­lot. As a part of that probe, police have been show­ing up at the homes of some of the peo­ple who signed the peti­tion to ques­tion them.
...

Police are show­ing up at the homes of some of the peo­ple who signed the Amend­ment 4 peti­tion as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into tens of thou­sands of peti­tion sig­na­tures.

Ron DeSantis’s Unprecedent Investigation That Can Only Succeed At Intimidation

And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle describes, it’s not an inves­ti­ga­tion into tens of thou­sands of reject­ed sig­na­tures. No, it’s an inves­ti­ga­tion are tens of thou­sands of accept­ed sig­na­tures, with the appar­ent goal of reject­ing them. And as Jer­ry Hol­land, the elec­tions super­vi­sor for Duval Coun­ty warns, the rate of sig­na­ture rejec­tion — based on com­par­ing a sig­na­ture to one on record — is much high­er for peti­tions than than vote-by-mail bal­lots. Sim­ply put, peo­ple tend to pay clos­er atten­tion to details when fill­ing out a mail in bal­lot. Details like a voter’s full address or the date. Indi­vid­u­als not reg­is­tered to vote can also be reject­ed. And all indi­ca­tions are the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion is look­ing to use any excuse avail­able. Hence an inves­ti­ga­tion into peti­tion fraud that is larg­er and more exten­sive than any­thing experts have ever seen.

And yet, with the Amend­ment 4 back­ers exceed­ing the nec­es­sary thresh­old of peti­tions by almost 100,000 peti­tions, the unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion into the tens of thou­sands of sig­na­ture can’t actu­al­ly real­is­ti­cal­ly result in a removal of the amend­ment mea­sure from the bal­lot. That’s also part of the con­text of this unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion: it does­n’t seem to serve a real pur­pose. Unless that pur­pose hap­pens to be gen­er­al pub­lic intim­i­da­tion:

Tam­pa Bay Times

What to know about Florida’s abor­tion peti­tion inves­ti­ga­tion

Here’s what sparked DeSan­tis’ abor­tion peti­tion probe and answers to the ques­tions it cre­at­ed.

By Justin Gar­cia Times staff
Romy Ellen­bo­gen Times staff

Pub­lished Sept. 17, 2024

Gov. Ron DeSan­tis’ admin­is­tra­tion has launched an unusu­al inves­ti­ga­tion into thou­sands of val­i­dat­ed peti­tion sig­na­tures that were used to get the abor­tion amend­ment on Novem­ber bal­lots.

The effort, which one coun­ty elec­tions super­vi­sor called “unprece­dent­ed,” has includ­ed law enforce­ment knock­ing on doors and elec­tions offi­cials spend­ing days pulling ver­i­fied peti­tions.

The amend­ment spon­sor group, Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom, has said any state effort to under­mine peti­tions val­i­dat­ed months ago would be viewed as “polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence.”

Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress from Flori­da have called for a Depart­ment of Jus­tice inves­ti­ga­tion. DeSan­tis and his staff have defend­ed the state’s effort, say­ing instances of fraud have been found.

...

What is Amend­ment 4?

Amend­ment 4 is one of two peti­tion-dri­ven amend­ments on the Novem­ber bal­lot this year. To get on the bal­lot, the amend­ment spon­sors got near­ly one mil­lion val­i­dat­ed sig­na­tures from Flori­da vot­ers.

The amend­ment says in part that “no law shall pro­hib­it, penal­ize, delay, or restrict abor­tion before via­bil­i­ty or when nec­es­sary to pro­tect the patient’s health, as deter­mined by the patient’s health­care provider.” If it pass­es, it would over­ride Florida’s ban on most abor­tions after six weeks of preg­nan­cy, which DeSan­tis signed into law.

DeSan­tis is against the amend­ment and has orga­nized and sup­port­ed a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee oppos­ing the ini­tia­tive. He has also pushed Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress from Flori­da to pub­licly speak out and donate in oppo­si­tion.

Sec­re­tary of State Cord Byrd cer­ti­fied the amend­ment for place­ment on the bal­lot in late Jan­u­ary.

Now, the state is review­ing some of the val­i­dat­ed peti­tions that helped get it on the bal­lot.

How did the inves­ti­ga­tion begin?

The Depart­ment of State said it began see­ing instances of fraud in abor­tion amend­ment peti­tions in June 2023 as elec­tions super­vi­sors con­duct­ed valid­i­ty checks.

Those offices, includ­ing that of Palm Beach Coun­ty Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions Wendy Link, flagged sus­pi­cious peti­tions in a state data­base. The state has not said how many were flagged for the abor­tion amend­ment, or for the oth­er peti­tion-dri­ven amend­ment this elec­tion cycle that would allow recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na use by adults.

...

On July 11, Brad McVay, gen­er­al coun­sel for the Flori­da Depart­ment of State, sent a let­ter to the Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment cit­ing exam­ples of sus­pect­ed fraud­u­lent peti­tions flagged by Link’s office. The let­ter said law enforce­ment had launched over 40 inves­ti­ga­tions into peti­tion cir­cu­la­tors around the state who col­lect­ed forms for the abor­tion amend­ment.

McVay said that over 23,000 ver­i­fied sig­na­tures were gath­ered by peti­tion col­lec­tors sus­pect­ed of fraud and that the office was con­cerned about “vot­er sig­na­ture forg­eries.” The Times first report­ed about the peti­tion review ear­li­er this month.

