DHS shutdown ends after 76 days

(The Center Square) - Six candidates are competing for the Democratic nomination in Georgia's 13th Congressional District. 

Incumbent David Scott died on April 22. Scott served in Congress for 23 years. 

The candidates are Everton Blair, Jasmine Clark, Jeffree Fauntleroy, Emanuel Jones, Heavenly Elaine Kimes, and Joe Lester. 

Fauntleroy told The Center Square his district does not need another career politician. He called for six-year term limits on members of Congress representing the 13th District.

“I believe you should be able to get things done in those six years and if you’ve done them effectively that’s a good thing,” Fauntleroy said.

Fauntleroy has also criticized Israel’s military action in Palestine. He has committed to rejecting campaign donations from groups aligned with Israel, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a large, bipartisan pro-Israel lobbying group.

“As a small business owner, I know how to look at a budget and identify where excess money is being spent,” Fauntleroy said. “Instead of giving our money to Israel, our tax dollars belong here in our community to fund Medicare for all.”

Fauntleroy also proposed an economic accountability dashboard to track federal funds invested throughout the district. He said the dashboard would allow residents to see how elected officials negotiate funding for district programs.

“Now it’s up to you–the citizens– to make sure those dollars are being spent correctly so that you know if your elected officials are doing the right thing for you,” Fauntleroy said.

Clark has served in the Georgia House of Representatives since 2019. 

“We need to be bold, loud, and intentional about standing up for our values and against what’s happening in our communities,” Clark said on her website.

Jones is focusing his campaign on expanding Medicaid throughout the state.

“I support efforts to lower prescription drug costs and ensure our seniors have access to affordable, high-quality healthcare,” Jones wrote on his campaign website.

Kimes, a dentist, has focused her campaign on expanding Medicare and advancing climate legislation.

Kimes pointed to the 2024 Rockdale chemical plant explosion as an indicator of the need to advance legislation that protects communities from environmental incidents. The Georgia Supreme Court heard arguments in the fallout from the explosion, as community members called for medical monitoring of residents living near the plant.

“In Congress, I will fight to hold corporate polluters accountable and secure federal funding to ensure every family has a healthy environment to call home,” Kimes wrote on her campaign website.

Blair, Clark, Jones, Kimes and Lester did not respond to a request for an interview. 

With six candidates, the contest is likely to be settled in a runoff since Georgia law requires candidates to receive more than 50% of the vote to win. Early voting continues through May 15. The runoff will be held on June 16. 

The winner of the Democratic primary will face Jonathan James Chavez in November. Chavez was the only Republican to qualify for the race. 

(The Center Square) – After weeks of delay, the U.S. House finally approved the Senate’s legislation reopening the Department of Homeland Security.

Once President Donald Trump signs the legislation, the 76-day DHS shutdown will end and all agencies except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol will receive full annual funds.

“The House passing the Department of Homeland Secruity [sic] (DHS) funding bill is an important step toward protecting our nation and keeping critical agencies operational,” U.S> Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., posted on X after the vote.

“But there's still work ahead. ICE and CBP were left out, and that must be fixed. Securing our homeland requires a fully funded DHS across the board, and House Republicans will continue working to get the job done.”

The Thursday adoption of the hybrid FY 2026 Homeland Security appropriations bill comes a day after the House adopted the Senate’s blueprint for a budget reconciliation bill to provide annual ICE and CBP funding for the next three years.

House Republicans had been waiting for actionable progress on budget reconciliation before agreeing to the Senate’s plan of funding ICE and CBP separately from the rest of DHS

Using a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill to provide advance annual funds for federal agencies is highly unorthodox.

But it allows Republicans to secure immigration enforcement funding without having to comply with Democrats’ list of policy ultimatums.

“Democrats got absolutely nothing for their political charade and shenanigans,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters. “In spite of our razor-thin, historically small majority, House Republicans continue to deliver for the American people.”

Valtteri Bottas on Wednesday revealed he deliberately endured a dangerous near-starvation diet to control his weight during his second season as a Formula One driver with Williams 12 years ago. 

