Iran claims its navy forced a US warship to turn back from the Strait of Hormuz as Washington denies any clash, amid rising tensions in the key waterway. The rival narratives come after US President Donald Trump announced Project Freedom, a mission he framed as a humanitarian effort to “free” stranded ships.
Published On 4 May 2026
The House Ethics Committee is set to weigh potential expulsion for Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., following a $5 million pandemic aid fraud indictment. Separately, calls grow for the expulsion of Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., over domestic violence and campaign finance allegations, highlighting a bipartisan ethics challenge within Congress.
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After resigning in the face of a House ethics probe, disgraced former Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick has been cut off from doing business with the federal government or receiving federal grants, aid or contracts.
This comes as Cherfilus-McCormick, a Florida Democrat, is charged with stealing $5 million in COVID-19 FEMA funds and making illegal campaign contributions. Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from Congress in late April after Republicans vowed to force a vote to expel her from the chamber. Though she resigned, Cherfilus-McCormick has denied any wrongdoing and is still running to regain her congressional seat this November.
Now, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, announced that Cherfilus-McCormick has been suspended, a federal designation that temporarily bars her from receiving contracts, grants or other federal funds. Her brother, Edwin Cherfilus, along with other associates and affiliated entities named in the federal indictment, has also been suspended by DHS.
“Former Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick abused Americans’ trust in the most egregious way possible,” DHS General Counsel James Percival said in a statement. “She manipulated the COVID-19 crisis to funnel over $5 million of FEMA relief funds to her and her family members.”
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., speaks after being sworn in during a ceremony in the Broward County Commission chambers in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Jan. 27, 2025. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“This is outright fraud,” Percival added, continuing, “That’s exactly what a federal grand jury and the U.S. House of Representatives found.”
Percival said he is “proud that my office is taking the first step to ensure she is held accountable and American taxpayers’ money is protected from further misuse.”
Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted by a Miami grand jury in November 2025 for allegedly stealing $5 million from FEMA. The decision to resign from office came just before the House Ethics Committee was scheduled to recommend she be punished for misusing disaster relief funding that she allegedly funneled through several companies into her campaign coffers.
The committee found that she had committed 18 campaign finance violations, five counts of false financial disclosures, three counts of misusing official funds and one count of lack of candor.
Cherfilus-McCormick maintained her innocence, asserting that “This was not a fair process.”
She said in a press release that the House Ethics Committee “refused my new attorney’s reasonable request for time to prepare my defense.” She wrote, “I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on, and my good name to be tarnished.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. did not call on Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick to step down before her resignation announcement. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away so that I can devote my time to fighting for my neighbors in Florida’s 20th district. I hereby resign from the 119th Congress, effective immediately,” she wrote.
DHS said that Cherfilus-McCormick’s suspension aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive order establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. The Trump Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which is led by “fraud czar” Vice President JD Vance, has been directed by the president to combat fraud, waste and abuse in federal benefit programs, “restore integrity to taxpayer-funded safety-net programs” and ensure that benefits go only to eligible Americans.
Vance said last week that the task force has been “working around the clock to root out fraudsters who have taken advantage of Americans’ generosity for far too long.”
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U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks during a Turning Point USA event at Akins Ford Arena at the Classic Center on April 14, 2026 in Athens, Georgia. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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He pointed out that since the task force was launched, it has exposed 447 California hospices suspected of more than $600 million in fraud, while the U.S. Small Business Administration has referred more than 560,000 fraudulent COVID-era loans totaling $22 billion to the Treasury for collection.
Fox News Digital reached out to Cherfilus-McCormick’s campaign for comment.
Deaths due to gang violence included people hit by stray bullets, cases of mistaken identity by the shooter, and relatives of targeted gang members.
Published On 4 May 2026
Twenty-three innocent bystanders have been killed and 30 wounded in gangland shootings in Sweden over the past three years, according to statistics that highlight the country’s battle to rein in violent crime.
Sweden has struggled for more than a decade to contain gang violence linked primarily to score-settling and battles to control the drug market. The innocent victims include people hit by stray bullets, cases of mistaken identity, and relatives of targeted gang members, according to the police statistics released on Monday.
