Jefferson City, Mo. (AP) – Missouri’s residents condemned a plan on Thursday to re -draw the state’s congress districts when the Republican legislature advised President Donald Trump’s strategy to strengthen the Republicans in the next year.
Dozens of humans turned out to be a plan for the first public hearing on a plan that divided a congress district in Kansas to give the Republicans a shot to win eight US house seats. The Republicans already hold six of these seats.
“Kansas City does not want to be shared. We deserve representation and a voice,” said Kristen Ellis Johnson, a lawyer from Kansas City, who came to the Capitol with her husband and daughter. “They share the urban, liberally irritated population to deliberately change these voices.”
A committee guided by Republicans nevertheless approved the plan and took him a step closer to a house debate next week.
Missouri is the third state that joins an emerging national struggle between Republicans and Democrats, which in the way the US house districts are drawn.
At Trump’s Prodding, Texas, his US house districts designed last month to give Republicans the chance to win five additional seats. California countered with its own revised map to give Democrats a shot to win five other US house seats. The California plan still needs the approval of the voters in November.
The missions are high because the Democrats National Nation only have to win three seats in the 2026 elections to take control of the house. And historically, the President’s party usually loses seats of the congress in the intermediate elections, as it happened during Trump’s first office.
The district of Kansas City would merged with rural areas
Missouris’ revised congress card, as the Republican governor Mike Kehoe was proposed, would stretch out a seat from Democratic MP Emanuel Cleaver from Kansas City to capture rural Republican areas.
While the legislators heard public criticism in Jefferson City, some opponents held a press conference in Kansas City near the point where three of the newly proposed districts would cross. Edgar Palacios, President and CEO of the Latinx Education Collaborative, wore Schwarz for the event to decrypt the redistribution proposal.
“It feels like this that we are at a funeral – a funeral for democracy in Missouri,” said Palacios. “This gerrymander runs directly against everything we fight for. It is called loudly and clearly:” Your voice, her community, her voice doesn’t matter. “
Ashley Sadowski, a mother whose 7- and 11-year-old students are at public schools in Kansas City, said that the proposed map could have an impact that gains over the elections.
“This means that I would drive from my house in a congress district to my son’s middle school in another congress district,” she said. “That makes no sense.”
“Politicians refuse our children the uniform voice they earn in DC,” added Sadowski.
At the hearing of the legislative, the lobbyist Shannon Cooper said that the city of Kansas rejected the revised map because one person has to bring most of the city in the US house to federal jobs and projects.
Some rural residents also said that they did not want to be combined in the same district as Kansas City.
“If you do this, the people in Kansas City will not meet your needs in the congress. Your voice is completely thinned out,” said Glenda Bainbridge, a democrat from rural Odessa, compared to the Associated Press when she was waiting to testify against the bill.
Only one person spoke at the hearing for the up-to-date card. A leader of Missouri said right to life
Missouri redistribution process for a legal challenge
MP Dirk Deaton, who sponsors the redistribution legislation, said the proposed map would share fewer counties and cities in several districts than the current congress districts.
“It is an improvement. It is a reform of our current congress card,” said Deaton.
He did not publicly announce demographic data that show the racist composition of the newly proposed districts. The Republican legislator said that he had no data on the estimated partisan composition of the voters.
State MP Mark Sharp from Kansas City, the ruined democrat in the redistribution committee, condemned the plan as a “morally corrupt” attempt to “go into an early retirement”.
Cleaver said he would question the up-to-date card in court if it passes.
The NAACP in Missouri has already filed a lawsuit before the state court who wants to hire the special meeting. It is argued that Kehoe’s demand for a special meeting is unconstitutional because there is no extraordinary fact to justify it. It is also said that Missouri’s constitution prohibits the up-to-date creation of congress districts without up-to-date census data or a judgment that invalidates the current districts.
Only one district was still moderately competitive under the current map of Missouri. Republican US MP Ann Wagner won her suburb of St. Louis in the last two elections with about 55% of the votes. Cleaver won the re -election with over 60% of the votes in 2024 and 2022, and most of the other districts of Missouri had even larger victory margins.
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The reporters of Associated Press, Heather Hollingsworth and Nicholas Ingram, contributed from Kansas City, Missouri.
