Missouri Senate passes Trump-backed plan that could help Republicans win
an additional US House seat
[September 13, 2025]
By DAVID A. LIEB
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Republicans handed President Donald
Trump a political victory Friday, giving final legislative approval to a
redistricting plan that could help Republicans win an additional U.S.
House seat in next year’s elections.
The Senate vote sends the redistricting plan to Republican Gov. Mike
Kehoe, who said he will sign it into law soon. But opponents immediately
announced a referendum petition that, if successful, could force a
statewide vote on the new map.
“This fight is not over. Missouri voters — not politicians — will have
the final say,” said Elsa Rainey, a spokesperson for People Not
Politicians, which is leading the referendum effort.
U.S. House districts were redrawn across the country after the 2020
census to account for population changes. But Missouri is the third
state to take up mid-decade redistricting this year in an emerging
national battle for partisan advantage ahead of the midterm elections.
Republican lawmakers in Texas passed a new U.S. 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.
Other states also are considering redistricting.
Each seat could be critical, because 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 him. Trump is trying to
stave off a historic trend in which the president’s party typically
loses seats in midterm elections.
On his social media site Friday, Trump touted Missouri's “much fairer,
and much improved, Congressional map” that he said “will help send an
additional MAGA Republican to Congress in the 2026 Midterm Elections.”
Missouri Republicans are targeting a Kansas City district
Republicans currently hold six of Missouri’s eight U.S. House seats. The
revised map passed the Republican-led state House earlier this week as
the focal point of a special session called by Kehoe that also includes
a proposal making it harder for citizen-initiated constitutional
amendments to win voter approval. That proposal, which still needs voter
ratification, would require future initiated amendments to pass in each
of Missouri's congressional districts instead of by a simple statewide
majority. No other state has such a standard.
The Republican-led Senate passed both measures Friday after changing the
chamber’s rules, then shutting off Democratic opponents. Senate Minority
Leader Doug Beck said afterward that he plans to help gather the more
than 100,000 signatures needed in 90 days to force a referendum on the
redistricting plan.
Kehoe has promoted the reshaped districts as a way 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 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 has
served as a historical segregation line between Black and white
residents.
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People opposed to a plan to redraw Missouri's U.S. House districts
gather at the state Capitol in Jefferson City, Mo. on Wednesday,
Sept. 10, 2025. (Christian Gooden/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)
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 under districts adopted by the state
Legislature after the 2020 census. He said he plans to challenge the
new map in court and seek reelection in 2026, regardless of the
shape 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 said in a
statement Friday.
Three lawsuits already have been brought, including two Friday on
behalf of voters who contend mid-decade redistricting isn't allowed
under the Missouri Constitution. A hearing is scheduled for Monday
on another lawsuit previously filed by the NAACP.
Kansas City residents raise concerns about new districts
Cleaver's revised Kansas City district would stretch from near the
city’s St. James United Methodist Church — which Cleaver once led —
180 miles (290 kilometers) southeast to include another United
Methodist church in rural Vienna. In the neighborhood around
Cleaver’s hometown church, where his son is now pastor, about 60% of
residents are Black or a mix of Black and another race, according to
U.S. Census Bureau data. By contrast, the area around Vienna has
just 11 Black residents out of nearly 2,500 people.
Democratic state Sen. Barbara Washington of Kansas City, who
described Cleaver as her longtime pastor, said the new map “erases
the voice of my community.”
“Carving up Kansas City and silencing our constituents is terrible,”
Washington said.
Kansas City resident Roger C. Williams Jr., a 79-year-old former
middle-school principal, said the effort to reshape congressional
districts reminds him of the discrimination he witnessed against
Black residents while growing 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 said.
Republican lawmakers said little during Senate debate. But
sponsoring state Rep. Dirk Deaton, a Republican, has said the new
map splits fewer overall counties and municipalities into multiple
districts than the current one.
Republican Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O'Laughlin said in a
statement after the Senate vote that the map "strengthens Missouri’s
conservative voice and ensures every Missourian is fairly
represented in Washington.”
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Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City,
Missouri, and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this
report.
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