Alexander Wallenius, operations coordinator at the Swedish police’s department of national operations, told news agency TT that one reason for the number of bystanders injured was that many of the shooters were young.
“We are dealing with very young perpetrators who, in many cases, have no previous experience of violent crime, which means a greater risk that third parties or the wrong target will be hit,” Wallenius said.
Swedish gangs often use social media and encrypted apps to recruit teens who are paid to carry out crimes.
The recruits are often under the age of 15, Sweden’s age of criminal responsibility – meaning they cannot be prosecuted and fall under the responsibility of social services, making them valuable assets to gangs.
The minority right-wing government, propped up by the far-right Sweden Democrats, has been pushing through proposals to crack down on crime and immigration ahead of a general election on September 13.
Last week, it said it planned to introduce legislation requiring social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat to take down the “murder adverts” posted by gangs within an hour or face hefty fines.
The government has previously announced plans to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 13 for crimes punishable by at least four years in prison.
In sports, there’s going in the right direction, and then there’s going in whatever direction the Boston Red Sox are going.
Boston entered the 2026 season with high hopes of returning to the postseason for the second consecutive year. The front office seemingly fixed their pitching problems, bringing in Ranger Suarez, Patrick Sandoval and Sonny Gray to support team ace Garrett Crochet.
While Alex Bregman departed in free agency, Roman Anthony, Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela and Marcelo Mayer formed a good young core around veteran stars like Willson Contreras and Trevor Story. Top prospect Kristian Campbell struggled in 2025, but at just 23-years-old, still offered plenty of upside.
They returned 2018 World Series-winning manager Alex Cora, providing stability as one of the three longest tenured managers with the same team.
Fast forward about six weeks and Boston’s buried in last place, 10 games behind the first place New York Yankees. They’ve been outscored on the season. And Cora and the entire hitting side of the coaching staff is gone. Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow has effectively cleaned house, hoping that a change in leadership would fix some of the team’s problems.
After this past weekend, not only has it not worked, but several players are now publicly disagreeing with each other in the media. The exact opposite of fixing problems.
Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora returns to the dugout during the sixth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers at Fenway Park in Boston, Mass., on April 7, 2026. (Barry Chin/The Boston Globe/Getty Images)
The Houston Astros came into Fenway on Friday as one of the worst teams in baseball through the early part of the season. Their pitching staff has been decimated by injury, with Hunter Brown, Cristian Javier, and Josh Hader all out with various arm-related problems. Framber Valdez is in Detroit, and replacement Tatsuya Imai looked overwhelmed in his first few starts, before blaming that the adjustment to living and traveling in the US for arm fatigue.
Boston took game one on Friday, but a 6-3 loss on Saturday and 3-1 loss on Sunday were a continuation of the team’s issues. Sunday’s was particularly tough for Red Sox fans to take, as Rafaela had a chance with the bases loaded to tie or win the game in extras, only to ground into a game ending double play.
And in the aftermath, players have started blaming each other. Contreras, according to MassLive, said that it’s “different” without Cora in the dugout.
“It’s different with Alex not here,” he said. “But after Cora got fired, the guys got loose a little more because I feel like the tension was gone…That’s what I felt. That’s my own opinion. When Alex wasn’t in the dugout (anymore), the team was kinda like loose. But that doesn’t matter. We have to play better. We have to find consistency. We have to get better, we have to be better.”
He then got even more specific, calling out the younger players in the lineup for a lack of experience.
It “probably doesn’t help that the lineup has a number of young players who don’t have much experience in dealing with slumps,” he added.
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One of those younger players, Marcelo Mayer, heard those remarks and clearly did not appreciate them.
“To me, that’s just kind of an excuse: blame the young guys,” Mayer said, responding to Contreras’ criticism. “But at the end of the day, we’re all playing baseball, we’re all pros. We all know what we need to do. I don’t think we’re doing a good job with runners in scoring position. When you don’t do that, you don’t score runs.”
