Florida House advances congressional map to give GOP up to 4 more seats

Politics Florida House advances redistricting bill that aims to give GOP 24-4 congressional advantage By Aaron Navarro, Aaron Navarro Digital Reporter Aaron Navarro is a CBS News digital reporter. He covered the 2024 elections and was previously an associate producer for the CBS News political unit in the 2021 and 2022 election cycles. Read Full Bio Aaron Navarro, Caroline Linton Caroline Linton Associate Managing Editor, Politics Caroline Linton is an associate managing editor on the political team for CBSNews.com. She has previously written for The Daily Beast, Newsweek and amNewYork. Read Full Bio Caroline Linton Updated on: April 29, 2026 / 11:32 AM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google The Florida House on Wednesday approved a new congressional map proposed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that aims to give Republicans four more seats as the party seeks to maintain control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.The map will now go to the Florida Senate, where the Republicans also have a two-thirds majority. Three Republicans on Florida's Senate Rules Committee voted against the map on Tuesday, with one GOP state senator in Tuesday's committee hearing vocally pushing back against the map. But there would need to be seven GOP defectors to sink its passage. Florida is currently represented by 20 Republicans and seven Democrats, with one Democratic-leaning seat vacant after Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned earlier this month. DeSantis' proposed map aims to eliminate or shrink Democratic-leaning districts in Tampa, Orlando and parts of the state's southeast coast. The vote came hours after the Supreme Court narrows a section of the Voting Rights Act that requires some states to create majority-minority districts. At least one of the districts that DeSantis had redrawn was a majority Hispanic district in central Florida. In committee hearings on Tuesday, attorney Mohammed Jazil did not answer if the maps complied with that provision. But th...