00:03Doctor, school districts across the country are suing the president's administration
00:08about a $6 billion funding freeze on educational programs.
00:12How does that affect Florida?
00:13Which programs are they talking about?
00:15Yeah, I'm like...
00:16So here's the thing.
00:17I think what the administration is doing is they are not going to give funding to school
00:24districts that are going to pursue harmful policies and objectives.
00:30And so that's something that in Florida, you're required to honor parents' rights.
00:35You're required to have the core subjects and live up to our standards.
00:41And so I think that's probably what it's going to be.
00:44So I don't think there's going to be any issues in Florida for not following the rules of the road.
00:52I mean, yeah, look, we have some school districts that try to go off the reservation
00:57because, you know, some of the laws that the state has passed, they may disagree with.
01:03But, you know, that's not the way this works, right?
01:05The state, you know, the state's created the federal government.
01:08The state's also created school districts and school boards under the Constitution.
01:12So when you have state laws, those have to be respected.
01:16I think what this is likely happening with the Trump administration, I need more specifics,
01:21but I think it's holding, like, school districts in California accountable
01:26because they're trying to do indoctrination, they're trying to do gender ideology,
01:31they're trying to do D&I, and that's the policy of the federal government not to do those things.
01:37And so they're free to adopt that, but they can't also get federal funding if they're doing that.
01:44And I think that if it's that, I think that that's totally appropriate.
01:48So we've addressed all those issues many years ago.
01:52Now, it's not like everyone's all hunky-dory and they're not all happy about all the things
01:57in every little nook and cranium.
01:58And I was down in Broward County yesterday.
02:01We were announcing a doge audit of their county government.
02:04They're not necessarily see eye to eye with us.
02:07I was in Gainesville, which, you know, I remarked, you know,
02:10I talk about this guy running for New York City mayor, and it's like,
02:13and I was like, you know, come to think of it, he could probably get elected in Gainesville.
02:17I mean, that's just the way it is, right?
02:18Fine.
02:19But, you know, and you can have those, but you have to follow the laws.
02:24And so in Florida, we have really unprecedented support for parents to be able
02:29to have their rights upheld and to ensure that these school districts are complying with.
02:34And look, what we're doing is like what 100% of people agreed education should be not too long ago.
02:41I mean, it's more recent that you've seen this massive tangent towards the partisanship and the political.
02:47I mean, the National Education Association is the largest teacher union.
02:51I've, go look at the stuff they're putting out on what their unions dedicate to.
02:56It's political stuff.
02:58It's talking about all these things that are really tangential for, okay, can we have good reading,
03:03good math, all that stuff.
03:04And I think that's been very harmful for American education.
03:08And California is obviously one of the worst offenders.
03:12I mean, I remember being out in California.
03:14I was doing some events.
03:15And I was kind of bemoaning.
03:17I'm like, you know, how heartless was it of California to lock these kids out of school, you know, for so long?
03:23I mean, you had athletes we were talking about the other day down at New College.
03:28You know, we said sports need to be, need to be going, you know, that 2020 season, a lot of those kids,
03:34if they were in California, they wouldn't have played at all.
03:36I mean, we had people moving here for that.
03:38And I was like, oh man, and then they were out for longer than that and this and that.
03:42And I had some, and most people agree that locking them out like California did was wrong.
03:46But some of them were like, well, some of these school districts, they'd be better off being at home
03:50because of how, you know, what they're doing.
03:53And I was surprising to hear that.
03:54But I think as you look into there, so I think it's probably going to be focused on some of those areas of the country
03:59that really want education to be more ideological and partisan.
04:06And that's not, that's certainly not what we're going to use Florida tax dollars for.
04:09And interesting on higher education too.
04:12I think the Trump administration is working hard to, you know, get some of the rot out of higher education,
04:20the intellectual rot, the ideological rot.
04:23We saw a lot of that at places like Columbia University after the October 7, 2023 attacks
04:28by Hamas and Israel with how those campuses really erupted and how the administrators let the inmates run the asylum.
04:35We saw a lot of, a lot of bats.
04:36Now, people that have followed this knew that there was a lot of rot there,
04:39but I think that really brought it to the surface for a lot of people.
04:42And so they're working hard to do things.
04:44We announced the accreditation, new accrediting body that we're going to get certified,
04:49Florida leading other states in the Southeast, leading to be able to do it.
04:53Because, you know, these accreditors, no one, how did they even get there?
04:56Like nobody elects these people and yet they have an agenda and they try to do it.
05:01And our schools have clashed with, you know, the accreditor here in the Southeast.
05:05They did try to, you know, the media's like, oh, they didn't adopt DEI.
05:08They tried to adopt DEI and the schools pushed back successfully, but they wanted to do it.
05:13So there was a lot of things going on there.
05:15But if you look at the news, I think came out yesterday, University of Florida Hamilton Center,
05:21they brought in like all these, these epic scholars, like people from Harvard
05:25and some of these places are leaving there to come to the University of Florida
05:31because what the Hamilton Center is already achieving is, and it's very young,
05:35I think the sky's the limit, but it's the, the premier place for the study of Western society,
05:42Western thought and the principles that, that underlie the American experiment.