Boston Red Sox first baseman Willson Contreras looks on after striking out against the Minnesota Twins in the first inning at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minn., on April 14, 2026. (Jesse Johnson/Imagn Images)
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So key players are underperforming. The rotation has been hammered by injuries, with Crochet now out with shoulder inflammation. They fired the manager and much of the coaching staff, and there’s public disagreement between veterans and younger players. Playoff odds have dropped to just 24%, despite being one of the richest and most successful organizations in the sport and playing in one of the league’s largest markets. Exactly what you want to see, a month and a half into the season.
Boston Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow speaks to the media at JetBlue Park at Fenway South in Fort Myers, Fla., on Feb. 11, 2026. (Maddie Malhotra/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)
Mayer is right too, to call out the lineup’s struggles with runners in scoring position. Boston has just a .695 OPS collectively in those situations so far this season, which puts them 23rd among the league’s 30 teams. The team’s batting average is .243, while the league-leading Braves are hitting .300 collectively. How much of that is just random variance and small sample size? Red Sox fans better hope that’s most of the explanation, because if not, this early-season swoon and a dysfunctional dugout can quickly end any hope of a postseason run.
Cabinet ministers have warned mutinous Labour MPs that any attempt to oust Keir Starmer after a potentially disastrous set of election results this week would unleash chaos for the party that would not be easily overcome.
However, several told the Guardian that even with the prime minister’s determination to stay in Downing Street after Thursday’s vote, the mood on the backbenches was febrile and events could yet spiral out of control.
They also admitted that – while they would discourage any coup against Starmer now, they did not expect him to lead the party into the next election. “When your personal brand is so poor, it is seldom retrievable,” one added.
Labour faces losing more than 1,500 council seats across England, a struggle for second place in Scotland and the prospect of losing Wales after a century of domination, leaving thousands of angry local politicians who see themselves as victims of the government’s unpopularity.
Before they headed to their constituencies last week, MPs were gripped by speculation over Starmer’s future, with Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham – despite not being eligible – seen as likely successors.
Some have argued Starmer should set out a timetable for his departure – and have suggested that a group of cabinet ministers might be prepared to tell the prime minister that his time was in up if the results are as bad as predicted.
The Guardian understands, however, that the appetite inside the cabinet for a leadership contest is severely limited, even among those ministers who believe that he will step down before the 2029 general election.
“We have a role to play and we’ll certainly not want chaos,” one said. “That’s not in anybody’s interests.”
Another indicated there was no group within the cabinet that was planning to move collectively, while a third added: “I don’t want new leaders, plots, pacts, talk of orderly transitions which shut out the public. Will there be cabinet resignations or a move against Keir? There could be, but I won’t be part of it.”
Several ministers warned of the danger of unintended consequences. “Those of us who are sane don’t really want a leadership contest or a timetable for Keir’s departure that undermines the party’s position, but we recognise that when the mood is febrile things can kick off,” one said.
“We wouldn’t be thanked for picking our own leader three years out from the next election. It’s not that things are perfect, it’s just that it’s premature.”
Neither Rayner, the former deputy PM, nor Streeting, the health secretary, are thought likely to move first – with allies suggesting they would only enter a contest if it were triggered by somebody else. In addition, Rayner still has to resolve her tax affairs.
Members of Labour’s national executive committee – which blocked Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton byelection in February – do not believe there is a route for him through it back to parliament, despite reports at the weekend.
Ed Miliband, the climate secretary, is said by colleagues to be more likely to try to act as kingmaker for Burnham, rather than to go for the top job himself. One friend said he was determined to prevent Streeting from becoming leader.
Downing Street has made clear that Starmer would fight any attempt to oust him, with allies of the prime minister saying any putative rivals should think carefully about both the instability any challenge would cause, particularly at a time of conflict and with difficult economic headwinds.
They also played down the prospect of any reshuffle – regarded by some as potentially even more destabilising – suggesting he would only do one if ministers resigned following the election results and he had to fill the gap.
Writing in the Observer at the weekend, Starmer said: “We have a choice. We could sink into the politics of grievance and division. Or we could rise to this moment – together – in a national effort that matches the scale of the threats and turbulence we face.
“When the nation rallied together to deal with Covid, the last government could have channelled that spirit to build a better nation. But instead, they descended into political infighting and let the country slump back to the old status quo. Not this time.”
