TALLAHASSEE, Florida — President-elect Donald Trump is throwing his support behind Florida’s chief financial officer as his choice to succeed former Rep. Matt Gaetz in Congress, a move that could increase pressure on Gov. Ron DeSantis to pick allies to the president-elect for other posts.

Trump on Monday said on social media that he would support Republican Jimmy Patronis for the now-vacant northwest Florida congressional seat that Gaetz gave up during his truncated bid for attorney general. Gaetz withdrew from consideration amid an outcry over investigations into his conduct. The Department of Justice conducted its own investigation as part of a sex trafficking probe and, according to Gaetz’s lawyers and DOJ officials, decided not to bring criminal charges.

Trump said that Patronis had “been a wonderful friend to me,” even though Patronis did not endorse Trump in this year’s presidential race until after DeSantis withdrew from the primary.

“Should he decide to enter this Race, Jimmy Patronis has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, JIMMY, RUN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Patronis appeared ready to take that advice. He put out his own social media post on Monday afternoon that said “Put me to work, Mr. President! … I am here to serve.”

Trump’s decision to back Patronis follows his public support of state Sen. Randy Fine for the congressional seat of another one of his picks in a second administration, Rep. Mike Waltz.

It comes at a key moment. Elected officials interested in running in the special election to pick Gaetz’s successor are required on Monday to submit their resign-to-run letters if they want to hold on to their seats while campaigning. Two state legislators had already said they planned to jump into the race, as has one local elected official.

Patronis’ decision to run for Congress means it would fall to DeSantis to pick someone to fill his job until the 2026 elections. State Sen. Joe Gruters, a long-time ally of Trump who has clashed with DeSantis, has already said he is running for chief financial officer. The question is whether DeSantis will fill the job with someone who would be able to run against Gruters in two years.

Additionally, Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law, has expressed interest in being appointed to the Senate seat now held by Marco Rubio. Trump has nominated Rubio for secretary of state, and it will be up to DeSantis to decide who will hold that seat until the next round of elections in two years.

Patronis, whose family runs a famous restaurant in Panama City, has been the state’s chief financial officer, a statewide elected post, since being appointed to it in 2017 by then-Gov. Rick Scott. Patronis, who had been a legislator, had been a strong ally to Scott going back to his first run as governor when Patronis supported him over the GOP candidate backed by most of Florida’s Republican establishment.

Patronis does not live in Gaetz’s congressional district, but he is well known throughout the region.

This marks the second Florida congressional race that Trump has made his preference known. Over the weekend he put out a social media post urging Fine, the state senator, to run for the congressional seat in northeast Florida held by Waltz. Trump picked Waltz as his national security adviser.

Two in-house investigators at U.S. intelligence agencies recently quit their jobs. There’s growing fear in Washington that they could be the start of an exodus — or a purge — of government watchdogs.

A wave of departures by inspectors general would give President-elect Donald Trump the opportunity to nominate or appoint people of his choice to the watchdog posts — leaving dozens of federal departments, agencies and offices subject to oversight by people who would owe their positions to Trump.

In the wake of Trump’s election, CIA Inspector General Robin Ashton and Intelligence Community Inspector General Thomas Monheim revealed they plan to leave government in the coming weeks. Neither cited Trump’s victory as a basis for the decision, but the timing of the announcements troubled some longtime advocates for IGs.

“I’m very disappointed that the two IGs have resigned,” said former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich. “My view is that when things get tough, IGs should not resign, but instead redouble their efforts to do their jobs. Doing a tough job in difficult circumstances is what they bargained for. I think preemptively resigning makes things too easy for the incoming administration to avoid oversight. To prematurely run for the exits, in my view, that is not the way to handle the responsibility.”

Trump frequently clashed in his first term with some IGs, who are responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by the government, and his team briefly floated a plan to call on all of them to resign, though Trump never did. This time around, Trump allies have urged the president-elect to clean house and remove from their positions all watchdogs appointed by other presidents, though it’s unclear if Trump will do so.

“I really hope that people that have a backbone don’t resign,” said Kathryn Newcomer, a professor of public policy at George Washington University and co-author of a book on IGs. “That’s very worrisome.”

Spokespeople for Ashton and Monheim did not respond directly to questions about whether Trump’s return played any role in their decisions to resign, which were first reported by the Project on Government Oversight. Both departing officials have spent decades in the federal government. But critics say the outgoing IGs should’ve announced their departures sooner and given the Biden administration the chance to nominate and confirm replacements.