Short­ly before the pri­ma­ry in August, McVay and a col­league from the Depart­ment of State trav­eled from Tal­la­has­see to Palm Beach Coun­ty to exam­ine the peti­tions, Link said. She said she didn’t hear back from his office until ear­li­er this month, when McVay request­ed over 17,000 peti­tions from her office. Link said Thurs­day that her office was still gath­er­ing them.

...

How does this review com­pare with oth­ers in the past?

Flori­da, like many states, has seen cas­es of peti­tion fraud over the years, includ­ing in a failed 2022 effort to expand casi­no gam­bling.

But all of the supervisor’s offices the Times spoke with agreed: They’ve nev­er seen such an expan­sive review of peti­tion sig­na­tures.

Kari Ewalt, spokesper­son for Osce­o­la Coun­ty Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions Office, said that it took sev­er­al employ­ees three days to gath­er the near­ly 2,000 peti­tions the state request­ed. Ewalt has been employed by the office for sev­en years.

“In the entire time I’ve worked here, they’ve nev­er asked us to review any peti­tion,” she said.

Pre­vi­ous fraud inves­ti­ga­tions have relied on sig­na­tures reject­ed by local elec­tions offices. But the Depart­ment of State didn’t ask for reject­ed peti­tions when it reached out to coun­ty super­vi­sors in the past few weeks, only the ver­i­fied ones.

Has any­one been arrest­ed?

The Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment has this year charged four peo­ple relat­ed to fraud­u­lent Amend­ment 4 peti­tion col­lec­tion.

In one case, the Sara­so­ta Coun­ty Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions flagged 32 alleged­ly fraud­u­lent peti­tions sub­mit­ted by a Tam­pa man. A state inves­ti­ga­tor inter­viewed 12 of those vot­ers and found that they did not sign the peti­tions them­selves.

In anoth­er case out of South Flori­da, PCI Con­sul­tants, which Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom hired to run the paid peti­tion process, sent a let­ter point­ing out sus­pi­cious sig­na­tures to a coun­ty elec­tions super­vi­sor. State law requires that all peti­tions be sub­mit­ted to elec­tions offices, mean­ing spon­sor groups can­not hold back peti­tions they think may be false.

In that case, PCI checked a peti­tion gatherer’s sig­na­tures because of the large vol­ume she sub­mit­ted, accord­ing to an arrest affi­davit. The peti­tion gath­er­er lat­er told inves­ti­ga­tors that a cowork­er who recruit­ed her, who worked for the group Five Star Peti­tion­ers, told her she would be paid by the sig­na­ture, which is ille­gal. When the woman called the com­pa­ny own­er about pay­ment, he told her she was com­mit­ting fraud and fired her, accord­ing to the arrest report. She denied forg­ing sig­na­tures. It is unclear how many, if any, oth­er peti­tion gath­er­ers were paid by sig­na­ture.

The Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment has also this year arrest­ed peti­tion gath­er­ers work­ing on oth­er amend­ment efforts, includ­ing the recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na ini­tia­tive and the failed casi­no gam­bling ini­tia­tive. While the scope of each state inves­ti­ga­tion is not clear, the probe into the Amend­ment 4 peti­tion-gath­er­ing effort appears more exten­sive than those look­ing into oth­er ini­tia­tives, because of the review of val­i­dat­ed sig­na­tures.

How are peti­tions ver­i­fied?

When an elec­tions office receives a signed peti­tion, employ­ees first check that it was signed by ink on paper. Staff then use per­son­al infor­ma­tion, includ­ing address and date of birth, to ver­i­fy the per­son who signed is a reg­is­tered vot­er, a spokesper­son for the Orange Coun­ty Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions said.

Peti­tions can be reject­ed if a sig­na­ture doesn’t match with the one in the voter’s file. But that’s just one of the ways it might not be approved. A state 2024 cam­paign guide­book says a peti­tion can be deemed invalid if it is signed by some­one who is not reg­is­tered to vote, or is miss­ing any infor­ma­tion, like a voter’s full address or the date.

Jer­ry Hol­land, the elec­tions super­vi­sor for Duval Coun­ty, said amend­ment peti­tion sig­na­tures tend to be reject­ed at a much high­er rate than those on vote-by-mail bal­lots.

That’s because, he said, a vot­er send­ing in a mail bal­lot tends to take time and sign care­ful­ly. But peo­ple sign­ing peti­tions are often on their way into a store or head­ed to anoth­er errand, lead­ing to more hur­ried sig­na­tures.

Hol­land said when his office checks sig­na­tures, they look for things like the lean of the sig­na­ture, how it ends, the first let­ter and oth­er mark­ers that could make it a match.

...

What is the Flori­da peti­tion process?

Flori­da is one of the few states in the South­east with a process for every­day cit­i­zens to put some­thing on the bal­lot. But Florida’s bar is much high­er than oth­er states that have a cit­i­zen ini­tia­tive process.

To get on the bal­lot, Flori­da peti­tion groups need to get valid sig­na­tures equal to 8% of the votes cast in the last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. This year, that meant near­ly 900,000 sig­na­tures.

Flori­da peti­tion gath­er­ers also need to get a required num­ber of peti­tions in at least half of Florida’s 28 con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts.

Once on the bal­lot, an amend­ment needs 60% vot­er sup­port to become law.

Can the amend­ment be removed from the bal­lot?

