While the First Amendment litigation between Ron DeSantis and Disney is more than a month in the rearview mirror, the Florida governor isn't done lobbing insults at the theme park giant.
"Over the years so many Republicans, any time some big bad corporation opposes what they want to do, they cower in the corner like little scared kitties," DeSantis said during a Tuesday afternoon panel sponsored by Moms for Liberty in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hours before he was slated to speak at the Republican National Convention.
"So we said no," he went on. "We're going to lead the state of Florida. We're not going to subcontract leadership to a woke corporation based in Burbank, California."
He's referring to how Disney spoke out against Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, derided by its critics as 'Don't Say Gay," which restricted classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation. DeSantis and GOP lawmakers responded by stripping Disney's control of its special taxing district and giving it to the governor.
Disney filed a federal lawsuit, alleging the actions were retaliatory and in violation of its First Amendment rights, but a judge ruled against the company. The company dropped its appeal of that decision last month, the day after Disney and the special district announced a development deal.
Despite the heated litigation, the governor's office released a friendly statement about its future relationship at the time. But DeSantis, it was clear Tuesday, wasn't done taking jabs.
"We won that battle with the parents' rights bill," DeSantis said about one of his state's largest employers. "We also won the battle eliminating all the corporate welfare that they had, and the result is now, they want to build all these new parks, and they're going to end up paying us a lot more money than they would have before."
During the event, DeSantis not only touted what he had done but also hinted at the future: "On higher ed, we've got more that we're going to do."
DeSantis and the GOP legislative supermajority already have taken aim at what they accuse of being progressive indoctrination in the state's public colleges and universities. They have, for example, banned funding for state college and university diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
"You have professors that are not meeting the mission, and the mission of these universities is a classical mission of education," DeSantis said.
Also passed in Florida: the "Stop WOKE Act," a key provision of which limits discussion of race, gender and other topics in state university classrooms. That's currently blocked by the courts and awaiting a final appeals decision.
DeSantis and Moms for Liberty have history
DeSantis wasn't the only one at the event from Florida, which has been at the forefront of a national debate over not only higher education but also what's taught and read in K-12 public schools.
U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds of Naples also spoke at the event, though on a different panel. So did Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, who also hail from the state, where they created the organization that has been at the head of what it calls a parental rights movement. Some critics, however, accuse the group and its local chapters of perpetuating a "culture war," while others even bash their work as a promotion of authoritarianism.
Moms for Liberty's ascent to national notoriety has mirrored DeSantis' in many ways, with their condemnations of COVID-19 restrictions catching conservative attention. The group has been closely aligned with the governor since its 2021 founding and, like DeSantis, has loudly advocated against classroom discussion of LGBTQ topics and critical race theory.
Some of the group's most headline-generating work has been the targeting of school library books its members deem inappropriate, leading to many titles being removed, especially in Florida. DeSantis himself advocated for and signed laws that opened the Florida floodgates for what critics call "book bans."
During DeSantis' panel, he was was joined by Justice, Arkansas GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, one of the conservative groups behind Project 2025, a detailed plan to reshape the federal government if Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November.
While Republicans say they are striving for a tone of "unity" after the assassination attempt on former President Trump, that sentiment largely didn't make it into the Moms for Liberty co-founders' remarks.
"We are fighting for our country and the future of our children," Justice said at the beginning of the event. "And there were some people who told us, 'Oh, don't use that word fight, Tiffany. You don't want to be too volatile.' Well, they're coming after our kids. And we always talk about at Moms for Liberty that we're fighting with a smile on our face."
Descovich said that fight was in a "battle between good and evil" and "for the soul of our children": "The enemy wants to come between us and our children," she said. "Once that happens ... our families are done. Our communities are done. And our country is lost."
Justice went on to ask the panel if the attempt on Trump's life was partly driven by "years of labeling anyone who stands for freedom, like President Trump does, like we do, as a threat to democracy?"
"When that type of venom in our politics reaches this fever pitch where now you have incidents where you have one person trying to literally snuff out the life of another, that's when it's gone too far," Donalds said. "We can have our disagreements in politics ... but there is a respect and a tolerance we must have as Americans."
USA TODAY contributed. This reporting content is supported by a partnership with Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. USA Today Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Douglas Soule can be reached at DSoule@gannett.com.
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