We’re coming up on two months since the first of what turned out to be a total of eight “high-credibility” Bigfoot reports across Northeast Ohio. Shortly after the Ohio Bigfoot Flap had taken place, boots were on the ground to investigate.
Folks with the Ohio Squatch Project had been deployed to investigate the sightings in person, while being assisted by the Bigfoot Society that had been tracking the activity since it got underway March 6.
Bigfoot evidence reportedly linked to recent Ohio Flap, including tracks and howls. (Getty)
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The activity in the area has since quieted down. The Bigfoot Society issued a final report on the matter in early April and it looked like another set of unexplained Bigfoot sightings were bound for the pages of the history books.
That was until Sunday when FOX 8 reported that it had obtained “exclusive new evidence tied to recent sightings in Northeast Ohio.” They went out and met with witnesses and Mike Miller, the co-founder of Ohio Night Stalkers Bigfoot Research Group.
They came back with video of alleged Bigfoot tracks, audio of unexplained howls, and a story about how this recent Bigfoot Flap wasn’t the first one in Ohio.
Bigfoot evidence reported from Ohio after recent increase in sightings in the state. (JLFCapture/iStock)
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The last such event took place back in 1978. Much like this recent one, the one 48 years ago is said to have happened after a brutal winter. Miller theorizes that the Bigfoot could have been flooded out of their normal dwellings and forced to look for new homes leading to their sightings.
Miller also says it’s possible that “it could be rearing young in that area or it’s just, you know, you’re in their area and they want you to go.”
There’s new evidence out of Ohio reportedly linked to the recent sightings in the Northeast part of the state. (Getty)
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He has evidence of howls that he claims don’t match any “known animal in North America.” He added, “Some of those screams pegged higher than a baboon on the spectrograph, and that is evidence.”
You can decide that for yourself. See the tracks, hear the howls, and listen to the full story told during the FOX 8 interview, about the prior Ohio Bigfoot Flap from 1978, here.
We’ve all been there: You’re doing maintenance on a Weyland-Yutani hauler dragging mineral ore back toward Earth, and there’s no terminal handy to tap into the MU/TH/UR AI to check ship systems. Lucky for you, one enterprising maker has created just the machine for the job.
Okay, maybe the megacorporations, starships, androids, and hostile xenomorphs of the Alien film franchise aren’t real, but the aesthetic popularized by the 1979 film and its successors has captivated plenty of people, including Jeff Merrick, who has a passion for building his own “cyberdecks,” custom-designed computers that often mimic cyberpunk and retro sci-fi aesthetics.
The 1970s retro future aesthetic is perfect for an Alien porta-terminal build, which is where the PS-85 comes in.
Built as a “rugged barebones slate-style portable computer inspired by the Alien universe,” Merrick’s Typeframe PS-85 packs in a small LCD display, a 40% mechanical keyboard with hot-swappable switches, and a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W – a low-power board with 512 MB of RAM – meaning it can’t do too much, but it’ll sure look cool doing it.
The PS-85 – Click to enlarge
“With a Pi Zero you’re likely going to want to run Raspberry Pi OS Lite and have a command-line only interface,” Merrick wrote on his PS-85 build page, where you can find instructions, 3D print files, and everything you need to build your own.
For those wondering about getting some more useful keycaps for yours, Merrick told us that any MX-compatible keycaps will work for the design if you want to forego all the Alien aesthetic for something a bit more useful.
Merrick doesn’t just take his look from retro science fiction, either: He’s also a lover of retro computing, as seen in the PX-88, which was the predecessor to his newer PS-85 design. Based on the 1985 Epson PX-4, Merrick’s PX-88 was a gift for his wife, who wanted a bare-bones cyberdeck for writing.
The decidedly retro PX-88 – Click to enlarge
“I built the PX-88 first and it took a few months of working on it in my free time,” Merrick told The Register in an email. “There was quite a bit of trial and error with learning CAD software and just figuring out how everything could fit together.”
The PS-85 went considerably quicker, Merrick told us. Whichever one you’re interested in building, you’re going to have to do it on your own – Merrick has no plans to sell completed units.
