Tallahassee Goes Looney Tunes Over Immigration

By Diane Roberts

Ron DeSantis is spittle-spouting, white boot-stamping, holding-his breath-till-he’s-blue, screaming-till-he’s-sick mad.

He’s toddler mad, Elmer Fudd mad: like, vewy, vewy angwy.

The Florida Legislature has defied him; dissed him; insulted him.




They showed up for the special session he demanded, gaveled in, gaveled out, and declared their own special session.

Then they trashed his hateful immigration bill and passed their own, infinitesimally less hateful, immigration bill.

The slap-fight is on, y’all.

DeSantis called the Legislature’s bill “toothless,” “grotesque,” and “weak, weak, weak.”

The Legislature, belatedly remembering they’re a co-equal branch of government, channeled their inner Bugs Bunny, and proclaimed, “Of course, you realize this means war!”

House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton called DeSantis’ rant a “blatant lie and accused him of bullying.

Plus, he wouldn’t return their phone calls.

The governor’s bill would have made it a state crime for the undocumented to cross the sacred border of Florida, even though some will have legally sought asylum and most are not, by any stretch of the imagination, criminals.




The bill would have forced Western Union, MoneyGram, and the like to police the citizenship of anyone trying to send money abroad.

If some hapless cop failed to be sufficiently “tough” on alleged “illegals,” DeSantis would have that cop arrested.

See, DeSantis is the hero of his bill, the sheriff valiantly saving White America from the Invading Horde — including the guy mowing your lawn.

So what if that guy ends up stateless, separated from his family, or back in a country where he’s likely to be killed?

It’s not like he’s an American.

Trumpier than thou

DeSantis insists he’s the one to double and triple down on the Gestapo-adjacent policies hourly spewing out of the Oval Office: He’s the Trumpiest! He wakes up every morning feeling the Trumpiest!

But the Florida Legislature, knowing the Naranja Suprema de Mar-a-Lago responds best to shameless flattery, called Daddy to ask what he wanted in the bill and named it the “Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy Act:” TRUMP.

Sycophancy is not the same as cleverness.

But never fear: It’s not like the Legislature has suddenly discovered empathy. Their bill is almost as inhumane as DeSantis’.

It strips out the remittance part and the cop-arresting part, but takes away in-state tuition for Dreamers–you don’t want to educate young people who, through no fault of their own, were brought to the US as small children.




Let them mow lawns and pick tomatoes and put up dry wall!

Oh, wait: We’re getting rid of the people who do those jobs.

Sen. Randy Fine claims it will “save” the state $45 million.

It will not. The state does not pay these students’ tuition. They pay it, just like every other Florida student.

Fine doesn’t care: His specialty is performative hatred and blue-ribbon Trump toadying, qualities which are about to get him elected to the U.S. Congress from the 6th District.

On April Fools’ Day, no less.

Egg Farmer

The main difference between the bills is that the lawmakers’ doesn’t make the governor Emperor of Immigration, as he desires.

Instead, it puts in charge one Wilton Earl Simpson, Commissioner of Agriculture.

This is a calculated slap upside the gubernatorial head.

Snarling like an enraged mole rat, DeSantis posted on the Elon Musk Cartoon Channel (aka X), “Wilton Simpson has voted to give drivers licenses and in-state tuition to illegals. He even refused to oppose allowing illegals to practice law in Florida. Do we want the fox guarding the henhouse?”

Wilton Simpson is a chicken farmer.

Simpson spat back: “I’m not the one who opposed and ran against President Trump.”

Simpson added, “DeSantis’ routine attacks on farmers don’t sit well here in Florida — and apparently not with folks across the country either.”

Mee-freaking-ow.

Torch songs

Democratic lawmakers allowed themselves a rare moment of schadenfreude mixed with music.

During a meeting in the Capitol, House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell played Goyte’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” calling it a great break-up song.

It goes: “Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over/But had me believing it was always something that I’d done.”

Florida Republicans are not famous for brain power, but it looks like they realize Ron DeSantis is increasingly impotent — irrelevant, even.

Donald Trump doesn’t like him.

Come 2026, he’s out of a job.

Lawmakers don’t need to suck up to him any more.

Maybe he’ll run for U.S. Senate against former Florida A.G. Ashley Moody, the woman he appointed to fill the seat of now Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Maybe he’ll run for president in 2028, although the nation took a good look at him in 2024, and the nation said, “Oh, HELL no!”

Whatever his future, these days DeSantis is becoming shrill, declaring he’ll veto the Legislature’s bill, flying around the state (at taxpayer expense, naturally), telling Floridians to get up in their lawmakers’ faces and demand complete capitulation: “You have your marching orders.”

Any politician who dares disobey him will face a primary opponent more to the governor’s liking, bankrolled by DeSantis’ Florida Freedom Fund.

And more! He just hasn’t decided yet what other terrifying vengeance he will wreak.

DeSantis is Yosemite Sam without the rustic charm — same absurd fantasies about ridding himself of pesky varmints impeding his bid to get back into Donald Trump’s good graces, same inability to figure out how: “Don’t rush me, I’m-a-thinkin’! And my head hurts.”

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.