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The governor called for a special session this week to deal with immigration, the condo crisis, hurricane recovery, and ballot initiatives.

Only one of those issues was addressed, however.

Immigration.

The governor is unhappy with the bill that was passed and is threatening to veto it.

We'll talk about the feud between the governor and legislative leaders right now on Florida This Week.

Welcome back.

Governor Ron DeSantis says he will veto a sweeping immigration bill narrowly passed Tuesday night by the state's Republican controlled legislature.

It's a move that shows the growing divide between the governor and legislative leaders, who are members of the same political party.

The legislature was called into a special session only weeks before its regular session to address immigration, hurricane recovery, changing the rules on ballot initiatives and the growing condo crisis.

However, in the end, immigration was the only issue to get attention.

Both the House speaker and the Senate President had objections to the governor's plans for immigration.

>> Carefully consider governor DeSantis proposal, and he had some good ideas.

But many of his proposals are bureaucratic.

We do not need to duplicate the functions of U.S. immigration and customs and create a mini Me version of Ice.

>> The Florida legislature matters.

Our opinions matter.

Our voices matter.

The Florida Constitution says so.

And more importantly, so do our constituents.

Instead, the legislature passed its own bill.

It's called the Trump Act, which stands for Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy.

The measure includes several items that the governor did want, including the repeal of a decade old law that allows undocumented students, dreamers who attended a Florida high school to pay in-state college tuition.

Legislators also set aside a half billion dollars to help state and local law enforcement to assist in the federal immigration crackdown.

And their bill would require the mandatory imposition of the death penalty if a person in the country illegally committed a capital offense, such as murder.

But the legislation did not include restrictions on undocumented immigrants wiring money back home that DeSantis wanted.

And the final bill also shifted immigration enforcement authority away from DeSantis and over to Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson.

Which prompted this criticism from the governor.

>> They also bizarrely strip immigration enforcement power from the governor and give it to the Commissioner of Agriculture.

But agriculture has not exactly been known for immigration enforcement, so it's almost like the fox guarding the henhouse.

It was bizarre.

I think it was more a sop to folks who want cheap labor.

That is totally bad policy.

That can't happen.

Our first guest, Tom Lee, was a state senator representing parts of Hillsborough County from 1996 to 2006 and again from 2012 to 2020.

He also served as Senate President from 2004 to 2006.

Tom Lee, welcome to the program.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

You've been there.

Why is this happening in Tallahassee?

>> Well, you know, look, the immigration is a central issue of our time.

There's no question about that.

But this isn't really about policy.

The legislature's a month away from holding its annual legislative session.

This could easily be accomplished during the course of a regular session.

This is about politics and the governor wanting to shine a light on one issue that is important to him and his political future as he continues to work his way post being governor into maybe a national campaign again, the legislature or citizens they serve in their communities, they have families, they have careers.

You know, calling them up to a special session is disruptive.

And without a plan, you can easily unravel and and you need to know where you're headed.

So in the absence of clear communication, I think the legislature was time.

You know, we've been in an era since term limits where the legislature has become sort of a wholly owned subsidiary of the executive branch.

It's one of the reasons I left in 2020.

I, you know, I didn't need to be there if we were just going to pick up the phone and call the governor in the morning and ask what he wanted us to do, they were elected to do their jobs to represent the people in their community.

Florida is a very diverse state, and so I think it's high time.

I don't wish them any acrimony.

The governor is not wrong to want to try to try to deal with this issue, but it needs to be a collaboration, not a dictatorship.

It's interesting that you said term limits.

Are term limits hurting the ability of the state Senate and the state House to to carry out their function well.

Term limits are a lot of good things about term limits.

But it was an incomplete thought.

And what it has done is changed the balance of power between the legislature and the executive branch.

When I was first there, before term limits had fully kicked in, there were members in the institution that had served there for a very long time and were very conversant on public policy and the process and the rules.

