00:00Potentially happen over the next few years.
00:02Governor, for county officials and city officials who don't sign the updates of the 287 year
00:08since this is happening over in Orange County, will you remove them from office?
00:13We've made it very clear.
00:16This is not a policy debate at this point.
00:18The policy debate was at the beginning of the year when I called the special session.
00:21Our law in Florida is that you have to do your best maximum efforts to assist with immigration enforcement.
00:32And Florida's led the way on that.
00:34We've led on arresting of illegal aliens.
00:37Obviously, you're now seeing the flights for DHS.
00:41That cadence is starting to increase.
00:43I think you're going to see that go up dramatically.
00:45And that's the policy of Florida.
00:47So you don't have the ability to just say you're not going to be on the team on this.
00:53Now, the attorney general I know has engaged in them, and he's creating a record.
00:59And so what I do is, if it comes time, I look at the record.
01:03I look at my constitutional authority.
01:05And if there's a conflict between how elected officials are acting and the duties that they have to not just faithfully uphold the law,
01:16but a whole host of other duties that are in the Florida Constitution that would give the governor the power to suspend if they breach the duties,
01:23you know, we go through that analysis and then make decisions.
01:26But I think that I've shown that I'm willing to do that.
01:30I mean, remember, we had a state attorney here in Hillsborough County that took positions that some of these laws were more recommendations than binding,
01:40and that went afoul of what a prosecutor's discretion would entail.
01:44We did the suspension.
01:46We put in Judge Susie Lopez.
01:48Obviously, there's not that many people that wish we could go back at this point.
01:52And Hillsborough voters, even though he tried to run again, you know, she won a resounding victory.
01:56And so I think that we've shown ability – my first week in office, we removed the sheriff of Broward County for the failures involving the response to the Parkland shooting in February of 2014.
02:11Now, I wasn't – or 2017, 2018.
02:15I wasn't governor then, but it was a huge, huge wound for this state and that community.
02:22And I got to know a lot of the parents over that year as I was running for governor, and all they wanted was some accountability.
02:28No one had been held accountable at all by the time I took office.
02:32And so we went.
02:34We did that.
02:35Florida Senate permanently relieved him of his duties and upheld that suspension.
02:39And then when we did the grand jury investigation, we removed a number of the school board members down there for a whole host of different reasons as well.
02:48So we have a track record of doing what needs to be done to ensure compliance.
02:54But what I would say is the law is very clear.
02:57I had to fight the legislature on this.
02:59Blaze was with me on this.
03:01There was a handful of the others that were with me on it, but mostly led by the speaker, they did not want to require participation with state and local.
03:11That was in their initial bill, and they actually took away all the governor's authority and would have mothballed our existing operations.
03:19Horrible, horrible piece of legislation.
03:21So we had to fight very hard to be able to get to the point where we got where these duties are imposed in law.
03:28And I can tell you, if you don't do it, even though Florida bans sanctuary cities, if you don't have an affirmative duty, what I think some of those areas, the Gainesvilles and the Orlandos and some of these little pockets around the state, they end up devolving into de facto sanctuary.
03:48Like, yeah, they won't run afoul of our sanctuary laws.
03:50They'll know kind of how to do that.
03:52So it's not going to be flagrant like L.A. or flagrant like Chicago or some of these places, but they won't be doing what is necessary so that the policy is effective.
04:03So they're expected to do it.
04:05I know the attorney general has sent a missive, and I will be watching how that unfolds very carefully.
04:12Yes, ma'am.
04:12Governor, you recently said Florida got a broad deal in the census count, but the state under your leadership didn't invest in U.S. census outreach.
04:20How do you reconcile that?
04:22But that's not the issue.
04:24The Biden administration's own figures a couple years later showed Florida had the second, that the census was off by us.
04:33They overcounted in these blue states.
04:35It was almost a complete difference between red and blue.
04:39And first of all, I think a lot of that money would have been wasted, quite frankly.
04:42And some of that, the blue states are doing that to count illegal aliens.
04:46I don't believe illegal aliens should be counted in the census.
04:50I think it's wrong.
04:51I think it's unconstitutional that they're counted in the census.
04:54So there was no way that I was going to devote taxpayer money for that.
04:59Even without counting that, we should have gotten at least one more seat.
05:04I mean, just think about it.
05:05Over that period, now granted, Florida's population really took off from the day the census ended, closed, I think, April of 2020, which was like the start of COVID.
