Florida Mayors Are Baiting Governor Ron DeSantis Into Siding With Coronavirus

Florida's Trump-loving governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order last week barring any cities or school districts from putting mask mandates in place, even as Florida gets ravaged by the Delta variant of the Coronavirus. But there are a handful of mayors who are directly disobeying this order, and they are daring DeSantis into siding with the virus over his own constituents. This is a smart move, both politically and public health-wise, by these mayors, as Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Late last week, Florida's Trump loving Republican governor. Ron DeSantis decided to side with the Corona virus, a Delta variant, and he signed an executive order that for bade cities, municipalities counties, school districts, whatever it is said, you cannot implement a mask mandate for yours. [inaudible] no public state, uh, mask mandates. You can't do it. He signed the executive order. And by the way, uh, Republicans, the Republican controlled legislature had actually passed legislation. Um, that gave him the authority to do that. Now that happened a while back, but this particular order was 100% DeSantis trying to get ahead of the issue, even though Florida, as we know accounts for now, 20% of the statewide COVID cases, uh, some other terrifying numbers here. Uh, let me just read these real quick, cause this is horrible. Um, COVID um, positive tests for the viruses that cause COVID is high in all 67 Florida counties, according to the centers for disease control and prevention on Saturday, Florida reported 21,683 new COVID-19 cases.

Um, as of July 30th, the single highest daily COVID case count since the pandemic began, uh, the seven day moving average soared to 15,817, a more than 750% increase since July 1st. We also have hospitals here that are reaching capacity more than 10,500 individuals in the state of Florida currently hospitalized with COVID-19 and that yes, folks included foods, children, preteen child in ICU units here in the state of Florida with the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus. And Ron DeSantis is telling counties, you cannot protect people. I will not let you make a rule to protect people.

And thorny

Is about to be challenged. We have at least two counties that are implementing mask mandates, orange county, Miami Dade county, orange county, by the way. And Miami-Dade, by the way, most populous orange county happens to be where all the theme parks are here in the state of Florida. So they're hotbeds, uh, of tourist activity. And that also plays a huge role in Florida, surging numbers, still a popular tourist destination all over the state, but orange county in particular, you got two mayors, one in each county that have implemented mask mandates. Now, to be fair, technically, they did this prior to DeSantis, signing this executive order. But what they're doing is challenging his authority because he had said earlier the week before they put their mandates in, if you do this, I'm going to sign the order. They did it. He signed the order. They're going to set up a legal showdown.

And the legal showdown is going to determine who has the ultimate authority in those areas? Is it the mayors? Is it the county commissioners or is it the governor of the state? Does the governor of the state have the authority to override local laws? That's going to be a massive folks. Court decision that is, is going to have ramifications, not just here in the state of Florida regarding COVID, but quite possibly nationwide regarding literally everything and could effectively render local governments moot at that point, which is why I do not believe the courts would side with the governor here. Even some of the more extreme right wing courts,

But we have to wait and see

How that plays out. But ultimately right now, forget the legal side. This is a smart move by these mayors for two reasons. One the public health part, right? That is obviously the most important you've got to protect your people. We've got to slow this virus down before all of Florida's hospitals hit capacity, and we can't even take somebody with a simple case of appendicitis.

But the second one is the political factor.

These orders signed by these mayors are effectively telling Ron DeSantis. You now have to make a choice. Are you going to side with the virus? Are you going to side with public health? The entire country is watching. They're watching your failures.