The Missouri House of Representatives is poised to vote on Tuesday on new congressional boundaries that would create an additional Republican-leaning district, part of President Trump’s national push to redraw maps to favor his party ahead of the midterm elections.
As lawmakers gathered at the Missouri State Capitol this week, Democrats, who are outnumbered, decried the new boundaries as “brazen,” “shameless,” cheating or “all to protect Trump,” and questioned whether drawing a new map now was even legal. States generally pass new congressional boundaries once a decade, after the results of the census are published.
“If we sanction this midcycle redraw, we will be joining the long and shameful line of the states that have used legal language to silence voters rather than to protect them,” said State Representative Kem Smith, a Democrat from the St. Louis area.
But Republicans used their large majority on Monday to advance the new map, which would split a Kansas City-based district now held by Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who has held a congressional seat for two decades. The proposed boundaries would favor Republicans in seven of Missouri’s eight districts, up from the six seats they currently hold. The new boundaries would splice Kansas City’s core into districts with large rural areas.
“This is a better map,” said State Representative Dirk Deaton, a Republican who argued that it was well within the General Assembly’s authority to revisit district lines between censuses. He added that the new map “comports with every legal standard and every constitutional requirement.”
If the map is approved by the Missouri House on Tuesday, it must still be passed by the State Senate before being sent to the desk of Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican who called the special session to draw a new map. The measure is widely expected to become law because Missouri Democrats, diminished by years of election losses, have few legislative options to slow its passage.
Still, state and national Democrats have tried to rally Missouri residents against the map by holding town halls and planning rallies, including one scheduled at the Capitol on Wednesday. The Democratic National Committee said legislators from Ohio, where new congressional maps must be drawn, are flying into Missouri for that protest. Democrats fear that conservative legislators in Ohio, Indiana and other states could follow Missouri in redrawing maps to boost Republicans’ odds of keeping their U.S. House majority.
Already this year, at Mr. Trump’s urging, Republican lawmakers in Texas have altered their state’s map to eliminate five Democratic-leaning districts. California Democrats have attempted to counter the move by presenting voters with a proposal to eliminate five Republican-leaning districts.
Inside Missouri’s limestone Capitol on Monday, Democrats accused Republicans of being beholden to Mr. Trump during a tense floor debate that stretched into the night.
“We just redistricted three years ago — three years ago,” said State Representative Wick Thomas, a Democrat from Kansas City. “So are we just going to redraw the lines every year if we don’t like the results? Is that what we think of our Republic? Of our state? Of the democratic institution?”
Democrats said the new map would dilute the voices of voters in Kansas City, the state’s most populous municipality, and some questioned whether it was an attempt to lessen the political power of Black and other nonwhite voters. Republicans and Democrats acknowledged that a court challenge of the new map would be almost certain.
Mr. Cleaver, who decades ago was elected as Kansas City’s first Black mayor, currently represents a district where white people make up a narrow majority of the population. The proposed map would not significantly change the makeup of Missouri’s other Democratic-held district, which is in the St. Louis area. A plurality of residents in that district are Black, and major boundary changes there could be vulnerable to a challenge under the Voting Rights Act.
Republican support for the new map is not unanimous. State Representative Tony Harbison, a Republican from a rural district in southeast Missouri, said during the debate on Monday that “our plate is full of things that we need to be doing for the people of this state, and this ain’t one of them.” Democrats applauded after he finished speaking.
But many others, including Governor Kehoe, have argued that the new map is good for Missouri and would help ensure that the views of the majority of residents are fully represented in Congress. Missouri was a swing state two decades ago, but Republicans now hold every statewide office. Mr. Trump carried the state last year with 59 percent of the vote, while former Vice President Kamala Harris received 40 percent.
On the House floor this week, some Republicans spoke in grave terms about what it could mean if Democrats won a congressional majority in next year’s midterms. They cited a range of policy grievances that included vaccine mandates, Covid lockdowns and transgender rights.
“My colleague across the aisle brought up the fact that President Donald J. Trump has, in fact, asked Missouri to consider redistricting, and thank God he has,” said State Representative Justin Sparks, a Republican from the St. Louis suburbs. He added that “every single vote in Congress matters now.”
During the special session, lawmakers are also weighing a measure that would make it harder for residents to amend the State Constitution through citizen initiatives. Missouri residents have used such measures in recent years to enact policies opposed by Republican politicians, such as establishing a right to abortion.
The moves have left some Missouri Democrats questioning the future not just of their policy goals, but of democracy itself.
“Our Republic is on the brink,” State Representative David Tyson Smith, a Democrat from Columbia, said in an interview. He added that “a thousand years from now, we’re going to look back and see, what did we do today?”
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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