It's not quite so much that way these days.

And everybody's looking for an exit strategy when they join the legislature.

And who hands out all the jobs, the governor, judgeships, executive branch agencies and what have you.

And so a lot of people end up, uh, you know, relying on the governor's opinion and wanting to curry favor with the governor instead of sometimes representing themselves.

And it's just good to see the the presiding officers, the speaker and the Senate President decide enough's enough.

And we want to be a part of this conversation, not control it necessarily, but at least the respect and deference and the sovereignty of the legislative branch under the separation of powers doctrines of our Constitution, to at least have a voice in these conversations.

There are a lot of supporters in the Republican caucus in the legislature who are supporters of Donald Trump.

How much of this goes back to Ron DeSantis challenging Donald Trump in 2024 for the presidential nomination of the party?

Well, I think a lot of this has to do with with the fact that the the legislature saw an opportunity to see the governor and raise him one.

In other words, we agree with you that immigration is a problem.

As a Republican controlled legislature.

We can't say we don't.

We don't want to rebuff you in your effort to to deal with this issue and support the federal government, but we're going to do it the Donald Trump way because he's the titular head of the Republican Party in the United States.

And we're going to follow his lead, not yours.

And so I think it was their way of pushing back against a DeSantis driven process and going around him to the white House and trying to develop something that the and narrative and the narrative that the public, the Republicans, could support embracing the president of United States and his initiatives.

Does it make sense to put the head of the Department of Agriculture, the Cabinet Secretary, in charge of enforcing immigration laws?

Well, I hear what the governor is saying.

I have confidence in Wilton Simpson.

I served with him.

He says it's the.

Fox guarding the henhouse.

I heard him, and that's a great soundbite.

Um, but I have a I have, you know, Wilton Simpson isn't just an AG commissioner.

Wilton Simpson is a successful businessman.

I wish everyone in Tallahassee had the kind of business experience that Wilton Simpson had, and had had the private sector experience that he had before he became a member of the Senate.

We didn't always agree on everything, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for him and I think he will apply the law.

I do, I think he will do his job and apply the law.

At a conference call this week, Republicans were calling into House Speaker Perez saying, look, you know, why is this happening?

Why is the party fighting with itself?

Don't do this.

It's a it's a bad show for the party.

Well, if you haven't been around a long time, it is it is new.

But throughout history, the legislature, there's a lot of stories about the president of the Senate or the speaker of the House telling the governor the way the cow eats the cabbage and and to respect the institution standing up to the governor, dealing with with him in the veto process.

That has not been the way it is in recent years.

But again, I think it's healthy for the for Floridians to have a legislature that is an equal partner in these conversations and the individual voices of members around the state weighing in to participate in these conversations, instead of having someone you know, tell them what they need to do.

It will produce better public policy.

Senator Tom Lee, thanks for coming by the program.

Thank you for having me.

Joining us right now is state representative from district 42 in Orlando.

She's a Democrat.

State Representative Lawrence McClure is from district 68, in Hillsborough County.

He's a Republican and state senator.

Carlos Guillermo Smith represents a district in the Orlando area and is a Democrat.

Nice to have all of you here.

Thank you for doing the program.

Anna, let me start with you.

Why is there such a split even among Republicans over this bill on immigration?

What's going on?

What do you think?

>> Well, thanks for having us.

And I think it's pretty clear.

Governor Ron DeSantis is trying to push for a publicly funded spectacle to Spectacle to compete for national headlines and pushing his own party in a direction that they're finally saying no to, in the sense that it's not the governor who dictates policy.

It should be the legislature.

And for the past six years, the legislature has just bent over backwards to please Governor Ron DeSantis.

And because he's a lame duck, my colleagues are finally realizing that they are an independent branch of government.

But at the end of the day, what he's trying to do is just seek more attention.

