One Special Session down, (at least?) two more to go.

The redistricting Special Session is complete (much more on that later), and a budget Special Session is set to begin May 12. Now, we are beginning to get a firmer timeline on a potential property tax relief Special Session.

Gov. Ron DeSantis says lawmakers could be called to Tallahassee as early as June to deal with property taxes. He is pitching that one as a phased approach, which is a polite way of saying that even he seems to understand that “repeal property taxes” is easier to chant at a podium than to turn into governing language.

And yet, this is where the Capitol is headed in 2026: from maps, to budget, to taxes in one long rolling sequel to a Session that never quite finished the first time.

As for property taxes, DeSantis is already warning about the villains before he has fully written the script. He is talking about “entrenched interests” mobilizing against his property-tax push even while allies acknowledge the plan itself is still not fully buttoned up.

That would sound like a major problem in a normal Legislature. In this one, maybe not. After all, lawmakers just sat through a redistricting Special Session where they only got a preview of the map the day before, waited on the Governor’s Office to transmit one, and still moved ahead anyway.

So the absence of polished property tax referendum language may not be the obstacle it should be. The working theory as DeSantis wraps his time in Tallahassee appears to be: details later, votes now.

Now, it’s onto our weekly game of winners and losers.

Winners

Honorable mention: St. Cloud City Council. In a state where local government too often confuses “economic development” with building another storage facility, the St. Cloud City Council looked at its downtown and decided to try something far more radical: letting adults act like adults.

Five years after taking the mildly scandalous step of allowing people to stroll downtown with a drink in hand, St. Cloud isn’t backing off. It’s going bigger.

The city just expanded outdoor alcohol consumption in its downtown entertainment district from four days a week to all seven, a clever way to boost foot traffic in an era where fewer and fewer people are taking to public bars to wind down.

And it sounds like it is actually working. Business owners aren’t describing chaos. A bakery owner is now looking into an alcohol license because people keep asking for mimosas. A brewery owner says the open-container setup has already helped bring more traffic downtown, and that Sunday brunch crowds should make the expansion even better. A boutique owner who is trying to get her new shop off the ground is hoping the extra drink-in-hand wanderers turn into actual paying customers.

That’s the whole point of a downtown entertainment district. You want people lingering, browsing, spending and maybe making a few irresponsible pastry decisions while holding a plastic cup.

Sure, not everybody loves it. There are always concerns about safety, late-night behavior and whether the few idiots in any community will ruin it for everyone else. Fair enough. But even the Police Chief seems unworried, saying residents have handled the arrangement well and that the simpler seven-day rule may actually make enforcement easier. That is about as close to a municipal green light as you get.

So give the St. Cloud City Council its flowers — and maybe a to-go mimosa.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: Lauren Book. Book spent April doing something Florida politics almost never rewards enough: hard, visible, exhausting work for a cause that actually matters.

On Friday, Book wrapped her annual “Walk in My Shoes” trek, a 1,500-mile journey that began in Key West on March 31 and finished in Tallahassee on May 1, with Book and the Lauren’s Kids team walking as much as 25 miles a day through communities across the state during National Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Child Abuse Prevention Month.

In a political culture that increasingly rewards big talk, Book once again did the much less glamorous thing: walking the walk by spending a month grinding out a statewide awareness campaign about child sexual abuse and survivor healing.

The walk is a product of Lauren’s Kids, the South Florida-based nonprofit she leads, which focuses on preventing child sexual abuse through education and awareness and helping survivors heal with guidance and support. Its Safer, Smarter Schools program offers a Pre-K through 12th grade personal safety and abuse-prevention curriculum developed with support from the Florida Department of Education and the University of Florida.

There is also something politically impressive about the consistency of it. Politics chews through causes, hashtags and public attention spans at a ridiculous speed. Book has managed to make this trek an annual institution anyway.

The biggest winner: Florida’s congressional Republicans. DeSantis’ mid-decade congressional redraw tore through the Legislature in a hurry, and the move appears like it will grow Florida’s 20-8 Republican advantage in its congressional delegation, and possibly help Republicans stem losses elsewhere in this year’s Midterms.

Republicans can yap about population shifts and “race-neutral” lines all they want. The map is a power play. Politicians have seen the judicial branch’s reluctance to step in to stop gerrymandering, and Republicans saw the judicial landscape changing in other ways regarding how maps can be drawn. So they stepped up and took advantage because they’re in power.

