From Huffington Post:
DeSantis Releases A Red-And-Blue Map, Even Though Florida Bans Partisan Redistricting
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In open defiance of a state constitution that explicitly bans partisan gerrymandering but in obedience to President Donald Trump, who demanded precisely that, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis drew a red-and-blue congressional map that would give Republicans four more House seats and unveiled it Monday to Fox News.
“Our new map for 2026 makes good on my promise to conduct mid-decade redistricting, and it more fairly represents the makeup of Florida today,” DeSantis told the network — more than an hour before transmitting the map to Florida lawmakers.
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Whether it would actually deliver 24 of Florida’s 28 congressional seats to Republicans if it is approved during this week’s special legislative session, though, is another matter, particularly in light of Trump’s terrible polling and Democrats’ recent success in special elections, including the state House district for Trump’s Palm Beach country club home.
One top Florida Republican, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said DeSantis’ map could even result in a so-called “dummymander” that helps Democrats gain seats above the eight they currently hold.
“Wide range from 22-6 Republican down to scenarios of maybe 18-10 or 17-11,” he said, adding that the DeSantis map assumes best-case scenarios for Republicans and ignores how Latino voters have been turned off by Trump’s aggressive deportation policy. “That 24-4 is based on numbers from huge red turnout years with no real Democrat turnout operations. And that 24-4 factors Hispanic vote that went Trump and won’t go Republican again.”
He said he was also perplexed by DeSantis’ choice to openly flout the state’s voter-approved anti-gerrymandering rules. “Dropping it on Fox, in red and blue, without legislation,” he said. “He’s definitely testing the Fair Districts Amendments.”
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Even before Florida voters successfully enshrined in their constitution a ban on partisan intent when drawing district lines, lawmakers proposing new maps did so using neutral, muted colors to delineate districts from neighboring ones in an attempt to convey their official, not political, nature.
“Desantis’ performance on Fox News handed us more evidence to present to the courts,” said Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party. “That it was color-coded and discussed partisan voter registration illustrates that he intends to force the legislature to violate the Florida constitution.”
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In a letter to lawmakers attempting to justify the map, DeSantis’ general counsel, David Axelman, argued that because the state Supreme Court found in 2025 that the Fair Districts Amendments’ prohibition against weakening seats drawn for racial minorities violated the U.S. Constitution, the language banning partisan intent also had to be struck down.
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“Because one part is unconstitutional, there’s little reason to think that voters would have approved the remaining parts by themselves,” Axelman wrote.
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Neither Axelman nor DeSantis’ press office responded to HuffPost’s queries.
DeSantis’ choice to hand the openly partisan rendering of the map to a news outlet with a dominating voice in GOP primaries is also raising eyebrows. DeSantis unsuccessfully ran for president in 2024 and is widely expected to consider a run in 2028.
“The organizing principle for this map seems to be based more on hubris than Florida’s constitution,” said Dan Gelber, a former Democratic state lawmaker and a member of the legal team that successfully tossed a gerrymandered congressional map in 2015. “The governor so badly wants to impress 2028 national voters that he’s fully ignored his own voters who overwhelmingly supported non-partisan maps.”
Trump, fearful that Democratic control of the House following the 2026 midterms would lead to investigations into his behavior and even to impeachment, last year demanded that Republican-run states redraw their congressional districts to create more GOP seats. Texas complied immediately with a map designed to produce five more Republican House members, and DeSantis said two weeks later that he, too, would likely redraw Florida’s map.
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Then, as today, his rationale for doing so was a claim that Florida had been undercounted in the 2020 Census. It is unclear, though, what the logical nexus is between Florida getting shortchanged in that count and a new congressional map that takes four more seats from Democrats and gives them to Republicans.
Trump’s order to create new Republican House seats has also led to a backlash from Democrats. California Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed through a voter initiative that could give Democrats five more seats, while Virginia voters last week approved a change to their constitution that could temporarily create four more.
The Florida Supreme Court has considered a challenge to a congressional map alleging partisan intent only once, in the first redistricting following the 2010 voter approval of the Fair Districts Amendments. In 2012, the same year in which Florida voted to reelect Democratic President Barack Obama, GOP state leaders produced a map with 17 GOP districts and 10 Democratic ones.
In a 5-2 opinion in 2015, the Florida Supreme Court agreed that the evidence collected at trial — which included private communications among GOP elected officials and consultants — proved partisan intent to help Republicans. The justices produced a map that resulted in 16 Republicans and 11 Democrats in 2016, and, two years later, 14 Republicans and 13 Democrats.
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Many Republicans hope that the current state Supreme Court, whose majority has been appointed by DeSantis, will not rule against Republicans, notwithstanding the constitutional language.
Marc Elias, the Democratic elections lawyer whom Republicans often describe as their nemesis because of his frequent wins, was also on the legal team that won the 2012 challenge in Florida.
On Monday, upon seeing the red-and-blue map DeSantis gave to Fox, he promised he would fight it if lawmakers wind up passing it in the special session that begins Tuesday. “If Florida enacts this, it will be sued,” he wrote.
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