05:15We boomed from there like never before, but still, over that decade, we did gain population.
05:21Are you trying to tell me Oregon and Florida were equal in population gain over that period of time?
05:27No, of course not.
05:28People know that.
05:29So the Biden people even had to put out analysis a couple years later where they looked at it and they acknowledged that there was flaw here.
05:38I was told at the tail end of the Trump administration that we were going to get at least two seats.
05:43And so we were shocked when it came out.
05:46Now, the problem is there's not good remedies to be able to because I wanted to bring a lawsuit.
05:51And I was like, well, can we do?
05:53And they're like, well, you know, you mean you can maybe have them order a new count, but that's not going to help you in the intervening time.
06:00And so I've spoken with the Commerce Secretary under President Trump right now, Secretary Ludnick, about it.
06:08They agree that this census was flawed.
06:11They agree that Florida did not get the population that it should have gotten.
06:16But they also believe, as I do, that this next census, whether they do it mid-decade, which I know they've considered doing another census,
06:25because I think you have to do it once every 10 years.
06:27It doesn't mean you can't do it more than every 10 years under the Constitution.
06:31They should do it and count people that are legally allowed to be here.
06:36How many seats would California lose if you only counted lawful people, citizens?
06:43They would lose a lot of seats because they're a sanctuary state.
06:47For us, you know, we would stand to gain because we did not spend money to try to count illegals,
06:56because I don't think that that's constitutionally proper.
06:59That is ultimately going to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court,
07:02because I do think the Trump administration is going to put in for a census that is not going to count foreign nationals,
07:09that is just going to count a U.S. citizen.
07:12And that's really the way that I think that's what the founding fathers intended.
07:15I mean, they never really contemplated that you'd have a president that would intentionally allow all these people to come in without rule of law.
07:26But nevertheless, that's what we had to deal with for the past four years.
07:29So I think we did get shortchange.
07:33Any way you cut it, we got shortchange.
07:35Even if you put the illegal issue aside, we still got shortchange with the way they did the calculations.
07:41And isn't it interesting?
07:42Everyone was forecasting Rhode Island was going to lose a seat, and they didn't.
07:47So Little Rhode Island has two seats.
07:49So they didn't lose a seat.
07:51Well, come to find out in Biden's administration, who was the Commerce Secretary?
07:55The former governor of Rhode Island.
07:57I mean, isn't that interesting that that would have happened that way?
07:59So I just think that the analysis that even Biden's people had to put out showed without question that we should have a different count for the remaining of the decade.
08:11So we've had two elections under the current census.
08:15There's going to be three more elections, congressional elections, 26, 28, and 30, before the next census is done and the next maps are drawn.
08:24We could have a new map anyways in Florida, but if we got additional seat awarded to us, then we would be forced to draw.
08:32There would be no discretion at all because we'd go from 28 to 29, maybe even to 30.
08:37You know, I had some people in the administration tell me they thought Florida would get like three to five more seats if they did it properly.
08:43Like, I haven't seen that analysis done, but I've had people tell me that so clearly.
08:47And then also we're malapportioned because they stopped the count on April 1st of 2020.
08:55The Census Bureau did.
08:56I'm not saying there was, that was like anything wrong with that, but that's just when the count stopped.
09:00But look what's happened since April of 2020.
09:02Look around Hillsborough County to see the growth.
09:05So there's some districts in this state where you have way more votes being cast than in other districts in these races.
09:12And you wonder, you know, how is it that that ends up shaking out the way it does?
09:17So I do think that we're malapportioned within the state as well as malapportioned in the country.
09:22And the thing about it was we had a presidential election last year where some people were saying that if Harris just won those Rust Belt states,
09:32that would be 270 to 268 if that had happened.
09:36So it would have been Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
09:38And that would have been a huge crisis for this country because people like me would have said, well, wait a minute.
09:44If you did the census properly, even her winning those three states would not have given 270.
09:51Trump should have would have had over 270 with a proper count, even if he didn't win any of those states.
09:56And so we really now obviously he won all of them.
09:59It wasn't close.
10:00But I mean, we would have had a constitutional crisis in this country had it ended up settled into that.
10:05So let's get the set.
10:06I think I hope that they do they read they redo the census.
10:10I think Florida would benefit if they redid the census.
10:14But even short of that, I do think that, you know, we're going to be looking at the pathways to be able to do the redistricting here in Florida.
10:21Okay. Thanks, everybody.
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