Trump allies have called to replace all IGs

More than 70 inspectors general serve in posts at agencies across the federal government, tasked with ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse, and investigating alleged misconduct. They generate thousands of reports each year and claim to have identified hundreds of billions of dollars in potential savings.

Inspectors general “drive efficiency and effectiveness,” said Diana Shaw, a former acting IG at the State Department. “If you don’t have IGs, nobody is minding the store.”

Some Trump allies have urged the president-elect to install his own appointees in the watchdog posts — about half of which are subject to Senate confirmation. About 10 of the posts are currently filled by officials installed or confirmed during Trump’s first term. Another 10 are vacant.

People involved in drafting the conservative Heritage Foundation blueprint Project 2025 have advocated for wholesale replacement of inspectors general and suggested they could be viewed as part of the “deep state” Trump has crusaded against.

“In a new administration, would you rather have some fresh eyes on programs or Miss IG Debbie DC, who’s been around for half a decade, and is up to the same old stuff,” Heritage Oversight Project Director Mike Howell said in a training video obtained by ProPublica and Documented. “Fresh eyes, fresh administration, makes for better oversight, and, you know, better political management of the bureaucracy.”

But other conservative activists oppose a major overhaul of the IG ranks, arguing that many key revelations about waste and corruption in government have come from IG reports and that treating the jobs as typical political posts would undercut the credibility of their work.

“It seems more likely that there may be a demand for IG resignations or outright firings this time around, but if … going forward all IGs are merely political appointees, then what’s the purpose of having IGs? It’s a fig leaf at that point with no real independence,” said Jason Foster, founder of the whistleblower group Empower Oversight. “The value of IG objectivity would be destroyed, and their offices would just be a duplicate bureaucracy that should probably be replaced by better and more effective legislative branch-controlled oversight agencies.”

A spokesperson for the Trump transition team did not respond to questions about his plans for the inspectors general and whether he agrees with those calling for a broad purge.

While Trump’s election has led to concern among many federal government workers, particularly over his plans to dismantle civil service protections, the worries in the IG workforce are particularly acute.

“Everyone is just a nervous wreck,” said a staffer in one IG office, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Trump’s tense first-term relations with IGs

Trump has had an uneasy history with inspectors general from the outset of his first term. Days before Trump took office in 2017, a transition team staffer reached out to several IGs and said they could continue in their jobs temporarily while a search for replacements was underway. Talk of a wholesale replacement of IGs — which would buck longstanding precedent — caused some alarm on Capitol Hill, and Trump’s team quickly backed down, describing the action as an error by a junior aide.

“I’ve spoken with the general counsel at the White House on this topic,” House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said at a February 2017 hearing with several inspectors general. “I think it is safe to say that that was a mistake. They wish it hadn’t happened. It is not their approach. It’s not their intention.”

During a span of six weeks in 2020, Trump ousted five inspectors general. He sacked Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s chief watchdog, after Atkinson referred to Congress a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s efforts to link Ukraine aid to an announcement of an investigation into the Biden family. Trump also removed an IG overseeing pandemic relief programs and another at the State Department.

“It was like an earthquake through the IG community,” Bromwich recalled. “People said, ‘Oh my God, why are we being focused on all of a sudden?’”

Trump and his allies have also signaled that he intends to be more insistent in his second term that his appointees and even rank-and-file government workers show loyalty to him and his administration.

Many in the IG community have their eyes on whether Trump moves to push out Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. He was nominated by President Barack Obama and served through the first Trump term and through Joe Biden’s presidency. Several of Horowitz’s reports have provided fodder for Trump’s complaints about sloppy surveillance practices, leaks to the media and signs of anti-Trump sentiment among some at the FBI.

But Trump and his allies have griped that Horowitz stopped short of concluding that political bias affected Trump-related investigations. The president-elect and GOP lawmakers have also faulted the DOJ IG for taking too long — sometimes years — to complete sensitive investigations.

The Grassley factor

One member of Congress has been viewed for decades as the patron saint of inspectors general on Capitol Hill: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). His voice could be critical to whether Trump winds up taking or ignoring some conservatives’ advice to wholesale oust IGs. In addition, several former aides to Grassley, such as former Judiciary Committee counsel and conservative firebrand Mike Davis, hold positions of influence in Trump’s orbit.

Grassley has repeatedly clashed with presidents of both parties when he has perceived them to be intruding on IGs’ independence. And he has called for case-by-case explanations when an inspector general is removed, something that might be difficult for Trump to offer in a government-wide purge. Legislation co-sponsored by Grassley and passed in 2022 requires the president to inform Congress of the “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” before firing or removing an IG. The law also prevents Trump or any president from naming as an acting IG someone who isn’t already working as or for such a watchdog.

