Democrat Emily Gregory won a Florida special election on Tuesday, flipping a state legislative district that is home to Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach estate that President Donald Trump counts as his residence.
The president had endorsed Gregory’s rival, Jon Maples. In a social media post Monday, he urged voters to turn out, saying Maples was backed “by so many of my Palm Beach County friends.”
Democrats celebrated the victory as the latest sign voters are turning against Trump and Republicans ahead of the midterm elections in November. Tuesday was the latest in a series of lopsided or improbable victories in special elections across the country since Trump returned to the White House more than a year ago.
The district was previously represented by Mike Caruso, a Republican who resigned to become Palm Beach County's clerk. Caruso won by 19 percentage points in 2024.
“If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what’s possible this November,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. She said Tuesday's race was the 29th seat that Democrats have flipped from Republican control since Trump took office.
“Gas prices are spiking, grocery costs are up, and families can’t get by — it’s clear voters at the polls are fed up with Republicans,” Williams said.
With almost all votes counted, Gregory led by 2.4 percentage points, or 797 votes.
Gregory grew up north of Palm Beach in Stuart. She’s the owner of a fitness company that works with pregnant and postpartum women, and she has never run for elected office before.
Speaking to MSNOW after her victory, she said she was “pretty shocked" and “having a fairly out-of-body experience.”
Democrats have notched some notable wins in Republican-controlled Florida. In December, Eileen Higgins won the race for Miami mayor, the first time a Democrat had led the city in nearly three decades. She defeated a Trump-endorsed Republican in a campaign that leaned heavily into criticism of the president’s immigration crackdown, a message that resonated with the city’s large Hispanic population.
Farther west in Texas, Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a reliably Republican state Senate district in a special election in January.
Trump immediately distanced himself from the loss in a district he’d won by 17 points in 2024, saying “I’m not involved in that" even though he had endorsed the Republican candidate.
The Texas race energized Democrats desperate for signs of momentum after being locked out of power in Washington.
But winning in Trump's backyard left them especially ebullient.
“Donald Trump’s own neighbors just sent a crystal clear message: They are furious and ready for change,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin.
Trump voted by mail in the Tuesday election and his ballot was counted, Palm Beach County voter records show. He chose a mail ballot despite publicly bashing the voting method as a source of fraud and pushing Congress to curtail the practice.
Trump was a New Yorker for most of his life but switched his personal residence and voter registration to Florida during his first term. Mar-a-Lago has become a gathering place for Trump's friends and allies, as well as business executives and foreign leaders looking to curry favor with him. He spends many weekends there as president.
FILE - An aerial view of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters during the swearing in ceremony for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, March 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Travel disruptions deepened Tuesday as senators raced to salvage a proposal to end the Homeland Security shutdown by funding much of the department, including airport workers going without pay, but excluding immigration operations that have been core to the dispute.
The sudden sense of urgency comes as U.S. airports are snarled by long security lines, with travelers being told to arrive hours before their flights in Houston, Atlanta and Baltimore/Washington International. Routine Department of Homeland Security funding was halted in mid-February ahead of the busy spring travel season. Nearly 11% of Transportation Security Administration workers who were scheduled to report for duty Monday — more than 3,200 — missed work, and at least 458 have have quit altogether since the shutdown began, according to DHS.
Democrats are refusing to fund the department without restraints on Trump's immigration enforcement and mass deportation operations after federal agents killed two citizens in Minneapolis.
“The time to end this is now,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
But Democrats panned the offer as insufficient. And President Donald Trump himself was noncommittal.
“I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it,” Trump said at an event at the White House swearing in his new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Airport conditions have become increasingly unpredictable with swelling crowds seen in major hubs. Travelers headed to LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports in New York — as well as Newark Liberty International in neighboring New Jersey — still couldn’t check online TSA wait times Tuesday morning.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were spotted in terminals, including at Philadelphia International Airport, where a protester was seen at one of the checkpoints holding a sign criticizing ICE. In Houston, passengers at George Bush Intercontinental Airport spent hours Tuesday navigating meandering security lines that twisted and turned across multiple floors.
