Missouri Court Clears Trump-Backed Map for November

Missouri's current U.S. House delegation is six Republicans and two Democrats, elected under boundaries drawn after the 2020 census. The revised map is designed to help Republicans defeat Cleaver, of Kansas City: it reassigns portions of Kansas City to two neighboring districts held by Republicans and stretches the rest of his 5th District far eastward into Republican-heavy rural areas. About 59% of the district's voters are new to it, according to an Associated Press estimate.

Missouri's mid-decade redistricting has been among the most litigated in the country, triggering about a dozen lawsuits over the past year. The Missouri Constitution neither authorizes nor forbids a referendum on congressional maps, which is how the question landed in court. It has been more than 100 years since a Missouri redistricting plan faced one: in 1922, voters rejected a new congressional map passed by the Republican-led Legislature, and the legitimacy of that petition was never challenged in court.

Nationally, Republicans hope to win as many as 16 additional seats from new House maps enacted in eight states — Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama. Democrats, whose counterattack has hit several setbacks, believe they could pick up as many as six seats from new districts in California and Utah. Whether the strategy pays off is unsettled: the president's party historically loses congressional seats in the midterms, and the Associated Press notes Trump's poor approval ratings could be an added hurdle for Republican candidates.