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TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blasted the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organization by signing two bills on Monday morning to fight foreign influence and commercial espionage.
“The first bill I signed today protects our public institutions from undue foreign influence, which means prohibiting agreements between public entities and the Chinese Communist Party or Cuba or any of these evil forces.” DeSantis said when signing the bill in Miami.
The bill would prevent academic institutions from offering certain language and culture programs abroad, such as the CCP-backed Confuscius Institute, which closed in 2019. Universities receiving further grants or donations of $ 50,000 from foreign governments must disclose them.
“In Florida, we were going to take a stand. These bills that I am signing today, foreign adversaries will not have access to our schools, our government and our businesses as in the past, neither the Chinese Communist Party, nor Russia, nor Cuba, nor the North Korea, neither Iran, nor Syria, not Venezuela. In fact, the first bill I signed today protects our public institutions from the undue foreign influence of Florent, DeSantis said.
DeSantis said the second bill would impose tougher penalties on people who disclose trade secrets.
Anyone who willfully steals without authorization or attempts to steal a trade secret and uses it for their own gain will now be liable to a third degree felony with a penalty of up to five years in prison. If the same person tries to sell the stolen trade secret, they risk second-degree felony with even greater penalties, DeSantis said.
The governor echoed his own calls to “hold China accountable” for the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the CCP and the World Health Organization were to blame for the spread of the virus.
“I really hope we take responsibility for the origins of the COVID pandemic because it just didn’t need to happen,” DeSantis said at a press conference. “The Chinese Communist Party is mainly to blame, but there is also American money that may very well have gone to Wuhan.”
“WHO [World Health Organization] is in the pocket of the Chinese Communist Party. Basically, they were asking everyone to look away, ”he added. “The idea was to try to whitewash the CCP’s role in this virus. And it wasn’t just the WHO, it wasn’t just the bureaucracies. You have seen the university community largely surround the cars and defend the CCP. You’ve seen the corporate media.
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