Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans prepare for next round of 2026 redistricting fight

President Donald Trump’s yearlong effort to redraw congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections has not gone as planned. But Republicans have one last battleground on the table when it comes to mid-decade redistricting: Florida.

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At the request of Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida state lawmakers will meet in Tallahassee next week for a special legislative session to consider redrawing the state’s 28 congressional districts — a move that could lead to between two and five new Republican-leaning seats. But the plan sparked opposition from many in his own party, fearing it would dilute Republican-held seats to the point that the party could lose incumbents in the fall.

This reflects a bleak political environment for Republicans right now. So far, even the Trump-led round of redistricting in the middle of the decade has disappointed the White House.

After the president pushed Republican-leaning Texas to redraw congressional lines last year, a handful of Democratic-led states also redrew their maps. This back-and-forth makes it likely that neither party will gain more than a handful of seats through redistricting, no matter what happens in Florida.

National Democrats have already named Florida as Trump’s final redistricting stand this year. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters earlier this week that his party would target Florida seats in the midterms, which has not been the case in recent election cycles.

“Our message to Florida Republicans is: ‘Look around and find out,’” Jeffries said.

DeSantis responded, attacking Democrats over their poor image in Florida.

“We’re going to take on Florida. “Please be my guest,” DeSantis said of Jeffries earlier this week. “I’ll pay for you to come to Florida and campaign. I’ll put you up in the Florida governor’s mansion. We’ll take you fishing.”

Preparing for the redistricting battle

The Florida state constitution expressly prohibits the adoption of any political map showing an “intent” to favor one party over the other.

That makes the legal hurdles in Florida — which would be the eighth state to redraw the congressional map before the midterm elections — very different from those in other states, where lawmakers involved in redistricting have openly talked about winning more House seats for their party. In Florida, however, this kind of talk could become part of legal challenges.

Democrats and opponents of the redistricting effort will almost certainly file additional legal challenges when the maps are adopted, under the argument that they were part of a political attempt to shore up the slim Republican majority in the House.

Republicans, however, remain unmoved by legal threats, arguing that the current maps contain remnants of a map drawn by Democrats and approved by the courts in 2012. They are trying, they say, to fix a redistricting error rather than take any overt political action.

“The current maps contain remnants of the court-imposed DCCC map a decade ago,” said Florida GOP Chairman Evan Power. “Recent court rulings indicate we no longer need to draw districts this way.”

“Now we can draw fair and compact districts to allow voters to choose the representation they want,” he added.

Florida’s current congressional maps were also largely drawn by DeSantis and approved by Republican lawmakers just a few years ago. Republicans gained a 20-8 advantage in Florida’s delegation along these lines.

DeSantis’ redistricting campaign has already drawn legal challenges from a group of state voters led by prominent Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, who filed a lawsuit claiming the governor exceeded his authority when he called a special session on redistricting.

“The Governor’s powers are defined by the Florida Constitution – which does not confer unilateral authority to compel the Legislature to pass legislation,” the lawsuit states.

A group called No Partisan Maps also announced it would hold protests Tuesday at the Florida State Capitol to mark the start of the special redistricting session.

Intra-party conflict

DeSantis faces significant pushback from his Republican colleagues, including from members of the congressional delegation, who worry that redistricting could dilute the GOP vote in a way that could put some districts in play in the midterms, as Democrats have shown early momentum in special elections.

“Don’t do it. I’ve said it all along,” Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., told Punchbowl News earlier this month. “I’ve been through enough redistributions to know it’s a slippery slope.”

Longtime Republican consultant Karl Rove also warned Friday that Florida Republicans should not go too far.

“Right now, the Democrats are ahead. If Florida does what it can, the Republicans will at least be tied,” Rove told “Fox & Friends,” analyzing the state of national redistricting to date. “But there’s a risk, because what they’re going to do is they’re going to have to take Republican votes out of Republican districts and put them into Democratic districts, which is going to bring down the number of some Republican incumbents, and they might lose a seat or two.”

DeSantis also has issues with lawmakers in his own GOP-dominated Legislature, many of whom have openly feuded with the governor since his failed 2024 presidential bid.

“No one wants to do this here,” said one Republican state representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely express opposition to the Republican governor’s plans. “This is a ship piloted by DeSantis. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. We’ll see how it goes.”

Five Republican lawmakers interviewed by NBC News echoed that sentiment, with most saying there is a general apathy among lawmakers about passing congressional maps that don’t directly impact them.

“If I had to guess, as long as the maps aren’t too egregious, I think we’ll vote to pass it,” said another. “But don’t confuse that with anyone who is interested in this idea or actually supports it.”

Still, there’s increased pressure on Florida Republicans to do something after Virginia voters approved a plan that could help Democrats pick up four seats in the state’s House of Representatives.

“Florida has the right and the intention to do this,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said this week. “And my view is that they should.”

NBC News reported earlier this month that the White House was closely monitoring the process in Florida, but had not engaged as aggressively as in other Republican-leaning states because of concerns about upcoming legal challenges.

“It would be the worst thing they could do to give the impression that they’re getting close,” said a former Trump administration official.

As of Friday afternoon, DeSantis’ office had not yet released any maps or given any indication of what a proposed map might look like.

Under normal circumstances, Florida’s redistricting process includes a series of public hearings as maps are collected.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried called the redistricting effort a “stunt” and a “direct attack on fair representation.” “This is yet another attempt by DeSantis to silence voters and deny Florida residents a democracy that belongs to them,” she said.

Although no map exists yet, Republicans’ biggest concern is the dilution of the Republican vote in GOP-controlled districts in the Miami and Tampa areas. That could endanger Republican Reps. Carlos Gimenez and Maria Salazar in South Florida and Laurel Lee and Anna Paulina Luna in the Tampa area.

“Let’s say they’re aggressively disrupting Kathy Castor’s seat,” said one longtime Republican operative, speaking of the Tampa-area Democratic congresswoman. “What does this mean for Lee and Luna?” »