The Sunshine State has joined Texas, California and a handful of other states in the battle of mid-decade redistricting.

On April 29, 2026, in a near party-line vote, the Florida Legislature adopted new congressional maps drawn by a staffer of Gov. Ron DeSantis. The GOP-led effort could lead to four more of Florida’s 28 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives turning Republican. Florida redrew its maps with the same underlying population data just four years ago.

Mid-decade redistricting in Florida was all but inevitable once Donald Trump made partisan map-drawing a national priority. Florida’s Republican legislators had little incentive – or political cover – to resist.

I’m a political scientist, and my research focuses on voting and elections. I’ve served as an expert in redistricting cases in Florida, and I’ve been tracking Florida voters’ opinions on DeSantis’ 2026 redistricting efforts.

What Florida voters think about gerrymandering overall

University of Florida Ph.D. student Rolland Grady and I conducted a representative survey of more than 2,300 Florida registered voters drawn randomly from the publicly available Florida voter file.

Participants had one week, from April 6-13, 2026, to fill out our web-based survey linked to an email invitation. We did not offer any incentives to respondents providing us with their opinions.

The results show broad, principled opposition to partisan gerrymandering in Florida. Roughly two-thirds of Florida voters we contacted said they oppose redrawing district lines to advantage a political party.

What they think about their own party gerrymandering

But beyond gauging how Florida voters feel about gerrymandering in theory, we wanted to see how they responded to actual scenarios of mid-decade redistricting, and whether it mattered to them which party was leading the redistricting.

So we designed an experimental survey: Before respondents were asked how they felt about mid-decade redistricting, each participant was randomly shown one of five different statements.

The control version of this statement read, “The redrawing of congressional district boundaries typically occurs every 10 years, immediately following the U.S. Census.”

The other versions gave that control statement, and then added information about a particular state – California, Texas or Florida – that was redrawing its maps, and which party was endorsing that gerrymandering.

Finally, there was a version of the statement that included the control statement, told voters that Republican Ron DeSantis was endorsing the redistricting in Florida, and then added a third line of text: “As you might know, in 2010 citizens in Florida passed the Fair Districts Amendment with bipartisan support of more than 60% of the vote.”

According to our survey results, Florida Democrats are intensely opposed to gerrymandering for partisan purposes when it is framed as benefiting Republicans. This strong opposition may increase the focus of big donors on Florida, helping to drive fundraising for Democratic candidates. It may also mobilize some Democrats to come out to the polls in November. But when it comes to persuasion, most Democrats who plan to vote in the midterm elections are already highly engaged and unlikely to support GOP candidates anyway.

Florida Republicans also oppose mid-decade redistricting in the abstract. Not surprisingly, support for drawing lines to help the GOP increases when framed as something DeSantis is pursuing, but only by 15 percentage points.

This suggests some latent, principled discomfort among GOP voters. On the other hand, strong messaging from Republican leaders, particularly Trump, in the run-up to the election may override concerns about fairness. Partisanship and leader-motivated behavior will drive many Republican voters to rationalize the GOP’s effort to increase their congressional margins by four seats.

Where independent voters fall

Finally, our poll finds that Florida independent voters have strong and consistently principled opposition to partisan gerrymandering; their support rarely exceeds 15% under any condition. But in Florida, independent voters, who are often registered with no party affiliation, are less politically organized or active than registered Republicans and Democrats. And it’s likely that these voters redrawn into a new congressional district will be even less knowledgeable about who represents them when it’s time to pick candidates.

It is possible that Democrats will be able to use GOP gerrymandering in November to get independent voters to the polls and oppose Republican candidates. But opposition to gaming the system is just one of many factors that will shape how independents vote. Other issues, such as concerns over the rising cost of living, immigration, foreign policy and presidential approval, usually play a much greater role in determining candidate choice in midterm elections.

The Florida GOP’s mid-decade redistricting gambit reveals a troubling truth about American democracy: Voters oppose partisan gerrymandering in principle but tolerate it in practice when their side benefits.

So even though a majority of Florida voters disapprove of the GOP’s effort to tilt the state’s map even further toward electing Republicans, I’m not expecting widespread punishment of Republican incumbents due to these redistricting efforts.

DeSantis is betting that Trump’s influence will paper over GOP voters’ discomfort, that Democrats will stay demoralized, and that independents will stay home in November.