A dead­line in state law to chal­lenge the valid­i­ty of amend­ment sig­na­tures has long since passed, mak­ing it unclear if there’s any legal path­way for the state to remove the amend­ment from the bal­lot.

The state cer­ti­fied it to appear in late Jan­u­ary, and the Flori­da Supreme Court approved the amendment’s word­ing in April.

Sev­er­al super­vi­sors also say that they have already print­ed or begun print­ing their bal­lots for the Novem­ber elec­tion.

———–

“What to know about Florida’s abor­tion peti­tion inves­ti­ga­tion” By Justin Gar­ci­a­Times and Romy Ellen­bo­gen; Tam­pa Bay Times; 09/17/2024

“On July 11, Brad McVay, gen­er­al coun­sel for the Flori­da Depart­ment of State, sent a let­ter to the Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment cit­ing exam­ples of sus­pect­ed fraud­u­lent peti­tions flagged by Link’s office. The let­ter said law enforce­ment had launched over 40 inves­ti­ga­tions into peti­tion cir­cu­la­tors around the state who col­lect­ed forms for the abor­tion amend­ment.”

The Flori­da Depart­ment of State is wield­ing its legal pow­ers in this realm like nev­er before. For any state. It’s an unprece­dent­ed review of peti­tion sig­na­tures. Unprece­dent­ed in part because the Depart­ment of State isn’t ask­ing to view reject­ed peti­tions. It’s ask­ing for the ver­i­fied ones, with the obvi­ous intent of unver­i­fy­ing some of them. How are they doing the unver­i­fi­ca­tions? Sig­na­ture com­par­isons, the kind of ver­i­fi­ca­tion method obvi­ous­ly fraught with sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and ambi­gu­i­ty. In oth­er words, the per­fect vague cri­te­ria for whip­ping of con­cerns regard­less of the evi­dence:

...
Flori­da, like many states, has seen cas­es of peti­tion fraud over the years, includ­ing in a failed 2022 effort to expand casi­no gam­bling.

But all of the supervisor’s offices the Times spoke with agreed: They’ve nev­er seen such an expan­sive review of peti­tion sig­na­tures.

Kari Ewalt, spokesper­son for Osce­o­la Coun­ty Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions Office, said that it took sev­er­al employ­ees three days to gath­er the near­ly 2,000 peti­tions the state request­ed. Ewalt has been employed by the office for sev­en years.

“In the entire time I’ve worked here, they’ve nev­er asked us to review any peti­tion,” she said.

Pre­vi­ous fraud inves­ti­ga­tions have relied on sig­na­tures reject­ed by local elec­tions offices. But the Depart­ment of State didn’t ask for reject­ed peti­tions when it reached out to coun­ty super­vi­sors in the past few weeks, only the ver­i­fied ones.

...

The Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment has also this year arrest­ed peti­tion gath­er­ers work­ing on oth­er amend­ment efforts, includ­ing the recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na ini­tia­tive and the failed casi­no gam­bling ini­tia­tive. While the scope of each state inves­ti­ga­tion is not clear, the probe into the Amend­ment 4 peti­tion-gath­er­ing effort appears more exten­sive than those look­ing into oth­er ini­tia­tives, because of the review of val­i­dat­ed sig­na­tures.

...

When an elec­tions office receives a signed peti­tion, employ­ees first check that it was signed by ink on paper. Staff then use per­son­al infor­ma­tion, includ­ing address and date of birth, to ver­i­fy the per­son who signed is a reg­is­tered vot­er, a spokesper­son for the Orange Coun­ty Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions said.

Peti­tions can be reject­ed if a sig­na­ture doesn’t match with the one in the voter’s file. But that’s just one of the ways it might not be approved. A state 2024 cam­paign guide­book says a peti­tion can be deemed invalid if it is signed by some­one who is not reg­is­tered to vote, or is miss­ing any infor­ma­tion, like a voter’s full address or the date.

Jer­ry Hol­land, the elec­tions super­vi­sor for Duval Coun­ty, said amend­ment peti­tion sig­na­tures tend to be reject­ed at a much high­er rate than those on vote-by-mail bal­lots.

That’s because, he said, a vot­er send­ing in a mail bal­lot tends to take time and sign care­ful­ly. But peo­ple sign­ing peti­tions are often on their way into a store or head­ed to anoth­er errand, lead­ing to more hur­ried sig­na­tures.

Hol­land said when his office checks sig­na­tures, they look for things like the lean of the sig­na­ture, how it ends, the first let­ter and oth­er mark­ers that could make it a match.
...

And while there have indeed been a hand­ful of legit­i­mate peti­tion fraud instances iden­ti­fied, note how one of the cas­es lit­er­al­ly involved Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom flag­ging the sus­pi­cious sig­na­tures and send­ing them to a coun­ty elec­tions super­vi­sor. So, yes, there are bad faith actors at work here, but it does­n’t appear to be Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom. The Flori­da Depart­ment of State, on the oth­er hand...

...
The Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment has this year charged four peo­ple relat­ed to fraud­u­lent Amend­ment 4 peti­tion col­lec­tion.

In one case, the Sara­so­ta Coun­ty Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions flagged 32 alleged­ly fraud­u­lent peti­tions sub­mit­ted by a Tam­pa man. A state inves­ti­ga­tor inter­viewed 12 of those vot­ers and found that they did not sign the peti­tions them­selves.