Many people have speculated about his future post serving as governor, and I can only imagine this is another attempt to use public money to try to boost his image as he tries to fight for relevancy in a growing Republican footprint where Donald Trump is the leader, not him.

Let me ask you, why is there a divide within your party over this immigration bill?

>> Well, you know, first and foremost, thanks for having me.

mean, I think the divide probably isn't as great as as it appears, right?

I think there were there was one member in the Florida House that voted no on this, and then a handful over in the Senate.

But by by, you know, by the math, um, we're unified.

This is a conservative piece of legislation.

I will stand by it as the bill's sponsor.

And we are serious about tackling the mass illegal immigration crisis that this state and country is facing.

So I, you know, we are having a conversation in the House of Representatives with our partners over in the Senate on how best to get this problem under control.

And the good news is, for the most part, we're all in agreement.

And the difference is, as they often are, are blown out of proportion.

Of course, you know, I'm not much of a political theater, uh, type of representative.

Um, you know, so that stuff is kind of a little confusing for confusing for me, to be quite honest.

I think I think a lot of it is is for the spectacle.

The governor, though, has used some strong language about this bill that you support.

He calls it weak.

Yeah, I would absolutely push back.

We would be the first state in the nation to impose the death penalty on folks that are here illegally and commit a capital offense.

Um, so that that's a little bit interesting to me how you can say that.

That's weak.

Um, I've read the bill inside and out.

I was, um, I was the drafter and worked with my colleagues on the bill.

I don't think that, um, you know, 82 Republicans in the Florida House would vote for a weak piece of legislation.

Um, on this subject, there's a mandate by the by the American people to start to get to work on this.

And that's exactly what we're doing.

Did President Trump help in getting this bill, in writing this bill or putting parts into this bill?

So what we said at the original call that governor DeSantis made, which if you if you'll you're kind of timeline.

This predated President Trump's inauguration with the speaker and the Senate president very clearly said was, we want to see President Trump, first and foremost, get into office and then roll out his plan on this.

It is the role of the federal government.

Of course, the state should should support it.

And but we can't do that until we know what he wants to do.

And so then once once he started rolling out his his plan, we paid very close attention and had, yes, lots of conversations with folks in the white House to make sure that we were doing we were aligning with what their vision for the states were.

Carlos, what do you think is going on with the governor threatening to veto this immigration bill?

>> Well, I think so much of what we're seeing here with this Republican infighting that's happening in Tallahassee is folks are just being very performative in trying to look like they are tough on immigration, when in fact, so many of the laws that have already been passed and the taxpayer dollars that have been appropriated to do just that have yielded very little results.

Since Martha's Vineyard, since the governor basically participated in that political stunt where he transported migrants over to Martha's Vineyard, he has been appropriated and has spent tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money, only to transport exactly zero migrants since Martha's Vineyard, outside of the state of Florida.

The state's supposedly tough on immigration E-Verify program has processed and filed exactly eight E-Verify cases in the state of Florida since 2022.

And by the way, they were not able to catch the Fdot's own contractors illegal worker who actually killed a Pinellas Ellis County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Hartwick.

So they're not being very tough on immigration, although both sides are performing for the hard right base to make it seem like they are.

This week, we didn't really get a lot of anything done.

We fought about the details of a bill that is, in my opinion, constitutionally infirm is mean spirited in its repeal of in-state tuition for dreamers.

That shatters the bipartisan promise that was made in 2014.

And now the governor has promised to veto it.

Which brings us back to square one, where nothing has gotten done and Floridians problems have not been addressed.

It's one of the provisions of the bill is to put the Secretary of Agriculture in charge of enforcing immigration laws here in Florida.

The governor, in that soundbite at the beginning of the show, said that this is the fox guarding the henhouse.

He said that agribusiness is not in favor of immigration reform.

I thought that thought that was an interesting take.

The the comedic irony of that is, of course, that the Commissioner of Agriculture, Wilton Simpson, in a previous capacity, was an egg farmer.

