{"id":262980,"date":"2025-09-29T05:01:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T05:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/262980\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T05:01:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T05:01:12","slug":"missouri-governor-signs-trump-backed-redistricting-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/262980\/","title":{"rendered":"Missouri governor signs Trump-backed redistricting plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed a new U.S. House map<\/a> into law Sunday as part of President Donald Trump\u2019s plan to try to hold on to a narrow Republican majority in next year\u2019s congressional election. <\/p>\n

Kehoe\u2019s signature puts the revised districts into state law with a goal of helping Republicans win one additional seat. But it may not be the final action. Opponents are pursuing a referendum petition that, if successful, would force a statewide vote on the new map. They also have brought several lawsuits against it.<\/p>\n

U.S. House districts were redrawn across the country after the 2020 census to account for population changes. But Missouri is the third state this year to try to redraw its districts for partisan advantage, a process known as gerrymandering<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Republican lawmakers in Texas<\/a> passed a new U.S. House map last month aimed at helping their party win five additional seats. Democratic lawmakers in California<\/a> countered with their own redistricting plan aimed at winning five more seats, though it still needs voter approval. Other states<\/a> also are considering redistricting. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s agenda and launch investigations into him. Trump is trying to stave off a historic trend in which the president\u2019s party typically loses seats in midterm elections. <\/p>\n

Republicans currently hold six of Missouri\u2019s eight U.S. House seats. The new map targets a seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver<\/a> by shaving off portions of his Kansas City district and stretching the rest of it into Republican-heavy rural areas. It reduces the number of Black and minority residents in Cleaver\u2019s district, which he has represented for two decades after serving as Kansas City\u2019s first Black mayor. <\/p>\n

Cleaver has denounced the redistricting plan<\/a> for using Kansas City\u2019s Troost Avenue \u2014 a street that has long segregated Black and white residents \u2014 as one of the dividing lines for the new districts.<\/p>\n

Kehoe has defended the new map as a means of boosting Missouri\u2019s \u201cconservative, common-sense values\u201d in the nation\u2019s capital. <\/p>\n

\u201cMissourians are more alike than we are different, and our values, across both sides of the aisle, are closer to each other than those of the congressional representation of states like New York, California, and Illinois. We believe this map best represents Missourians, and I appreciate the support and efforts of state legislators, our congressional delegation, and President Trump in getting this map to my desk,\u201d Kehoe said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Kehoe signed the new law during an event that was closed to the public. <\/p>\n

Opponents are gathering petition signatures seeking to force a statewide referendum on the new map. They have until Dec. 11 to submit around 110,000 valid signatures, which would put the map on hold until a public vote can occur sometime next year. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, opponents also are pursuing a variety of legal challenges. Several lawsuits by voters, including a new one announced Sunday by a Democratic-affilated group, contend mid-decade redistricting isn\u2019t allowed under Missouri\u2019s constitution. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not prompted by the law or a court order; it was the result of Republican lawmakers in Missouri following partisan directives from politicians in Washington, D.C.,\u201d said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.<\/p>\n

A previously filed lawsuit by the NAACP contends no \u201cextraordinary occasion\u201d existed for Kehoe to call lawmakers into session<\/a> for redistricting. <\/p>\n

A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union also asserts that the new Kansas City area districts violate state constitutional requirements to be compact and contain equal populations. It notes that the redistricting legislation lists a \u201cKC 811\u201d voting precinct in both the fourth and fifth congressional districts, which it asserts is grounds to invalidate the new map. <\/p>\n

But Kehoe\u2019s office said there is no error. It said other government agencies had assigned the same name to two distinct voting locations. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Juan A. Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed a new U.S. House map into law Sunday…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":262981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[276,69,90,57,2055,18818,362,2934,59974,49231,9540,21719,50,80,22204,27604,358,5028,61,322,67,326,132,68,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-262980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-government-and-politics","14":"tag-kansas-city","15":"tag-legal-proceedings","16":"tag-legislation","17":"tag-marina-jenkins","18":"tag-mike-kehoe","19":"tag-missouri","20":"tag-mo-state-wire","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-redistricting","24":"tag-referendums","25":"tag-texas","26":"tag-tx-state-wire","27":"tag-u-s-news","28":"tag-u-s-republican-party","29":"tag-united-states","30":"tag-united-states-house-of-representatives","31":"tag-unitedstates","32":"tag-us","33":"tag-washington-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115285831973141994","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}