05:46And that's a total lost art in so many of these other places around the United States of America
05:51and some of the most historic and, and august institutions.
05:56They've really just turned away from, you know, what made this country unique,
06:01why Western civilization has had all these successes.
06:05And they've adopted some of these insular ideologies.
06:08So, so they can abandon the field.
06:10We'll double down on that.
06:12And we'll make sure that students that go through, they're going to have an opportunity,
06:16you know, to get the premier education when it comes to the pillars of Western civilization.
06:22You know, it's like my, you know, our kids are young.
06:24They're, we're there just finished second, first and pre-K.
06:27I'm like, you know, you think about, you know, where they're going, you know, to college.
06:32And, you know, I'm just like, you know, I'm like, I am not sending them to, to, to, to Harvard or Yale on this, I cannot do that.
06:38And, you know, when I was there was, it was, it was crazy, but it's gotten a lot crazier.
06:44I can tell you that way crazier.
06:46And so, you know, I'm saying, hey, I'm a Navy guy, you know, what about the Naval Academy?
06:50And first lady doesn't like that as much, not because she's not a big supporter of the military.
06:54She just may not want our kids to be, you know, to be in, in those situations.
06:58That's, I think, a mother's instinct on that.
07:00And so we'll see.
07:02But, you know, we both talked to ourselves.
07:04We, we have so many great options now in Florida.
07:07Yeah, our kids, you know, I was in Gainesville yesterday and just congratulating the folks there on the basketball national championship that, and I had, I had the pleasure of being able to go.
07:18It was exciting because, you know, it looked like they were going to lose for 50, you know, most of the game, but 38 minutes and then the last couple, it's, it shifted.
07:25And so it was a really, really neat thing.
07:27And I said, you know, we're, we're, we're encouraged by the potential for the football season, you know, with Florida.
07:34But I said, you know, we, we've been in Tallahassee since 2019.
07:38And so my kids, all they know is FSU.
07:40So they are like huge FSU.
07:43And like, that's kind of gotten known.
07:45And then some of my, my, my Gator friends would be like, man, why are you pushing them?
07:49I was like, trust me, I am not pushing.
07:51This is what they've done.
07:52So at the beginning of last season, we went to the Florida Miami game at the swamp.
07:58My girl, our girls were in, I think they were in like UF cheerleader outfits.
08:03My son had a Tebow Jersey on.
08:06We thought, listen, you know, you're going to experience the swamp.
08:08It's special.
08:09And maybe, you know, they'll, they'll do it.
08:11And we weren't pushing that either, but we wanted to give them, you know, expose them.
08:14And I can tell you, it was a rejection.
08:17They, they're so dyed in the wool with, with, with FSU on that.
08:22And so, you know, it is, but we think about, I think, look what they're doing at Hamilton.
08:27Like, I think like to, to have no tuition increases for Florida residents, since I've been governor,
08:33$6,300, you can get one of the premier educations.
08:36Look what Florida State's done.
08:37Look, I mean, we overhauled new college down in Sarasota.
08:40You know, some of the parents out there that are concerned about, oh man, some of these universities are too crazy.
08:46You should take a trip to new college and what they've done.
08:49I mean, they've really leaned in on classical liberal arts education.
08:53They've recruited huge, huge, around the country, great scholars down there.
08:58But you pull up to like the main, because we did an event there, you pull up there.
09:02It's right on the water, just beautiful campus.
09:06And I'm thinking to myself, you have some of these places that are really good that I have a high regard for,
09:10like a Hillsdale College in, in Michigan.
09:13But, you know, if you're a parent, would you rather be visiting central Michigan in January?
09:18Or would you rather be in Sarasota, there or there?
09:21And so it's that.
09:21So you have that.
09:22So you have so many different options, which I think are really good.
09:26But part of it, and you even have people now, when I first became governor,
09:30if I talked to people from like, you know, like in finance, like New York City,
09:34they would never have, have even thought about Florida for, for higher ed.
09:39It just wasn't on their radar.
09:41Now, after all that's happened over these years, they look at what some of those universities up there are doing.
09:46They look at what our universities here.
09:48There's a huge contrast.
09:49And so like, why would I want to mess with that when I know I can get something good in Florida?
09:54And that's a huge, huge success, I think, that a lot of people, you know, have really worked hard to do.
09:59So that's a, that's a lot of information, but just saying that I think what the Trump administration is doing
10:05on both K-12 and higher ed is trying to hold the line for sanity and restoring sanity to our education system.
10:14Because I think if we do that and we focus on, you know, the building blocks of what these students need,
10:20I think we're going to be much better off both as a state like we have done, but also as a country.
10:25So, but in the meantime, you can count on us.
10:28There's a lot of people that are involved in fighting cancer, particularly pediatric cancer throughout the state.
10:35But just know in the state of Florida, we're going to be there.
10:39We're going to be fighting the fight alongside you.
10:41And we're going to do all we can to, to finally bring this issue to bed once and for all.