In anoth­er case out of South Flori­da, PCI Con­sul­tants, which Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom hired to run the paid peti­tion process, sent a let­ter point­ing out sus­pi­cious sig­na­tures to a coun­ty elec­tions super­vi­sor. State law requires that all peti­tions be sub­mit­ted to elec­tions offices, mean­ing spon­sor groups can­not hold back peti­tions they think may be false.

In that case, PCI checked a peti­tion gatherer’s sig­na­tures because of the large vol­ume she sub­mit­ted, accord­ing to an arrest affi­davit. The peti­tion gath­er­er lat­er told inves­ti­ga­tors that a cowork­er who recruit­ed her, who worked for the group Five Star Peti­tion­ers, told her she would be paid by the sig­na­ture, which is ille­gal. When the woman called the com­pa­ny own­er about pay­ment, he told her she was com­mit­ting fraud and fired her, accord­ing to the arrest report. She denied forg­ing sig­na­tures. It is unclear how many, if any, oth­er peti­tion gath­er­ers were paid by sig­na­ture.
...

As we can see, the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion is engaged in a full spec­trum legal cam­paign to stop Amend­ment 4. An unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion, as legal experts point out in the fol­low­ing piece.

And as we’re also going to see, it’s not just that the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion sus­pects fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures were used to get Amend­ment 4 on the bal­lot. The sus­pi­cion is also that these fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures were ver­i­fied by the local elec­tion super­vi­sors.

Now, thus far, it does­n’t appear the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion has any real evi­dence of wide­spread peti­tion fraud. But don’t for­get: intim­i­da­tion does­n’t require real evi­dence of wrong­do­ing. It just requires a threat. And now, thanks to this inves­ti­ga­tion, local elec­tion super­vi­sors around Flori­da have found them­selves poten­tial­ly sus­pect­ed of some sort of wrong­do­ing.

But there’s anoth­er aspect about this inves­ti­ga­tion that should raise major ques­tions about what the real inten­tion is behind this inves­ti­ga­tion: even by their own esti­mates, the state offi­cials only sus­pect as many as 36,000 Amend­ment 4 peti­tion sig­na­tures were fraud­u­lent, and yet over 100,000 more sig­na­tures were gath­ered than nec­es­sary. So even if all of those sus­pect­ed sig­na­tures were indeed found to be fraud­u­lent, there’s no chance the inves­ti­ga­tion could result in the removal of the Amend­ment 4 bal­lot ini­tia­tive. And yet, this unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion that involved send­ing police the homes of peti­tion sign­ers con­tin­ues:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

Flori­da law enforcers are inves­ti­gat­ing the state’s abor­tion bal­lot ini­tia­tive. Here’s what to know

By KATE PAYNE
Updat­ed 4:55 PM CDT, Sep­tem­ber 10, 2024

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — State police in Flori­da are show­ing up at the homes of vot­ers who signed a peti­tion to get an abor­tion rights amend­ment on the bal­lot in Novem­ber as part of a state probe into alleged peti­tion fraud.

Repub­li­can Gov. Ron DeSan­tis has defend­ed police vis­it­ing the homes of Florid­i­ans who signed the peti­tion. Crit­ics say the inves­ti­ga­tion is a brazen attempt to intim­i­date vot­ers in the country’s third-largest state from pro­tect­ing access to abor­tion — and that the probe comes long after a dead­line to chal­lenge peti­tion sig­na­tures has passed.

Cia­ra Tor­res-Spel­lis­cy, a pro­fes­sor of con­sti­tu­tion­al and elec­tions law at the Stet­son Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Law, said she doesn’t know of a legal prece­dent the state could use to chal­lenge the sig­na­tures after the dead­line.

“The Flori­da Supreme Court already allowed the abor­tion ques­tion to go on the bal­lot in April of 2024,” Tor­res-Spel­lis­cy told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “Thus this effort to ques­tion sig­na­tures at this point seems far too late.”

...

What would Florida’s abor­tion amend­ment do?

Flori­da law cur­rent­ly bans most abor­tions after six weeks of preg­nan­cy, before many women even know they are preg­nant. If approved by 60% of vot­ers, the bal­lot ini­tia­tive known as Amend­ment 4 would ensure that abor­tions are legal until the fetus is viable, as deter­mined by the patient’s health care provider.

The pro­posed amend­ment says “no law shall pro­hib­it, penal­ize, delay, or restrict abor­tion before via­bil­i­ty or when nec­es­sary to pro­tect the patient’s health, as deter­mined by the patient’s health­care provider.” It pro­vides for one excep­tion, which is already in the state con­sti­tu­tion — that par­ents must be noti­fied before their minor chil­dren can get an abor­tion.

How did cam­paign­ers get the amend­ment on the bal­lot?

To qual­i­fy for the Novem­ber bal­lot, sup­port­ers had to col­lect more than 891,000 peti­tion sig­na­tures from Flori­da vot­ers. In Jan­u­ary, state elec­tions offi­cials con­firmed the cam­paign had cleared that mile­stone, ulti­mate­ly sub­mit­ting more than 997,000 ver­i­fied sig­na­tures — 100,000 more than they need­ed. That mar­gin is far more than the 36,000 sig­na­tures state offi­cials say they’re prob­ing as part of a broad review by the Flori­da Depart­ment of State to inves­ti­gate alleged peti­tion fraud.

In April, the Flori­da Supreme Court ruled that the bal­lot mea­sure would be allowed to go before vot­ers in Novem­ber, reject­ing the state attor­ney general’s argu­ment that the pro­posed amend­ment is decep­tive and that vot­ers won’t real­ize how broad­ly it will expand access to abor­tions.

