Another red state could collect an additional seat from the United States house

Jefferson City, Mo. (AP) – The Republicans of Missouri gave President Donald Trump a political victory on Friday, giving the final legislative approval to a district redistribution plan that could help Republicans win an additional seat in the United States Chamber in the elections next year.

The vote of the Senate sends the redistribution plan of districts to the Republican governor Mike Kehoe, who said he will sign it soon. But the opponents immediately announced a request for referendum that, if it succeeds, it could force a state vote in the new map.

“This fight is not over. Missouri voters, not politicians, will have the last word,” said Elsa Rainey, spokesman for non -political people, which leads the referendum’s effort.

The districts of the House of Representatives were redesigned throughout the country after the 2020 census to take into account population changes. But Missouri is the third state to take redistribution of districts of the decade this year in an emerging national battle for partisan advantage before the middle of the period elections.

Republican legislators in Texas approved a new map of the United States house last month with the aim of helping their match win additional seats. Democratic legislators in California countered with their own redistribution plan for districts aimed at winning five more seats, but still needs the approval of voters. Other states are also considering the redistribution of districts.

Each seat could be critical, because the Democrats must obtain only three seats to gain control of the camera, which would allow them to obstruct Trump’s agenda and launch research on it. Trump is trying to avoid a historical tendency in which the president’s party generally loses seats in the mid -period elections.

On his social media site on Friday, Trump promoted the “Map of the Congress much more fair and very improved in Congress” that said “will help send an additional magician republican to Congress in the mid -period of the period of 2026”.

Missouri Republicans are pointing to a Kansas City district

Republicans currently have six of the eight seats of the Missouri representatives chamber. The revised map approved the State House led by Republicans earlier this week as the focal point of a special session convened by Kehoe that also includes a proposal that makes it difficult for the constitutional amendments initiated by Citizens to win the approval of the voters. That proposal, which still needs the ratification of the voters, would require that the amendments initiated future be approved in each of the districts of the Missouri Congress instead of by a simple state majority. No other state has such a standard.

The Senate led by the Republicans approved both measures on Friday after changing the camera rules, then closing the Democratic opponents. The senate minority leader, Doug Beck, said later that he plans to help gather the more than 100,000 firms needed in 90 days to force a referendum in the district redistribution plan.

Kehoe has promoted remodeling districts as a way to amplify the “conservative values ​​of common sense of Missouri” in Washington, DC

Missouri’s revised map goes to a seat held by Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver to shave portions of his district of Kansas City and extend the rest in republican rural areas. The plan reduces the number of black and minority residents in the Cleaver district, partly when creating a dividing line along a street that has served as a line of historical segregation among black and white residents.

Cleaver, who was the first black mayor of Kansas City, has served in Congress for more than 20 years. He won the re -election with more than 60% of the votes both in 2024 and 2022 under the districts adopted by the state legislature after the 2020 census. He said he plans to challenge the new map in court and seek re -election in 2026, regardless of the form of his district.

“Together, in court and in the streets, we will continue to press to ensure that the law is confirmed, justice prevails and this unconstitutional Gerrymander is defeated,” Cleaver said in a statement on Friday.

Three demands have already been filed, including two Fridays in the name of the voters who support the redistribution of districts in the middle of the decade is not allowed under the Constitution of Missouri. A hearing is scheduled for Monday on another demand previously filed by the NAACP.

Kansas City residents pose concerns about the new districts

The revised district of Kansas City de Cleaver would extend from the Methodist Church St. James United of the city, which Cleaver once led: 180 miles (290 kilometers) to the southeast to include another Methodist Church together in Vienna Rural. In the neighborhood around the Church of the hometown of Cleaver, where his son is now a shepherd, about 60% of the residents are black or a mixture of black and another race, according to data from the United States Census Office. On the contrary, the area around Vienna has only 11 black residents of almost 2,500 people.

Democratic state senator Barbara Washington by Kansas City, who described Cleaver as her former shepherd, said the new map “erases the voice of my community.”

“Talking the city of Kansas and silencing our voters is terrible,” Washington said.

Via News

The resident of Kansas City, Roger C. Williams Jr., former director of the 79 -year -old intermediate school, said the effort to remodel the districts of the congress reminds him of the discrimination he witnessed against the black residents while growing in Arkansas.

“What the Republicans are doing now in the state of Missouri is that they are taking me back to a time when I, or the people who seemed to me, we would not have a chance, because they would not have a voice,” he said.

Republican legislators said little during the Senate debate. But sponsoring state representative Dirk Deaton, a Republican, said the new map divides less counties and general municipalities in multiple districts than the current one.

The president of the Republican Senate, Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, said in a statement after the vote of the Senate that the map “strengthens the conservative voice of Missouri and ensures that each misurian is quite represented in Washington.”

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News Heather Hollingsworth writers in Kansas City, Missouri and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.