How GOP gerrymandering could backfire

But just because the GOP’s gerrymandering won’t sway voters away from their party doesn’t mean it won’t end up hurting them at the polls.

DeSantis’ map crams Democrats into just four of 28 districts – a high-stakes gamble that requires lightning to strike twice. To succeed for the GOP, the map requires both 2024’s Democratic and independent voter apathy and 2022’s swing to the right by independents.

But midterms tend to bring lower turnout, and today’s economic squeeze plus Trump’s dismal approval ratings make another 2022-style GOP surge highly unlikely.

The worst case for the GOP would be a 2018-style blue wave. It would destroy DeSantis’ gerrymander and could potentially flip three South Florida GOP seats and two in Central Florida to Democrats. Aggressive redistricting may meet unintended consequences come November.

See you in court

Florida Democrats and other groups will likely sue under the state constitution’s Fair Districts amendments, which were adopted in 2010 by Florida voters of all political stripes. These amendments to the Florida Constitution expressly prohibit redrawing districts with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.

But DeSantis and his lawyers are setting the stage to defend the mid-decade partisan gerrymander. They fully expect that the Florida Supreme Court will strike down the Fair Districts amendments’ ban on partisan redistricting. The odds are stacked against the citizens of Florida who support fair districts.

In my view, the real losers here are the Florida voters, particularly those who approved the state’s Fair Districts amendments in 2010, which were a bipartisan triumph.

Daniel A. Smith is an Advisory Board Member of Common Cause Florida and President of ElectionSmith.

Your early life may quietly set the stage for developing Type 1 diabetes, an increasingly common, lifelong condition that can significantly affect daily life.

Our team’s research, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that biological pathways associated with future Type 1 diabetes may begin as early as pregnancy, and that these signs could be detected in umbilical cord blood.

As a group, we study how living systems respond to stress. Understanding the early biology of Type 1 diabetes can help uncover windows of opportunity to treat the disease sooner.

Early stressors and Type 1 diabetes

Type 1 diabetes affects the pancreas. Specifically, its insulin-producing beta cells that help control blood sugar are progressively destroyed.

While this condition has typically been attributed to a dysfunctional immune system, a growing body of research suggests that beta cells themselves play an active role in disease development. Beta cells become stressed when overworked or exposed to harmful conditions. In some cases, they may even self-destruct before the immune system shows signs of affecting the pancreas. Potential stressors include infection, increased energy demands and smaller pancreas size.

Type 1 diabetes does not fit neatly within the traditional definition of an autoimmune disease. It ultimately develops when the body can no longer make enough insulin. During periods of increased demand for insulin, such as after consuming a large amount of carbohdyrates or during infection, beta cells are forced to work harder. When stressed beta cells stop working properly or die, they release molecular signals that can activate an immune response. This raises the possibility that immune responses may, in some cases, follow rather than initiate beta cell injury.

These observations suggest that stressed beta cells are not merely a consequence of Type 1 diabetes but also a contributor to its onset.

Studying diabetes in a general population

Our team wanted to see whether we could detect early signs of beta cell vulnerability before Type 1 diabetes symptoms start – or even before the immune system begins attacking the pancreas.

While genetics does play a role in Type 1 diabetes, an increasing number of people without a family history of diabetes are developing the disease. Much of the existing research has focused on children with high genetic risk. This is in part because, although Type 1 diabetes is increasing, it’s relatively rare – affecting less than 1% of people globally – making it hard to study before the disease starts.

In contrast, we sought to study children from a general population, not just those known to be at high risk for Type 1 diabetes. So we used data from the All Babies in Southeast Sweden cohort, a longitudinal study founded by one of us, Johnny Ludvigsson, which has been following mothers and their children since the late 1990s.

As part of the study, researchers collected and stored umbilical cord blood samples. Decades later, we selected samples from babies who later developed Type 1 diabetes for this study and screened them for proteins known to be involved in inflammation. We then used machine learning tools to identify factors linked to disease risk.

We found that the levels of several proteins in umbilical cord blood predicted the likelihood of whether a child in this cohort developed Type 1 diabetes in the future. These protein biomarkers fell into a few categories, including ones that help molecules get to where they need to be; ones that do not belong in the body, such as pollution; ones involved in the maintenance of cell structure; and ones that help regulate immune responses.

