Rep. Maxwell Frost: Florida Govt. Abusing Its Powers

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Next to the bloodshed in America’s classrooms. A grief-stricken community in Nashville is gathering for vigil this evening to mourn. The three children and three adults who were killed in a mass shooting at a Christian school on Monday. More details are now emerging about what happened that day. New body cam footage is showing how the police confronted the shooter who local authorities say was under care for an emotional disorder and had legally purchased seven guns in the past three years. For Americans everywhere, this incident is incredibly triggering and our next guest is no exception. Democrat Maxwell Frost made history in 2022 when he became the first person from generation Z to win a seat in Congress, formally one of the leaders of the March for Our Lives movement. He tells Michel Martin why the shooting in Nashville is so utterly outrageous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Representative Frost, thank you so much for talking with us.

REP. MAXWELL FROST (D-FL): Thank you so much for having me.

MARTIN: Now, I just wanted to start thinking about the fact that we’re speaking with you after a person killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville. People may remember that you were the first national organizing director of the student led anti-gun violence group, March for Our Lives. And just a couple of days ago was the fifth anniversary of that 2018 student led campaign. And I just was wondering what the last day or so has brought up for you as a person who is so involved in that issue.

FROST: Well, you know, it’s incredibly, number one, triggering for myself and for the friends of mine that have grown up with, over the past decade, fighting with and gun violence. I, you know, go on social media every time after these shootings and see my friends from Parkland, my friends from polls, different shootings across the entire country talking about having to relive their own trauma because of what’s happening right now. I found out about this shooting right before I hopped on a plane to come here to D.C. for session and just spent the whole time thinking about it and being very angry about the fact that this isn’t normal and it shouldn’t be a reality for us, but we live in a country where, for so many people, growing up, especially people, part of my generation, they see this gun violence is normal because it happens on a daily basis. It seems like every week there’s another mass shooting, and those are the ones people hear about. There are so many shootings across the country. It was 100 people a day due to gun violence. The largest mass shooting is actually not one event, but the multiple instances of gun violence that happened in black and brown communities across the country. The devastating amount of white middle age rural Americans who will take their life with a gun in a day as well. And so, there’s just a lot of work that needs to be done on this issue.

MARTIN: Is there anything you’ve learned since you’ve been in Congress that sheds light on why it is that this particular health crisis a solution seemed to elude us, at least, to this point?

FROST: Yes. It in gun violence and on any issue, whenever you see broad opposition and you take a step back and think, why has nothing been done on this? What’s going on? Almost always — in fact, I’ll say always, there is some sort of lobby behind it that has a goal of valuing of profits over people, and that’s the same thing in the gun issue. You can boil it down to culture, which that’s a huge part of it. You can boil it down to power, which is a huge part of it. But behind all of that, there — you think about something like the NRA. The NRA says that they’re an advocacy organization is completely false. They’re not an advocacy organization. If they were, they would be with most NRA members and advocating for universal background checks. But because that might hurt the bottom line of gun manufacturers, they’re not for it. So, they are lobbying front, so that way these gun companies can make more money. Corporate greed and the role that corporations plan our politics are a huge reason why we don’t have voting rights, a huge reason why we don’t have adequate gun laws in this country, a huge reason why health care in this country is not a health care system but a sickness care system, and it’s really something that we can’t just look at and talk about, we have to actually act on it. That’s why in the 10 years I’ve been working on this issue, one bill has passed at the federal level, and it’s an OK bill. It’s important. It’s going to save lives. But that’s the reason why. It all boils down to corporations, corporate greed, people valuing profits over people.

MARTIN: You arrived in Congress at the point at which your party went into the minority after having been in the majority for, you know, some number of years, but I was just looking at the list of hearings today and many of them are like big tech censorship, disorder at the border, things of that nature. So, I’m just interested in how you set priorities for yourself at a time when sort of the institutional levers don’t really seem to be there in your — in the house for people with your perspective.

FROST: No matter what the situation is, no matter what’s going on, we have to stay true to our values and what we believe in, right, and the issues that we ran on. I ran on ending gun violence. I ran on ensuring everybody has health care in this country. I ran on voting rights. I ran on ending the climate crisis. And I’m going to stick true to those values no matter who the speaker of the house is. However, we do know that, you know, a lot of times we have to take small steps to get there. It doesn’t mean we don’t let go — you know, it doesn’t mean we let go of those north stars, but it means we realized the political situation. The situation right now is the Republicans have a slim majority and they are focused on not bills that are going to help people but bills that will help set themselves up. So, you know, keep the House and run for president in two years — less than two years. And I’m not making this up. Jim Jordan, one of them, you know, most senior members of that party said it himself that the next two years are going to be about setting themselves up in terms of messaging and et cetera for the election, and we see that in the bills coming up. I mean, look at the bills I’ve had an oversight. I had one that was called the Biden investigation, then a colon, the Department of Treasury, like it’s some sort of movie title. I had another one that was the hunter Biden laptop Twitter files, part one. You know, when’s part two? You know, it’s like it’s all theatrics, and it’s all messaging and not about affordable housing, not about helping foreign working-class families not about helping to end gun violence in our communities, supporting small businesses, none of that. It’s all about messaging and placing blame on the Biden administration for number one issues that have been here for a while and issues that they’re not interested or actually working together on.

