Ron DeSantis hopes Donald Trump White House ‘reevaluates’ the census

Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to make the case that Florida deserves another congressional seat, but the mechanics of that allocation remain fuzzy.

DeSantis told radio host Jenna Ellis that Florida may get another seat if President Donald Trump’s administration “reevaluates the census,” claiming without real evidence that former President Joe Biden “admitted we should have had more seats.”

DeSantis previously said the White House could “award” Florida a seat, though he has yet to clarify how that would work. It’s likewise unclear how the alleged assertions of Biden, whose competence DeSantis routinely questioned, would factor into the current White House’s decision-making.

DeSantis also believes the U.S. Supreme Court will review the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, which he thinks “may be adjudicated by the end of the year, the beginning of next year.”

“I think the redistricting thing is going to be huge or definitely going to be in that fight,” DeSantis said, though he admitted that the “contours of that” are “still to be determined.”

He went on to suggest that if seats were being redistributed, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “brutally gerrymandered” California should cede “four or five” of them.

“So much of their population is based on them counting, you know, all the illegal aliens. So he has a gerrymandered map. He’s trying to do it more. I think it’s going to fail because I think even California can see that this is basically a ruse,” DeSantis said, before questioning Newsom’s motives and saying his push for redistricting is simply a play for publicity.

“He’s just trying to posture and try to get more attention to raise his profile nationally. I don’t think he’s going to be successful, though,” DeSantis predicted.

Florida has a 20-8 Republican majority in Congress. To put that supermajority in perspective, there are a little more than 1.3 million more Republicans than Democrats in a state with nearly 13.6 million registered voters.

DeSantis has offered a series of novel defenses of his position, including blaming former President Barack Obama, who served from 2009 to 2017, for Florida’s post-2020 census map that his office drew up and compelled the Legislature to approve ahead of the 2022 elections.