By Patricia Mazzei
For six years, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida could count on Republican state lawmakers bending to his will, giving swift approval to his ambitious legislative priorities with hardly a whiff of protest.
Those days appear to be over.
On Monday, in a remarkable sequence of events at the state Capitol in Tallahassee, Republican legislative leaders asserted their independence. They rejected DeSantis’ call for a special session on illegal immigration, called one of their own instead and, in an exceedingly rare move, overrode one of his budget vetoes.
They even aimed some public disdain his way.
“I believe special sessions should be used sparingly and should not be stunts used to generate headlines,” Daniel Perez, the new House speaker, said from the chamber floor.
Perez and Ben Albritton, the new Senate president, introduced their own immigration bill, characterizing it as a way to back President Donald Trump on illegal immigration — much like DeSantis did when he made his own proposals.
But the legislators’ reproach of DeSantis was not really about immigration policy. The incoming leaders, speaking simultaneously to their respective chambers, were staging a dramatic break with a governor who, from the time he took office in 2019, had methodically expanded his executive powers — often, it seemed, at the expense of a pliant Legislature.
“Sometimes leadership isn’t about being out front on an issue,” Albritton said on the Senate floor. “It’s actually about following the leader you trust. I trust President Trump. And I trust Florida law enforcement.”
Perez and Albritton said they would not impose criminal penalties on local police officers who did not help with federal immigration enforcement, as DeSantis had wanted. They also did not agree to expand a DeSantis program that in 2022 paid to recruit and fly several dozen immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts.
The leaders said that they would set aside $500 million for local agencies to assist with immigration enforcement (as DeSantis had requested), increase certain criminal penalties (though not as many as DeSantis wanted) and create a new state office to coordinate enforcement efforts (but not under DeSantis’ power).
Leaders of DeSantis’ own party had not dared to defy him so directly since his actions at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 turned the governor into a national Republican hero. DeSantis leveraged his new standing to push far-reaching proposals that turned Florida into a laboratory of right-wing policy, and won reelection in a rout in 2022. He announced he was running for president.
But early last year, DeSantis’ campaign fizzled as Trump’s barreled forward. DeSantis did not loom as large over the spring legislative session. His once-close relationship with Trump was strained.
The governor successfully defeated a pair of state ballot initiatives in November that would have guaranteed abortion rights and legalized marijuana in Florida. But he is term-limited after 2026, and the jockeying to succeed him has begun.
On Monday, the new legislative leaders, who will preside over their chambers through the end of DeSantis’ term, seemed to be declaring their independence from a governor’s office that has wielded so much power that legislative sessions have become largely predictable rubber stamps.
Lawmakers will still focus on illegal immigration this week, as DeSantis had wanted. But Republican leaders dismissed many of the governor’s proposed policies — and outright rejected, at least for now, other changes that DeSantis was seeking, such as making it more difficult for citizens to get constitutional amendments on the ballot.
Proposals like that can wait until the regular session in March, said Perez, the House speaker. The special session is expected to conclude by Tuesday evening, he added.
Among other things, Perez called several of the governor’s immigration proposals “bureaucratic.”
The use of such blunt language against DeSantis or his priorities had been highly unusual among Florida Republicans, who hold supermajorities in the House and Senate. Only in private did they grumble in recent years about DeSantis’ stifling approach.
But on Monday, the House and Senate unanimously overrode some of his budget vetoes, reinstating about $57 million for legislative operating expenses. The last time the Legislature overrode a Florida governor appears to have been in 2010.
In response to Monday’s developments, DeSantis wrote on the social platform X that he was glad that lawmakers had “finally agreed to come in and do their job,” two weeks after he called for a special session. But he called their proposed bill “substantially weaker” than what he had wanted.
“The Legislature’s bill is a bait-and-switch tactic trying to create the illusion of an illegal immigration crack down, when it does anything but,” DeSantis wrote. “It is an insult to name such a weak bill after President Trump, who has been so strong on this issue.”
Soon after DeSantis called the special session, Republican leaders said the move was premature, the first inkling that they intended to push back at the governor. DeSantis then devoted several public appearances across the state to shaming lawmakers, suggesting that they were typical politicians who campaigned on difficult issues but then preferred not to legislate on them.
“You can view me as, like, a dog that’s got you on the ankle on immigration,” DeSantis told reporters last week, adding that he would not just let the issue go.
Perez said the immigration issue became relevant for the Legislature once Trump took office and signed a slew of executive orders on federal immigration policy. The bill that state representatives will consider between Monday and Tuesday is titled “Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy Act” — that is, the TRUMP Act.
The bill would identify and fund new detention spaces for immigrants with uncertain or contested legal status and name the Florida agricultural commissioner, Wilton Simpson, as the state’s chief immigration officer. Giving that title to Simpson, who is not close with DeSantis, was seen as another challenge to the governor. On X, DeSantis called the proposal unconstitutional.
DeSantis and Republican legislative leaders all want to stop allowing in-state tuition rates for students who were brought to Florida illegally as children. That policy has been in place since 2014, when it was championed by Jeanette M. Núñez, who was then a state representative from Miami. She is now DeSantis’ lieutenant governor.
Núñez said on X over the weekend that “our country looks very different today than it did then.”
“Florida will not incentivize illegal immigration through this law or any other,” she wrote.
State Rep. Fentrice Driskell of Tampa, the House Democratic minority leader, told reporters that DeSantis and Republican leaders did not disagree much on policy.
But, she added, she favors a stronger separation of powers: “It’s healthy, that they rebuffed the governor.”