The 36-year-old Finn, who has returned to F1 with the new American Cadillac team after a season on the sidelines, admitted he was "delusional" and felt "like a drug addict" as he aimed to lose 10 kilos.

In a letter published by The Players’ Tribune, he said he began the diet after his Williams team forecast they would have an overweight car in 2014 and suggested he should lose five kilos.

"This was back when there was no seat-plus-driver weight minimum," explained Bottas, who will line up on the grid for Cadillac for the fourth race of the 2026 season, his 13th in Formula One, in Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix. 

"If you put a clear goal like that in front of me, I am going to obsess over it ... When you tell me five kilos in two months, my brain thinks, 'five? Why not 10? We can make the car even quicker.'

"So, I started eating steamed broccoli and a bit of steamed cauliflower for almost every meal. I can still smell the broccoli. Wet. Green. Plain. My god. It was like a game to me. 

"I would wake up and weigh myself every morning, and when I'd see the number go down, I'd feel a deep satisfaction. I would come back from a 90-minute run and eat my little bowl of steamed broccoli, just to have enough energy so I could go for another 90-minute run.

"I had this GPS watch and my coach could track my training, my heart rate, everything. I knew he would think I was burning myself out, so I started taking the watch off and leaving it at home before my second session. The game became completely consuming."

Bottas said he continued the most extreme diet for two months, admitting "my nerves were shot – I would wake up at 4am on my own, no alarm, my heart beating out of my chest."

- Intense foggy spells -

When pre-season testing began, he said, the Williams car was "actually underweight ... Welcome to F1."

He then began to "feel weird" and suffer "intense foggy spells -- not full-blown panic attacks exactly, but when I was in a crowd, I would start to feel dizzy and had to get out. I wanted to be alone or in the car."

Finally, he said, he went to see a psychologist after the tragic rain-hit 2014 Japanese Grand Prix and Jules Bianchi’s ultimately fatal accident.

The psychologist told him: "You know Valtteri, you don't seem to have any interests outside of racing. Nothing else that brings you joy. You're almost like a machine.

"He was right,” admitted Bottas, winner of 10 Grands Prix. "My whole identity was the car."

He ended the diet and recovered form and health to enjoy a career that took him from Williams to Mercedes in 2017 as number two to seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton and then three years with Sauber to 2024. 

His revelation may shock many, but weight control was a critical factor for drivers for many years before regulations were eased.

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(The Center Square) – The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 passed the U.S. House Thursday in a 224-200 vote, a hopeful sign for America’s agricultural industry that has operated for the past eight years without updated federal farm policies.

“This Farm Bill was not written in the halls of Congress, but in the fields and rural communities across our great nation,” House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., stated on social media after the Thursday vote.

“Every provision is a direct reflection of what we learned during each of the more than 150 listening sessions the Agriculture Committee held.”

Despite both partisan and interparty tug-of-wars over certain sections of the bill, the legislation ultimately received the support of 14 Democrats, as well as the highest level of House Republican support for a farm bill in U.S. history.

Part of the bill’s success was due to the last-minute passage of key amendments that stripped some of the more contentious provisions.

Lawmakers bipartisanly gutted a policy that would have shielded pesticide manufacturers from state-level personal injury lawsuits, so long as product labeling adhered to federal standards.

They also stripped a provision that would have authorized year-round E15 sales, though lawmakers plan to vote on that policy in a separate bill in the near future.

Most of the 2026 Farm Bill’s content was bipartisan, though many Democrats believe it is too “skinny.”

Like all farm bills, the legislation updates funding levels for crop insurance and price support, disaster assistance, risk management programs, operation and marketing loans, and federal agricultural research.

It also outlines investments in rural broadband connectivity, forest management, water infrastructure, and hospital assistance, as well as the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP).

Hundreds of stakeholders support the long-overdue farm bill, including the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“After three years of extensions and eight years since a farm bill was passed, we’re grateful the House found a bipartisan path forward,” AFBF President Zippy Duvall said in a statement Thursday.

“Important updates to research and conservation, as well as increased loan limits and clarity on interstate commerce, will help farmers survive today’s challenges and give them the tools to thrive in the future.”

