TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida lawmakers Wednesday rubber-stamped a new congressional map that fails to solve either problem cited by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as justifications for an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting — even as it flouts a state constitutional ban on partisan map drawing by likely giving Republicans more House seats, as demanded by President Donald Trump.

Exactly 53 hours after the new map made its first appearance showing a sea of 24 red districts with four small blue dots on Fox News, the Florida Senate approved on a 21-17 vote a map created entirely by DeSantis with zero input from lawmakers or the public. It now goes to DeSantis for his signature.

“Let me tell you what this is about. This is about fear. Not just any fear ― panic, the kind of panic that comes from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when the ground is shifting beneath you and you can’t win in a fair fight,” said Orlando Democratic state Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis.

Brian Nathan, a Democratic Navy veteran who unexpectedly won a Tampa state Senate seat in a recent special election, said none of his new constituents has asked for a new map. “We are here because of two people. The president asked explicitly for more Republican districts, and the governor is happy to oblige,” he said.

The state House, which has an even stronger Republican majority than the Senate, voted 83-28 in favor of the map hours earlier, even as lawmakers were reading through the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the much-anticipated Callais case that dramatically weakened protections for minority districts under the Voting Rights Act.

That decision, however, likely has little effect on the congressional map in Florida, thanks to the state Supreme Court having ruled last year that protections against weakening minority districts violated the U.S. Constitution.

That language was part of the Fair Districts Amendment on congressional districts that Florida voters passed overwhelmingly in 2010, and that 2025 Florida high court ruling is the basis for DeSantis’ legal theory that the striking down of part of the Fair Districts provisions means the entire amendment is null and void.

The main part of the voter initiative bans efforts to protect incumbents or a particular party, while a separate section mandates the drawing of districts that, to the extent possible, does not split up counties and cities. Jason Poredo, the DeSantis staffer who drew the new map, told lawmakers Tuesday that he used partisan data in drawing the districts and conceded that the new map splits up more counties and cities than the existing map.

DeSantis’ outside lawyer handling the redistricting matter, Mohammad Jazil, meanwhile testified that there was no need to abide by the voter-approved partisan intent ban. “Our legal position is that you do not need to comply,” he told lawmakers.

Poredo’s testimony also conceded that he used the same Census data for the new map that was used in the current map — meaning the new districts no more reflect the current population of Florida and recent internal migration patterns than do the existing districts.

DeSantis has been arguing, falsely, for months that a new congressional map was necessary because Florida was shortchanged in the 2020 Census, that the state has seen an enormous influx of population in the years since, and that vast numbers of Floridians have moved from one part of the state to another.

“All of you know that this doesn’t address anything about an alleged census undercount. We’re not getting an extra seat in Congress,” Orlando Democratic Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith told his colleagues. “That is a completely spurious point.”

DeSantis’ arguments were nevertheless repeated frequently by Republican legislators.

“There is obviously the argument that, because so many people have moved to Florida, that these congressional districts are not perhaps accurately representing the electorate in the best way possible,” said Ana Maria Rodriguez, a state senator from Doral. “So I think these new maps will give voters an opportunity to have more representation and more voices in Congress.”

Pensacola Republican Don Gaetz, who sponsored DeSantis’ map for him on the Senate floor, also cited those claims. “In our state, as the governor has indicated, his words, not mine, surges in population that, in his view, are leaving some Floridians underrepresented,” Gaetz said.

Gaetz, the father of former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, conceded that the new map did not and could not address that issue, and then referred further questions to the Capitol’s first floor, where DeSantis has his suite of offices. “Go to the plaza level. Ask the governor,” he said.

DeSantis’ office did not respond to HuffPost queries on the matter.

He first began speaking about the need for a new Florida congressional map two weeks after Trump publicly demanded that Republican-led states, starting with Texas, draw new maps to create more Republican seats to improve the party’s chances of holding the House in the November midterm elections. Texas quickly complied, as did Republicans in North Carolina and Missouri.

Democrats, however, responded with their own new maps in California and Virginia, both of which received voter approval to produce more likely Democratic seats, although the process used to create Virginia’s map is currently being reviewed by that state’s Supreme Court.

The new map in Florida is almost certain to draw legal challenges of its own, particularly the openly partisan intent that went into drawing it that directly violates the Florida constitution.

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