Asked Wednesday whether Trump should pursue a broad ouster of IGs, Grassley replied bluntly: “No. He should not.”

“I guess it’s the case of whether he believes in congressional oversight, because I work closely with all the inspector generals and I think I’ve got a good reputation for defending them. And I intend to defend them,” the Iowa Republican added.

When Trump lashed out at IGs during his first term, Grassley publicly urged him to ease up, arguing that they were actually advancing his agenda of accountability for the sprawling federal government.

“I encourage Pres Trump 2view IGs as helpers 2hold bureaucracy accountable+draining swamp,” Grassley wrote on X in 2020.

However, last week, Grassley sent every inspector general in the federal government ademand for information about sexual harassment settlements involving employees of the watchdog offices. The move seemed to raise the possibility he could be gathering data that Trump’s team could use to target specific IG offices.

A spokesperson for Grassley did not respond to a request for comment, but advocates for the IGs expressed hope that the long-serving senator will temper whatever plans Trump may have to upend the watchdog operations — some of which were first set up in the late 1970s.

“I know from personal experience that Sen. Grassley has been a strong proponent of IGs for forever,” Bromwich said. “I would think that he’s going to be consistent with the beliefs that he has advanced throughout his career, rather than bowing to the whims of Donald Trump and some of his people, he will fight to keep the IGs independent. … That will be telling, whether Senator Grassley exercises that influence.”

Donald Trump is making it clear he wants to bend the Republican-led Congress to his will, pushing the limits of what lawmakers will accept on staffing his Cabinet and also on looming questions of federal spending authority.

Round one in that fight — the Matt Gaetz saga — went to Senate Republicans. And it gives early hints of how GOP lawmakers may respond on spending and other controversial nominees.

“The Senate also has a responsibility for advice and consent — and in this particular case, I think there was advice offered, rather than consent,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said shortly after Gaetz announced he was withdrawing his name from consideration for attorney general.

In that tumultuous episode, GOP senators pushed back privately, not publicly. Many were hesitant to vocally denounce his efforts, knowing the threat of Trump’s wrath and a potential primary challenge constantly shadow them. But they counseled him behind the scenes, hoping he’d acquiesce before they were forced to either bend or defy him outright.

Gaetz won’t be the last example that tests the strategy. Even with the Florida firebrand out, incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has a slew of problems over Trump’s controversial Cabinet nominees — including sexual assault allegations against Pete Hegseth, who Trump tapped to lead the Department of Defense — as the incoming president leans on Congress to let him circumvent the Senate’s confirmation authority and make recess appointments.

And then there’s spending, arguably Congress’ most important responsibility. Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the House in limbo as he defers to Trump on his preferences for a funding deal, and a shutdown deadline is quickly approaching. Johnson and appropriators have a potentially bigger challenge soon, as the incoming president’s out-of-government allies have made it clear they want to go around Congress’ constitutionally guaranteed power to control federal spending.

“I think we should defend Article One. We’re an equal branch of government. I support probably 80 percent or 90 percent of the policies, but it’s going to be in the Article One vs. Article Two framework,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said about the relationship between Trump and Hill Republicans. Those two articles of the Constitution establish the legislative and executive branch, respectively.

Trump’s anticipated return to Washington is poised to look much different than his arrival in 2017, when he knew little of the ways of Congress and struggled with the persuasive tactics required to push through a legislative agenda. The coming months will lay bare whether his now-numerous Capitol Hill allies will be able to more effectively steer his ambitions — or allow him to steer theirs.

“There will be no daylight between us and President Trump on policy, and moving forward with foreign policy, funding or anything else,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a close Trump ally, told reporters in the Capitol recently.

Trump will likely have his greatest influence in the House, particularly with Johnson leading the chamber. Their fates are closely intertwined, since Johnson will need the president-elect’s support to keep his job in leadership.

And even Republicans who have been fiercely public about reforming the spending process are giving Trump the latitude to decide how to handle the upcoming government funding fight, with the deadline backing up straight into the Christmas holiday.

“You just have a very Trump House, because most people that came in came in with him at the top of the ticket,” said one senior GOP House member, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

While lawmakers haven’t explicitly pushed back on efforts to allow the executive branch to make more funding decisions, there are already emerging policy divides between lawmakers and Trump on spending — as well as mass deportations, tariffs and additional aid to Ukraine. Just this week, libertarian-leaning GOP Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) argued that Trump’s plan to use the military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants would be a “huge mistake.” Several Republicans, including Thune, have raised concerns about tariffs.

