DeSantis Uses Special Session To Push New Florida U.S. House Map

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called a special legislative session this week in Tallahassee to push through a new U.S. House map aimed at creating more Republican-held seats before the 2026 elections.

Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature moved quickly to approve the proposal that would redraw Florida's 28 districts. Republicans now hold 20 seats and the plan is pitched as creating as many as four additional GOP-leaning districts. Critics say the map halves Black majority districts and amounts to aggressive gerrymandering, while supporters hail it as a legal corrective to past maps.

The episode traces back to major legal shifts in 2025 that gave states broader power over redistricting. The U.S. Supreme Court rulings that year reduced federal limits on mid-decade map changes and weakened some Voting Rights Act protections. In early 2026, President Trump urged Republican states to use that leeway to redraw maps before the November elections. Florida's 2022 redistricting already delivered Republicans a net gain of four seats, producing the current 20-8 split. The timing matters: candidate qualifying for Florida's 2026 U.S. House races runs from noon June 8 to noon June 12, so new lines could reshape filing and primary dynamics.

Coverage has shifted as legal hurdles fell. Early reporting treated mid-decade redraws as unlikely under federal oversight. After the 2025 court decisions, outlets began framing state campaigns as decisive. Local critics and some county legislators say approving the plan did not mean they abdicated authority to the governor, and legal challenges are expected to test both state constitutional limits and federal voting-rights claims ahead of the 2026 cycle.