Conspiracy surrounding Florida’s special legislative session

Florida Legislature meetings often have fascinating tidbits and sidebar stories, and the special session called by Gov. Ron DeSantis in late January is one that doesn’t appear on the printed House or Senate calendars. There are two interesting side bets.

Officially, this special session gave President Donald Trump whatever he needed to mass deport illegal aliens, made it harder to propose state constitutional amendments through the petition process, and amended condo safety rules. However, it is still intended to provide assistance to Floridians. Hurricane damage last year. However, the only way to do that was to wait for the regular legislative session to be convened on March 4th.

The primary reason for doing so now is that the governor needs to get back on President Trump’s good side. After a disappointing run against President Trump last year, DeSantis hopes to maintain political viability after leaving the governor’s mansion in two years.

That would require President Trump’s goodwill, and with DeSantis’ support, he became the 2018 Republican gubernatorial candidate. All of the “Ron Desanctimonious” stuff from last year was just typical Trumpist nonsense that can now be forgiven and forgotten – the governor knows his position, If I had known, I would now be forgiven and forgotten. Demonstrates a level of loyalty worthy of a Labrador Retriever.

For now, that means helping President Trump accomplish everything on his list of Day 1 executive orders.

Trump has ended the careers of Republicans who crossed paths with him — just ask Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney — and there is speculation that DeSantis wants to seek the White House again. That won’t be possible if Trump denounces him in the Republican primary.

The second wild card in the special session, which Mr. DeSantis had planned to begin on Jan. 27, is to see how much independence state lawmakers can assert during the final two years of Mr. DeSantis’ Tallahassee term.

Hours after DeSantis announced his plan, Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez called it “premature” to call a special session just 37 days before the 2025 regular session. Capitol observers were stunned when he said calling a special session was “irresponsible.” Without a ready agenda.

Huh? Who are those people? Don’t they know that DeSantis has controlled North Korea’s Congress in a way that makes it look like an Aristotelian freethinker?

When he tried to bash Disney, our members of Congress did their best to help. Should abortion be more restricted? No problem, sir. Flying immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard? There was no objection from the fourth floor of the Capitol. Should bars be penalized if minors attend a drag show? That’s right, Governor. He convened his own Supreme Court, suspended the state’s attorney, and hand-picked top school board seats, all without a peep from the House or Senate.

But he goes out to Iowa and narrowly loses one presidential election, and what do they do? These legislators start acting like elected constitutional officials, That’s it.

Understandably, Democrats were furious not only about what Mr. DeSantis wants to do, but also about how he is going about it. But they are in such a minority in both houses that all they can do is howl.

There is also precedent for Republican lawmakers opposing the governor. After the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, Charlie Crist sought to strengthen his campaign for the U.S. Senate by calling a special session of Congress that constitutionally prohibited offshore drilling.

However, Crist left the Republican Party and was running as an independent candidate. If he came under fire, most Republicans wouldn’t have spit on him. So they convened, went through some formalities, and then immediately called off the press conference to blame Cristo for calling them to town.

There was one fascinating little detail in the joint statement issued by Albritton and Perez regarding this new special session. They said they fully support President Trump’s immigration crackdown and will cooperate in any way they can. Freely translated, “Governor, we’re not working for you, but it’s like you’re working for Trump right now, so we’re going to help you help Trump.” Masu.”

Bill Cotterell is a former Capitol Hill reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. Contact him at wrcott43@aol.com.

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