Why are state offi­cials inves­ti­gat­ing the peti­tions?

Accord­ing to a let­ter from Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Brad McVay that was shared with the AP, the state’s Office of Elec­tion Crimes and Secu­ri­ty is “con­cerned” about alle­ga­tions that forged sig­na­tures were sub­mit­ted and then ver­i­fied as valid by super­vi­sors of elec­tions.

Police are show­ing up at some vot­ers’ homes to ques­tion them about sign­ing a peti­tion to get the abor­tion ini­tia­tive on the bal­lot. And state offi­cials have sent requests to coun­ty-lev­el elec­tions super­vi­sors to gath­er thou­sands of peti­tion sig­na­tures for review as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged peti­tion fraud, accord­ing to report­ing by the Tam­pa Bay Times.

DeSan­tis defend­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion, say­ing police have found evi­dence that some of the sup­posed vot­er sig­na­tures were from dead peo­ple.

“They’re inves­ti­gat­ing this, as they should,” DeSan­tis said Tues­day. “Our tol­er­ance for vot­er fraud in the state of Flori­da is zero. That’s the only thing that you can do is to have zero tol­er­ance.”

Vot­er fraud is extreme­ly rare, typ­i­cal­ly occurs in iso­lat­ed instances and is gen­er­al­ly detect­ed. An AP inves­ti­ga­tion of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion found few­er than 475 poten­tial cas­es of vot­er fraud out of 25.5 mil­lion bal­lots cast in the six states where for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his allies dis­put­ed his loss to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

What is Florida’s elec­tions police force?

DeSan­tis signed a bill in 2022 to cre­ate a police force ded­i­cat­ed to pur­su­ing vot­er fraud and oth­er elec­tion crimes, embrac­ing a top Repub­li­can pri­or­i­ty fol­low­ing Trump’s false claims that his reelec­tion was stolen.

The Office of Elec­tion Crimes and Secu­ri­ty reviews fraud alle­ga­tions and con­ducts pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tions and can make refer­rals to the Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment.

In 2022, the state announced crim­i­nal charges against 20 peo­ple for ille­gal­ly vot­ing in 2020, in an open­ing sal­vo for the the new elec­tion crimes unit. All of the indi­vid­u­als had pri­or felony con­vic­tions that left them inel­i­gi­ble to vote, but all had been issued vot­er id cards by the state, accord­ing to report­ing by the Tam­pa Bay Times

...

Could the amend­ment be struck from the bal­lot?

Sup­port­ers of the amend­ment have labeled the inves­ti­ga­tion as “polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence.” They fear it’s a late-stage effort to try to pull the amend­ment from the bal­lot.

-Tor­res-Spel­lis­cy, the Stet­son law pro­fes­sor, told the AP there’s no legal prece­dent for the state to have the amend­ment struck from the bal­lot this late in the process. Local elec­tions super­vi­sors have said they’ve already begun send­ing their bal­lot lan­guage to the print­ers.

Tor­res-Spel­lis­cy point­ed to a pre­vi­ous deci­sion by the state supreme court to keep a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment on the bal­lot in a rul­ing that came just days before the 2016 elec­tion. The court reject­ed a request to inval­i­date the solar ener­gy bal­lot ini­tia­tive known as Amend­ment 1, despite media reports a month before the elec­tion that indus­try insid­ers had craft­ed the mea­sure to mis­lead vot­ers.

“Like the U.S. Supreme Court, the Flori­da Supreme Court has not been fol­low­ing its own prece­dents recent­ly,” Tor­res-Spel­lis­cy said. “But if they were being con­sis­tent with pri­or prece­dents includ­ing keep­ing Amend­ment 1 on the bal­lot in 2016, then the Flori­da Supreme Court should also keep Amend­ment 4 on the bal­lot in 2024.”

————

“Flori­da law enforcers are inves­ti­gat­ing the state’s abor­tion bal­lot ini­tia­tive. Here’s what to know” By KATE PAYNE; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 09/10/2024

“In April, the Flori­da Supreme Court ruled that the bal­lot mea­sure would be allowed to go before vot­ers in Novem­ber, reject­ing the state attor­ney general’s argu­ment that the pro­posed amend­ment is decep­tive and that vot­ers won’t real­ize how broad­ly it will expand access to abor­tions.”

This isn’t just a sto­ry about Flori­da police going to the homes of peo­ple who signed the Amend­ment 4 bal­lots as part of an unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion. It’s the sto­ry of an unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion that was pre­ced­ed by a failed attempt by the state attor­ney gen­er­al to have Amend­ment 4 thrown off the bal­lot entire­ly. The DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion clear­ly does­n’t want to allow this vote to hap­pen. And the inves­ti­ga­tion is appar­ent­ly part of that ongo­ing effort to some­how derail Amend­ment 4 before vot­ers are allowed to make their pref­er­ences shown. And yet, notice how there does­n’t appear to be any real­is­tic way of get­ting the bal­lot ini­tia­tive tossed even if tens of thou­sands of fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures are found because they exceed­ed the required 891,000 sig­na­tures by near­ly 100k. That’s part of what gives this whole effort the feel of being large­ly an intim­i­da­tion tac­tic. And not just tar­get­ing vot­ers. It’s intim­i­da­tion against local super­vi­sors of elec­tions. After all, while police are show­ing up at the hous­es of vot­ers who signed the peti­tion, the focus of the inves­ti­ga­tion is into sig­na­tures that have been ver­i­fied by super­vi­sors of elec­tions:

