Florida Republicans have approved a new congressional map that could hand them as many as four House seats currently held by Democrats, because nothing says "fair representation" like quietly redrawing lines while pretending you’re not doing exactly what everyone knows you’re doing. The goal is straightforward and universally understood: bolster the GOP’s majority and retake the lead in a nationwide partisan gerrymandering showdown. But good luck getting top Republicans in the Sunshine State to admit that out loud.

The drive to redraw maps in Florida has been marked by secrecy and obfuscation, because the state constitution expressly prohibits partisan redistricting. So GOP officials - starting with Governor Ron DeSantis and extending to lowly political operatives - have treated the subject of gerrymandering like a defendant respecting a Miranda warning: Do not say anything that could jeopardize these new maps in court. “Anything you say will get you subpoenaed,” one political consultant told us, speaking anonymously because he, too, does not want to be hauled before a judge when Democrats inevitably challenge the new maps. “You can’t say, ‘We need to make more Republican seats.’ You’re done. You’re toast, and then your map’s invalidated.”

No Republican has followed this fight-club rule more carefully than DeSantis, who called the legislature into session less than a week after Virginia voters evened up the national gerrymandering race by approving an aggressive Democratic redistricting plan. His office drew lines based on the likelihood that the Supreme Court would weaken enforcement of the Voting Rights Act - a bet that paid off spectacularly this morning when the Court voided a Louisiana voting map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, 6 - 3. The ruling could lead other GOP-led states to eliminate House seats drawn to boost minority representation, though it didn’t touch Florida’s state ban on partisan gerrymandering. Until Monday, no one had actually seen the DeSantis map, which eliminates a district created to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. When he finally released it, the governor claimed the proposal was “separate” and “independent” of the tit-for-tat redistricting battle Trump launched in Texas. “It’s the right thing to do for Florida,” he told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.

DeSantis’s official rationale is that Florida was shortchanged in the 2020 Census and that its population has grown dramatically. The closest he came to acknowledging the partisan nature of the new map - which could give Republicans 24 out of Florida’s 28 House seats - was to note that the GOP now has 1.5 million more registered voters than Democrats. He did signal partisan intent in ways less likely to backfire in court: He gave his proposal first to Fox News, and the map was drawn in shades of red and blue to denote how many seats Republicans could control. The bigger gamble is whether newly gerrymandered lines will yield those four seats. For months, the prospect divided the Florida GOP: current House members feared seeing their districts become more competitive, and some officials worried an aggressive gerrymander could backfire in a midterm year expected to favor Democrats. An analysis by the nonpartisan Civic Data & Research Institute argued Republicans had already maximized their advantage and that an aggressive plan would produce “zero net gain.” Other strategists disagree. “They’re not maxed out in Florida,” Matt Gorman, a former NRCC staffer, told us. “You’ve got to make sure you’re not drawing the lines too thin, but the idea that you can’t move anything is ridiculous.”

Democrats have characterized the gambit as simultaneously illegal and foolish. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dubbed it “the DeSantis dummymander,” claiming Democrats could win three to five additional seats if turnout matches 2018 and 2020. Others avoided such bravado. Steve Schale, a longtime Florida Democratic strategist, told us Republicans “definitely created a harder pathway,” but added, “I don’t think it’s a slam-dunk four-seat Republican gain.” The proposal targets seats held by Democratic Representatives Kathy Castor in Tampa, Darren Soto near Orlando, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jared Moskowitz in southeast Florida. Schale compared gerrymandering to squeezing a balloon: “The air moves around inside, but it’s still there. You can’t make them just disappear into the ocean.”

The uncertainty of how successful DeSantis’s map will prove is intertwined with Florida’s shifting political identity. Both parties agree it’s no longer the swing state that decided the 2000 election by a few hundred votes, but is it light-red or deep red? Trump’s 2024 win relied on gains among Latino voters, who have since swung back to Democrats in special elections. For now, Democrats who persuaded voters to approve gerrymanders in California and Virginia are hoping to block Florida’s plan - if not in the GOP-dominated legislature, then in the courts. They’ve grasped at moral high ground, pointing out that while Democrats took their plans directly to voters, Republicans jammed their new maps through with minimal public debate. As lawmakers convened in Tallahassee, opponents tried to generate a public groundswell; now that the map has passed, they plan to sue under the Fair Districts Amendment, a 2010 ballot measure banning partisan and racial gerrymandering. “This legislature has refused to engage with the public because they know that what they’re doing is illegal,” Genesis Robinson of Equal Ground told us.

The governor’s office seems to be banking on a favorable ruling from the Florida Supreme Court, composed entirely of Republican appointees, which upheld the preceding GOP-tilted map used in 2022. A memo from DeSantis’s general counsel argued the Fair Districts Amendment was unconstitutional, and in testimony, a lawyer acknowledged mapmakers used partisan voter data. Democrats saw that as an opening in the litigation likely to follow. What seemed clear: if Florida’s ban on partisan gerrymandering remains intact, the informal ban on copping to it is weakening.