Duvall added that AFBF “urge[s] the Senate to follow the House’s lead and move this important bipartisan legislation forward. Food security is national security, and investing in America’s farmers and ranchers is an investment in America’s families.”

German artist Georg Baselitz, whose expressive paintings and sculptures stirred controversy in West Germany before winning global acclaim, has died aged 88.

His death was confirmed to AFP by Ropac Gallery, which had a long-standing professional relationship with the artist.

A statement provided by the gallery on Thursday said Baselitz -- who "defined German visual art for a generation" -- had "died peacefully".

Baselitz, born Hans-Georg Kern, was among Germany's most prominent contemporary visual artists with a body of work over six decades across a range of techniques.

He adopted the name Baselitz in 1961 as a nod to Deutschbaselitz, the town near Dresden in eastern Germany where he was born in 1938.

Baselitz spent his early childhood in Nazi Germany and then grew up in communist East Germany.

He initially studied art in East Berlin but moved to West Berlin in 1957 after being subjected to "political pressure," according to the Ropac Gallery, and feared being sent to work as a miner.

— 'German Neurosis' —

His first exhibition in West Berlin, in 1963, was labeled "pornographic" by the press. Two of his paintings were confiscated, accused of being too sexually explicit, and the exhibition was closed.

A high-profile legal battle ensued.

His success was recognized two years later in Florence, Italy, where he exhibited his "Heroes" group of works.

His works often echoed the traumas of German history and are now found in some of the most prestigious public collections around the world.

"All German painters harbor a neurosis about the German past. That is to say, the war, and especially the post-war period, the GDR," he told Der Spiegel in 2013, referring to the communist German Democratic Republic.

"All of this plunged me into a deep depression and put me under immense pressure. My paintings are, in a way, battles."

Baselitz's provocative persona included a penchant for controversial or even offensive phrases.

In the same Der Spiegel interview, he offered his opinion that women "don't paint as well" as men.

"That's a fact. Of course, there are exceptions," he said. "Agnes Martin, or, historically, Paula Modersohn-Becker. (...) But even she is neither Picasso, nor Modigliani, nor Gauguin."

- "Shocking" the public -

Baselitz not only painted but also worked in the graphic arts and was a noted sculptor.

In 1969, he began painting canvases upside-down and inverting motifs, a technique he said sought to find a way between abstraction and straightforward figurative art.

His work drew on the traditions of German Expressionism, postwar American abstract painters like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning as well as the Pop Art movement.

But his work also clearly stood out, breaking for example in the 1960s with the more dominant artistic trend towards heavy abstraction.

"Like any artist, I want to create something unknown to the viewer. They will be shocked by what they see. And once the shock has passed, they may perceive something… or perhaps not. That is the goal of every artist," he told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in an interview last January.

His wife, Elke Kretzschmar, whom he met shortly after moving to West Berlin and married in 1962, also became a major subject in his art from the 1970s onward.

Baselitz achieved an international breakthrough in the early 1980s after representing West Germany at the 1980 Venice Biennale along with painter Anselm Kiefer.

His works -- alongside those of other German artists such as Kiefer and Gerhard Richter -- became highly sought-after among collectors.

In Paris, his career had reached a double milestone in recent years with his election to the Academie des Beaux-Arts in 2019, followed by a major retrospective exhibition in 2021 at the Centre Pompidou, one of Europe's leading museums of modern and contemporary art.

The Ropac Gallery said a final set of works by Baselitz are due to be shown in an exhibition in Venice at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini starting next week.

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Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been in detention since a 2021 military coup, with her announced movement to house arrest a tantilising update that still leaves her isolated from the public eye.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.

As her administration was felled, a decade-long democratic experiment was halted and activists rose up -- first as street protesters and then as guerrilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.

Myanmar leader Min Aung Hlaing -- who ordered the coup deposing Suu Kyi and now serves as civilian president -- on Thursday said she would serve the remainder of her sentence at a "designated residence".

It was not immediately clear where that would be or how long she has yet to serve.

- Accidental icon -

Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in detention ordered by the military -- but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar's armed forces.

She was born on June 19, 1945 in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of World War II.

Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonisers as he sought to secure independence for his country.

