In the wake of 2020’s protests against police violence, some of which descended into riotous violence and looting, the Florida governor backed, and the Legislature approved, a bill that would fine demonstrators found in the same area as a protest that turned violent. The disappointments along these lines are mounting. Republicans energized by DeSantis’ culture warring are going to be disappointed by the governor’s failure to execute his own vision. American conservatives want nothing less than for Disney to change its corporate culture, but all they’re getting is a punitive measure that will be felt primarily by the residents of Florida’s Orange and Osceola counties. What the maneuver will do, however, is transfer $1 billion in bond debt to local officials and likely force municipal governments to raise local taxes by staggering amounts to make up for lost revenue. It might make Disney and other similarly left-leaning firms more reluctant to promote progressive values. In other words, the most charitable interpretation of DeSantis’ retaliation against Disney is that it is, at best, a bank shot. The most sympathetic analyses of Florida’s scheme maintain that it could have the salutatory effect of communicating to other “woke” companies that their corporate officers should stay out of politics, even if deploying this tactic makes it more likely that progressive-led states will lash out similarly against their own political adversaries in the private sector.