Acting TSA administrator Ha McNeil said multiple airports are experiencing greater than 40% call out rates, according to prepared remarks she will give Wednesday to the House Committee on Homeland Security.
She is also expected to tell lawmakers of the personal toll the shutdown has had on TSA workers who “are running out of options to keep a roof over their head and put food on the table.”
The contours of the deal emerged once a group of Republican senators met with Trump at the White House late Monday, after he upended talks and deployed federal immigration officers at certain airport security checkpoints — a move some lawmakers warned could lead to heightened tensions.
The proposal would fund most of Homeland Security, but not one main part of ICE — the enforcement and removal operations that are core to Trump's deportation agenda.
Under the plan, ICE's Homeland Security Investigations would be funded as well as Customs and Border Protection, and it would include funding for officers to wear body cameras, but few other restraints.
The proposal was not substantially different from one the two sides had already agreed on before the deaths sparked demands for more changes, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the details, which have not been publicly released.
For example, there was no mandate that immigration officers wear identification or other changes the White House had floated earlier in talks, including a ban on immigration enforcement at schools, churches, hospitals and other sensitive places, the person said.
While the ICE officers manning airports are going without face-covering masks, the Democratic demand that they go unmasked during immigration operations does not appear to be part of the deal.
“We need strong, strong reforms and we need to rein in ICE," said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
Since so much of ICE is already funded through Trump's big tax breaks bill, immigration officers are still receiving paychecks despite the shutdown.
Congress is controlled by the Republican president's party, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said his party members insist on “bold” changes to ICE.
On Tuesday, Delta Air Lines confirmed it was suspending its specialty services for members of Congress amid the shutdown, meaning those who fly with the carrier will be treated like other passengers based on their SkyMiles status. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the suspension.
Efforts to end the standoff stalled when Trump linked any deal to his push to pass the so-called SAVE America Act, a strict proof-of-citizenship and voter ID bill that has stalled in the Senate ahead of the midterm elections. Some GOP senators have pitched him on the idea of tackling it in another legislative package.
“It’s not a perfect deal but I think it works,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who met with Trump and thinks the president is on board. “If you’re waiting in line four hours in Atlanta, this madness needs to come to an end."
The White House on Tuesday stressed that conversations were ongoing. But it also said an agreement to split off immigration enforcement funding, while addressing Trump’s elections bill separately, “seems to be acceptable.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said his understanding was that there was a “sense of urgency” coming from the talks as the airport disruptions worsen.
The deal could provide a political exit from the standoff over the embattled Department of Homeland Security, which was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but has come to symbolize Trump’s aggressive mass deportation agenda, with its goal of removing 1 million immigrants this year.
Under mounting political pressure, Trump ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem amid the public outcry over the immigration operations, and senators late Monday confirmed Mullin, one of their own, as the president's handpicked replacement.
Mullin, a former Oklahoma senator aligned with Trump's agenda, provides a potentially new face for the department. He told senators during his confirmation hearing that he supported another key demand of Democrats — ensuring a judge has signed off on warrants that immigration officers use to search people's homes, rather than simply relying on administrative warrants issued by the department.
“This is significant,” Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said about the progress toward changes. "Noem is gone. That’s a big deal.”
ICE’s budget grew under last year’s bill by $75 billion, which has been untouched by the shutdown. Rather, its routine annual funding, some $10 billion, would be cut almost in half under the proposal.
Associated Press writers Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York, Lekan Oyekanmi in Houston and Kevin Freking, Seung Min Kim and Stephen Groves in Washington contributed to this report.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent works at the baggage check at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
President Donald Trump listens as Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin during the swearing-in at the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, March 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., talks with reporters asking about a proposal to end the Homeland Security budget stalemate, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
A TSA worker, left, screens an airline passenger at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Air Marshals, patrol around Washington Dulles International Airport, in Chantilly, Va., Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce)
Travelers line up at a TSA checkpoint at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
Travelers line up at a TSA checkpoint at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Lekan Oyekanmi)
Travelers line up at a TSA checkpoint at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
Travelers line up at a TSA checkpoint at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Lekan Oyekanmi)
People wait in a TSA line at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Monday, March 23, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., talks to reporters about a funding bill to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown that began more than a month ago, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
