Florida’s State of the State address: Breaking down the DeSantis agenda - Part 3
Bottom Line: Something I quickly picked up from Governor Ron DeSantis’s Inaugural speech – was that if he said he’d do something – he meant it. Go back through the governor’s speech and you’ll not find one specific issue he highlighted that he hasn’t already acted on within his first two months on the job. With that in mind it makes sense to me to pull out what Ron’s agenda for the 2019 state session is from his State of the State address. These are the specific issues and the order with which he prioritized them. I counted fourteen separate agenda items outlined in his address. In part three I’ll cover the final four agenda items.
- Sanctuary Cities- Made clear that Florida won’t become a sanctuary state and that any illegal alien who’s detained will be properly processed. He placed an added emphasis on criminal aliens who he’d previously stated would be deported. He advocated the passage of the proposed ban on Sanctuary cities/counties in Florida.
- Support for Venezuela – Repudiated the Maduro regime. Condemned socialism as a system that is hostile to human liberty and contrary to human nature.Told Venezuelan exiles in Florida that we stand with you.
- Support for Cubans – Stated that he supports the Trump administration's efforts against the Castro regime and would like to see it go the way of Maduro’s regime creating a free Cuba
- Support for Israel – Thanked the state legislature for recent anti-BDS legislation. Called out anti-Semitism and stated that BDS is DOA in Florida
After the speech the governor mentioned that he could have put about thirty items in his speech, but he didn’t want to get bogged down into too much detail. He elaborated by saying that just because it wasn’t in his speech doesn’t mean it won’t be addressed...So if an issue near and dear to you wasn’t covered – it's not a certainty that it won’t happen in this year’s session, but it is probably safe to say that it wasn’t one of Governor DeSantis’s top fourteen priorities. It’s been a new day in Florida ever since Ron DeSantis took the helm. This new leadership likely will lead to a different feel to this year’s state session as well. To be continued.