Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) warned Florida Republicans they could pay a steep price politically if they don’t swiftly fall in line with his immigration agenda.
Earlier this month, DeSantis faced pushback from Republican leaders in both state legislative chambers after he announced a special session designed to help the new Trump administration’s “agenda of enforcing immigration law.”
When pressed this week on Republican state House Speaker Daniel Perez and Republican Senate President Ben Albritton’s move to label the special session as “premature,” DeSantis intimated the lawmakers were reneging on campaign promises. He suggested that they, and other hesitant GOP members, could face fallout from angry voters if they failed to carry out the governor’s mission to help President Donald Trump implement a series of executive orders overhauling the Biden administration’s immigration policy.
“Imagine having to explain to a Republican voter if you’re a member of the Florida legislature, ‘Oh, you don’t want to help with this?’ That it’s not how we can just wait and do it months from now. Nobody is going to accept that,” DeSantis said during a Fox News appearance on Wednesday.
The following day, the governor told reporters the special session “really shouldn’t be much of an issue in terms of the back and forth with the legislature because all these people ran saying they were opposed to Biden’s policies.”
“They all ran in support of Donald Trump in the 2024 election,” DeSantis said during a news conference in Jacksonville. “So it didn’t, like, we’re calling them back to ask them to do something that they haven’t already pledged to do. … I think people should come in and vote their conscience on it, but obviously, we want this to be public in a way that’s accountable for people.”
Resisting a special session, the governor added on Thursday, would “be very, very hazardous politically, I think, for these members to do.”
DeSantis initially ordered the special session on Jan. 13.
“I spoke with the president multiple times leading up to his inauguration. We knew these executive orders were coming, so I called the special session to start … so we could respond to them,” he said.
However, his GOP colleagues blasted DeSantis’s “fragments of ideas” for the legislative session.
“He did not release any actual bill language or even meaningful details for legislators and our constituents to consider,” Albritton and Perez wrote. “When we receive specific guidance that may necessitate our state’s legislative action to complement President Trump’s efforts, we stand ready to act at the appropriate time.”
DeSantis shot back.
“I’m not just going to wait six months for something to eventually stick,” he said on Thursday. “We’ve been waiting four years to be able to have a partner in Washington, D.C., on this issue. We have a sense of urgency. We’ve got to get the job done. No more dragging your feet.”
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While the Florida governor is a firm supporter of Trump’s executive actions on the border, he criticized the H-1B visa program, which the president supports, this week.
“Honestly, the H-1B, even though it’s a legal program, they want cheap labor, too,” DeSantis said in Jacksonville. “They bring in foreign workers, Americans train the foreigner, and then they fire the American and let the foreigner work at a lower wage. Yeah, I don’t like that.”