Our machine learning tool also identified some proteins that were associated with the absence of future Type 1 diabetes. These proteins, like tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-3 (TIMP3) and adenosine deaminase (ADA), are known to regulate inflammation by suppressing overactive immune responses, supporting healthy cellular communication and improving insulin production. Researchers have previously found that TIMP3 plays a role in glucose stabilization.

We found that levels of two specific proteins best predicted whether a baby would eventually develop Type 1 diabetes: IDS, which helps break down the long sugar molecules giving tissues strength and flexibility, and HLA-DRA, which is involved in activating the immune system. Type 1 diabetes is known to affect the long sugar molecules that IDS breaks down in several organs.

Importantly, the ability of these proteins to predict disease risk wasn’t heavily reliant on genetics. Although some differences were more pronounced in children with certain variants of HLA linked to increased risk of Type 1 diabetes, including this information in our machine learning algorithm only marginally improved accuracy. Instead, the proteins themselves were driving disease risk.

Type 1 diabetes isn’t inevitable

To be clear, the biomarkers we identified reflect possibility, not destiny. Like blood pressure and growth milestones, these measures could tell clinicians about someone’s risk of disease and ways to treat it.

Currently, screening for Type 1 diabetes typically relies on genetic testing and testing for the presence of autoantibodies, which are proteins that indicate the body is attacking insulin-producing cells. However, by the time autoantibodies appear, it may be too late to address the biological changes that set the stage for Type 1 diabetes.

Some of the markers we observed could be linked to widespread environmental exposures, including PFAS and other forever chemicals, that affect disease risk. Understanding how these toxic substances that pregnant people routinely and inadvertently encounter affect early biology could inform environmental and public health policies.

Our findings suggest that umbilical cord blood could help clinicians and parents more proactively address a child’s risk for Type 1 diabetes. Cord blood is often tossed out during the birthing process. But this “waste” can hold valuable information about early life and future health outcomes.

Beyond its potential value for early screening, cord blood is already used to source lifesaving stem cell treatments. Our work adds to growing evidence that cord blood is an important resource for supporting child health.

What’s next?

We are a long way from applying our findings to the clinic. Our study identified biomarkers associated with the later development of Type 1 diabetes in a group of Swedish children. But we now need to study broader populations and biomarkers, as well as figure out the biology behind these signals. Identifying whether there are specific factors in the first several years of life that could be addressed to offset these protein imbalances could help reduce disease risk.

Our group is also studying umbilical cord blood markers in relation to other conditions, including childhood obesity, depression, autism and inflammatory bowel disease. As a data scientist-, pediatrician- and microbiologist-led team, we use biological data to look for early signs of these conditions to find opportunities to support children before those disease pathways are set.

Eric W. Triplett receives funding from the EU Horizon program.

Johnny Ludvigsson receives funding from the EU Horizon program

Angelica P. Ahrens does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Florida added nearly 3 million residents from 2010-2020, making it the fastest-growing state in the United States during that time.

On any given day, a Florida county commission or municipality may approve a new subdivision, a transportation agency may select the route of a highway expansion, or a rancher may decide whether to sell land for development. As new neighborhoods, roads and infrastructure spread across the state, they reshape not only communities but also the natural systems wildlife depends on.

Each decision is local and incremental. But taken together, these choices determine whether wildlife can move across Florida’s landscapes to find food, reproduce and adapt to a changing climate – or become isolated in shrinking fragments of habitat.

In 2011, Florida eliminated the Department of Community Affairs, which had monitored and coordinated land use and development throughout the state. Since then, there has been limited oversight of local and county governments when it comes to urban planning and land development.

As conservation researchers, we study how scientific data can support real-world planning decisions. That led us to develop the Florida Ecological Connectivity Planning Viewer in collaboration with our colleagues at the University of Florida’s Center for Landscape Conservation Planning and GeoPlan Center. We call it the EcoCon.

This online mapping platform helps decision-makers and conservationists understand how land across Florida fits together as a connected ecological network. Seeing this network alongside a suite of other related planning and conservation data can help them avoid impacts that would disrupt or disconnect it.

A cautionary tale from the ‘Last Green Thread’

Scientists have known for decades that connected landscapes benefit both animals and people. Large, connected ecosystems help protect drinking water supplies, reduce flooding and support agriculture, recreation and tourism. They can also be more resilient to climate pressures, such as stronger storms and changing rainfall patterns.

