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Apr 28, 2026

DeSantis SCRAMBLES As Florida GOP In Jeopardy Over Election Scheme

Ron DeSantis scrambles to push through his disastrous redistricting plans as many Republicans and Florida redistricting expert reveal how massively DeSantis' election scheme could backfire for the party. John Iadarola and Jackson White break it down on The Damage Report. Leave a comment with your thoughts below!
  • 4 minutes
As expected, old pudding fingers himself, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, earlier this week unveiled his plan to unconstitutionally gerrymander Florida's congressional map amid massive pressure from the Trump administration to do that. And he is really in a rush, okay? [00:00:15] He gave legislators less than 24 hours to review the plan ahead of a special session today. It's actually gonna be happening today. He doesn't want them looking too close at it. And the reason is that it's getting pretty close to the primaries, getting pretty close to the election. You gotta get this thing passed if you want it be in effect. But it might bite [00:00:33] him on the ass that they didn't really consider what they were doing more. So he's gonna try to do this and I'm gonna tell you why he should be stopped from doing it. I'm also gonna tell you why it's not hypocritical for me to say that despite the fact that I was gloating over what happened in Virginia. But then I'm also gonna tell you why perhaps he shouldn't be [00:00:48] stopped from doing it, which maybe will be more fun. So we're gonna talk about that. Hold on to your butts. For right now, DeSantis says that this change needs to happen so that Florida's congressional delegation looks more like the state. Okay, so right now, Republicans hold [00:01:04] 20 of 28 US House seats. But you can see on this map what he thinks it will look like after when they hold 24 of 28. Okay, so if that's the way that it works, Republicans will have 86 % of the representation. So if that is what Florida looks like, then I imagine 86 % of [00:01:24] Florida votes for the Republican. Wait, no, 56 % did. So that's strange. You already have more representation than Trump got in that election and you think you need more. I think you're lying to us there. And I know what you're thinking. Well, he can lie, right? I mean, you guys were [00:01:42] so happy about California. You are so happy about Virginia. So shouldn't you shut up about this? First of all, it's a talk show. If I shut up, it'll get really boring really fast. Also, no, I don't have to do that. And I'm not just talking about the fact that California and Virginia had people in the state vote for it, which Texas didn't and Florida is not going [00:01:59] to. I'm not even talking about that. I mean, that in California and Virginia, it is legal to do what they did. It's not legal in Florida to do what they're doing. He's literally breaking the law. Mid decade partisan redistricting is expressly illegal under Florida State Constitution. [00:02:15] Which states in section 20 of Article 2 that quote, no apportionment plan or individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party, which you can see it does. We're setting aside that it's also wildly racially discriminatory because obviously Ron DeSantis and the Florida Supreme Court and our full Supreme Court aren't going [00:02:33] to care about that. But you should know it's also racially discriminatory. But it is also politically discriminatory. And they're legally not allowed to do this. That is not true in California or in Virginia. Now there's also the consideration of whether this might backfire on them. But Jackson, what do you think? Well, I think that this is gonna continue to go back [00:02:52] and forth. And I think that the Democrats should not try to go higher in situations like this. If Dems can continue to gerrymander and get pluses, then do it. Because at this point, this is literally about protecting any semblance of democracy that we have left. um DeSantis [00:03:12] is definitely gonna go forward with this. It might get struck down in court, we'll see. But this is the name of the game now. Donald Trump is, who knows how he's gonna do it, but he's not gonna leave in 2028. I mean, he'll try not to leave. He's gonna try to run again. [00:03:28] It's gonna be a huge, insane mess. And so I think that on the left side, we really need to combat this and play as dirty as they do. Again, and again, with the ultimate goal, at least from my point of view of, hit them as hard as you can in this and then eventually [00:03:44] get national uh unbiased redistricting. That's what we should have. Now in this particular case, uh DeSantis is also being mocked because he's doing this map, but it might not produce the result that we showed you in that picture before. uh University of Florida redistricting expert Michael McDonald said of DeSantis' proposal, quote, it's probably a plus two or plus three [00:04:04] map for the GOP, not plus four, but- it could backfire gloriously if it's just a bloodbath everywhere for Republicans, which is very similar to what might be developing in Texas. That this isn't just that on net the Democrats are still gonna benefit. It's that the assumptions [00:04:23] that went into crafting those maps might have really been off. And in fact, as we did a video last week about this, definitely go watch that. In Florida, it might even be worse in Texas because they had to use outdated information in crafting this map. So it really could backfire [00:04:38] and make DeSantis look like a bigger fool than he already does.

The Damage Report: April 28, 2026

Hosts: John Iadarola   Guests: Jackson White