“I open-sourced the full plans and files so folks could build their own, and a few people have,” Merrick told us, before giving advice that everyone who’s monetized a hobby would likely give him. “I plan to keep it solidly as a hobby rather than a business, it’s more fun that way.” ®
Victoria is back in black for the first time since the start of the pandemic, with Tuesday’s state budget to deliver an operating surplus and forecasting another next financial year.
The 2026-27 budget, to be handed down on Tuesday afternoon, will show the state recorded a $700m surplus in 2025-26, largely in line with December’s pre-budget update of $710m and an improvement on the $611m forecast last May.
It marks Victoria’s first surplus since before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2018-19, when the state’s finances were $1bn in the black.
The treasurer, Jaclyn Symes, has also projected a $1bn surplus in 2026-27, down by $943m on December’s forecast.
The government has said the budget – its final before the November state election – would show average surpluses of $1.7bn projected across the forward estimates period.
“Labor’s budget is in surplus while continuing to invest in the frontline services Victorians rely on,” Symes said in a statement.
“Jess Wilson’s Liberals will do what they always do – they will cut funding, close hospitals and sack workers.”
However, like other states, Victoria’s headline operating surplus does not include infrastructure and other capital spending. The government did not release the figures that include this spending before Tuesday’s budget, but the December update had estimated a cash deficit of $9.68bn in 2025-26, decreasing to $7.3bn in 2026-27 and $6.8bn in 2027-28 before widening again to $8.1bn in 2028-29.
The opposition leader and shadow treasurer, Jess Wilson, has seized on the cash deficit figures to claim the government hasn’t delivered a “real” surplus.
“This doesn’t take into account the billions of dollars that is going into infrastructure spend – into roads, into schools, into hospitals,” Wilson told reporters on Monday.
“It’s all well and good for the premier and the treasurer to stand up and talk about a $700m operating surplus, but it does nothing to manage the debt bomb that is running under this government.”
December’s budget update showed net debt was expected to be $165.8bn at June 2026, rising to $192.6bn by 2028–29. However, it will stabilise as a proportion of the economy to about 25%.
The premier, Jacinta Allan, said the state’s economic growth – averaging 2.6% annually over the decade – has allowed the government to pay down debt and providing cost-of-living relief in the budget.
“We understand that it is important to drive down the percentage of debt as a share of the economy. We also understand in these uncertain times that it’s really important to help people,” she said on Monday.
Allan said if the government were to reduce debt “hard and fast” it would hurt households “at a time when they need this support more than ever before”.
“Now is not the time to make life even harder for working people and families,” she said.
Prior to Tuesday, the government had announced more than $6bn worth of funding commitments as part of the budget, including $750m to provide a 20% refund on car registrations and $432m to extend free public transport until the end of May and then half-price fares for the rest of 2026.
It also announced $1.6bn for school infrastructure, including $762m over the next four years for new and expanded schools and $294m for upgrades of existing facilities.
Health was also a focus with $95m to open the upgraded Werribee Mercy hospital emergency department, $87.2m to open, maintain and expand services at several community hospitals, $50.1m for an additional 4,000 surgeries for children and $43.4m to boost the state-funded public fertility program.
The government will also expand its stamp duty concession off-the-plan apartments, townhouses and units for a further six months, until 21 April 2027.
Former Delta Force sniper Brad Halling shined a light on the absolute brutality of the Battle of Mogadishu.
The Battle of Mogadishu began on Oct. 3, 1993, in Somalia when an American Special Operations task force conducted a capture mission against warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s forces.
Task Force Ranger was in the country to stop a famine and genocide. The elite task force consisted of Army Rangers, Delta Force operators and a small group of Air Force and DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) operators.
What started as a simple snatch-and-grab mission turned into a fight for survival after two helicopters were shot down. The events were made even more famous with the 1999 book “Black Hawk Down” and 2001 film of the same name.
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A photo of an American Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia. (Scott Peterson/Liaison via Getty Images)
Halling was a Delta Force sniper deployed as a member of Task Force Ranger when the events unfolded. He was on the same helicopter as Medal of Honor recipients Gary Gordon (KIA) and Randy Shughart (KIA).
Gordon and Shughart famously inserted at the crash site of a downed helicopter and fought to the brutal and violent end against a horde of Somali attackers. Their teammate, who lost a leg when his helicopter was hit, remembers the carnage more than 30 years later.