...
To qual­i­fy for the Novem­ber bal­lot, sup­port­ers had to col­lect more than 891,000 peti­tion sig­na­tures from Flori­da vot­ers. In Jan­u­ary, state elec­tions offi­cials con­firmed the cam­paign had cleared that mile­stone, ulti­mate­ly sub­mit­ting more than 997,000 ver­i­fied sig­na­tures — 100,000 more than they need­ed. That mar­gin is far more than the 36,000 sig­na­tures state offi­cials say they’re prob­ing as part of a broad review by the Flori­da Depart­ment of State to inves­ti­gate alleged peti­tion fraud.

...

Accord­ing to a let­ter from Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Brad McVay that was shared with the AP, the state’s Office of Elec­tion Crimes and Secu­ri­ty is “con­cerned” about alle­ga­tions that forged sig­na­tures were sub­mit­ted and then ver­i­fied as valid by super­vi­sors of elec­tions.

Police are show­ing up at some vot­ers’ homes to ques­tion them about sign­ing a peti­tion to get the abor­tion ini­tia­tive on the bal­lot. And state offi­cials have sent requests to coun­ty-lev­el elec­tions super­vi­sors to gath­er thou­sands of peti­tion sig­na­tures for review as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged peti­tion fraud, accord­ing to report­ing by the Tam­pa Bay Times.

DeSan­tis defend­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion, say­ing police have found evi­dence that some of the sup­posed vot­er sig­na­tures were from dead peo­ple.

“They’re inves­ti­gat­ing this, as they should,” DeSan­tis said Tues­day. “Our tol­er­ance for vot­er fraud in the state of Flori­da is zero. That’s the only thing that you can do is to have zero tol­er­ance.”

Vot­er fraud is extreme­ly rare, typ­i­cal­ly occurs in iso­lat­ed instances and is gen­er­al­ly detect­ed. An AP inves­ti­ga­tion of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion found few­er than 475 poten­tial cas­es of vot­er fraud out of 25.5 mil­lion bal­lots cast in the six states where for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his allies dis­put­ed his loss to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.
...

And as the arti­cle reminds us, while this par­tic­u­lar inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged vot­er fraud may be unprece­dent­ed for a state bal­lot ini­tia­tive, it’s not like this is kind of whipped up alarm about alleged vot­er fraud that we’ve seen from DeSan­tis’s admin­is­tra­tion. <a href=“https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2022/10/10/black-voters-over-represented-among-those-arrested-election-crimes/10436294002/”>The 2022 sur­prise arrests of 20 indi­vid­u­als with pri­or felony con­vic­tions just weeks before the 2022 midterm was in many respects a pre­view of what we’re see­ing today. Polit­i­cal the­atrics in the form of an elec­tion ‘inves­ti­ga­tion’ that is obvi­ous­ly being done as part of some sort of vot­er intim­i­da­tion tac­tic:

...
DeSan­tis signed a bill in 2022 to cre­ate a police force ded­i­cat­ed to pur­su­ing vot­er fraud and oth­er elec­tion crimes, embrac­ing a top Repub­li­can pri­or­i­ty fol­low­ing Trump’s false claims that his reelec­tion was stolen.

The Office of Elec­tion Crimes and Secu­ri­ty reviews fraud alle­ga­tions and con­ducts pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tions and can make refer­rals to the Flori­da Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment.

In 2022, the state announced crim­i­nal charges against 20 peo­ple for ille­gal­ly vot­ing in 2020, in an open­ing sal­vo for the the new elec­tion crimes unit. All of the indi­vid­u­als had pri­or felony con­vic­tions that left them inel­i­gi­ble to vote, but all had been issued vot­er id cards by the state, accord­ing to report­ing by the Tam­pa Bay Times
...

In 2022 it was bad faith inves­ti­ga­tion into con­vict­ed felons vot­ing involv­ing the sur­prise arrests of dozens of, most­ly black, Florid­i­ans who were issued vot­er ID cards by the state. 2024 has the Amend­ment 4 ‘inves­ti­ga­tions’ that include police show­ing up at the homes of peti­tion sign­ers to ver­i­fy their sig­na­tures. What kind of ‘elec­tion fraud’ intim­i­da­tion can Flori­da res­i­dent expect going for­ward? Time will tell, but the intim­i­da­tion is pre­sum­ably going to be a lot more intense under a sec­ond Trump term.

Ron DeSantis’s Very Ironic Courtroom Victory

Intim­i­da­tion and, as the fol­low­ing report implic­it­ly warns, dis­in­for­ma­tion. Yes, it turns out the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion won its legal bat­tle to keep in tax-pay­er fund­ed anti-Amend­ment 4 web­site and pub­lic mes­sag­ing cam­paign in oper­a­tion. It was­n’t a par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing legal vic­to­ry for the state. But what made it notable is the argu­ments made by the judge for why the law­suit should be thrown out. As Judge Jonathan Sjostrom put it, the case sim­ply isn’t jus­ti­cia­ble and out­side the bounds where courts should be decid­ing. What was the judge’s rea­son­ing for con­clud­ing that the case could­n’t be heard by the court? Well, as Judge Sjostrom describes, the case is “not jus­ti­cia­ble by courts because polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot”. So at the same time the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion is threat­en­ing the employ­ees of local tv sta­tions with crim­i­nal charges of they air a pro-Amend­ment 4 ad, the admin­is­tra­tion is win­ning court cas­es on the basis that ‘polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot’:

