'F around and find out': Hakeem Jeffries warns Florida Republicans against gerrymandering

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has been the subject of a lot of President Donald Trump's verbal attacks of late. On Wednesday, however, he had a big smile on his face as Virginia voters said 'yes' to a redistricting referendum. After celebrating the win, Jeffries warned Florida Republicans that a planned redistricting would work in the Democrats' favor. 

Jeffries' statement came after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that Republicans will redraw the congressional map of the state in their favor. Labelling the proposed redrawing "DeSantis dummymander", Jeffries said, "Our message to Florida Republicans is F around and find out. If they go down the road of a DeSantis 'dummymander', the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans." 

Jeffries claimed that Texas Republicans were "on the run" and would not be able to win five seats despite their own gerrymandering last year. "They would be fortunate if they got two or three," he said. The House Minority Leader seemed confident about the Democrats winning all five seats in California, and said that the blue party would end the "war" started by the GOP, as the latter was "dummymandering their way into the minority."

Earlier, Jefferies had called the result of the vote in Virginia a "big victory for the people of Virginia, a big victory for America, and a big victory for democracy." He accused President Trump and Republicans of launching the gerrymandering war, and vowed that Democrats would finish it.

"We will not let Donald Trump rig the midterm elections by gerrymandering maps all across the country without a forceful Democratic response," he said. Jeffries claimed that this "forceful Democratic response" is transpiring across the country as Republicans were stopped from gerrymandering in New Hampshire, Indiana, Kansas, and Nebraska. "These Republican extremists thought that we were going to step back," he added.

Jeffries also claimed that the Democrats' goal was to establish a national standard prohibiting mid-decade partisan gerrymandering. "What we are not going to do is unilaterally disarm. Apparently, that's what Donald Trump believed that we would do…they had us confused in terms of the moment that we are in and the need to push back consistently with the fierce urgency of now," he added.

The redistricting war began in 2025 when, upon the orders of President Trump, the Republican-led Texas legislature redrew the state's congressional map to remove five Democratic House lawmakers. Leading up to the recent Virginia vote, the GOP had gerrymandered in North Carolina, Missouri, and Ohio to build up several red seats, as per a New York Times report. Democrats responded by approving new maps in California, and most recently, Virginia voters approved the same in their state.