He was assassinated in 1947, months before the goal was achieved, and Suu Kyi spent most of her early years outside Myanmar -- first in India, where her mother was an ambassador, and later at Oxford University, where she met her British husband.

After General Ne Win seized power in 1962, he forced his brand of socialism on Myanmar, turning what was once Asia's rice bowl into one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries.

Suu Kyi's elevation to a champion of democracy happened almost by accident when she returned home in 1988 to nurse her dying mother.

Soon afterwards, at least 3,000 people were killed when the military crushed protests against its authoritarian rule -- a catalyst moment for Suu Kyi.

A charismatic orator, the then-43-year-old found herself helming a burgeoning democracy movement, but was put under house arrest in 1989.

Her National League for Democracy party nonetheless surged to a landslide election victory in 1990. But the generals were not prepared to give up power.

Suu Kyi spent around 15 of the following 20 years in detention, largely at her Yangon home where she often roused crowds with speeches over her boundary wall.

The junta offered to end her imprisonment at any time if she left the country permanently, but Suu Kyi refused and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while detained in 1991.

Her campaign took a heavy toll -- she missed her husband's death from cancer in 1999 and much of her two sons' childhoods.

This time, a source from her party said they expected her to be kept in the sparse and sprawling capital Naypyidaw.

- Rank and file -

The military eventually granted her freedom in 2010, just days after elections her party boycotted, but which brought in a nominally civilian government.

She became an MP in a 2012 by-election, cultivating a saint-like reputation among followers who refer to her simply as "The Lady" or "Aunty".

Her movement swept the next poll three years later, prompting jubilant celebrations by massive crowds, a flurry of visits from long-absent foreign leaders and a striking mood of public optimism.

But there was global revulsion at a 2017 army crackdown that forced roughly 750,000 members of the Rohingya minority to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Her government appeared in lockstep with the military, denying claims the Rohingya suffered rape, extrajudicial killings and arson attacks.

Suu Kyi travelled to The Hague to rebut charges of genocide against them at the UN's top court in 2019 -- tanking her reputation on the international circuit.

But her relationship with the powerful military establishment remained fraught and they snatched back power after the 2020 vote, claiming fraud had marred the poll.

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The Turkish COP31 president-designate said Thursday the clean energy transition will be a top issue at the climate summit but simply telling nations to phase out fossil fuels "is not realistic".

Murat Kurum, who is also Turkey's climate minister, spoke to AFP as the war in the Middle East has fuelled calls for the world to speed up the deployment of renewable energy.

Last year's COP30 climate conference in Brazil produced a watered-down final text that lacked any explicit mention of a fossil-fuel transition.

Instead, Brazil offered to create a voluntary "roadmap" on transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Speaking on the sidelines of a high-level meeting on the energy transition at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, Kurum said that COP31 would "continue to implement" the roadmap initiated by Brazil.

But when pressed on whether the words "fossil fuels" could appear in a COP31 final decision, Kurum said: "It's not about putting some words in a text."

Nearly 200 countries agreed at COP28 in 2023 to transition away from fossil fuels in a landmark deal, but efforts to turn that pledge into action have stalled.

Nearly 60 nations hailed progress in the fight to exit fossil fuels on Wednesday at a conference in Colombia that gained new urgency after the COP30 failure to spell out the goal.

An urban planner by training who ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor of Istanbul in 2024, Kurum took a diplomatic tone when talking about issues that are major sources of tension at climate summits.

"Each and every country is dependent on fossil fuels. So just telling them to phase out of fossil fuels is not realistic," he said through an interpreter.

"What should happen is that countries work on clean energy, renewable energy as soon as possible so that they can reduce their dependency on fossil fuels," he said.

"We need to do this not only by writing something, writing a statement on paper, but we need to make sure that people actually see that reality," Kurum added.

On another divisive issue that will top the COP 31 agenda -- climate finance -- he said pledges  by developed countries to provide money to developing nations have not reached "the desired level".

"On the one hand, we are aware of the expectations of developing countries, but we are also aware of the concerns of the developed countries," he said.

- 'No surprises in Antalya' -

Under a compromise deal following a battle over hosting COP31, Australia will lead the negotiations at COP31 while Turkey will preside over the summit in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya.