Mia­mi Her­ald

Judge won’t block Flori­da agency from dis­sem­i­nat­ing ‘mis­in­for­ma­tion’ about abor­tion

By Jim Saun­ders News Ser­vice of Flori­da
Octo­ber 02, 2024 5:30 AM

Tal­la­has­see

Say­ing courts “must trust the peo­ple to decide what infor­ma­tion is impor­tant to them,” a Leon Coun­ty cir­cuit judge Mon­day refused to issue a tem­po­rary injunc­tion to block the state Agency for Health Admin­is­tra­tion from dis­sem­i­nat­ing what crit­ics call “mis­in­for­ma­tion” about a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment on abor­tion rights.

Judge Jonathan Sjostrom reject­ed argu­ments by Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom, a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee spon­sor­ing the pro­posed amend­ment, and wrote that the case is “not jus­ti­cia­ble by courts because polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot.”

“When courts speak of jus­ti­cia­bil­i­ty, the essence of the point is that judges must exer­cise law­ful author­i­ty with­out hes­i­ta­tion but must resist the temp­ta­tion to pow­er uncon­strained by a rea­son­able resort to judi­cial process,” he wrote. “In an elec­tion cam­paign under these cir­cum­stances, the polit­i­cal pow­er reserved to the peo­ple in (part) of the Flori­da Con­sti­tu­tion means that it is not for the courts to inter­vene in this ref­er­en­dum cam­paign to decide what the peo­ple will be per­mit­ted to con­sid­er. This case is not jus­ti­cia­ble.”

...

With Gov. Ron DeSan­tis help­ing lead efforts to defeat the amend­ment, Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom con­tends the agency vio­lat­ed state law by using pub­lic resources to spread inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion about the pro­pos­al.

Issues in the law­suit includ­ed state­ments on the web­site such as, “Cur­rent Flori­da Law Pro­tects Women, Amend­ment 4 Threat­ens Women’s Safe­ty.”

In seek­ing the tem­po­rary injunc­tion, Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom want­ed Sjostrom to declare that the agency’s actions vio­lat­ed the committee’s right to pro­pose con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments, order the agency to remove adver­tis­ing or mate­ri­als that “vio­late FPF’s (the committee’s) rights and enjoin AHCA from dis­sem­i­nat­ing such adver­tis­ing or oth­er mate­ri­als in the future.”

“Through this web­site, AHCA dis­par­ages Amend­ment 4 and Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom as its spon­sor, alleg­ing fear­mon­ger­ing and lying,” the motion for a tem­po­rary injunc­tion said. “AHCA presents vot­ers with false infor­ma­tion about Amend­ment 4 and cur­rent law and cre­ates a sense of urgency that ‘Cur­rent Law Pro­tects Women. Amend­ment 4 Threat­ens Women’s Safe­ty,’ that Amend­ment 4 will ‘lead to unreg­u­lat­ed and unsafe abor­tions,’ and ‘We must keep Flori­da from becom­ing an abor­tion tourism des­ti­na­tion state.’ Vot­ers can only be left with the impres­sion that this state agency is advis­ing them to vote no on Amend­ment 4.”

But in a court doc­u­ment oppos­ing the injunc­tion request, attor­neys for the state said the Con­sti­tu­tion does not give Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom a “right to muz­zle AHCA’s pub­lic state­ments about an issue of immense pub­lic con­cern.”

“Noth­ing in Flori­da law sup­ports FPF’s attempt to make this court a ref­er­ee in a fun­da­men­tal­ly polit­i­cal dis­pute over the accu­ra­cy of AHCA’s speech about Amend­ment 4,” the state’s attor­neys wrote. “In any event, FPF is wrong when it accus­es AHCA of ‘spread­ing false infor­ma­tion about the amend­ment.’ AHCA has not made false, decep­tive or mis­lead­ing state­ments about Amend­ment 4.”

Sjostrom wrote Mon­day that noth­ing in his deci­sion “should be con­sid­ered as express­ing the court’s views of the wis­dom of the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment under con­sid­er­a­tion for the upcom­ing elec­tion or the rel­a­tive mer­its of the argu­ments mus­tered for or against the amend­ment dur­ing the cur­rent cam­paign. This order should form no part of any voter’s deci­sion whether to vote for this pro­posed amend­ment.”

But he wrote that Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom had not estab­lished legal stand­ing to chal­lenge the dis­put­ed infor­ma­tion.

“Real­ly, this is so because no per­son or enti­ty has stand­ing to lit­i­gate these issues in court dur­ing this cam­paign,” Sjostrom wrote. “The fact find­er must be each vot­er who will choose the infor­ma­tion the vot­er finds con­vinc­ing and ren­der judg­ment on each bal­lot.”

...

Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom began the dri­ve to pass the con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment after DeSan­tis and the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Leg­is­la­ture last year approved a law to pre­vent abor­tions after six weeks of preg­nan­cy. That law took effect May 1.

The Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom law­suit came two days after Palm Beach Coun­ty attor­ney Adam Richard­son filed a case at the Flori­da Supreme Court about the agency infor­ma­tion on Amend­ment 4. That case remains pend­ing.

