TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida is pushing back against assertions that the state’s new congressional map was drawn to help Republicans, arguing in a new legal filing that other states such as Virginia and Illinois have engaged in much more blatant partisan gerrymandering.

Voting rights and civil rights groups have filed multiple lawsuits challenging a new map pushed into law by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis. They have argued that the map, which could result in Republicans picking up four seats, is a clear violation of voter approved anti-gerrymandering standards and “one of the most extreme congressional maps” enacted in the past 50 years.

A circuit court judge will hold a hearing Friday on whether to temporarily block the new map and instead let the state’s old congressional map — which was also recommended by the DeSantis administration back in 2022 — be used for the midterms. The 2022 map gave Republicans a 20-8 edge.

Lawyers representing the state filed their response Wednesday and made several arguments — some of them procedural — as to why the new map should be allowed to remain in place. They argue, for example, that it’s too close to the August primary to undo the map approved just two weeks ago.

But the 29-page filing also insists those challenging the map have produced “scant evidence” to back their claims.

“The claim of partisan favoritism is tethered only to maps showing the district lines overlayed onto the results of a few elections, hearsay from their supposed experts, thoughts about tweets, their perspective on Fox News coverage, and a single factual representation from the governor’s map drawer,” the lawyers for the governor and state wrote.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida is pushing back against assertions that the state’s new congressional map was drawn to help Republicans, arguing in a new legal filing that other states such as Virginia and Illinois have engaged in much more blatant partisan gerrymandering.

Voting rights and civil rights groups have filed multiple lawsuits challenging a new map pushed into law by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis. They have argued that the map, which could result in Republicans picking up four seats, is a clear violation of voter approved anti-gerrymandering standards and “one of the most extreme congressional maps” enacted in the past 50 years.

A circuit court judge will hold a hearing Friday on whether to temporarily block the new map and instead let the state’s old congressional map — which was also recommended by the DeSantis administration back in 2022 — be used for the midterms. The 2022 map gave Republicans a 20-8 edge.

Lawyers representing the state filed their response Wednesday and made several arguments — some of them procedural — as to why the new map should be allowed to remain in place. They argue, for example, that it’s too close to the August primary to undo the map approved just two weeks ago.

But the 29-page filing also insists those challenging the map have produced “scant evidence” to back their claims.

“The claim of partisan favoritism is tethered only to maps showing the district lines overlayed onto the results of a few elections, hearsay from their supposed experts, thoughts about tweets, their perspective on Fox News coverage, and a single factual representation from the governor’s map drawer,” the lawyers for the governor and state wrote.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court belatedly blocked a ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that would have restricted telehealth prescriptions of the abortion and miscarriage management drug mifepristone nationwide.

The order came after the court initially failed to act by its own 5 p.m. deadline, which was set on Monday when Justice Samuel Alito extended a previous deadline. Mifepristone manufacturers Danco and GenBioPro had filed emergency appeals to the high court. These were handled by Alito, the justice assigned to all appeals from the Fifth Circuit. The lower court’s ruling is now paused at least until it reaches a decision in this case, filed by Louisiana, and any appeals of that decision return to the Supreme Court.

As is common with emergency orders, the vote count isn’t known, though Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas both wrote alarming dissents outlining why they would have let the restrictions take effect.

Thomas claimed that “it is a criminal offense to ship mifepristone for use in abortions” because of the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-vice law that conservatives argue should be used to ban mailing abortion pills, if not to ban abortion entirely. Both Thomas and Alito have shown interest in this legal theory in the past: During oral arguments in Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—another mifepristone case that reached the Court in 2024—both justices asked questions about the Comstock Act. Thomas said Thursday that Danco and GenBioPro cannot be “irreparably harmed” by the lower court ruling because the companies are engaging in “criminal enterprise.” Nearly 115 Republican members of Congress filed a “friend of the court brief” on Louisiana’s side, arguing that mailing mifepristone violates the Comstock Act.

Thomas describes the mailing of mifepristone as a "criminal enterprise" and says providers should face federal felony charges rather than obtaining relief from SCOTUS. www.documentcloud.org/documents/28...

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) 2026-05-14T21:30:19.455Z

South Carolina GOP Gov. Henry McMaster is expected to announce a special session on redistricting, teeing up the state legislature to pass a Republican gerrymander that would almost certainly cost Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn his seat in this year’s midterms.

Clyburn is the sole Democrat in South Carolina’s House delegation; the new map would dismantle his district, leaving the state with 7 likely red seats and no Democratic-leaning ones.

McMaster’s plan — confirmed by four people familiar with the decision, who were granted anonymity to share private details — is a reversal of his position earlier this month and follows pressure from President Donald Trump and his allies to gerrymander the state.

The looming special session comes after five Republican state senators voted with Democrats to block a measure that would have allowed them to redraw South Carolina’s districts this cycle without a call from McMaster.

Gov. Brian Kemp called state lawmakers for a special session on June 17 to reshape how Georgians vote and to redraw the state’s political maps after last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision gutted a section of the Voting Rights Act prohibiting racial gerrymandering.

The move, announced Wednesday, thrusts Kemp and his Republican allies back into the center of two of the most combustible debates in Georgia politics a day after the June 16 primary runoffs cement nominees for every statewide office.

The first is a looming crisis over Georgia’s voting system. The second is a redistricting fight over congressional and legislative boundaries for the 2028 elections.

Kemp has ruled out changing the maps for this year’s races, but Republicans are moving to act now while they are certain a GOP governor can sign the new districts into law.

A special session is required to address a statutory July deadline lawmakers left unresolved when they adjourned in April.

Less than a month after she resigned from Congress in the face of a looming expulsion recommendation, former U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick said Monday she is a candidate to return to Washington.

Cherfilus-McCormick said she is seeking the Democratic nomination in the reconfigured 20th Congressional District, which is concentrated in central Broward County, after Florida Republicans changed the map of Florida congressional districts.

She said she isn’t deterred by four other candidates who are already running — or by the prospect that U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz might decide to run in the same district. Wasserman Schultz’s Broward district was blown up by the new Republican reconfiguration of the congressional map.

“The strongest candidate in the race is me,” Cherfilus-McCormick said. “I never said I wasn’t running.”

The former congresswoman made it clear she doesn’t care for Wasserman Schultz, the senior Democratic member of Florida’s congressional delegation. When she was first elected, in a 2022 special election to fill the vacancy left by the late U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, Cherfilus-McCormick said Wasserman Schultz was dismissive when she arrived in Washington.