In a move stirring political controversy and public protest, Florida lawmakers are set to embark on a mid-decade congressional redistricting process, the first such legislative action since Governor Ron DeSantis called for a review of district lines earlier this year. The select House committee on congressional redistricting will convene Thursday afternoon in Tallahassee, marking a pivotal moment in a debate that has drawn sharp lines between Republicans and Democrats and set off alarm bells among voting rights advocates.
This week’s committee meeting is the first legislative session on redistricting since Governor DeSantis, in July 2025, declared it would be “appropriate to do a redistricting” in the middle of the decade. By August, DeSantis, with support from Attorney General James Uthmeier, was publicly advocating for an update to the 2020 Decennial Census, arguing that Florida was “shortchanged in the reapportionment stemming from the last census.” Despite these claims, no official update to the census has occurred, leaving critics to question the true motivations behind the proposed changes.
According to Phoenix, Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell did not mince words in her response to the redistricting push. At a press conference on December 1, 2025, Driskell accused Republican leaders of attempting to “rig” next year’s midterm elections in favor of their party. “Any attempt to draw new maps in Florida right now is a direct response to the president’s pressure to stack the deck before the midterms, and that is illegal in Florida,” Driskell stated. She pointed to the state’s Fair Districts amendments, which explicitly prohibit drawing maps to benefit one party or incumbent over another, as a safeguard against what she described as “swamp-like cynical behavior.”
“Redistricting decides who represents us in our government. A process that must serve the people, not politicians. This isn’t something that the people asked for. This is just the swamp-like cynical behavior that people hate about politics,” Driskell continued, underscoring the gravity of the situation for many Floridians who feel their voices could be diluted by partisan maneuvering.
Florida’s Fair Districts amendments, enshrined in the state constitution, are designed to ensure that electoral lines are drawn without intentional favoritism toward any political party or incumbent. Yet, with Republicans holding a supermajority in both chambers of the Florida Legislature—including a 26-11 advantage in the Senate—Democrats face an uphill battle in stopping the redistricting effort. Driskell acknowledged this reality, saying, “We don’t have the numbers to stop this, but we haven’t seen what’s going to happen in the Senate yet and, interestingly, more and more we’re watching our state Senate become a backstop to guard against some of the more dangerous whims of the legislation that we see coming out from the House.”
While Senate Republicans have remained largely silent on the issue since DeSantis’s summer comments, some voices have emerged with concerns of their own. Pinellas County Republican state Senator Nick DiCeglie told the Phoenix last month, “I’d like to see some data on the magnitude of people in the state of Florida who might be here illegally who have been part of the calculation on re-districting. I think that we should have redistricting based on United States citizens, and we’ll see how that plays out here, if possible. It’s always good to focus on U.S. citizens and see exactly what needs to be done to accomplish that.” Despite this, Senate President Ben Albritton has yet to comment, and no relevant committee has been formed in the Senate to oversee the process.
The debate in Florida comes amid a national wave of redistricting efforts, many of which have been met with legal challenges and public outcry. Earlier this year, Texas undertook its own congressional redistricting after former President Donald Trump claimed Republicans were “entitled to five more seats” in the state. That new map was blocked by a federal court as an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” with the Supreme Court later temporarily allowing the map’s use for the 2026 election after an emergency request by the state. Meanwhile, Indiana House Republicans, under pressure from the White House, proposed a redrawing that would give their party control over all nine of the state’s House seats, even though Democrats currently hold two.
In Florida, the stakes are high. Republicans currently represent 20 of the state’s 28 congressional districts, and any further changes could significantly impact the balance of power in Washington ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Democratic U.S. Representative Kathy Castor, who serves the Tampa Bay area, criticized Tallahassee Republicans for focusing on redistricting rather than addressing pressing issues like property insurance and electricity costs. “I think it’s a waste of time and money,” Castor told the Phoenix last week, voicing the frustrations of many Floridians who see the move as a distraction from more urgent concerns.
As the House Select Committee on congressional redistricting prepares to meet at 1:30 p.m. in Tallahassee, opposition groups are mobilizing. The “No Partisan Maps” coalition—a collection of voting and civil rights organizations—has scheduled a protest in front of the Capitol to coincide with the hearing. Their message is clear: redistricting should not be used as a tool for partisan gain, and the public will not stand idly by as the process unfolds.
The controversy in Florida is mirrored by heated rhetoric on the national stage. On December 1, 2025, GOP Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri appeared on Fox News to denounce Democrats’ efforts to hold the Trump administration accountable, calling such actions “dangerous.” Schmitt accused elected Democrats of encouraging military personnel to disobey orders, warning, “That’s the first step. But what we saw happened this weekend, through some of those same elected officials, was to say, basically, to military men and women, ‘Look out, you might get prosecuted.’ This is not the language of we’ll beat them in the next election or we’ll win the argument. This is the language of a color revolution, where you’re calling on military men and women to disobey orders.” He added, “And you put that on top of the firebombing of Tesla dealerships, the riots you see in the streets, the prosecution of a political opponent—the Democrats have completely lost the plot here. And the American people, I think, see that. But it’s a very dangerous road to go down here to say you should be disobeying orders because we don’t like Trump.”
These comments reflect a broader climate of distrust and partisan tension, both in Florida and across the nation. As lawmakers debate the boundaries that will shape political power for years to come, the fundamental question remains: will the process serve the interests of the people, or those of the politicians drawing the lines?
The outcome of Florida’s redistricting battle is far from certain, but one thing is clear—the eyes of the state, and indeed the nation, will be fixed on Tallahassee as the process unfolds.
