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DeSantis Announces He’s Calling For State Legislature To End Special Protections For Disney’s Florida Operations

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is not backing down in his fight against Disney.

While speaking at an event, the popular Republican governor declared that he’s calling on the state legislature to end special protections for Disney’s Florida operations.

“I’d also like to make another announcement before we get into the subject of today’s program. I think as many of, you know, the Florida legislature is meeting this week to consider the congressional reapportionment plan for Florida for the next 10 years. And that is what they’ve been called upon to do,” DeSantis said.

“I am announcing today that we are expanding the call of what they are going to be considering,” DeSantis continued. “Yes, they will be considering the congressional map but they also will be considering termination of all special districts that were enacted in Florida prior to 1968, and that includes the Reedy Creek Improvement District.”

“What I would say as a matter of the first principle is I don’t support special privileges in law just because a company is powerful and they’ve been able to wield a lot of power,” DeSantis said.

“I think what has happened is there’s a lot of these special privileges that are not justifiable, but because Disney had held so much sway, they were able to sustain a lot of special treatment over the years,” he added.

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“The Reedy Creek Improvement Act was signed into law in May 1967 by Gov. Claude Kirk in response to lobbying efforts by Disney. The entertainment giant proposed building a recreation-oriented development on 25,000 acres of property in a remote area of Central Florida’s Orange and Osceola counties, which consisted of 38.5 square miles of largely uninhabited pasture and swampland,” Fox News reported.

“Orange and Osceola County did not have the services or resources needed to bring the project to life, so the state legislature worked with Disney to establish the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a special taxing district that allows the company to act with the same authority and responsibility as a county government,” the report added.

A new poll reveals that Americans are not happy with Disney after the company embraced the LGBTQ movement.

A new survey found that nearly 7 in 10 Americans no longer want to do “business” with Disney and will instead seek out “family-friendly alternatives.”

The poll found that a whopping 68.2% of voters are now “less likely to do business with Disney.” Of that number, 57.2% said they are “much less likely” to buy from Disney.

Additionally, 69% said that they are likely to “support family-friendly alternatives to Disney.”

Perhaps most importantly, the survey found that 48.2% of Democrats also said they are less likely to “do business” with Disney over the company’s stance on including LGBTQ characters and language at its park, shows, and movies.

Last month, leaked videos went viral on social media of an executive producer at Disney admitting to “adding queerness” to children’s programming.

Disney announced plans to ax gendered language such as “boys and girls” and “ladies and gentleman” in their park greetings to promote gender inclusivity.

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Disney’s diversity and inclusion manager Vivian Ware was heard speaking about the changes in a video conference call recorded by City Journal’s Christopher Rufo.

“We’ve provided training for all of our cast members in relation to that. So now they know it’s ‘Hello, everyone,’ or ‘Hello, friends,'” Ware said in the video.

“We want to create that magical moment with our cast members, with our guests,” she said. “And we don’t want to just assume because someone might be in, our interpretation, may be presenting as a female that they may not want to be ‘princess.'”

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This came after DeSantis signed into law Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill.

The bill prohibits teachers from giving classroom instruction on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade.

DeSantis signed a bill that will impose four-year term limits on school board members and subject most material in district schools’ libraries and classrooms to governmental oversight and approval practices.

DeSantis said the legislation will enable parents to “defend the education of their kids” and keep instructional, library, or reading list material in line with state standards.

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