After Missouri, what state is next? A redistricting race started by Trump continues

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Missouri is the latest state redrawing its voting map to help Republicans hold onto their majority in the U.S. House. The state Senate voted Friday for a redistricting plan requested by President Trump that would help Republicans win a seat now held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

The plan now goes to Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe, who’s expected to sign it. He had already called on lawmakers to approve the map he says reflects “Missouri’s conservative, common sense values.”

Missouri Democrats said this is a gerrymander that dilutes the votes of Black voters, especially around Kansas City, where voters will be split into different congressional districts. Two lawsuits have already been filed against the plan and a group is organizing a voter petition drive that could block it.

States usually redistrict at the start of the decade following the national census but Trump has set off a redistricting race around the country. Holding the Republican advantage in the U.S. House is key to Trump’s agenda and protects his administration from investigations that a Democratic-led House might launch.

Trump convinced Texas lawmakers to draw new maps that could help Republicans win five more seats. He’s called on other Republican-led states to redraw their maps too and the issue is rippling across the country.

Trump got the redistricting race going this year in the face of high-stakes midterms

In the last six midterm elections, the party that held the White House has lost seats in the U.S. House. Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants states to redistrict to help Republicans hold onto the House.

In July, he called on Texas lawmakers to give Republicans an advantage in five more seats in that state and they did.

Trump has urged Indiana and Florida to follow and that could yield one or two additional wins for Republicans in each place. Republicans there are considering their options.

Democratic states threaten to counter with their own redistricting

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom led the Legislature in countering Texas by drawing a map that would help his party win five seats there. That plan will go to voters for approval in an election Nov. 4, after what’s expected to be an expensive statewide campaign.

Like several other states, California had left redistricting to an independent commission designed to reduce political influence on the process. The partisan map, if passed at the polls, would replace the independent commission’s work for the next three elections.

The governors of Illinois and Maryland have left the door open to redistricting that could yield an edge for Democrats in a congressional seat or two in each state. New York could also try to redistrict but couldn’t allow it to take effect until the 2028 election.

Then there are two outlier states. Ohio’s current map is expiring because it didn’t meet state requirements for bipartisan support when it passed in 2022. That could end up yielding Republicans a couple more advantageous seats.

And in Republican-led Utah, a court found that the state’s current map was the product of illegal political gerrymandering and has ordered a new one be drawn. That could yield a seat ripe for a Democrat to win. But the Republican-led Legislature is challenging that order in court.

How does redistricting work?

There are 435 members of the U.S. House representing about 760,000 people each. Every 10 years, as populations change, the national census shows how many seats each state gets and the states draw new district maps.

However people vote, the way their votes are divided up into districts can determine how many seats favor Republican or Democratic candidates. Gerrymandering is the name for when the party in power draws the lines to favor their candidates, sometimes ending up with irregularly shaped districts that make a district lean toward a party.

Gerrymandering for political advantage is legal in many states. But it can make their congressional delegations more heavily tilted to one party than the population is in general and it can lead to a more polarized, gridlocked Congress.

It’s illegal to gerrymander to dilute the voting power of a racial group. That’s often been done by “cracking” communities into different districts or “packing” them together to take them from neighboring districts.

These laws, under the Voting Rights Act, could be reconsidered by the U.S. Supreme Court in a case it is scheduled to hear in October. That could lead more states to redraw their lines.