Um, but but a bizarre take.

I'd put it back on him.

That's a very bizarre take.

Uh, the way that we thought about that was, is we wanted a statewide elected official who faced the electorate to be the chief immigration officer.

We didn't want this to be a secretary that was appointed by the governor.

And so when we started looking through the different cabinet positions, we first looked at the attorney general and we had some very basic criteria.

We wanted to have a law enforcement component.

We wanted them to have frequent communication with the federal government, and we wanted them to have a physical presence geographically throughout the state.

Well, the attorney general does have a law enforcement presence and does coordinate with the federal government on on litigation, but doesn't really have a geographical footprint.

We looked at the chief financial officers, Um, uh, cabinet position and and it was even met less of the metrics.

So then we looked at the Department of Agriculture and well, they have all of them.

So it was this aha moment.

Now what I would what I would say also is we currently don't have an attorney general, and we currently don't have a chief financial officer as a function of President Trump, understanding that Florida has been leading the way.

And I would I would actually go on to say that we have very clearly demonstrated that we are a leader and willing to take on very conservative pieces of legislation that the the rest of the country is pointed to and tried to imitate.

And so, so the notion that it's a little bit of, well, which one is it?

We're so good that the president of United States, who got elected on a mandate.

Uh, asked to to cabinet folks to to come up there and help him in the fight or were were liberals that aren't doing our jobs.

It can't be both ways.

Let me ask you the same question.

Why?

Uh, The governor says that this is the fox guarding the henhouse.

Do you think that putting the Secretary of Agriculture in charge of enforcing immigration is such?

Well, this is going to be one of those rare bipartisan moments where I'm going to echo Chairman Maclure here.

This is a conservative bill.

I mean, from our perspective as Democrats, both bills are incredibly concerning when it comes to constitutionality, when it comes to the entanglement of local law enforcement with federal issues and federal enforcement when it comes to repealing in-state tuition for our Dreamers.

I mean, both of these bills are bills that I would vote no on because I find them to be incredibly concerning, and they don't address the actual problems we face with immigration.

Immigration is one of the most complicated policies in the country, only second to the IRS.

And right now in Florida, we only have two immigration courts that are processing paperwork.

Three if you count the one at a detention center in Miami.

Creating an environment where we have one of the largest backlogs in the nation of 481,000 people waiting for processing.

That is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

This bill, unfortunately, from my perspective, doesn't address these core issues, these core problems.

And I do have concerns with the spillover effect with these types of policies impacting immigrants of all backgrounds, those of mixed status, those with status.

And we saw that with Senate Bill 1718 that passed about a year ago, where individuals are now scared to go into a medical facility for fear of being targeted.

You see workers that are debating if they should stay in Florida because other states are more welcoming to their their backgrounds and experiences.

This state almost passed a bill to reduce child labor laws so that children can work in fields that have historically been occupied by immigrant labor.

And so we have a serious problem before us.

But from my perspective, both of Both of these bills are incredibly concerning, and they are conservative approaches to an issue that I do think we have better solutions to approach with.

Carlos, I want to ask you about the special session.

Was this a rushed thing that did happen too quickly?

Did it happen without the necessary preparation?

And and why wasn't the condo crisis hurricane recovery and why why wasn't some of the other issues?

Uh, like, I suspect that the governor still plans to go ahead with.

Changing the way petitions are gathered for constitutional amendments.

But why weren't those issues addressed during the special session?

Well, they weren't addressed during the special session because they never really were on governor DeSantis agenda.

He listed a series of issues in the original special session call immigration, condo reform, hurricane relief, ballot initiatives.

And ultimately we only got to one of them because that is the issue that the that the governor wanted to play politics on, and that he wanted to be performative, to appear that he was going to be tough on immigration.

But special sessions, to your point, are never a place to craft good policy.

It's very rushed in nature.

