Republicans Tuesday brought their extraordinary redistricting push to Missouri as President Donald Trump seeks to hold onto control of Congress by using gerrymandered maps to squeeze more GOP seats out of red states ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
GOP lawmakers passed a plan to chop up Kansas City’s congressional district to oust incumbent Democratic Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, the city’s first Black mayor, which would likely create a 7-1 state delegation, up from the current 6-2 edge in the Show Me State.
Kansas City residents people have denounced the new Republican map, which got the green light Monday and was expected to win final approval later Tuesday.
“Kansas City does not want to be divided. We deserve representation and a voice,” Kristen Ellis Johnson, an attorney from Kansas City who came to the Capitol with her husband and daughter, said at a public hearing last week.
It’s the latest move in Trump’s unprecedented no-holds-barred effort to cling to control of both houses of Congress by redrawing maps in red states in the middle of the decade.
Trump is in a tricky political environment with voters souring on his second term economic plans, including tariffs on imported goods that are driving up prices for consumers, and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
He wants to ram through new maps because Democrats would otherwise need to gain just three seats in the 2026 elections to take control of the House and install Brooklyn’s Rep. Hakeem Jeffries as House Speaker.
History says the party of the sitting president typically loses House seats in midterm elections, as happened during Trump’s first term in office.
Republicans started the unexpected redistricting war in Texas, where they overcame fierce Democratic resistance to pass a map that will likely pick up five seats. Now they are eyeing the additional seat in Missouri and one or even two seats in Indiana, plus two or three in Ohio.
Democrats are countering by seeking to redraw district lines in deep-blue California, which could help them pick up five seats of their own.
A Utah judge last week ordered the state’s Republican leaders to draw a new map that could result in Democrats picking up one out of the state’s four GOP-held seats next year.
New York Democrats are pushing to enact a new law that might allow them to rejigger the state’s congressional districts, which are now split 19-7. But any change would not go into effect until 2028.
Other states on both sides of the partisan divide could do likewise, including Florida, Maryland and Illinois.
The Supreme Court has ruled that gerrymandering for partisan advantage is legal, even though it effectively can make it impossible for out-of-power parties to win seats commensurate with their share of the electorate.
