Looking at details surrounding Florida HB-1 has me questioning my own sanity.  I’m writing things that I look at and say “You sound like the guy who goes around insisting that the FBI is reading all of his e-mails.” It makes sense to me but the conclusions are admittedly a bit far flung…then again, this era that we’re living in is pretty far flung, and the GOP really does appear to have gone batshit crazy under Trump, so I’m posting the first paragraph of the long magazine style essay that I’m working on (my big end of the month magazine style piece for the Globe and Intelligencer) and I wanted to hear the response of the Nat Zero community as to whether I should keep going with this or dial it down a notch. Please sound off and let me know in the comments.

An outline of potential civil action to counter enforcement of Floria’s HB-1 anti-protest law
Florida HB-1: Combating public disorder is the infamous anti-protest bill that was was passed by the Republican dominated Florida state legislature on April 15 of 2021. The state of Oklahoma recently passed a similar law, HB-1674 that contains similar provisions. The Florida bill has been widely characterized as an attack on the First Amendment Rights of speech and assembly, and an example of cruel and unusual punishment in that it imposes excessive bail and fines on individuals who may be rounded up in enormous mass arrests, even if they’ve committed no crime, and there is zero evidence to demonstrate any kind of criminal intent. This essay will examine several especially troublesome aspects of the bill, and present a theory for civil proceedings that effectively amount to a “paralysis of prosecution” approach. The goal is that HB-1 should be struck down due to the fact that the law cannot be enforced in the manner that the Florida legislature apparently intended without leading to conditions that constitute violations of 18 USC § 241: Conspiracy against rights and 18 USC § 242: Deprivation of rights under color of law.

Civil action to seek relief for violations of those two sections of the US Code is sought under 42 USC § 1983: Civil action for deprivation of rights. The remainder of this essay will include a brief review of key sections of HB-1 that are especially troublesome; compare those sections to the statutes cited above and provide references to key Federal Court statutes; and finally present a discussion of political factors surrounding passage of this bill which suggest it not only threatens the First Amendment Rights of Florida residents, but may even constitute something absolutely unprecedented in American history: an attempt by a political party to uphold the ideology of Trumpism by passing a law that simplifies the legal defense for acts of vehicular homicide, a form of terrorist attack that is preferred by right-wing extremists in the United States. Laws like Florida HB-1 and Oklahoma-1674 may ultimately represent an example of Republican governors and legislators using the power of their offices to sponsor domestic terrorism.