Connect with us

Latest

DeSantis under pressure as Florida redraw could tip House balance in GOP map fight

Published

on

All eyes are on Florida next week, as it is likely the final battleground in the high-stakes fight between President Donald Trump and Republicans versus Democrats over congressional redistricting.

A special session of the Florida legislature, called earlier this year by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to redraw the right-leaning state’s U.S. House districts, kicks off on Tuesday.

At stake is which party will control the House of Representatives during the final two years of Trump’s second term in the White House.

Republicans and Democrats over the past nine months have been redrawing the House district maps in states they control to gain partisan advantages heading into this year’s midterm elections, when the GOP will be defending its razor-thin congressional majority.

DESANTIS AND JEFFRIES TRADE SHOTS OVER FLORIDA CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING

Lawmakers in the GOP-dominated Florida legislature are meeting one week after voters in Virginia narrowly passed a referendum that, if it clears legal hurdles, will give the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature — rather than the current nonpartisan commission — temporary redistricting power through the 2030 election. It could result in a 10-1 advantage for Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation, up from their current 6-5 edge.

The vote in Virginia put more pressure on DeSantis to deliver a new map in Florida that could create between three and five more right-leaning congressional districts.

“Florida has the right and the intention to do it. And my view is that they should,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Wednesday when asked if Florida’s maps should be redrawn in time for the midterms.

A Florida-based Republican in the governor’s wider political circle who asked for anonymity to speak more freely told Fox News Digital, “Gov. DeSantis is under tremendous pressure to deliver an answer to Virginia for Trump and Speaker Johnson.”

The road ahead for DeSantis is not easy: the governor already pushed through a new House map four years ago, which helped secure the GOP’s current 20-8 majority in Florida’s U.S. House delegation. Redrawing the map again just four years later is harder.

VIRGINIA VOTE GIVES DEMOCRATS MIDTERM MAP EDGE – SPARKS GOP BLAME GAME

There are also legal hurdles DeSantis faces: It is illegal under Florida’s constitution to redraw maps for partisan gain, known as gerrymandering. Democrats have vowed lawsuits against any new map that may come out of Tallahassee.

U.S. House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries last week took aim at what some are dubbing “dummymander,” a play on words of “gerrymander,” and argued that redrawing the maps in Florida — where the GOP suffered setbacks earlier this spring in special legislative elections — would harm Republican members of Congress.

“Our message to Florida Republicans is, ‘F around and find out,’” Jeffries told reporters as he referenced next week’s redistricting legislative session. Jeffries said the redistricting move would lead Democrats to increase their target list of vulnerable Florida House Republicans.

He warned DeSantis and Republicans that “the electoral tide is turning in Florida.”

DEMOCRATS NARROWLY WIN CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING SHOWDOWN IN VIRGINIA

Pushing back, DeSantis said “Please. Be my guest. I will pay for you to come down to Florida to campaign.”

“I’ll put you up in the Florida governor’s mansion. We will take you fishing,” the governor added.

DeSantis has argued that the last U.S. Census was full of flaws and claimed that it robbed Florida of an extra congressional seat. And the governor has also pointed to the major influx of new residents this decade who moved to Florida from other states in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

Not all Florida Republicans are on board with the effort, due to concerns it may backfire.

A Florida-based GOP strategist told Fox News Digital some Florida members of Congress “don’t want this.”

And pointing to the legislature, where there are some grumblings, the strategist, who asked to remain anonymous to speak clearly, said “some don’t want to do it, but their hands will be forced.”

Florida has already moved the filing deadline for congressional candidates back from April to June, but for candidates already running for Congress, the late-in-the-game map redraw brings plenty of complications.

“Changing the map changes the race. Candidates have been interview for a job description that just got a requirement change,” veteran Florida-based GOP donor and bundler Dan Eberhart told Fox News Digital.

Eberhart noted that “these candidates are going to have to call an audible really soon – changing districts and probably new competitors.”

