YES, BUT THAT INTIMIDATION OF CITIZENS HAPPENED OUTSIDE THE ACELA CORRIDOR, SO WHY SHOULD WE COVER IT?

So far, neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post thinks this fascist act by Florida's authoritarian governor, Ron DeSantis, is worthy of a full story:

In a move that critics are calling a flagrant abuse of power, Florida’s Department of Health is threatening to bring criminal charges against local TV stations airing a campaign ad to overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

That quote comes from a CNN story. Popular Information has more:

On October 3, the Florida Department of Health sent a letter to Mark Higgins, the General Manager of WFLA, Tampa's NBC affiliate. The letter, sent by Florida Department of Health General Counsel John Wilson, claimed that airing the ad violates Florida law. Wilson cites Florida's law against "sanitary nuisance," which prohibits "the commission of any act... by which... the health and lives of individuals... may be endangered." Wilson argues that WFLA's decision to air the ad could "threaten or impair the health and lives of women." Wilson advised Higgins that ... WFLA must stop airing it within 24 hours. Failure to do so, Wilson writes, would be a crime punishable by up to 60 days in prison under Florida law.

So what is this alleged "sanitary nuisance"? It's

a first-personal narrative of a woman named Caroline who was diagnosed with brain cancer while pregnant with her second child. "The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom," Caroline says in the ad. "Florida has now banned abortion, even in cases like mine." Caroline urges voters to support Amendment 4 to "protect women like me."

Is banning political ads the purpose of the law?

The statute deals with issues like "untreated or improperly treated human waste," "[t]he keeping of diseased animals," and the "causing of any condition capable of breeding flies, mosquitoes, or other arthropods capable of transmitting diseases." While the statute includes a catch-all for "any other condition determined to be a sanitary nuisance," there is no mention of political ads.

There's no story on this at the Post. The Times provides a brief mention of what the DeSantis administration is doing starting in paragraph 13 of this story, which is primary about whether the referendum will get the 60% supermajority vote it needs to pass. The Times provides a link to a full story, but it's from MSNBC.

For years, Republicans have used many techniques, primarily gerrymandering, to effectively end democracy at the state level in red and purple states. In many states now, Democrats would need huge majorities to reach parity in the makeup of state legislative bodies.

Our most important newspapers don't think that's a story. To some extent, I think this is because they don't want to offend Republicans -- but I also think it's because they don't really care what happens outside the Acela Corridor (D.C. to Boston, or, more precisely, D.C. to Cambridge), and possibly L.A. and Silicon Valley. They send reporters on safaris to diners and say they're trying hard to understand "flyover country," but they don't send reporters to Republican-controlled state legislatures where deomocracy is being killed.

The Post has been better on this. A month ago, it ran a story about DeSantis's deployment of his election police to the homes of people who signed the petition to get this referendum on the ballot. So maybe the Post will eventually cover this threat to WFLA in a serious way. (The Times reported on DeSantis administration attempts to challenge the validity of the ballot petitions but didn't mention the home visits by DeSantis's election goons until paragraph 14 of this story. There was a further mention in an op-ed.)

The Times is covering DeSantis's hardball tactics, but totalitarian threats to individuals by GOP officials need to be seen as a five-alarm fire in every newsroom in America. Unfortunately, that goes against the long-ingrained habits of most high-level reporters and editors, who mostly care about how politicians battle fellow politicians and other political agents for power. (Even the CNN story cited at the beginning of this post falls into that category -- it's primarily about the response to DeSantis's threat by the Democratic chair of the Federal Communications Commission.)

A governor's threat to jail someone for running a political ad ought to be front-page news in every news outlet in America.

One more point: DeSantis is running. He still wants to be president, and you shouldn't underestimate the odds that he can win the 2028 GOP nomination. Yes, he crashed and burned in the 2024 primaries, but that was mostly because most GOP voters who liked his authoritarian style liked Trump a lot more. In polls of Republicans taken during the primary campaign, his favorable/unfavorable numbers were 62%/22%, according to FiveThirtyEight; Nikki Haley's were 43%/40. He didn't refuse to take Kamala Harris's calls about the last hurricane for no reason. He's planning a comeback -- and because he's both authoritarian and seemingly "mainstream," at least according to the media, he has a shot at winning the primaries. And every Republican presidential nominee has a shot at winning the election.