When asked if he would have a role in the negotiations, Kurum said: "Turkey will play a role anywhere, everywhere, because Turkey is the COP31 president."

Australia will lead the negotiations "in coordination" with the COP31 presidency, he said, adding: "At end of the day, the decisions will be taken by the COP31 presidency."

Kurum said he was working in "great harmony and great coordination" with Australia's Climate Minister Chris Bowen, who is steering the COP31 negotiations.

He said the goal of COP31 can be summed up in one word: sincerity.

"We want sincerity at COP31. We want promises kept at COP31," Kurum said. "At the end of the day, we want a result-oriented, implementation-oriented COP."

Kurum sounded optimistic that COP31 would run smoothly -- a pledge some of his predecessors have also made but struggled to deliver as climate summits notoriously run into overtime due to tense negotiations. 

"At COP31 in Antalya in November there will be no surprises," he said. "Everything will be planned, decided and implemented ahead of time."

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(The Center Square) - The accused shooter at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday will remain in federal custody while awaiting a trial, a judge said on Thursday.

Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, a Washington, D.C. federal court judge, said she would not grant the defense’s request to keep the suspected shooter out of jail until the scheduled May 11 trial.

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Cole Tomas Allen, a resident of Torrance, California, appeared in Washington, D.C., federal court on Thursday, where he agreed to remain in detention until his trial on May 11. Allen was charged with the attempted assassination of a U.S. president, transmission of a firearm across state lines and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice laid out Allen’s alleged plan leading up to the incident at the Washington Hilton hotel on Saturday night.

“The crimes with which the defendant is charged are among the most serious in the United States Code, and the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming,” lawyers for the DOJ wrote in a brief to the court.

In the filing to the D.C. court, lawyers said Allen engaged in extensive planning in an attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump. The president announced he would attend the correspondents’ dinner on March 2, and Allen later searched for information about the dinner on April 6 before reserving a two-night stay for April 24 - April 26 at the Washington Hilton on the same day, prosecutors said.

Leading up to the planned attack, lawyers said Allen searched various articles involving the details of the correspondents’ dinner and Trump’s planned remarks. Allen boarded a train from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., via Chicago on April 21, according to court documents.

On the train, he viewed an online article titled, ‘Trump's Plans for ‘Mic-Drop’ Media Confrontation Are Leaked: The president is planning a rage-fueled moment at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.’

Lawyers said California and federal databases confirmed Allen bought a 12-gauge pump action shotgun and .38 caliber pistol in California.

On the night of the correspondents’ dinner, April 25, Allen tracked Trump’s schedule multiple times through an online webpage, prosecutors allege. Minutes before the attack, Allen searched for live video of Trump’s arrival at the dinner, including a video showing the president exiting a car to arrive at the dinner.

Shortly after searching for the live video, an email titled “Apology and Explanation” was sent out to several family members and friends. The email appeared to rail against Trump and other members of his cabinet.

“Administration officials (not including [FBI Director] Mr. [Kash] Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” Allen wrote, authorities allege.

“This was a planned attack of unfathomable malice that risked the lives of hundreds of people whose only transgression was attending an annual event celebrating the media and featuring the President of the United States,” lawyers wrote. “It was, at its core, an anti-democratic act of political violence.”

Lawyers called for the D.C. court to consider the potential consequences if Allen was successful in achieving his desired goal, which they said was to assassinate Trump and other high-ranking cabinet officials.

“The defendant’s crimes were also premeditated and calculated to achieve his objectives,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “The defendant’s actions leading up to and on the night of April 25, 2026 were the product of at least weeks of premeditation and planning.”

The lawyers pointed to references in Allen’s message to family members and friends that he “would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary.”

Allen’s trial hearing is set for May 11.

Myanmar's junta-chief turned president on Thursday ordered deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi to be moved to house arrest, five years after sweeping her into detention in a 2021 coup.

A statement from the office of Min Aung Hlaing said he had "commuted the remaining sentence" of the 80-year-old Suu Kyi "to be served at the designated residence".