We live in an era where each side will go to the mat to rationalize going after their political opponents, regardless of the long-term effect. This entire mid-decade redistricting episode, with Florida just the latest entry, is more proof of that. And its architects can try to dress it up in all the flowery language they want, but it’s simple: They’re in power and they want to stay in power.

And in terms of Republicans’ advantage in Florida: mission accomplished. The new map goes hunting in exactly the places Democrats still had some life: Tampa Bay, Orlando and South Florida. The redraw reshapes Democratic metro areas and could cost Democrats several seats and make decisions difficult in the few blue-leaning districts remaining, where incumbent Democrats may end up running against each other.

In other words, Republican incumbents don’t just get friendlier lines. Democratic incumbents get uncertainty and the possibility of ugly intraparty collisions.

Yes, lawsuits are certain to come. But those are unlikely to be resolved before the 2026 election, with relief on track to, at best, come by 2028. Until a court says otherwise, Florida’s Republicans just built themselves an even larger advantage come November.

Losers

Dishonorable mention: Joseph Ladapo. Ladapo made himself one of the faces of this year’s “medical freedom” push. He spent months railing against vaccine mandates, declaring last September that “every last one of them is wrong” and, wildly, that they “drip with disdain and slavery.” He also said the state would work to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law.

And then, responsible lawmakers said no.

The Department of Health has already moved to end four childhood vaccine mandates: chickenpox, hepatitis B, pneumococcal conjugate, and Hib. But Ladapo and DeSantis wanted to go further via legislation to give parents a “conscience objection” to vaccine mandates.

Importantly, the state already has exemptions for medical or religious reasons. This new loophole would have been a de facto way to completely undermine the mandates entirely.

The Senate during the Regular Session passed the bill, but the House did not. The bill was revived during this past week’s redistricting Special Session, but House Speaker Daniel Perez killed it again, saying he had concerns about children being in school without long-standing measles, mumps, polio and chickenpox vaccinations. After that, the Senate chose not to move it either.

Chalk up an “L” for Ladapo.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: Pinellas/St. Pete. South Pinellas got put in a blender. The same new congressional map that thrilled Republicans is treating St. Petersburg as an afterthought.

The Tampa Bay core is now split into three Republican-leaning districts. That could leave the region with no Democratic member of Congress.

But beyond the partisan fallout, Pinellas residents have every right to wonder whether their interests will have a voice at all in Congress following this election.

U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor currently serves as that voice (more on her later), as the current makeup of Florida’s 14th Congressional District spans Tampa and Downtown St. Pete.

But the new Florida’s 16th Congressional District will absorb much of St. Pete and combines it into a sprawling district anchored by Manatee County and stretching to DeSoto, Hardee, Polk and Sarasota counties. CD 14 is now focused in Hillsborough, while the rest of Pinellas is put into Florida’s 13th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and becomes even redder under the new lines.

So this is less an issue of St. Pete being represented by someone who may lean more conservative than many in the city, and more about whether the person representing the city will have any connection at all.

There are always hard choices when drawing a map. But being this dismissive of one of Florida’s most iconic regions seems particularly unnecessary — unless, again, the goal is simply exerting political power, larger picture be damned.

The Rays already made fans wonder whether the city matters enough. Now the mapmakers did the same thing to its congressional footprint. Brutal.

The biggest loser: Florida’s congressional Democrats. We hope the Florida Democratic delegation likes jigsaw puzzles, because they’ve got work to do to find seven fits in these districts that make sense.

The ugliest South Florida example is Jared Moskowitz. WUSF reported that his current district gets divided across three districts, with Parkland, where he lives, dropped into a more Republican seat that stretches all the way to Naples. Debbie Wasserman Schultz also loses any clean home district of her own.

Moskowitz has said he’ll bite the bullet and run in the red-leaning Florida’s 25th Congressional District. But will Wasserman Schultz end up battling a fellow Democrat in a Primary?

And then there is Castor. She may not be in the same immediate incumbent-versus-incumbent box, but she is hardly comfortable. Her seat now reaches into more conservative rural areas, with the old Tampa-St. Pete coalition that defined her district broken up. Castor is vowing to seek re-election in CD 14, but it just became a much harder task.

And Darren Soto’s district just got significantly more challenging, with much of his Puerto Rican voting base now split up. He plans to run again in the new Florida’s 9th Congressional District, but he’ll almost certainly be an underdog even if his opponent is a new face.

That is the through line for Florida Democrats in Congress now: uncertainty everywhere, and not enough time to get relief from the courts before the consequences come in November.