Florida may be the final battlefield in a political war that started a year ago.

Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, Trump last spring first floated the idea of rare, but not unheard of, mid-decade congressional redistricting.

The mission was simple: redraw congressional district maps in red states to pad the GOP’s fragile House majority to keep control of the chamber in the midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.

When asked by reporters last summer about his plan to add Republican-leaning House seats across the country, the president said, “Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five.”

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called a special session of the GOP-dominated state legislature to pass the new map.

But Democratic state lawmakers, who broke quorum for two weeks as they fled Texas in a bid to delay the passage of the redistricting bill, energized Democrats across the country.

Among those leading the fight against Trump’s redistricting was Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

DEMOCRACY ’26: STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE FOX NEWS ELECTION HUB

California voters in November overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that temporarily sidetracked the left-leaning state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and returned the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated legislature.

That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which aimed to counter the move by Texas to redraw their maps.

The fight quickly spread beyond Texas and California.

Republican-controlled Missouri and Ohio and swing state North Carolina, where the GOP dominates the legislature, have drawn new maps as part of the president’s push.

In blows to Republicans, a Utah district judge late last year rejected a congressional district map drawn by the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the midterms.

Republicans in Indiana’s Senate in December defied Trump, shooting down a redistricting bill that had passed the state House. The showdown in the Indiana statehouse grabbed plenty of national attention.

Continue Reading

Latest

How Trump survives: Battling the media, former allies and assassination attempts

Published

on

Donald Trump has been written off a thousand times and always managed to bounce back.

He hung on when he first got in the race and was mocked as a sideshow. When the “Access Hollywood” tape came out. When his supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. 

He outlasted two impeachments and four criminal cases. He won reelection when that seemed like a long shot. He’s the Harry Houdini of Washington. 

And on Saturday night, he survived his third assassination attempt. At a dinner that was expected to feature the president mocking the media, his calm response to being targeted by a heavily armed shooter generated enormous sympathy for him. It’s a dangerous job, he said.

THE LEFT’S DEHUMANIZATION OF TRUMP IS PUSHING PEOPLE OVER THE EDGE – WITH DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES

In fact, he “fought like hell” to continue with the Correspondents’ Association dinner, but the Secret Service – one of whose members was shot but saved by a protective vest – insisted on clearing the room. 

At the same time, Trump has such mounting political problems that it’s hard to avoid the conclusion he’s in a free fall. 

The president is bogged down in an unpopular war and canceled the latest talks. Rising gas prices are inflicting pain at home. He may be losing the redistricting wars. Some of his most prominent supporters in the conservative media have turned on him with a vengeance, even apologizing for having supported him.

That’s not all. The Democrats are virtually certain to win the House. They are talking about impeaching Trump the day they’re sworn in. Sure, he’d be acquitted in the Senate, but his last two years would be a blizzard of investigations and payback.

REPORT GIVES NEW DETAILS ON TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT SUSPECT’S ‘DESCENT INTO MADNESS’

What’s more, the president can’t run again. He’ll still have the power of incumbency, but the House can block most of what he wants to do (and this is beyond the media fantasy that the opposition party could take the Senate as well).

In the ever-present polls, Trump has dropped as low as 33% approval in an AP survey, his worst numbers ever.

More eye-popping is a new survey with a large sample, from Strength in Numbers/Verasight, which says 21% of Republicans support impeachment, with 72% opposed. Among independents, 50% back impeaching the president.   

And a Fox News poll found more respondents trusting the Democrats over the Republicans on the economy, by four points, for the first time in 15 years.

This comes against the backdrop of Trump having fired three women in his Cabinet, creating a sense of disorder, and his wife giving a televised speech to deny any involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.

But let’s have a reality check.

Trump’s relentless attacks on the press have taken their toll, with many dismissing the coverage as fueled by personal hostility. And Democrats, with few exceptions, aren’t helping themselves by appearing to root for the Iranian terrorists when our service members are at risk.

