Missouri's map mayhem
The NPR Politics Podcast
Missouri's congressional map redistricting effort, driven by Republican lawmakers following President Trump's push for more safe GOP seats, has been thrown into chaos by court rulings
Key takeaways
- Missouri Republicans attempted to create nine additional safe Republican seats through aggressive redistricting, but court challenges and public backlash disrupted their plans.
- The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that voters can referendum on federal redistricting maps, invalidating the 2025 map despite its use in the primary election.
Main topics
- Missouri congressional redistricting
- Gerrymandering and political manipulation of district lines
Notable quotes
"They could sue me. I could lose everything, but it would all be worth it if at least two people here have a spark."
Conclusion
Despite Republican efforts to reshape Missouri's congressional map in their favor, court rulings
Transcript preview
Speaker 5 (0:00) Looking for love? One New York event promises to find you your perfect match using Palantir, though not affiliated with the actual software company. Speaker 2 (0:07) They can sue me. I could lose everything, but it would all be worth it if at least two people here have a spark. So, no pressure. Speaker 5 (0:16) The facts, myths, and dark jokes surrounding Palantir. Listen to Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:24) Remember the flurry of activity when President Trump asked Republican-run states to redraw congressional district lines to favor his party? Well, in one state, the saga isn't over. Speaker 1 (0:40) It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. Speaker 4 (0:44) I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. Speaker 1 (0:45) And we are recording this at 1.07 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, September 14th. And St. Louis Public Radio's politics correspondent, Jason Rosenbaum, is also with us. Hey, Jason. Thank Speaker 3 (0:58) you so much for having me. Speaker 1 (1:00) And we are so glad to have you here. The state we are talking about is Missouri. And there have been a lot of developments in the past week or so that may or may not have interfered with your sleep. But I want to go back to the beginning. President Trump said he wanted more safe Republican congressional districts. Missouri lawmakers got together to redraw the district lines. What did those new maps look like? Speaker 3 (1:29) What happened after President Trump pressured Texas to draw about five more Republican-leaning seats is Missouri jumped into the fray. And Missouri, before 2025, had six Republican-leaning congressional districts and two safely Democratic ones. What they ended up drawing in 2025 was a map with only one safe district in St. Louis and seven. fairly safe Republican districts. And they did that by dividing Kansas City into three separate congressional districts. And they had tried to do this in 2022, right after the census. But Republicans actually decided not to go along with breaking up Kansas City because they felt it could backfire in a bad Republican year by putting so much Democratic-leaning territory into largely rural areas. Donald Trump said jump and the Republicans decided to jump really high in this instance. Speaker 4 (2:32) This one district that they were basically drawing out was trying to eliminate a district that's been held for a while by Representative Emanuel Cleaver, who is a longtime black Democrat there. What can you tell us about him, Jason? Speaker 3 (2:45) Cleaver is a historic. figure in Missouri politics. He was the first black mayor of Kansas City. He has served in Congress since 2005. And he has actually a pretty good reputation of forging meaningful relationships with Republicans. When I talked with him last week, he called former Republican Senator Kit Bond his brother, like because they worked so closely when he was mayor and when they were both in Congress. And so he doesn't really have a reputation among Republicans of being a bomb thrower. In fact, his reputation is of being very collaborative, even with people he disagrees with. But his district at the time was essentially crackable. Even though he is an African-American lawmaker, his district is not a majority minority district. And so Republicans were able to break it up in 2025. And I think that he saw this as a huge betrayal of not only the voters, but to the tangible goodwill that he tried to put forward to a party that he disagrees with all the time. Speaker 1 (3:56) And that could have been the end of the story, but it wasn't because Missouri residents gathered signatures for a voter referendum that would throw out this new map. Speaker 1 (4:10) they succeeded at getting enough signatures, right? Speaker 3 (4:13) They did. In fact, there were a number of Republican insiders back in 2025 who seriously doubted that enough signatures would be gathered because the time frame to gather the signatures was so short compared to other initiative petitions in Missouri. But not only did they get the baseline amount of signatures, they got triple the amount of signatures in roughly three months. They couldn't just get signatures in Kansas City and St. Louis, which were heavily Democratic. They had to get it in six out of eight congressional districts, including places that are Republican-leaning or heavily Republican. So I think that really showed that there was a lot of voter angst and backlash over this. And the fact that there was a way to tangibly push back against it through the referendum process. I actually kind of was exciting to a lot of voters who who who felt that this gerrymandering push was an affront to their sensibilities. And Speaker 1 (5:14) of course, then that also wasn't the end of the story. There's a lot of Speaker 4 (5:18) that wasn't in the story that I feel like this has like nine layers, I feel like. So Speaker 1 (5:22) let's peel back the next layer. Then the courts got involved. Speaker 3 (5:26) Yes. So there have been like 12 court cases involved with this referendum. I'm just going to try to get to the most important ones. Missouri Secretary of