By DAVID A. LIEB, Related Press
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Republicans handed President Donald Trump a political victory Friday, giving ultimate 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 stated he’ll signal it into legislation quickly. However opponents instantly introduced a referendum petition that, if profitable, may drive a statewide vote on the brand new map.
“This struggle just isn’t over. Missouri voters — not politicians — could have the ultimate say,” stated Elsa Rainey, a spokesperson for Individuals Not Politicians, which is main the referendum effort.
U.S. Home districts have been redrawn throughout the nation after the 2020 census to account for inhabitants adjustments. 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 aimed toward serving to their occasion win 5 further seats. Democratic lawmakers in California countered with their very own redistricting plan aimed toward successful 5 extra seats, however it nonetheless wants voter approval. Different states are also contemplating redistricting.
Every seat could possibly be crucial, as a result of Democrats want to achieve 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 attempting to stave off a historic development during which the president’s occasion usually loses seats in midterm elections.
On his social media website Friday, Trump touted Missouri’s “a lot fairer, and far improved, Congressional map” that he stated “will assist ship an extra MAGA Republican to Congress within the 2026 Midterm Elections.”
Missouri Republicans are concentrating on a Kansas Metropolis district
Republicans at present 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 known as by Kehoe that additionally features a proposal making it more durable for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to win voter approval. That proposal, which nonetheless wants voter ratification, would require future initiated amendments to cross in every of Missouri’s congressional districts as an alternative 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 stated afterward that he plans to assist collect the greater than 100,000 signatures wanted in 90 days to drive a referendum on the redistricting plan.
Kehoe has promoted the reshaped districts as a option to amplify “Missouri’s conservative, commonsense 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 gained reelection with over 60% of the vote in each 2024 and 2022 beneath districts adopted by the state Legislature after the 2020 census. He stated he plans to problem the brand new map in courtroom and search reelection in 2026, whatever the form of his district.
“Collectively, within the courts and within the streets, we’ll proceed pushing to make sure the legislation is upheld, justice prevails, and this unconstitutional gerrymander is defeated,” Cleaver stated in an announcement Friday.
Three lawsuits have already got been introduced, together with two Friday on behalf of voters who contend mid-decade redistricting isn’t allowed beneath 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 the town’s St. James United Methodist Church — which Cleaver as soon as led — 180 miles 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 knowledge. Against this, the realm round Vienna has simply 11 Black residents out of practically 2,500 folks.
Democratic state Sen. Barbara Washington of Kansas Metropolis, who described Cleaver as her longtime pastor, stated the brand new map “erases the voice of my group.”
“Carving up Kansas Metropolis and silencing our constituents is horrible,” Washington stated.
Kansas Metropolis resident Roger C. Williams Jr., a 79-year-old former middle-school principal, stated the trouble to reshape congressional districts reminds him of the discrimination he witnessed in opposition to Black residents whereas rising up in Arkansas.
“What Republicans are doing now within the state of Missouri is that they’re taking me again to a time once I, or people who regarded like me, wouldn’t have a possibility, as a result of they wouldn’t have a voice,” he stated.
Republican lawmakers stated little throughout Senate debate. However sponsoring state Rep. Dirk Deaton, a Republican, has stated the brand new map splits fewer total counties and municipalities into a number of districts than the present one.
Republican Senate President Professional Tem Cindy O’Laughlin stated in an announcement after the Senate vote that the map “strengthens Missouri’s conservative voice and ensures each Missourian is pretty represented in Washington.”
Related Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
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