2026 Elections
News Source
EXCERPT:
Some House Republicans spent weeks warning against a drastic redraw of Florida’s congressional map.
Now that it’s out — with Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting as many as four Democratic seats for a GOP takeover — they’re mostly keeping any criticism to themselves.
“I think they did a pretty good job,” said Rep. Gus Bilirakis, who said he was one of the Florida Republicans whose district changed “quite a bit.”
“But I think they could touch it up a little bit, too,” he added.
Rep. Scott Franklin said he is set to represent his third constituency in four terms. He still lives within the confines of the 18th district, he said, though it is much smaller in area.
“Mine gets significantly less red than it was,” Franklin said. “But it’s still a conservative performing seat.”
News Source
EXCERPT:
President Donald Trump continues to prioritize the passage of the SAVE America Act, keeping election integrity at the forefront in Washington. However, states are not waiting for Congress to act. Across the country, this shift has been building for years, and it is becoming harder to ignore.
The SAVE America Act should be passed because it aligns federal elections with the direction states are already taking.
Florida offers one of the clearest examples. Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a state-level measure requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and directing officials to verify applicants using existing data systems. The approach mirrors what the SAVE America Act would do at the federal level. DeSantis said the law would “strengthen the security, transparency, and reliability of Florida’s election system.”
Florida is not alone. In Mississippi, Governor Tate Reeves signed the SHIELD Act, which requires officials to verify citizenship when individuals register to vote, including checks against federal databases and regular audits of voter rolls. Reeves called it “another win for election integrity” and made clear that the state intends to keep strengthening its system.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled a new congressional redistricting map on Monday that could net the Republican Party four more seats in the House of Representatives.
Republicans currently hold 20 of the Sunshine State’s 28 seats, so if the new map is approved, it could increase to 24.
DeSantis told Fox News, “Florida got shortchanged in the 2020 Census, and we’ve been fighting for fair representation ever since. Our population has since grown dramatically, and we have moved from a Democrat majority to a 1.5 million Republican advantage. Drawing maps based on race, which is reflected in our current congressional districts, is unconstitutional and should be prohibited.”
“Our new map for 2026 makes good on my promise to conduct mid-decade redistricting, and it more fairly represents the makeup of Florida today,” DeSantis added.
Partisan lean of new Florida congressional districts:
FL09: 🔴 Trump + 17.7
FL14: 🔴 Trump + 10.5
FL22: 🔴 Trump + 10.5
FL25: 🔴 Trump + 9.1 https://t.co/CHL6rFGJIA pic.twitter.com/AIAEYhAUkG— OSZ (@OpenSourceZone) April 27, 2026
News Source
EXCERPT:
President Donald Trump is trying to clear the field of several Indiana Republican state senators who previously opposed a congressional redistricting map by endorsing their challengers in the upcoming May 5 primary election.
In December, 21 Republican state senators joined their Democrat colleagues to block a redrawn congressional map that would have strengthened the GOP’s control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
‘Anybody that votes against Redistricting, and the SUCCESS of the Republican Party in D.C., will be, I am sure, met with a MAGA Primary in the Spring.’
The new map, which would have created two more Republican-leaning congressional districts, failed in the state Senate in a 31-19 vote.
Trump issued a warning to Republican state senators ahead of the vote, cautioning those who planned to block the map.
“Anybody that votes against Redistricting, and the SUCCESS of the Republican Party in D.C., will be, I am sure, met with a MAGA Primary in the Spring,” Trump wrote, adding that he would “do everything within my power to make sure that they will not hurt the Republican Party, and our Country, again.
News Source
EXCERPT:
The gerrymandering of House districts is becoming more rampant across the U.S.
The word “gerrymander” was coined in America more than 200 years ago as an unflattering way to describe the political manipulation of boundaries for legislative voting districts by those in charge of drawing them.
The word has stood the test of time, in part because American politics remain fiercely competitive. And with time and technology, politicians have become even more adept at drafting voting districts that benefit their political party.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Democrats’ uniform opposition to the SAVE America Act demonstrates their unremitting antagonism toward any reform that increases the integrity of the election process. The same can be said of a meritless lawsuit in Kansas (League of Women Voters v. Schwab) that seeks to eliminate the most basic safeguard in mail voting: verifying that the signature on a returned ballot matches that of the voter.
In the suit, the plaintiffs, represented in part by the law firm of Marc Elias — the Democrat election lawyer who has made a career out of seeking to tear down every election integrity safeguard he can find — claim that signature verification violates the Kansas Constitution’s equal protection and due process provisions. In essence, they contend, human beings are incapable of conducting a signature analysis.
This legal challenge is frivolous. Kansas has elaborate procedures to ensure signature verification is applied in a uniform and consistent manner. It also provides a robust “cure” process, giving voters ample opportunity to resolve any perceived mismatch.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Reps. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) and Mike Collins (R-Ga.) traded barbs while former college football coach Derek Dooley largely stayed above the fray during Sunday’s Georgia Senate GOP primary debate — one day before early voting begins. Carter, Collins and Dooley alongside former Senate candidate John Coyne and retired Brig. Gen. Jonathan McColumn are vying for the Republican nomination to take on Sen. Jon Ossoff…
News Source
EXCERPT:
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is urging Florida Republicans to move forward with a new congressional map, signaling a counteroffensive after Democrats narrowly pushed through a controversial redistricting referendum in Virginia.