It was not immediately clear where she will be moved, but a senior source from her dissolved National League for Democracy (NLD) party told AFP she would likely be kept sequestered at an address in the capital Naypyidaw.

"We do not know where it is exactly," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The official statement also did not make clear how many years remain in Suu Kyi's sentence.

As military chief, Min Aung Hlaing toppled Suu Kyi's elected government five years ago, detaining her on a host of charges which rights groups say were confected to sideline her.

The move triggered a sprawling civil war that has killed thousands and displaced millions in the Southeast Asian country of roughly 50 million.

Min Aung Hlaing this month traded his military title for the office of civilian president, being sworn in after a tightly-controlled election that excluded the NLD.

Election criticism or protest was punished by up to a decade in prison, and the vote did not take place in areas seized by rebels in the war.

Democracy monitors described the electoral process as a rebranding of the rule of the military, which has dominated Myanmar for most of its post-independence history.

The move has been accompanied by some rollbacks of post-coup curbs and prisoner amnesties, which analysts have likewise dismissed as lip-service measures to launder the leadership's reputation.

"They're playing their same usual games as far as I'm concerned," Suu Kyi's son Kim Aris told AFP by phone.

"They're trying to legitimise themselves in the eyes of the international media and governments around the world."

"If she has actually been moved to house arrest, then I hope that she will be allowed communication with me and her lawyers, amongst others," he added.

"Nobody has reached out to me."

Suu Kyi remains massively popular inside Myanmar, but has been held almost completely incommunicado as her family warned of her ailing health.

In one of his first acts as civilian president, Min Aung Hlaing this month also pardoned Suu Kyi's top aide Win Myint, who served as her ceremonial president.

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(The Center Square) – A U.S. Supreme Court ruling Wednesday “compelled” Florida to redraw congressional districts, second-term Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday a day after the Legislature approved his map plan.

The ruling in a Louisiana redistricting case was issued as the Legislature was debating a bill to redraw congressional districts, potentially giving Republicans a four-seat gain ahead of the midterm elections. Louisiana is expected to redraw its map; five other states have redrawn and implemented; one other has changed because of litigation; and three more states remain tied up in courtrooms.

DeSantis said he'll sign the bill when it formally reaches his desk. Nationally, that will make the potential net change projection seven additional seats for Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.

DeSantis, in a news conference Thursday, said he knew the Louisiana ruling was coming. He called a special session of the Legislature, he said, to redraw the maps in part to correct “racial gerrymandering" in a South Florida district.

“It not only vindicated why we were doing what we were doing,” he said of the Supreme Court ruling, "it compelled us to do what we were doing."

The South Florida congressional district that partially prompted the redistricting has “these crab claws going out,” the governor said. “It’s ridiculous. That has been fixed.”

He singled out U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., for criticizing Florida’s redistricting efforts. Jeffires said the Democrats would “ aggressively target for defeat” eight incumbent Republican members in Congress if the redistricting bill passed.

Florida's representation is 20 Republicans, seven Democrats and one vacancy from the resignation of former Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.

“The notion that we would ever deviate from doing what’s right because we are fielding threats from some machine politician in Brooklyn like Hakeem Jeffries, give me a break,” DeSantis said. “That is not happening here.”

Jeffires also condemned the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Louisiana case.

“Republican extremists have embraced voter suppression and racial gerrymandering to desperately cling to power,” he said. “The corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court appointed by Donald Trump has taken a blowtorch to the Voting Rights Act. Why? The extremists need to cheat to win.”

Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, was among those who criticized Florida’s redistricting plan.

“Over the last year, we’ve heard a wide range of excuses from Governor Ron DeSantis about why he wanted to illegally gerrymander congressional districts in Florida,” she said. “The fact of the matter is this: the map that was passed today is a direct response to the president’s call to gerrymander maps to help Republicans and that is illegal under our state’s constitution.”

Critics of the redistricting bill said it was a partisan move to help Republicans, and that it violated a state constitutional amendment approved by voters that makes it illegal to use redistricting for partisan purposes.

DeSantis said predicting was needed to balance population in the congressional districts due to Florida’s rapid population growth in the last few years in addition to correcting “racial gerrymandering” in the South Florida district.