When Florida legislators kick off their 2023 legislative session Tuesday, count on numerous payments that can be pink meat for almost all’s Republican base.

Amongst them are main proposals to increase gun rights, additional limit range efforts at public universities and increase the power to sue media shops for defamation — all measures that make clear the path of a potential presidential bid by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

With a GOP supermajority holding energy throughout each chambers in Tallahassee, DeSantis will face little significant resistance in shaping the state’s politics as he sees match, politics watchers within the state mentioned, as he continues to construct out a probable presidential marketing campaign.

“Regardless of the governor needs to get via, it would get via this session,” mentioned Susan MacManus, a professor emeritus of political science on the College of South Florida. “It’s going to supply some clues — some enormous clues — as to what sort of marketing campaign he’s going to run.”

A DeSantis spokesperson declined to reply questions concerning the coming session. The governor’s latest memoir steadily trumpets his accomplishments in Florida as fashions for nationwide coverage. One chapter is even known as “Make America Florida,” and he writes that “the Florida blueprint” is a “blueprint for America’s revival.”

Listed below are a number of the greatest objects the GOP Legislature can be specializing in in its March 7-to-Might 5 session.

Increasing gun rights

Republican leaders have already launched laws that may enable folks to hold hid loaded weapons anyplace with out permits — a proposal DeSantis has signaled is one among his high priorities for the approaching session.

“This was one thing that I’ve all the time supported,” he mentioned in December. “It’ll be one thing that can be performed within the common session.”

Beneath present Florida regulation, individuals who search to hold hid weapons in public are required to get hid weapons licenses from the state. A “constitutional carry” measure — as conservatives gun rights activists name the invoice — or “permitless carry” — the time period most well-liked by gun security and gun management activists, in addition to impartial teams — would get rid of the requirement.

In latest weeks, nevertheless, Senate Republicans have mixed the laws with measures they are saying would enhance faculty security, like making a standardized faculty risk evaluation course of and increasing a program that enables faculty district staff to hold weapons at colleges. 

Democrats have blasted the mix as a political ploy to make the permitless carry proposal extra palatable to voters.

“They need to be two separate payments,” state Sen. Jason Pizzo, a famous DeSantis critic, mentioned in an interview. “They’re not germane. … They shouldn’t be mixed collectively.”

Cracking down on something ‘woke’

DeSantis’ heavy lean into tradition conflict points associated to schooling has helped elevate his nationwide profile. Conservatives have celebrated his 2022 “Cease WOKE Act,” which in impact curtailed conversations about race in colleges; his stress on the School Board, which appeared to immediate the group to water down its Superior Placement African American research course (the group claims it did not make the modifications due to DeSantis); and his retaliation in opposition to Disney after it objected to a bit of laws — dubbed the “Don’t Say Homosexual” invoice by critics — to limit educating younger college students about sexual orientation and gender identification.

He’s not about to cease that method.

One other Republican-proposed invoice within the Legislature would construct on these efforts by cracking down on range applications at state universities. The invoice, HB 999, would consolidate state management over such colleges. It will enable the Florida Board of Governors, in impact, to pressure universities to take away majors and minors in such topics as vital race principle and gender research and to bar spending on applications or actions that assist them. The Board of Governors oversees the state’s public universities, and 14 of its 17 members are appointed by the governor.

The invoice would additionally give colleges’ boards of trustees the authority to evaluation college members’ tenure at any time.

As well as, DeSantis and state Republicans should not letting up on their deal with focusing on transgender folks. 

A pair of corresponding payments within the state Home and Senate would, if enacted, ban requiring college students, educators and different faculty staff from utilizing pronouns that “don’t correspond with that particular person’s intercourse.” They might additionally ban faculty staff from sharing their very own pronouns if they don’t “correspond” with their sexes and from asking college students for his or her most well-liked pronouns. 

The identical payments would additionally increase the Parental Rights in Training Act, which that critics name the “Don’t Say Homosexual” regulation, by extending a ban on educating college students about sexual orientation and gender identification via the eighth grade (the present regulation applied such a ban via the third grade). 

Andres Malave, an aide to Republican Home Speaker Paul Renner, disputed that any focus by legislators on high-profile tradition war-related laws like HB 999 was coming from the governor’s workplace. 

“These proposals are all member-driven, and they’re going to transfer their manner via the suitable processes,” he mentioned in an interview.

Going after the media

One other invoice anticipated to get critical consideration, at DeSantis’ urging, would make it simpler to efficiently sue media organizations for defamation.

The invoice, HB 991, would restrict the “precise malice” requirement that has historically allowed journalists some room for error so that they’re not pressured to self-censor whereas holding highly effective folks accountable. The time period “precise malice” refers to the concept that folks acted on data they knew to be false or with reckless disregard for its accuracy.

Notably, the invoice would additionally classify allegations of discrimination in opposition to different folks on the premise of race, intercourse, sexual orientation or gender identification as defamation.

Consultants have raised substantial questions concerning the invoice’s constitutionality and legality, provided that it consists of a number of provisions that would appear to contradict landmark Supreme Courtroom rulings on First Modification rights.

The invoice in essence places in writing former President Donald Trump’s calls throughout his 2016 marketing campaign “to open up our libel legal guidelines,” and its motion via the Legislature would advance the DeSantis administration’s combative method to the information media.

In a roundtable dialogue final month about “media defamation practices,” DeSantis urged the Legislature to behave on the difficulty, saying, “Legacy media shops more and more divorce themselves from the reality and as a substitute attempt to elevate most well-liked narratives and partisan activism over reporting the details.”

Pizzo mentioned concerning the invoice, “DeSantis is simply actually copying [Trump’s] playbook.”

‘We’ll know the place he’s going by what occurs on this session’

Different conservative payments are getting nationwide consideration, together with one which, whether it is enacted, would get rid of the Democratic Social gathering within the state and one other that may require bloggers who write concerning the governor and legislators to register with the state.

Regardless of the Republican supermajority within the Legislature, many Florida politics watchers don’t count on these payments to go.

“I name them silliness payments,” MacManus mentioned. “I believe there’s a hazard in shifting ahead with payments like these if [DeSantis] anticipates working for president.”

The Legislature will even think about extra typical Republican proposals pushed by DeSantis, like “file tax reduction” and an schooling plan that may increase lecturers’ salaries whereas limiting faculty board phrases and stripping unions of leverage in negotiating pay for educators.

“We’ll know the place he’s going by what occurs on this session,” MacManus mentioned.