Missouri Republicans handed President Trump a redistricting victory Friday, giving final legislative approval to a plan that could help the GOP win another of the state's US House seats in next year's elections. The Senate vote sends the redistricting plan to Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe for his expected signature to make it law. But opponents immediately announced a referendum petition that, if successful, could force a statewide vote on the new map, the AP reports.
Missouri is the third state to take up mid-decade redistricting in an emerging national battle for partisan advantage ahead of the midterm elections. Republican lawmakers in Texas passed a new US House map last month aimed at helping their party win five additional seats. Democratic lawmakers in California countered with their own redistricting plan aimed at winning five more seats, but it still needs voter approval. Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House, which would allow them to obstruct Trump's agenda and launch investigations into his actions. Republicans currently hold six of Missouri's eight US House seats. The revised map passed the state House earlier this week as the focal point of a special session called by Kehoe.
Missouri's revised map targets a seat held by Democratic US Rep. Emanuel Cleaver by shaving off portions of his Kansas City district and stretching the rest of it into Republican-heavy rural areas. The plan reduces the number of Black and minority residents in Cleaver's district, partly by creating a dividing line along a street that Cleaver said had been a historical segregation line between Black and white residents. Cleaver, who was Kansas City's first Black mayor, has served in Congress for over 20 years. He won reelection with over 60% of the vote in both 2024 and 2022 in districts adopted by the Republican-led legislature after the 2020 census.
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