Richard­son asked the Supreme Court to issue what is known as a writ of quo war­ran­to to Agency for Health Care Admin­is­tra­tion Sec­re­tary Jason Wei­da, DeSan­tis and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ash­ley Moody “for­bid­ding them from mis­us­ing or abus­ing their offices to inter­fere with the elec­tion for Amend­ment 4, and to unrav­el what­ev­er actions they have already tak­en to do so.”

————

“Judge won’t block Flori­da agency from dis­sem­i­nat­ing ‘mis­in­for­ma­tion’ about abor­tion” By Jim Saun­ders; Mia­mi Her­ald; 10/02/2024

“Judge Jonathan Sjostrom reject­ed argu­ments by Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom, a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee spon­sor­ing the pro­posed amend­ment, and wrote that the case is “not jus­ti­cia­ble by courts because polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot.””

The case is “not jus­ti­cia­ble by courts because polit­i­cal pow­er is reserved to the peo­ple in an elec­tion by means of each bal­lot,” accord­ing to the judge in this case. As Judge Sjostrom adds, courts “must trust the peo­ple to decide what infor­ma­tion is impor­tant to them.” Beyond that, the judge argues that the lack of jus­ti­cia­bil­i­ty is “because no per­son or enti­ty has stand­ing to lit­i­gate these issues in court dur­ing this cam­paign.” No per­son or enti­ty has stand­ing to lit­i­gate these issues, accord­ing to the judge. Instead, the “fact find­er must be each vot­er who will choose the infor­ma­tion the vot­er finds con­vinc­ing and ren­der judg­ment on each bal­lot.” It’s quite a rul­ing in the face of the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion’s ongo­ing law­suit to block the air­ing of pro-Amend­ment 4 ads:

...
Say­ing courts “must trust the peo­ple to decide what infor­ma­tion is impor­tant to them,” a Leon Coun­ty cir­cuit judge Mon­day refused to issue a tem­po­rary injunc­tion to block the state Agency for Health Admin­is­tra­tion from dis­sem­i­nat­ing what crit­ics call “mis­in­for­ma­tion” about a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment on abor­tion rights.

...

“When courts speak of jus­ti­cia­bil­i­ty, the essence of the point is that judges must exer­cise law­ful author­i­ty with­out hes­i­ta­tion but must resist the temp­ta­tion to pow­er uncon­strained by a rea­son­able resort to judi­cial process,” he wrote. “In an elec­tion cam­paign under these cir­cum­stances, the polit­i­cal pow­er reserved to the peo­ple in (part) of the Flori­da Con­sti­tu­tion means that it is not for the courts to inter­vene in this ref­er­en­dum cam­paign to decide what the peo­ple will be per­mit­ted to con­sid­er. This case is not jus­ti­cia­ble.”

...

Sjostrom wrote Mon­day that noth­ing in his deci­sion “should be con­sid­ered as express­ing the court’s views of the wis­dom of the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment under con­sid­er­a­tion for the upcom­ing elec­tion or the rel­a­tive mer­its of the argu­ments mus­tered for or against the amend­ment dur­ing the cur­rent cam­paign. This order should form no part of any voter’s deci­sion whether to vote for this pro­posed amend­ment.”

But he wrote that Florid­i­ans Pro­tect­ing Free­dom had not estab­lished legal stand­ing to chal­lenge the dis­put­ed infor­ma­tion.

“Real­ly, this is so because no per­son or enti­ty has stand­ing to lit­i­gate these issues in court dur­ing this cam­paign,” Sjostrom wrote. “The fact find­er must be each vot­er who will choose the infor­ma­tion the vot­er finds con­vinc­ing and ren­der judg­ment on each bal­lot.”
...

It real­ly is quite a remark­able rul­ing. Well, rather, it became a remark­able rul­ing after the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion pro­ceed­ed to issue its legal threats against tele­vi­sion sta­tion employ­ees just days after this rul­ing.

And sure, it was obvi­ous­ly a gross­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal move on the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion’s part. But that’s kind of the point of these maneu­vers. The more they feel like abus­es of pow­er, and the more the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion is giv­en free reign to oper­ate in this man­ner, the more pow­er­ful these abus­es of pow­er become. As Josh Mar­shall warned above, the imme­di­ate risk of fas­cism under a sec­ond Trump term like­ly won’t be some­thing as extreme as an end to elec­tions. Instead, it will be an end to fair elec­tions, with the pow­er of the state mobi­lized in favor of one side or anoth­er. Sure, things could get much worse. But it’ll start off with a soft­er form of fas­cism. The tem­plate is already up and run­ning.

And while we’ve long know that the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 project will be serv­ing as a kind of soft fas­cism nation­al pol­i­cy tem­plate for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion — a Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, as Her­itage pres­i­dent Kevin Roberts put it — it’s going to be impor­tant to keep in mind that we’ve also been privy to a state-lev­el tem­plate for how this ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’ can be made into a per­ma­nent real­i­ty. Yes, we should be extreme­ly con­cerned about a total fas­cist like Trump return­ing to pow­er. Espe­cial­ly when he’ll be return­ing on a plat­form of vengeance and ide­o­log­i­cal cleans­es. But don’t for­get that Trump is only going to the top fas­cist. Gov­er­nors will get to be fas­cists too. Along with the rad­i­cal bil­lion­aire-backed theocrats whis­per­ing in their ear and sign­ing those checks.