The wreckage of an American Blackhawk helicopter that was shot down by Somali warlords sits in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Oct. 14, 1993. The helicopter was used to root out ammunition caches. (Scott Peterson/Liaison via Getty Images)
Halling said the following in a video released by Black Rifle Coffee, explaining how he lost his leg and the intense violence of the combat:
“By the time that bird went down, the comms were total chaos. Everybody’s world was in a window this big and it was as bad or worse than the window next to them. I look up and the door gunner, Paul Shannon, gets shot through the hands. The gun goes quiet. I got up. Helped him with his hand. I gave him my CAR-15 and I ended up on the minigun and I never got off the minigun. We could see [Mike] Durant’s helicopter. There had been requests made to go in and try and assist them. Gary [Gordon] and Randy [Shughart] went there believing that they were going to be able to recover these guys and get them out. And I believed it. When they left, I didn’t have any feeling that that was going to be the last time I saw them. But I will forever remember seeing them leave that aircraft. I can still picture it. I can even tell you Gary was out first and Randy got out after Gary was on the ground. What actually unfortunately happens is the crowds did realize this bird went down, but their cover was our bird. While we were over top of Gary and Randy, we got hit by that RPG. That RPG came up through the floor, went through my leg, and then up into the engine compartment. I still remember the flash being first, the heat that followed, and the immense over pressure in that bird as that round detonated. And I remember the unbelievable violence that airframe started shaking.”
You can watch Halling’s full comments below, and let me know your thoughts at David.Hookstead@outkick.com.
It’s impossible to understand what the Battle of Mogadishu was like unless you were a part of it. I’ve spoken with several men who were there, and while they all say “Black Hawk Down” does a nice job of capturing the chaos, a movie is still not close to the reality on the ground.
American soldiers found a city unleashed against them as they tried to secure two separate crash sites and save as many of their teammates as possible.
US DRAMATICALLY ESCALATES SOMALIA AIRSTRIKES AS TRUMP ADMIN TARGETS ISIS, AL QAEDA TERRORISTS
The wreckage of a U.S. military vehicle burns after it was destroyed by a remote-controlled bomb on Oct. 3, 1993, injuring three U.S. Marines and killing a Somali civilian. Five other U.S. soldiers were killed and two U.S. helicopters were shot down during a U.N. peacekeeping operation. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
Impossible decisions had to be made, and the Rangers, Delta Force operators and everyone else on the ground had to do whatever was necessary to survive.
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Fractions of a second must have felt like a lifetime as enemy bullets and rockets rained down. Former Ranger and CAG operator Brad Thomas summed up the decisions that the men were faced with very well in my Instagram video below.
Be thankful such men exist and are on our side. Let me know your thoughts at David.Hookstead@outkick.com.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a new gerrymandered congressional district map into law Monday which gives Republicans an electoral advantage in four additional races in November’s midterm elections.
“Signed, Sealed, and Delivered,” DeSantis said in a post on X, with a map of the new districts attached.
With the stroke of a pen, DeSantis, a Republican, has done more to determine the outcome of congressional elections in Florida than any political operative or field organizer in the state. The new map slices and dices districts around Miami, Orlando and the Tampa Bay area.
As an example of the effect of the mid-decade redistricting, mapmakers packed reliably Democratic voters around Orlando into a single district, forcing Democratic representatives Darren Soto and Maxwell Frost to compete for the same voters.
Conversely, the new map splits the Tampa Bay area from two districts into three, somewhat shoring up the 13th district for Republicans, now held by firebrand Trump supporter and influencer congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, while weakening a left-leaning district for Democrats held by congresswoman Kathy Castor.
Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a longstanding figure among the Democratic National Committee, has had her seat drawn out from beneath her. Miami’s Democrats have been packed into three tight districts along the coast.
Florida’s current delegation has 20 Republicans and eight Democrats.
Criticism of the redistricting has come from both the right and the left. Democrats accuse DeSantis of violating the state’s constitution, which has a plain-language prohibition passed by popular mandate on partisan gerrymandering. Republicans fear the aggressive redraw endangers at least as many of Florida’s Republican representatives as it protects, and may backfire.