00:06Now, we are here to discuss something that both the Attorney General and I are going to be pursuing in conjunction, hopefully, with the Trump administration.
00:16And that involves the count of Florida in the most recent census.
00:21I think most people know we were undercounted in that census.
00:25In fact, I remember when the first Trump administration was leaving office in January of 2021, I spoke with people at the Commerce Department, and they said Florida is going to get two additional seats in Congress as a result of that census, which was basically the 2010 through 2020 population growth.
00:47It turns out a new administration takes office.
00:50We end up getting one seat in the state of Florida.
00:53You know, Oregon got one.
00:55I think Colorado, I mean, it's like we got the same as Oregon over that period of time.
00:59And even the Biden administration a couple years later said that there was undercount in Florida, that Florida should have gotten at least one more seat in Congress, and that some of these other states.
01:13And look, I'm not a conspiracy theorists, but every state that got shortchanged was a Republican state, and every state that got more was a Democrat state.
01:24That's just the truth about how that census was applied.
01:28So, you know, you think about it, and I know there's different issues involving the census even apart from that, but the census that was done, and it started under Trump administration, but it was processed, and the results were promulgated under Biden.
01:44And just with that, if we just take that and applied it properly, Florida would have at least one more seat.
01:50That's just the truth.
01:52So the attorney general has written a letter to the Census Bureau, the Commerce Department, copying the White House, saying, you know, please fix this remuneration and award Florida what we're entitled to, an extra seat in Congress.
02:09And if we get that, that's not only an extra seat in the House of Representatives, we have 28 now, that would also mean an additional vote in the Electoral College when it comes to presidential elections.
02:20And so we should have had that in 2024, in 22 for Congress, 24 for both Congress and the Electoral College, and we want this fixed now.
02:32So if that relief is given, then that would obviously force us, force the Florida legislature, to have to redraw the maps that we have for U.S. House of Representatives, because we have 28 districts currently.
02:49We would presumably have 29.
02:50I've had some people tell me they think we'd have 30, but I think 29.
02:54So you would have to do that.
02:55But that would need to be done, you know, likely within the next three to six months so that we have enough time to be able to get that done.
03:04But we are going to press this issue.
03:06Attorney General told me he's going to be willing to go up to Washington and talk to people in the Commerce Department to be able to get this right.
03:13I know President Trump has spoken about the need to fix the problems with the census.
03:19And let me also say that there's the issue, which I think is important, about, okay, you count people, and then you've got people, especially in, like, California, who are illegally in the country.
03:32Should you be rewarded for that in more seats in Congress because you're a sanctuary jurisdiction?
03:38I don't think so.
03:39I don't think it's right.
03:40So, you know, you count who's ever present, but then when you do congressional apportionment, that should be based on people who are lawfully present in the country.
03:51And then if you did that, that would also necessitate different results than what we've had in recent years.
03:58And so we're totally supportive of dealing with the issue of not having illegal aliens counted for the purpose of apportionment.
04:09That benefits California.
04:11It benefits Illinois, New York, in ways that it really shouldn't.
04:15But that's how it's been done.
04:17So we're definitely supportive of that.
04:18But you don't even need to do that to give us the extra seat that we should have had starting in the 2022 election.
04:25So that's the first thing.
04:26And we're going to keep on this.
04:27We're going to work with commerce.
04:29You know, I had spoken with folks back in the day when this happened.
04:33I was like, can we sue over this?
04:35And they're like, well, we don't really, you know, how do you get in?
04:39And, like, we didn't know, like, what the basis would be.
04:41We knew we were entitled.
04:42But, you know, you've got to prove it.
04:43You've got to have the legal theory, all this stuff.
04:45And we were not going to get any help at the time, of course, from the Biden administration.
04:48Well, now, Biden administration has since had to acknowledge that there was an undercount.
04:53And I know the Trump administration is of the same mind.
04:55And so we're in a position now where I think we may be able to get positive relief.
04:59The other issue that is going to be significant that's going to have a bearing on Florida's congressional districts is the idea of race-based districts.
05:10So the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted a case.
05:13It's going to be argued in October, basically asking the question about whether is it appropriate to use race when you're drawing districts.
05:22So the current iteration of the Voting Rights Act has been interpreted to mean that if you have a majority-minority district, that district has to be kept into a similar configuration such that the majority can elect a candidate of their choice, which basically, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean, you know, if that district elected a Republican, they would say that that's a bad district.
05:51It basically means that district has to elect a Democrat.
05:53That's the way this has been interpreted over the years.
05:57We have at least one in our congressional map that is configured, strangely, to be able to comply with that interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.
06:08People are now bringing a challenge saying, you know what, Voting Rights Act means you show up to vote.
06:14If you're a lawful citizen, you get to vote.
06:16They can't play games with you.
06:18They can't make one person go in with nothing and then someone, because they're a different color, have to be able to recite the odyssey from memory.
06:26Otherwise, they fail the literacy test.
06:27All that stuff is done.
06:30Like, that is not something that's appropriate.
06:32But that's an individual's voter's right to go in and cast a vote if you're a citizen of this country.
06:38And that obviously should apply regardless of race.
06:42But are we saying that you have to draw these strange districts to be able to manufacture a certain number of folks of certain race or not race in one district?
06:52That is using race to draw the districts in ways that I think people, some people, I do, interpret the 14th Amendment to not allow.
07:01So that is going to be a huge issue in front of the Supreme Court.
07:04I think because they're hearing it this early in the session that they likely are going to render a decision on this perhaps by the end of the year, the beginning of next year.
07:15You know, our primary is a year away.
07:16So we have time to be able to digest those changes.
