TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s legislative leaders issued a stunning rebuke to Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday, rejecting his call for a special legislative session to address immigration and overriding one of his vetoes for the first time.

Instead of supporting DeSantis on his signature issue in recent years, lawmakers are holding their own special session this week to support President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, which they’re calling the “Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy (TRUMP) Act.”

And they are considering stripping DeSantis of his immigration enforcement powers, which the governor used to fly migrants to Martha’s Vineyard three years ago.

House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, and Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, all but accused DeSantis of calling lawmakers back to Tallahassee to boost his own political profile.

“I believe special sessions should be used sparingly,” Perez said. “They should not be stunts designed to generate headlines.”

Albritton said some of DeSantis' immigration proposals, such as criminally charging local police who don’t cooperate, were potentially unconstitutional and had nothing to do with Trump’s agenda.

“Sometimes leadership isn’t about being out in front of an issue,” Albritton told colleagues. “It’s about following the leader you trust. I trust President Trump.”

DeSantis responded on X by claiming the bill was similar to his own, but “substantially weaker.”

“It is an insult to name such a weak bill after President Trump, who has been so strong on this issue,” he wrote.

Though the Florida legislature's leadership initially said the call for a special session on immigration enforcement was “premature,” they have now finally agreed to come in and do their job.

The leaders' statements were the result of years of frustration with DeSantis' leadership and treatment of the Legislature.

Over the last six years, he’s run roughshod over his GOP colleagues, frequently vetoing their priorities while calling them back to Tallahassee to pass legislation that he touted during splashy news conferences and on the campaign trail.

Republican leaders are now proposing to kneecap DeSantis on immigration.

They could strip DeSantis of his authority to enforce immigration in the state and give that power to Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, a Republican who has a frosty relationship with DeSantis. Simpson, a former Senate president, was elected to lead the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in 2022.

If state lawmakers approve the proposal, Simpson would become the state’s chief immigration officer and would oversee how local and state law enforcement agencies enforce Trump’s immigration agenda.

DeSantis trashed the idea. On X, he wrote that the agriculture department’s “stakeholders often oppose enforcement measures,” implying that farmers relying on migrant labor don’t want changes.

“By giving enforcement power to the agricultural arm of state government, it ensures that enforcement never actually occurs,” DeSantis wrote. “In short, it puts the fox in charge of the hen house.”

On Monday, lawmakers also overrode the governor’s veto last year of more than $56 million for legislative support services. The money was meant to pay for the state’s economists, about 200 legislative staffers and The Florida Channel, which broadcasts meetings and legislative actions for the public.

Lawmakers said they believed DeSantis was targeting one specific provision among the $56 million: funding a study on the effect of fees charged by credit card companies on sales taxes. The veto was considered a favor to credit card companies.

“This veto was at best a misunderstanding of the importance of the appropriation, or at worst, an attempt to threaten the independence of our separate branch of government,” Perez told lawmakers.

In calling for the veto, he said that the budget of the governor’s office has grown 70% since DeSantis took office.

The moves left many lawmakers stunned.

“It’s obviously unprecedented,” said Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, the only legislator to vote against overriding DeSantis' veto.

“The king has fallen,” said Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami.

Lawmakers could pass the new legislation as soon as Tuesday morning.

Their 75-page proposal would assign more than $500 million to a new Office of State Immigration Enforcement within Simpson’s office. The money would pay for 149 new positions and grants to train local police to respond to federal immigration orders.

It would also eliminate a state law that offers students who are in the country illegally in-state tuition at Florida’s public universities and colleges — something that has been in place since 2014 and that DeSantis has pushed to repeal in the past.

In response to DeSantis' criticism, Perez and Albritton issued a joint statement accusing him of having not read their legislation and lobbing “serious and inappropriate insults” at Simpson, local police and farmers.

One of DeSantis' statements — that local police won’t help federal immigration officers under their bill — was a “blatant lie,” they wrote. His claim that Simpson doesn’t oversee any law enforcement was also “completely untrue.” The agriculture department has 200 sworn officers, they wrote.

They also took aim at DeSantis' claim that the department’s “stakeholders” wouldn’t want to enforce immigration laws.

“This outrageous statement maligns the hard-working farmers who work day and night to keep food on grocery stores shelves across Florida,” Perez and Albritton wrote.

The moves are a surprising end to a rare two-week standoff between DeSantis and legislative leaders.

DeSantis began calling for a special session to address the condominium crisis in September. But it wasn’t until Trump was sworn into office earlier this month that the governor formally ordered them back to Tallahassee.

The order required lawmakers to return to the Capitol, but what they would do was ultimately up to Perez and Albritton, who quickly pushed back against the idea.

DeSantis initially proposed an aggressive agenda of immigration and condominium reforms, hurricane relief and reforms to the citizen initiative process to amend the state constitution.

Perez and Albritton said the ideas were “premature” and potentially “irresponsible,” noting that DeSantis did not provide “any actual bill language or even meaningful details.”

While they supported Trump’s immigration agenda, they wrote that they should wait to see what the president was going to propose.

Since then, DeSantis quietly dropped condominium reforms, while waging a campaign to shame state lawmakers, taking to X and Fox News warning that they would face consequences for defying him.

On Monday, Perez blasted efforts to “bully” lawmakers, which included emails and text messages to Floridians that included some lawmakers' personal cellphone numbers, he said.

“Attacks on this body — attacks on all of you — is not acceptable," Perez said. “This House will not be moved by threats.”

Sen. Randy Fine, R-Melbourne Beach, said previously that DeSantis' call for a special session was a sign of a “flailing guy losing relevance.”

“To do a special session for five days on four topics with no bill, the whole thing was always a stunt,” Fine said Monday.

Special legislative sessions have typically been held to address emergencies, with a clear agenda known well in advance.

Sen. Ed Hooper, R-Palm Harbor, said he’s never been so in the dark about what was to come during a special session in his 15 years in the Legislature.

“This is kind of unprecedented that we’d come up here without sort of knowing a solution or having a defined plan,” Hooper said.

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