ORLANDO, Fla.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he plans to call a special session in April for the Republican-dominated Legislature to draw new congressional districts, joining a redistricting arms race among states that have redrawn districts mid-decade.<\/p>\n
Even though Florida\u2019s 2026 legislative session starts next week, DeSantis said he wanted to wait for a possible ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The ruling in Louisiana vs. Callais could determine whether Section 2, a part of the Voting Rights Act that bars discrimination in voting systems, is constitutional. The governor said \u201cat least one or two\u201d districts in Florida could be affected by the high court\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a question of if they\u2019re going to rule. It\u2019s a question of what the scope is going to be,\u201d DeSantis said at a news conference in Steinhatchee, Fla. \u201cSo, we\u2019re getting out ahead of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, 20 of Florida\u2019s 28 congressional seats are held by Republicans.<\/p>\n
Congressional districts in Florida that are redrawn to favor Republicans could carry big consequences for President Trump\u2019s plan to reshape congressional districts in GOP-led states, which could give Republicans a shot at winning additional seats in the midterm elections and retaining control of the closely divided U.S. House.<\/p>\n
Nationwide, the unusual mid-decade redistricting battle has so far resulted in a total of nine more seats Republicans believe they can win in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio \u2014 and a total of six more seats Democrats expect to win in California and Utah, putting Republicans up by three. But the redrawn districts are being litigated in some states, and if the maps hold for 2026, there is no guarantee the parties will win the seats.<\/p>\n
In 2010, more than 60% of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting the drawing of district boundaries to unfairly favor one political party in a process known as gerrymandering. The Florida Supreme Court, however, last July upheld a congressional map pushed by DeSantis that critics said violated the \u201cFair Districts\u201d amendment.<\/p>\n
After that decision, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez last August announced the creation of a select committee to examine the state\u2019s congressional map.<\/p>\n
Florida Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman said in a statement that what DeSantis wants the Legislature to do is clearly illegal.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlorida\u2019s Fair Districts Amendment strictly prohibits any maps from being drawn for partisan reasons, and regardless of any bluster from the governor\u2019s office, the only reason we\u2019re having this unprecedented conversation about drawing new maps is because Donald Trump demanded it,\u201d Berman said. \u201cAn overwhelming majority of Floridians voted in favor of the Fair Districts Amendment and their voices must be respected. The redistricting process is meant to serve the people, not the politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Florida Democratic Party called the move by DeSantis \u201creckless, partisan and opportunistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is nothing more than a desperate attempt to rig the system and silence voters before the 2026 election,\u201d the statement said. \u201cNow, after gutting representation for Black Floridians just three years ago, Ron is hoping the decimation of the Voting Rights Act by Trump\u2019s Supreme Court will allow him to further gerrymander and suppress the vote of millions of Floridians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, said the state already has a fairly strong Republican gerrymander, so it would be difficult for Republicans to pick up additional seats, unless they\u2019re planning to draw \u201cnoncompact districts that squiggle all over the place\u201d and then hold the election before a judge can throw out the map. McDonald said DeSantis also could be trying to shore up Republican strongholds to mitigate the losses generally experienced by the party in power during midterm elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump\u2019s approval ratings are pretty low,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cAnd so looking at what we would expect to happen in November, unless something fundamentally changes in the country between now and then, we expect the Democrats to have a very good year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schneider and Fischer write for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he plans to call a special session in April for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19260,14256,2683,409,41126,28,30,29,8853,29314,56477,2895,56478,4219,914,5956,56181],"class_list":["post-110745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-april","tag-congressional-district","tag-desantis","tag-donald-trump","tag-fair-districts","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-floridians","tag-map","tag-midterm-election","tag-party","tag-possible-ruling","tag-republicans","tag-state","tag-statement","tag-voting-rights-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}