Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Signs Legislation to Curb Influence of the Chinese Communist Party

DeSantis
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Hannah Knudsen

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed legislation Monday designed to curb the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The governor signed three bills — SB 264, 258, and 846 — which take crucial steps to stop CCP influence in the Sunshine State.

“Today, Florida makes it very clear: we don’t want the CCP in the Sunshine State. We want to maintain this as the Free State of Florida,” DeSantis said, signing legislation designed to do just that. SB 264, for instance, prohibits the purchase of farmland in Florida by the CCP or what DeSantis described as “other foreign countries of concern.”

“We believe protecting our food supply is a security issue, and we want to make sure that our agricultural land is not compromised by CCP influence,” he said during Monday’s press conference.

“Now, the prohibition in that bill is not just limited to farmland. It also includes land within ten miles of any military installation or any type of critical infrastructure in our state,” DeSantis continued, adding that the legislation “ensures our seaports and ensures our airports, power plants, telecom systems, and other critical infrastructure will not be compromised by the CCP or any foreign adversary.”

The legislation aims to halt sensitive data from being stored on servers that could be owned by the CCP affiliates, and it also blocks TikTok on government devices — the latter of which is done via SB 258.

According to DeSantis’s office, that piece of legislation “requires the Department of Management Services to create a list of prohibited applications owned by a foreign principal or foreign countries of concern, including China, which present a cybersecurity and data privacy risk.”

It then requires government and educational institutions to “block access to prohibited applications on all government servers and devices in Florida and requires public employers to retain the ability to remotely wipe and uninstall these dangerous applications from government issued devices.”

SB 846 focuses on institutes of higher learning, banning state colleges and universities and their employees “from soliciting or accepting any gift in their official capacities from a college or university based in a foreign country of concern,” per the governor’s office.

WATCH the full presser below:

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House Appropriations Committee

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