By November, the Iran war could be a distant memory. The economy might enjoy an uptick. Even now, with the ceasefire collapsing over the Strait of Hormuz blockade, the stock market has hit record highs.

Trump will use his media mastery to dominate the news agenda. He already takes calls from reporters at all hours. 

SHOOTING SUSPECT’S MANIFESTO CLEARLY STATED WHO HE WANTED TO TARGET, WHITE HOUSE SAYS

The Democrats, meanwhile, are leaderless. Even if Hakeem Jeffries is speaker, the president will make far more news. That won’t change until the 2028 primaries, when a front-runner or two emerges.

Trump can make news with executive orders, such as moving marijuana to a lower classification and boosting research into psychedelic drugs.

The betrayal being voiced by his onetime allies on the right, who embraced his pledge of no new foreign wars, may be less important for those not immersed in the online world. But it is a bellwether for the splintering of the MAGA coalition.

Now some of its leading members are calling him erratic and reckless.

No one is loving this more than the Democrats and the Never Trumpers, who say wait, you’re just noticing this now? We’ve been telling you this for years.

“Trump looks desperate to run for the hills,” says New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. “He constantly says he has defeated the mullahs and ‘obliterated’ their military power, and yet Iran refuses to be subdued.”

SEE PHOTOS: BEFORE AND AFTER SHOOTING AT WH CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER

What’s obvious, says veteran columnist Andrew Sullivan: “Trump is completely out of his depth. He went to war impulsively. He never expected the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz; and then they did. And he can’t re-open it. In fact, he decided to close it again. Or something.”

Throw in the AI image of Trump as Jesus, which offended many Catholics, and the list of unforced errors just grows. He’s even attacked the Supreme Court, a third of which he appointed.

And there is growing concern about the health of the president, who will soon turn 80, with television running footage every time he closes his eyes at a meeting.

Trump regularly talks about building his massive ballroom, which reminds people of his surprise demolition of the East Wing and plans for a monument that would dwarf the Arc de Triomphe. He brought it up after the gunfire on Saturday night, saying the ballroom would be bulletproof and extremely secure.

Trump also used the gunfire at the Washington Hilton to underscore his own importance. Having studied assassinations, he said, “the most impactful people, the people that do the most… they’re the ones they go after.”

Politically speaking, Trump is clearly struggling. But anyone who rules out a rebound for this president is ignoring history.

There will be all kinds of twists and turns in the remaining six months before the midterms, and the Democrats are unpopular as well. 

But here’s a moment of rare consensus: We can all be grateful that the Secret Service did its job well.

Continue Reading

Latest

New York woman convicted for throwing dynamite at boyfriend, blowing off his hand as he tried to get rid of it

Published

on

A New York woman was convicted after authorities said she threw a handmade stick of dynamite at her boyfriend while he was sleeping, causing his hand to be blown off as he attempted to get rid of the explosive.

Keyonna Waddell, 35, of Deer Park on Long Island, was found guilty by a jury on Friday of first-degree assault and first-degree criminal possession of a weapon in connection with the March 2024 incident.

Waddell had threatened the victim with dynamite several times in the months leading up to the incident, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.

WOMAN CHARGED IN MAN’S FATAL STABBING OUTSIDE UPSCALE LONG ISLAND YACHT CLUB

“Domestic violence can escalate to deadly levels, and this case is a sobering reminder of that reality,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said in a statement.

On March 22, 2024, Waddell and her boyfriend were involved in an argument inside his apartment, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.

After the dispute, the man left the apartment and told Waddell to leave. When he arrived back home, Waddell did not appear to be there, and he went to sleep.

He was later woken up by a hissing sound and noticed a flame on the floor of his bedroom. He then realized that a stick of dynamite had been thrown into his bedroom and attempted to toss the explosive device out of the window, but it detonated and blew off most of his hand before he was able to throw it out of harm’s way.