The Virginia measure, approved Tuesday by a razor-thin margin, is expected to dramatically reshape the state’s congressional delegation in Democrats’ favor ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The Progressives won a major battle in the ongoing gerrymandering wars, this time scoring a narrow victory in Virginia. The ballot measure allows the progressives to change U.S. House Districts to effectively take 4 Republican seats away. The now-passed ballot measure faces legal challenges.
Dems Win In Virginia, Could Lose In Court– thefederalist.com
News Source
EXCERPT:
Democrats and their well-heeled funders have won their rigged referendum to rig Virginia’s congressional maps, but the political boundary battle isn’t over yet.
Now come the court challenges, and that’s where the redistricting revisionists could lose their big win thanks to their unabashed manipulation of Virginia law.
“It’s illegal actually for a number of reasons,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told me last week, a few days before Tuesday’s election, on The Dan O’Donnell Show in Milwaukee.
Snead asserts that Virginia Democrats, who hold the commonwealth’s political trifecta, have steamrolled the process while abandoning their plastic principles. His election watchdog organization is involved in one of several lawsuits challenging the maps and the referendum that gave Democrats the shaky imprimatur to implement them.
News Source
EXCERPT:
The two giant super PACs closely tied to Republican leaders in the House and Senate are relying on billionaire donors, the fossil fuel industry, cryptocurrency firms, and Big Tobacco to bankroll their defense of Congress.
Around half of the combined haul of the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) and the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) has come from billionaires—at least $133.5 million—according to a Sludge analysis of Federal Election Commission data from the start of 2025 through March 2026. The billionaires include reclusive President Trump megadonor Timothy Mellon, casino mogul Steve Wynn, Republican megadonors Christopher and Jude Reyes, poultry magnate Ronald Cameron, and cryptocurrency tycoons the Winklevoss twins. It’s possible that more billionaires have donated to the SLF and CLF through their “dark money” affiliates, which hide the names of donors from the public.
The SLF and CLF were the top-spending outside groups nationwide in the 2022 midterms—though this time around, many more super PACs are loaded up with record amounts of cash to spend. The groups, aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.), spend heavily on attack ads against Democrats and independent expenditures supporting Republicans each cycle.
News Source
EXCERPT:
On Tuesday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “The Last Word,” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) argued that Republicans “understood that the only way they could possibly maintain a majority in the House of Representatives” “was if they cheated, if they went seeking seats in places like Texas, which is why the president began this effort.”
Host Lawrence O’Donnell asked, “You’ve just come from the House of Representatives, to the governorship, in this last election. In your view, what would it mean if the Republicans were able to conspire with Donald Trump to increase the number of Republicans in the House of Representatives so that they could cling to control of the House of Representatives for two more years?”
Spanberger answered, “Well, I think they very much understood that the only way they could possibly maintain a majority in the House of Representatives — of course, they have a slim, slim majority at the moment — was if they cheated, if they went seeking seats in places like Texas, which is why the president began this effort. Because he knew that, at the midterms, much like, back in 2018, when I was first elected to Congress, that his poor leadership, the chaos that he is creating, the war he’s begun with Iran, skyrocketing gas prices, failed promise after failed promise, would be enough to propel yet another blue wave in a midterm, in the 2026 midterm election.”
News Source
EXCERPT:
Trump’s scheme to steal the midterm election by getting red states to gerrymander more Republican House seats was a poorly thought-out effort with great potential to backfire from the moment it was launched.
The president assumed that Democrats would not fight back. Trump also assumed that red states would line up around the country to carry out his wishes.
PoliticusUSA’s news and opinions are 100% independent. Support us by becoming a subscriber.
Democrats did fight back by playing by the same rules that Trump established. In California, Democrats romped to a new map that could net them five House seats. While in red states like Kansas and Indiana, Republicans refused to redraw their maps. Ohio Republicans rejected a full-scale gerrymander and went with a fairer map after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries threatened them with a ballot referendum.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), who is running to succeed retiring Sen. Joni Ernst (R), is pushing to expand access to birth control as the race for the open Senate seat heats up. The Iowa congresswoman has long supported efforts to improve access and reintroduced legislation late last month aimed at reducing barriers to contraception, particularly…
News Source
EXCERPT:
After a narrow loss in Virginia, Republicans are pointing fingers as President Donald Trump’s national gerrymandering fight slips into a stalemate.
Multiple Republicans say the party should’ve spent much more, much earlier to have a better shot at blocking Democrats’ Virginia map, which could give the party as many as four more House seats. And pressure is now growing on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to make up for Democrats’ gains with a GOP-led redistricting effort in his state, as soon as next week.
“You’d be hard pressed to find a single Republican tonight who doesn’t think the GOP should’ve done more in Virginia. It actually hurts more that it was so close,” said a GOP operative, granted anonymity to speak candidly, like others in this article.
There are mounting signs that Trump and the GOP have used valuable time and political capital on an arduous tit-for-tat that is so far looking like it will be close to a draw. Even if Republicans squeeze out gains in a new Florida map, their total gains are likely to be modest at best.
News Source
EXCERPT:
For the moment, the Democrats have won. Their Machiavellian gerrymandering scheme passed by a slim margin Tuesday night, slicing and dicing Virginia’s congressional districts into a ridiculous jigsaw puzzle that most closely resembles Illinois’ comical maps — meaning they have no logic, other than to rig the result and disenfranchise millions of voters.