NBC News:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a new congressional map that would create four more Republican-leaning districts and wipe out Democrats’ national redistricting advantage.

The map — which would carve up a Black-held district — was released Wednesday afternoon, just days after state legislators said they would defer to DeSantis, a Republican, on the new congressional boundaries. The Republican-controlled Legislature drew maps that would have created less of a GOP advantage, but DeSantis vetoed them last month.

DeSantis’ map would create 20 Republican seats and eight Democratic ones based on 2020 electoral data, according to Matthew Isbell, a leading Florida-based Democratic data consultant who analyzed the maps Wednesday evening. Florida’s congressional delegation consists of 16 Republicans and 11 Democrats in the House. The state was apportioned an additional House seat after the 2020 census.

“It’s so blatantly partisan,” Isbell said. “The only way you can create a 20-and-8 map … was to basically say, ‘Screw Black representation.’”

A top Republican in the Legislature agreed privately, saying the maps were probably drawn with partisan intent by DeSantis — a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate who is up for re-election this year.

DeSantis has said his administration is complying with the law, which prohibits partisan gerrymandering….

Daniel Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida who studies elections, said DeSantis appeared to be inviting lawsuits. The map “is clearly being drawn to challenge the remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court has not struck down,” he said….

While the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature had advanced maps that would have slightly advantaged Republicans, DeSantis sought significant gains for his party; in particular, he demanded that legislators dismantle largely Black congressional districts and argued that the North Florida district that ran from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, represented by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

“We are not going to have a 200-mile gerrymander that divvies up people based on the color of their skin,” DeSantis said Tuesday at a news conference in Miami. “That is wrong. That’s not the way we’ve governed in the state of Florida. And obviously that will be litigated.”

DeSantis’ map would dissolve the seat, the state’s 5th Congressional District, into several Republican districts. It would also water down the African American voting population in another district with a significant number of Black voters, currently represented by Senate candidate Val Demings of Orlando. That would leave the state with just one majority Black voting district.