MARTIN: So, given that those realities, as you understand them, what is your role here? What are you going to do?

FROST: Well, it’s a few different things. As a member on oversight, I have an important job of pushing back on all the lies that we’re seeing from the — this far-right MAGA wing of the Republican Party, and we’re going to continue to push back on those things and these committee hearings, and that’s really one of our front lines over the next two years. On space, science and technology, which is the other committee I sit on, that’s more of a bipartisan committee. We are hoping that we can work together among the environmental subcommittee, work together in terms of resiliency against the impacts of the climate crisis but also, preventative measures. And we’re not going to get the green new deal this year or next year, but what we can get are, you know, smaller, incremental steps to hopefully, you know, appropriate money in the right way where we can actually prevent the climate crisis and put money in the hands of community groups that are doing great work in terms of resiliency, but also in terms of preventative measures in reducing emissions. And so, those are just one of the examples on gun violence. I just filed my first bill last week. It’s the Creative Federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention. It’s a bicameral piece of legislation, which means that it also was introduced in the Senate. I worked with Senator Chris Murphy on it. We introduced it at the same day with advocates and survivors surrounding us. That is a bill that has enough. It’s not gun policy, it’s just a department to research data and provide good recommendations on any gun violence. And I hope that because it’s not, you know, “gun policy” and it’s more about creating an office that we can get some Republican support on it, is it going to end gun violence, the creation of the office immediately? No. But it’s providing a daily solution to a daily problem.

MARTIN: Do you see any areas of possible agreement with members of the House Majority, the Republican Party, at — on matters such as this?

FROST: I hope so. I mean, you know, we’ve — I’ve reached out to many different members. I’ve had conversations with members of the Florida delegation and, you know, we’ve already done two bipartisan things. We worked number one. We worked together with the whole delegation, Republicans and Democrats, in ensuring that there’s no off-road (ph) drilling in Florida. We also all came together to write a letter to the Florida State Legislature to advocate for money in protecting the Everglades. So, we — I mean, we’ve already been doing it. And you know, we’ve co-sponsored a ton of bipartisan legislation. But again, none of this is the type of legislation that we really — the transformational change we need right now to combat the climate crisis. And I don’t know if you saw the recent report, but we don’t have much time to drastically, you know, cut emissions, or else, you know, my generation and my kids and my kids’ kids are going to, you know, have the consequences to bear. We, you know, see that Republicans are being very, you know, the sort of a vengeance, you know, associated with being in the majority right now. And so, there’s not been a ton of collaboration on a lot of the bigger ticket items.

MARTIN: But is that really across the board or is that just for the cameras? I guess what I’m curious about is like behind the scenes are there members of the House Republican Majority who are willing to work with people like you and others like you on things that would move the ball forward?

FROST: No. Some are. You know, you’ll — it’s — you’ll rarely find someone in Congress, a member, who just doesn’t want to work with anyone, right, on anything. I mean, even very far-right members that I disagree with on a lot of things, I’ve had conversations with some of them about music legislation, et cetera that they seemed, you know, open to. And there’s been a ton of partisan legislation already passed this session. It’s just, here’s the thing, no one hears about it because, you know, the majority isn’t you know, making a big deal about it because, you know, they have a mission. And that mission right now is a messaging for the next election cycle. The next two years are one big campaign. And I think, you know, as you look at these committee hearings and you look up the pieces of legislation we’re voting on, like this parental bill of rights last week that we voted on that talks, you know, apparently, it gives parents rights. It doesn’t do that at all, actually. And it doesn’t even talk about the rights of students to not get shot in their classroom. If Republicans in Congress actually cared about what’s going on at schools, why don’t they do something on these school shootings? Why don’t they do something to ensure that children actually have nutrition in schools? Why don’t they do something to ensure that teachers have equitable pay and that they have the materials that they need so students can learn? No. It’s a cycle, right, defund public education, blame public education on all the problems and then, try to privatize the system. And then, you know, we have this shooting just less than a week after we voted on this parental bill of rights. So, it’s a very horrible irony. But, you know, there is just a lot of work to do.

MARTIN: Is there anything that has surprised you about being in Congress?

FROST: Not a ton. I would say that partisanship is really built into the operation of Congress. It’s not just a thing that has happened, right? It is part of the building. It is part of the way we operate. I’ll give you an example, my orientation. We are only with our Republican colleagues for the morning and that’s when the classes are going on, and I’m trying to pay attention, you know. And after that, there’s a bunch of other events and they — you get split up and you’re not with each other the whole night. So, you really have to go out of your way to create opportunities for bipartisanship. We have separate break rooms, you know, the cloakrooms. We sit on separate sides of the aisle. We obviously caucus separately. A lot of the caucuses are separated by party even though there’s members who might actually, you know, be able to join different ones. So yes, either way, the — really the way partisanship is really built into the operation here has been a big surprise for me.