The challenge today is not proving that connectivity matters. It is helping people see how thousands of everyday land-use decisions add up to create, or break, those connections.

A clear example of this challenge can be found in central Florida, about 20 miles southwest of Orlando. Since the early 1990s, conservation scientists have identified a narrow stretch of land known as the “Last Green Thread.” This thread is one of the few remaining opportunities to maintain a continuous ecological connection between protected lands in the Green Swamp, the source of four of Florida’s rivers, and the headwaters of the Everglades to the south.

This corridor still remains. But it is a shrinking sliver on its way to completely disappearing as land use decisions continue to make it less functional. An intact corridor helps species such as the Florida black bear, and potentially the endangered Florida panther, move between habitats. It also benefits other animals that are sensitive to fragmentation, including bobcats, otters, scrub jays, alligators and gopher tortoises.

No single decision has eliminated this corridor. Over time, however, development has gradually filled in significant parts of this landscape. Subdivisions and infrastructure have spread across multiple private properties and public jurisdictions. The result is a fragmented pathway between major conservation areas in south and central Florida.

A new way to see the landscape

Researchers have spent decades mapping wildlife habitat and ecological connections using geographic information systems. These digital tools help identify where important ecological links exist across landscapes.

But this data has not always been easy for planners, communities and landowners to access. Information may be scattered across agencies, universities and technical reports, or it may require expensive software tools and expertise to access.

When different decision-makers rely on different maps – or none at all – it becomes difficult to see how individual land-use decisions affect the larger ecological network.

This is where the EcoCon comes in.

With a few clicks, users can turn different layers on and off. These layers include wildlife movement pathways, protected conservation lands, wildlife crossings, water resources, agricultural areas and more. Instead of looking at these pieces separately, the EcoCon shows how they overlap.

The wildlife connectivity data comes from scientific models that estimate how animals move across the landscape. Using information such as land cover, habitat quality and barriers, including roads and development, these models highlight the routes animals are most likely to take between large natural areas.

By bringing this information together in a single, easy-to-use, publicly accessible mapping tool, the EcoCon helps planners see how proposed changes to the landscape might affect wildlife and natural resources.

Using the EcoCon isn’t about stopping development. Rather, it gives decision-makers a clearer picture so they can make informed, coordinated plans for growth in ways that better support both people and wildlife.

Tools like the EcoCon can also support broader conservation initiatives such as the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a statewide network of connected public and private lands that helps wildlife move across the state.

In fast-growing Florida, this visibility may be one of the most important tools for ensuring that wildlife and people can continue to share the same landscape in a rapidly changing world.

Sarah Lockhart works for the University of Florida Center for Landscape Conservation Planning. Her team receives funding from Florida state government to work on the science and planning associated with the Florida Wildlife Corridor and Florida Ecological Greenways Network.

Thomas Hoctor receives funding from Florida state government to work on the science and planning associated with the Florida Wildlife Corridor and Florida Ecological Greenways Network.

Florida is home to a host of diverse wildlife you can’t find anywhere else. Most people know of manatees and Florida panthers. But you might never have heard of the Big Cypress fox squirrel, a subspecies found only in southwest Florida.

At up to 2 feet, 3 inches (68.5 centimeters) long, including its tail, and weighing roughly 3 pounds (1.36 kilograms), the Big Cypress fox squirrel is a heavyweight compared with its cousin, the eastern gray squirrel. But while gray squirrels can thrive across much of the eastern U.S. and Canada, the Big Cypress fox squirrel’s habitat is limited to five Florida counties south of the Caloosahatchee River.

This means every new road, canal and subdivision takes a bigger bite out of its world.

Because this squirrel is so shy and hard to spot, no one knows how many remain, which is one reason the state of Florida lists it as threatened. Historically, it moved through cypress swamps, pine savannas and hardwood forests. But these days, it often navigates a patchwork of golf courses, parks and low-density neighborhoods, crossing open lawns and scattered tree canopies to reach safe cover.

As the links between habitable areas disappear, Big Cypress fox squirrels are funneled into a few risky travel routes. This can cause their populations to become isolated from each other and more vulnerable to decline.