But how Republicans handle the various battles will be an early litmus test for how far they are willing to bend to Trump’s effort to control their end of Pennsylvania Avenue. While Johnson has tied himself closely to Trump, Thune has worked to repair their relationship — and recently got social media praise from the president-elect — but will have to try to balance Trump’s demands with what can actually get the votes in the Senate.

“It’s just hard for me to fathom or believe that people have changed so much that they’re willing to give up that responsibility,” Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general under George W. Bush, a president also accused of executive overreach, said about the Senate’s confirmation powers.

Asked if there was a lesson for Trump to learn from Gaetz’s withdrawal, incoming Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that the only takeaway was that Trump “has the constitutional right to nominate. We have the constitutional responsibility to confirm.

“We each handle our jobs separately,” he said.

Trump-Vance transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump winning by a “resounding margin” gives him “a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”

During Trump’s first term, he had multiple spending clashes with conservatives on the Hill before many began to align with the iron-fisted president. And the reality that he can make or break someone’s career in politics is now widely recognized, though his attempts are not always successful.

One House Republican, granted anonymity to speak frankly, recounted how several members have survived primaries after facing attacks from Trump or his allies: “It was just two years ago that Matt Rosendale pushed away the president’s phone call on the House floor. I mean, like, I understand that there’s this optic that we’re gonna all fall in line. I don’t know, do we seem unified?”

But spending deadlines could be where fiscal hawks clash with Trump, despite both calling for reining in government spending. Trump followed other presidents before him in contributing to the national debt, with his administration adding $7 trillion to the total.

Outside of Congress, Trump’s allies are working to grease the way for his agenda to sidestep congressional approval.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump picked to lead his new so-called Department of Government Efficiency, made the case in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday that the Supreme Court could seek to determine whether the 1974 Impoundment Control Act — which restricts the executive branch’s power to alter congressionally appropriated funds — is unconstitutional.

While the discussion, on its own, is a nod to Trump’s pending return to Washington, if the high court sided with them, it would mark a significant shift. And while the idea would likely spark heartburn if enacted, even some Republicans tasked with funding the government aren’t closing the door entirely until they get more information.

“My job is to work with the president, not against the president,” said Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.). “We wouldn’t be in the majority without him, so we’re certainly going to try to work with the president.”

Ursula Perano contributed to this report.

MIAMI — Florida will conduct a special election on April 1, 2025, to fill the House seat vacated by Matt Gaetz, kicking off a sprint among Florida Republicans to represent the deep-red district.

Gaetz resigned from Congress after President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to appoint him as attorney general. He then dropped out of the running for that job on Thursday, citing the “distraction” of the upcoming confirmation process, which had raised questions about sexual misconduct and drug use allegations that he denies. Trump instead said he planned to nominate former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

On Friday morning, Gaetz said he did not plan to return to Congress but hasn’t announced what he’ll do next.

“I’m gonna be fighting for President Trump,” Gaetz told Charlie Kirk on his radio show. “I’m gonna be doing whatever he asks of me, as I always have. But I think that eight years is probably enough time in the United States Congress.”

It takes several months to fill the seat in the 1st District because of requirements around qualifying, overseas ballot deadlines and the need to hold both a primary and general election.

The primaries are set for January 28, but whoever wins the GOP nomination will be the heavy favorite over the Democratic pick.

“At Gov. Ron DeSantis’ direction, this special election is being conducted as quickly as statutorily possible,” Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring this election is held as soon as we are allowed to hold it by state law.”

GOP State Rep. Michelle Salzman filed on Tuesday to run for Gaetz’s 1st District, while Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said he was “strongly considering” doing the same. “We’ve got a historic opportunity to fight the swamp, end lawfare and return power back into the hands of Americans,” he wrote on X.

GOP State Rep. Joel Rudman also has filed to run, saying in a press release Friday morning that he would “stand in lockstep” with Trump. Another name floated for the District 1 seat is DeSantis chief of staff James Uthmeier.

If Patronis were to run, then DeSantis would get to select his replacement for CFO. That would help line up a challenge in 2026 to state Sen. Joe Gruters (R-Sarasota), who has already filed to run for the position and has the Trump endorsement — but is a longtime DeSantis foe.

An endorsement by Trump in the race would likely serve to anoint the future representative. Salzman endorsed DeSantis in the primary while Patronis — who’d been weighing a 2026 gubernatorial run — stayed neutral until DeSantis dropped out.

Florida will soon have another special election to schedule. Trump also tapped Rep. Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser. But that special election isn’t on the calendar yet because Waltz has not announced when he will resign and could serve at the start of the new Congress next year — which is not unusual for members nominated to serve in a president-elect’s administration.