The victim then ran out of his home to the driveway, at which point he saw Waddell running away.

He was subsequently rushed to the hospital, where the remainder of his hand and part of his arm were amputated.

MAN CHARGED WITH ATTEMPTED MURDER AFTER ALLEGEDLY SHOOTING VICTIM IN FACE WITH CROSSBOW: POLICE

Waddell was arrested the following day, officials said. Her sentencing is scheduled for May 27, and she could face up to 25 years in prison.

“Thanks to the outstanding work of our prosecutors and the Suffolk County Police Department, a dangerous individual has been held accountable and will face a lengthy prison sentence for this horrific act,” Tierney said in his statement.

Continue Reading

Latest

Diego Pavia accepts Ravens rookie minicamp invite after making unfortunate NFL Draft history: reports

Published

on

Diego Pavia, the polarizing former Vanderbilt quarterback who was runner-up in Heisman voting last season, has reportedly found a home in the NFL after going undrafted this weekend.

Pavia accepted an invitation to the Baltimore Ravens’ rookie minicamp on a tryout basis, per multiple reports. He doesn’t have a spot on the roster yet, but it’s a start as he looks to crack into the NFL with Baltimore.

Of course, Lamar Jackson, the two-time MVP quarterback, is cemented as the team’s starting quarterback, but perhaps Pavia can stand out enough in rookie minicamp to earn an invitation to training camp this summer.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Pavia was not expecting to be undrafted this weekend, but he became the first Heisman Trophy finalist since 2014 to not hear his name called through the seven rounds in Pittsburgh.

Pavia won the SEC Offensive Player of the Year and the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm award for best upperclassman quarterback after throwing for 3,539 passing yards and 29 touchdowns, both of which single-season school records, to give the Commodores its first-ever 10-win season.

Vanderbilt just missed out on the College Football Playoff after finishing 10-3.

POLARIZING COLLEGE FOOTBALL STAR, HEISMAN TROPHY FINALIST GOES UNDRAFTED

Pavia ultimately finished second in Heisman voting to Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza – the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft by the Las Vegas Raiders. So, what ultimately led to Pavia not getting drafted?

While his personality may have factored in, Pavia’s official height at the NFL Scouting Combine turned some heads. Vanderbilt had him listed at 6-foot, but he was measured at 5-foot-9 7/8, which would make him the shortest quarterback in the NFL if he were to step foot on the gridiron today. The average height is 6-foot-2 for an NFL quarterback.

However, those shorter than the average have seen success, including Minnesota Vikings newest member, Kyler Murray, who went first overall to the Arizona Cardinals in 2019 coming out of Oklahoma. He’s listed at 5-foot-10.

Pavia barked back at critics during the Senior Bowl in January regarding his height.

“Yeah, my size has been doubted my whole life,” he said at the time, via AL.com. “I feel like the only thing the NFL cares about is can you win, and I view myself as a winner. I’ve been fortunate with all these great teams that I’ve had — we’ve never had a losing season. So that’s something to look forward to, I hope, for the rest of my career, that’s how it’s going to be.

“I feel like God has blessed me in so many ways to be a connector, and I feel like that’s one of my superpowers that I’ve got — I can connect. We unite, and then once you unite, you want to play for one another, and once you give 120% effort, there’s no one that can stop your team.”

Pavia’s personality, viewed by some as more cocky than confident, may have played a factor as well. After finishing runner-up to Mendoza in Heisman voting, Pavia was spotted at a New York City nightclub next to a sign that read, “F— Indiana.” Then, he posted on social media a photo with friends and a caption that read, “F— ALL THE VOTERS, BUT…FAMILY FOR LIFE.”

Pavia later apologized for his decision to post that on his socials.

No matter the case, Pavia has a shot now with the Ravens and new head coach Jesse Minter, as he aims to show enough to join the quarterbacks group in training camp. Other than Jackson, the Ravens have Tyler “Snoop” Huntley on the roster to start the season.    

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2026 Political Signal