As a landscape conservation researcher, I study how wildlife moves through changing environments and how urban design can support that movement. My most recent research, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Florida and Florida State University, focused on the Big Cypress fox squirrel. Our team asked one practical question: How can city planning and landscape design support wildlife movement as the region grows?

A new approach

What’s new about our work is that we paired connectivity modeling – a method that maps how easily animals can move across a landscape – with an approach to urban design that organizes landscapes along a gradient from dense urban areas to natural habitats. This approach helps planners match conservation strategies to each setting, or transect zone – urban, suburban, seminatural, such as parks and golf courses, and core habitat, or undisturbed areas.

Our method is unique because it integrates wildlife connectivity data directly into actionable design solutions for each zone, rather than proposing a single corridor. This allows planners to design landscapes that support wildlife movement in ways that can be replicated anywhere. In suburban neighborhoods, for example, wildlife crossings and native plants provide safer movement options.

Importantly, this approach is not specific to preserving just this species of squirrel. Planners and conservationists can use it to maintain wildlife movement alongside development across Florida and beyond. This includes other priority areas along the Florida Wildlife Corridor where development constrains animal movement.

To develop our approach, we used habitat suitability models developed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission using detailed land-cover data and verified squirrel observation records kept by Florida Natural Areas Inventory and universities in Florida and Arizona. Then we converted this data into what landscape conservationists call a resistance map, which shows how difficult it is for a Big Cypress fox squirrel to move across the landscape.

We applied the model across the squirrel’s known range in southwest Florida, with a focus on rapidly developing areas around Fort Myers and Naples. We then identified where movement is concentrated and where it gets squeezed into narrow pathways.

Squeezing through ‘pinch points’

Our model showed that the squirrel’s best habitat persists in a network of pinch points, bottlenecks where development and infrastructure funnel movement into a limited set of pathways.

In the broader southwestern Florida region, those bottlenecks show up near urbanizing areas such as Naples, Fort Myers and Bonita Springs. In Fort Myers, for example, squirrel movement was funneled into just a few narrow routes, such as urban parks in highly developed areas and less developed spaces such as golf courses and residential neighborhoods with tree cover. Movement was more diffuse near wetlands and along the Caloosahatchee River.

This means that even in built-up areas, a few connected strips of trees, water edges and open space make a big difference, because they may be the only workable routes left.

We also found that many important habitat patches and connections fall outside protected areas. Rather, they lie on private and intensively managed lands, such as residential yards, golf courses, agriculture and landscaped spaces that are regularly maintained. In fast-growing southwestern Florida, that means long-term conservation depends not only on preserves but also on how neighborhoods, road projects, parks, golf courses and vacant lots are planned and maintained.

From wildlife science to real-world design

Instead of creating just one wildlife corridor, we design solutions for different types of landscapes along a city-to-nature gradient. From dense urban areas to natural habitats, this lets us keep the landscape connected using a network of green infrastructure while matching conservation actions to how the land is used and how squirrels are likely to move through it.

In urban and suburban areas, squirrels are using the remaining open spaces, such as parks and low-density residential areas, but these landscapes can function as ecological traps as well as population “sinks,” where risks such as vehicle collisions are higher.

Roads, highways and railroad tracks are major sources of habitat fragmentation and wildlife mortality, so one priority is to make it safer for wildlife to cross.

Our study proposes canopy bridges and other wildlife crossings. Other helpful measures include traffic-calming strategies, signage and “green street” design, which integrates vegetation, stormwater management and safer road layouts to reduce risks for both wildlife and people.

We also propose retrofitting existing infrastructure in urban areas with elements such as green roofs, living walls, bioswales – channels that help keep stormwater clean – rain gardens and permeable pavement. These features add vegetation, absorb stormwater and reduce heat, while also making urban areas easier for wildlife to navigate.

In suburban areas, priorities include planting native vegetation in yards, parks and roadside buffers and improving road crossings where animals are most at risk.

In seminatural areas such as golf courses, opportunities include restoring native vegetation and maintaining “stepping stone” habitats. These are small patches, such as tree clusters and bushes, that animals can use as safe stopovers while moving across developed landscapes.

This kind of green infrastructure can reduce flooding, improve water quality, lower urban temperatures and create recreational spaces – benefits that support both wildlife and the people who live alongside them.

Eve Bohnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.