The Florida Senate, for example, only held one committee hearing to evaluate a very complicated immigration bill before it went to the floor of the Senate for full review.

Once we got to the floor of the Senate, the bill was replaced with an 80 something page strike.

All that none of us had an opportunity to review until minutes before we had to start asking questions on it.

And so all we have to do is look at our recent history on special sessions to see that there's always unintended consequences.

The condo issue and the law that we're trying to reform itself was passed during a special session.

My last special, special session as session as a member of the House was to revoke the Disney Reedy Creek district, which was something that we also had to come back and revisit and clean up as well.

And so we don't really have a great track record on these special sessions.

And the point is always to rush it through so that we're obscuring from the public what's really happening and deny them the opportunity to provide substantial input and participate in the process.

But there's tension between the governor and members of the legislature over this bill.

Does this go back to the the last presidential election where the governor challenged Donald Trump in the Republican primary?

Is there some hostility based on that, or what's the what's the source?

Why why is there such a difficult relationship between Republicans in the House and Senate and the governor?

Well, I think we've had a historically good relationship.

And and I won't run from the governor ran in a primary against now President Donald Trump.

That's very clear to everyone.

My understanding and I'm you know, I'm no expert on it.

on it.

It seems like the governor and the president, you know, have gotten together and played golf.

And so, you know, I don't know the nature of their relationship today.

It was very clear back in the primary that President Trump wasn't too pleased with with the governor running against him.

But that's really none of my business.

What this is all about for us in the Florida House is we're a part time legislature.

We are the we are the people's house.

We go up for a portion of the year on behalf of our constituency in a part time capacity, and we are supposed to bring the ideas and concerns of our communities up to Tallahassee and talk about them with the other representation from across the state.

And that's so that's exactly what we're going to do.

And when we talk about those other issues that were in the original call, I want to be very clear.

Representative Vicky Lopez is leading the charge on on getting that topic under control and getting a good understanding.

It's noteworthy that the current speaker of the House, Daniel Perez, he was the was the bill's sponsor in that special session.

And I'm going to run the risk here of of, uh, agreeing with my, my good friend, Senator Guillermo Smith.

We want to make sure that we get that right.

Right.

We want to we want to we want to run it through our committee process.

We're in committee weeks.

Uh, we were supposed to have this last week off and then go back into committee weeks next week.

And and so we're going to have legislation that that really contemplates that in a full picture.

And then on ballot initiatives.

Yes.

That's something that we're going to have a conversation about.

We're all very concerned about that process.

Expect more restrictions on ballot signature gathering.

Well, I never want to warrant what what the Florida legislature is going to do, because there's variables that pop up all of the time.

But what I what I can warn is we're going to have a very strong conversation about these topics.

Of course, the notion that we're not going to have a conversation about hurricane funding in relief would go against literally, I Literally.

I think every session that I've been a part of over seven years.

We just have a minute left.

But how much of this is the playing out of the wrestling over the race for governor, the Republican nomination for governor in in 2026?

How much of this feud is part of that?

It's definitely a part of it.

I mean, chairman McClure alluded to some of the tensions and dynamics within the Republican caucus of who's vying for what field and rural and race in the future.

What I will say is that we need to go back to the basics and focus on solving these everyday economic problems that our constituents are facing, like property insurance, housing affordability.

And I'm just hopeful we can put this drama aside and really focus on solving these problems instead of creating more problems.

And will you expect those to come up in the session that begins the beginning of March?

That is the goal 100%.

And I think all of us want to get back to those basics right now.

Lawrence, just 10s would you agree 100%?

I mean, those are those are real problems facing Floridians.

I think that that we're all in on having these conversations, how we end, you know, what product we end with.

Um, that'll be for the legislative session.

Well, thank you all for being here.

Thanks to our panelists, Anna Eskamani, Lawrence McClure, and Carlos Guillermo Smith.

If you have comments about the program, please send them to us at ft. Org.

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Have a great weekend.