MARTIN: And what about generationally? Do you feel a big divide with other members who — the median age of voting members of the house is, I believe, 58. And I think the median age of voting members of the Senate is something like 65?

FROST: Yes.

MARTIN: Do you feel it? Does it seem like that?

FROST: Well, I will say that there is — yes, there is a generational divide. 100 percent.

MARTIN: How do you see that? How does it play out?

FROST: It’s — a lot of times it’s on little things. But, I mean, you look at something like the TikTok hearing that just happened. You just listen to a lot of the questions and they’re just kind of like, you know, stupid questions that if you knew anything about tech or the way that, you know, TikTok works, you wouldn’t ask it. I’m not saying the — you shouldn’t have a hearing on protecting data and privacy, but just like you — like the words people are saying are just kind of like, you know, wild. It’s not even just about younger people, it’s just about educated people in terms of tech. And young people are actually much more educated in this space because — gen Z, for instance, what — the thing that separates our generation from other generations is we’ve been immersed in technology since birth. That’s actually the — that’s the defining factor of gen Z, technology since birth, cellphone since birth, internet since birth. And because of that, we’re just naturally educated on tech and the internet and et cetera because it’s been a factor of our life. And so, I think it’s part of the reason why it’s important to have younger people in Congress, but also, not just young people, educated people on these different topics.

MARTIN: If you and I were to talk again, and I hope we will, by the end of next year, what do you think we will be talking about? Do you hope that there will be something specific that we can point to that you can say, this is different because I was here?

FROST: Number one, it’s — first and foremost, is the work I do back at home, the constituent services, the way we engage with our community. I just did a community swearing in in Orlando. Usually, when a member of Congress gets sworn in, it’s a pretty small event, maybe a smaller group of people. Some people do bigger things. We did it in the gym of a community center, in a neighborhood that needs a lot of help in Central Florida. And we had over 1,000 people show up because we knocked the doors, the days leading up. We were in the community talking about it every single day and we had 1,100 people come out. That’s not normal. So, like, you know, in terms of the progress and changing the way people think about politicians and politics, we’re already doing that back at home. It’s not going to get on the news every day, because it’s not. I guess, you know, sexy enough or whatever, but that’s really — it doesn’t matter if it’s the speaker of the House or who’s in the Majority or anything. The work we do back at home is paramount and it’s really important, especially in the State of Florida where we have a governor like Ron DeSantis chipping away at the hopes and dreams and desires of everybody. And so, it’s important that we provide that leadership. And honestly, in this moment, that is the most important thing for me.

MARTIN: Before we let you go, the — Florida, there’s so many things we could talk about. The fact is that that Governor DeSantis was reelected by wider margins than he was first elected. He seems extremely popular in the state, and he seems poised clearly to run for the presidency. So, it would seem that he would have every incentive to keep going down the road that he is. I mean, it is part of your job right now to just kind of gumming up the works as opposed to actually fulfilling your own agenda? Do you see what I mean? Is there really anything you can do?

FROST: A huge part of it is using my office and the way that we can to advocate and help people that are going through this. You know, there’s a huge vacuum in impacted folks being able to actually talk about what’s going on in Florida because there’s this culture of fear right now in the state. When I speak with teachers, superintendents, et cetera, they’re scared to speak out because they will literally get fired. You know, for instance, we had a high school, Boone High School, that they have — they’ve had this event for a long time, years and years. It’s called Dragon Donuts. And there’s a drag queen in Central Florida that comes in and it’s not a drag show, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s a conversation with the drag queen about the work that they do in the community as far as feeding people and small business and et cetera. And so, this — you know, the state essentially told the school board and told the district that they need to shut this down across. They’re also going to fire anyone associated with it, teachers, administrators, et cetera. So, we essentially have this like fascist Florida government right now that is using, abusing its powers to scare people into submission to doing what they want. And so, that includes — you know, it’s difficult for legislators to speak out. We saw happens to State Attorney Andrew Warren in Hillsborough County where because he was vocal, he was suspended from office by Ron DeSantis, which was unconstitutional. But there’s one — there’s a group of people he can’t touch and its members of Congress, it’s students. So — and so, that’s why we’re seeing a lot of students step up and be the voice for what’s going on in the State of Florida. I’ll be there alongside with them. We’re also encouraging — I think President Biden and the administration need to do a lot more. The DOJ needs to do a lot more. We need the attorney general involved with what’s going on in Florida. We need the Department of Education to launch an investigation on what’s going on in terms of don’t say gay. So, we need leadership from that point. So, you know, my two things are, number one, ensuring people know about it, being vocal about it, being vocal in the communities, hosting events and rallies so that way people understand what’s going on. And then, also, pushing the levers of power that we do have. Because, you know, you’re right. I’m a representative. I hold no executive powers. I don’t have any departments that I run. All I have is my influence and my ability to, you know, bring the subject to bear at the national level. And so, we’ll do that in in big ways.

MARTIN: Congressman Maxwell Frost, thank you so much for talking with us today.

FROST: Of course. Thank you so much for having me.