07:20But if that decision were to come down and to say that those districts are problematic, Florida would be forced with that as well,
07:27even if we didn't get the extra seat to go in and do a new map.
07:33And as you remember, well, some may remember, you know, I had to veto the Florida Republican legislature.
07:40I had to veto their map last time because they drew this 200-mile district from Tallahassee to Jacksonville,
07:47this little squiggly district across the northern tip of Florida, and it was purely to manufacture a certain racial composition.
07:56It was not a VRA district, though.
07:58This was them doing that apart from that.
08:01And I said, that's not constitutional.
08:02Like, regardless, however you think the VRA should be interpreted, if it's a VRA district, federal law, fine, you deal with that.
08:10But this was not.
08:11No one was even claiming it was.
08:13And so I said, I'm not going to sign that.
08:15And we vetoed the map.
08:18We had to fight them on other stuff, but we got a map in.
08:22And it ended up going to federal court and the Florida Supreme Court, and it's been upheld every time people have sued over it because we knew we were right.
08:32But that was a really important decision to be able to do that.
08:35So we've done that.
08:37Here, this could be something that would require us to do even more, and we're going to be ready and willing and able to do it.
08:46Now, apart from what happens with the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau, apart from what happens with the U.S. Supreme Court and how they interpret Section 2 of the VRA,
08:57we do have a situation in Florida where, based on the recent Florida Supreme Court decision, you know, there may be things in the map that we are going to have to,
09:08well, the legislature would have to address.
09:12You know, we're going through it.
09:13I know people are looking at it.
09:15But there's definitely some decisions that were made by the legislature last time, particularly in southern Florida,
09:20that may not comport with the court's recent decision upholding the northern part of Florida with a part of the map that was challenged.
09:28So that obviously is a basis to go in and do this thing fresh.
09:34And the other thing I would point out is if you look at when this census was completed, the counting, I think, stopped in April of 2020.
09:44I mean, just think about what it was like in Palm Beach then compared to now.
09:48I mean, like you've had Florida has been the place where people have escaped to from all.
09:52And just keep in mind, I'm not recruiting people to move here.
09:55I'm not. Some governors will go around the country.
09:58Please move to our state. Please.
09:59I'm not doing that because, honestly, we've got a lot of people.
10:02We've got great people.
10:04You know, I figured out like during COVID, like I didn't need to go on these trips to recruit, you know, businesses from New York.
10:10They were calling me, asking me to come down.
10:12You guys can come if you want. It was fine.
10:14So I'm not one of those guys that's like begging people, you know, to move here at all because I understand, like, look, there's some benefits to that.
10:22I mean, some of the people have moved in this area, you know, have good income.
10:26They don't really use services.
10:28They contribute and all that stuff.
10:29So I'm not saying it's bad, but there obviously is challenges with traffic.
10:34There's challenges with building new schools and all this stuff.
10:37So the bottom line is, you know, we just try to do a good job.
10:40People can vote with their feet how they want to.
10:42And the reality is, since that April of 2020, you know, Florida has been the number one state that people have sought to move to in the entire United States of America.
10:53And so when I got elected governor, I think we had about 21 million people.
10:58You know, now we're almost 23 and a half million people in the state of Florida.
11:03But our current congressional districts are reflective of that reality from 2019 to the beginning of 2020.
11:11So you have some districts that have not reflected the population change that's happened.
11:16So some districts you have a lot of votes, some you don't have as much votes.
11:20And so that is another basis to go back in and look and say, okay, we want equal representation.
11:26You know, these districts should be the same.
11:27You know, a congressman in some parts of Florida can get elected with, like, a fraction of the votes that some others, some of these congressmen, you know, are getting 250,000 votes.
11:38Some of the others are getting, like, less than 200,000 votes.
11:41And I'm thinking to myself, like, you know, that's odd when you have that.
11:45And it's not just there's overall way more votes in some districts than the others.
11:49So we've seen that.
11:50And part of it is because what's happened in Florida has really been unprecedented.
11:54We've had really significant growth and migration.
11:59And our congressional map should reflect that.
12:02So this is something that we are going to have to address as a state.
12:07I've spoken with some folks in the Florida legislature.
12:11And I think that there's broad acknowledgment that this is something, you know, that is going to have to happen.
12:16Again, we do have some things that will happen between now and the spring that will inform exactly how we're supposed to do this, particularly if we get another seat or if the Supreme Court says that the racial-based districts are unconstitutional, that we would have no choice as a state but to go in and do a new congressional map.
12:39But I really – this is something that's kind of stuck in my craw for a number of years because I remember telling everybody we were going to get two seats at the last census.
12:50And then when they came out with it, and we only got one, and I was looking around, and I'm like, you know, they told me Rhode Island was going to lose a seat, and we were going to get two.
12:59And then Biden comes in.
13:01Who's the Commerce Secretary overseeing the census?
13:04Former governor of Rhode Island.
13:06Did Rhode Island lose a seat?
13:07No.
13:07Did Florida get two?
13:09No.
13:09We only got one.
13:10So there's all these questions, and so I've been frustrated with it.
13:13We were not going to get anywhere, I think, under the Biden administration.
13:17And I know the president has personally spoken about the need to get the census right, so we have an opportunity to do that and to basically give Floridians what they're entitled to, which is fair representation.
13:29So I want to thank the attorney general for taking the lead on this and working with the Trump administration.
13:36This is time sensitive, though.
13:37I mean, Florida, we have more time than most because our primary is not for about a year away.
13:43And we have filing that probably can get pushed to June for congressional if we need to, like the state offices.
13:51So we do have some time, but certainly if they're going to go back and fix the census, I mean, that would be something that they would need to act on.
13:57So we're going to go back and fix the census.
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