JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Republicans handed President Donald Trump a political victory Friday, giving closing legislative approval to a redistricting plan that might assist Republicans win an extra U.S. Home seat in subsequent 12 months’s elections.
The Senate vote sends the redistricting plan to Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe, who mentioned he’ll signal it into regulation quickly. However opponents instantly introduced a referendum petition that, if profitable, may power a statewide vote on the brand new map.
“This fight is not over. Missouri voters — not politicians — will have the final say,” mentioned Elsa Rainey, a spokesperson for Folks Not Politicians, which is main the referendum effort.
U.S. Home districts had been redrawn throughout the nation after the 2020 census to account for inhabitants modifications. However Missouri is the third state to take up mid-decade redistricting this 12 months in an rising nationwide battle for partisan benefit forward of the midterm elections.
Republican lawmakers in Texas handed a brand new U.S. Home map final month geared toward serving to their celebration win 5 further seats. Democratic lawmakers in California countered with their very own redistricting plan geared toward profitable 5 extra seats, but it surely nonetheless wants voter approval. Different states are also contemplating redistricting.
Every seat might be vital, as a result of Democrats want to realize simply three seats to win management of the Home, which might enable them to impede Trump’s agenda and launch investigations into him. Trump is making an attempt to stave off a historic development through which the president’s celebration sometimes loses seats in midterm elections.
On his social media web site Friday, Trump touted Missouri’s “much fairer, and much improved, Congressional map” that he mentioned “will help send an additional MAGA Republican to Congress in the 2026 Midterm Elections.”
Missouri Republicans are concentrating on a Kansas Metropolis district
Republicans at the moment maintain six of Missouri’s eight U.S. Home seats. The revised map handed the Republican-led state Home earlier this week as the focus of a particular session referred to as by Kehoe that additionally features a proposal making it tougher for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to win voter approval. That proposal, which nonetheless wants voter ratification, would require future initiated amendments to move in every of Missouri’s congressional districts as a substitute of by a easy statewide majority. No different state has such a regular.
The Republican-led Senate handed each measures Friday after altering the chamber’s guidelines, then shutting off Democratic opponents. Senate Minority Chief Doug Beck mentioned afterward that he plans to assist collect the greater than 100,000 signatures wanted in 90 days to power a referendum on the redistricting plan.
Kehoe has promoted the reshaped districts as a option to amplify “Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values” in Washington, D.C.
Missouri’s revised map targets a seat held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver by shaving off parts of his Kansas Metropolis district and stretching the remainder of it into Republican-heavy rural areas. The plan reduces the variety of Black and minority residents in Cleaver’s district, partly by making a dividing line alongside a road that has served as a historic segregation line between Black and white residents.
Cleaver, who was Kansas Metropolis’s first Black mayor, has served in Congress for over 20 years. He received reelection with over 60% of the vote in each 2024 and 2022 underneath districts adopted by the state Legislature after the 2020 census. He mentioned he plans to problem the brand new map in courtroom and search reelection in 2026, whatever the form of his district.
“Together, in the courts and in the streets, we will continue pushing to ensure the law is upheld, justice prevails, and this unconstitutional gerrymander is defeated,” Cleaver mentioned in a press release Friday.
Three lawsuits have already got been introduced, together with two Friday on behalf of voters who contend mid-decade redistricting isn’t allowed underneath the Missouri Structure. A listening to is scheduled for Monday on one other lawsuit beforehand filed by the NAACP.
Kansas Metropolis residents increase issues about new districts
Cleaver’s revised Kansas Metropolis district would stretch from close to town’s St. James United Methodist Church — which Cleaver as soon as led — 180 miles (290 kilometers) southeast to incorporate one other United Methodist church in rural Vienna. Within the neighborhood round Cleaver’s hometown church, the place his son is now pastor, about 60% of residents are Black or a mixture of Black and one other race, in response to U.S. Census Bureau information. Against this, the world round Vienna has simply 11 Black residents out of almost 2,500 folks.
Democratic state Sen. Barbara Washington of Kansas Metropolis, who described Cleaver as her longtime pastor, mentioned the brand new map “erases the voice of my community.”
“Carving up Kansas City and silencing our constituents is terrible,” Washington mentioned.
Kansas Metropolis resident Roger C. Williams Jr., a 79-year-old former middle-school principal, mentioned the hassle to reshape congressional districts reminds him of the discrimination he witnessed towards Black residents whereas rising up in Arkansas.
“What Republicans are doing now in the state of Missouri is they’re taking me back to a time when I, or people that looked like me, would not have an opportunity, because they wouldn’t have a voice,” he mentioned.
Republican lawmakers mentioned little throughout Senate debate. However sponsoring state Rep. Dirk Deaton, a Republican, has mentioned the brand new map splits fewer general counties and municipalities into a number of districts than the present one.
Republican Senate President Professional Tem Cindy O’Laughlin mentioned in a press release after the Senate vote that the map “strengthens Missouri’s conservative voice and ensures every Missourian is fairly represented in Washington.”
Related Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
