Missouri Republicans Now Also Poised to Do Trump’s Mid-Cycle Redistricting Dirty Work
This is your TPM evening briefing.
While Missouri Democrats stage protests and push Republican leadership to engage with them, it appears that Republicans in the Missouri state House will ultimately be able to pass redrawn congressional district maps this week, bowing to pressure from the Trump administration.
Two weeks ago, Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe unveiled the new congressional map — which he called a “Missouri First” map, in MAGA fashion — and called for a special session for the map to be approved. If approved, the proposed map would drastically change the congressional district that currently sits in the Kansas City-area of Missouri, which has been represented by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver — who was also the first Black mayor of Kansas City — for years. The map would, essentially, split up part of the city and add rural territory to that district, changing the contours of it so that seven of the eight U.S. House districts in Missouri would favor Republicans.
It’s all part of President Trump’s effort to force red state legislatures where Republicans have supermajorities to redraw their maps mid-cycle so that Republicans have a better chance of keeping the U.S. House in the 2026 midterms. Typically, state lawmakers or independent redistricting commissions redraw state congressional maps after each U.S. Census, rather than engaging in the mid-decade, highly partisan gerrymandering of the sort that Trump is encouraging in order to keep his hold on the federal government (and to avoid giving Democrats investigative and oversight power in the House).
While Republican state House members maintain that the map was drawn by staffers in the governor’s office, Democrats have argued that the map was likely drawn by the White House. They vocalized those beliefs when the map was voted out of state House committees last week.
“I think that everyone watching actually understands that the people who drew these maps are sitting in D.C.,” Democratic state Rep. Ashley Aune, the minority leader in the state House, said on Thursday. “It’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.”
Regardless of where the map was drawn, it is clear that the White House’s pressure campaign had considerable impact in Missouri. In 2022 there was some interest in trying to redraw the lines of Cleaver’s district, but Republicans in the state House and Senate rejected the measure, saying it could backfire. There is still, reportedly, some concern among the Republicans who support the redrawn map of the same problem this time around. Per St. Louis NPR station STLPR:
The decision to advance Deaton’s bill is a reversal from 2022, when many Republicans in the House and Senate rejected a map that targeted Cleaver. Some GOP lawmakers said that such a plan could backfire and make Alford and Graves’ districts more competitive. And even Republicans who back the plan now concede that the new version of Cleaver’s district, which connects Kansas City to a number of rural counties, could be winnable forDemocrats in a bad election year for the GOP.
After the map was moved out of committee last week, a handful of Democratic state House members spent the weekend conducting a sit-in in the House chamber of the state Capitol both in protest of the measure and to try to force Republican leadership to listen to their concerns about the redrawn map, which the state House spent Monday afternoon debating. It is expected to vote on and pass the measure early this week.
“Republican lawmakers, at the urging of Donald Trump, are pushing through a mid-cycle gerrymander that slices up Kansas City and silences the voices of thousands of Missourians,” Democratic state Rep. Ray Reed told TPM Friday before spending the weekend in the state House. “They refused to acknowledge us on the floor, broke rules meant to safeguard debate, and then left for the weekend — while we stayed put. We chose to hold the floor because the people of Missouri deserve better than a map designed to entrench power at the expense of their voice.”
“Our sit-in is not an act of defiance for defiance’s sake. It is an act of faith. Faith in the idea that democracy belongs to all of us. Faith in the idea that when people see what’s being done in their name, they will not stay silent. Faith in the long arc of history, which bends toward justice only when we help bend it,” he continued.
Local Chicago Officials Not Seeing the Kind of Crackdown Trump Has Been Bragging About Yet
After the president posted a beefy fake cartoon-like photo of himself declaring war on Chicago and its immigrant population over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Monday announcing Operation Midway Blitz as the name of its effort to arrest a bunch of undocumented immigrants in the city in coming days and weeks.
“This ICE operation will target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets,” the DHS statement released Monday said.
There are some reports that the Trump administration plans to stage the operation from a naval base outside of Chicago. As of Monday, local officials told the New York Times they’ve only seen a few arrests so far. Per the Times:
Local officials and advocates for immigrants said that residents seemed to be bracing for arrests, but that few had been witnessed as of Monday morning. At least three people were arrested on the Southwest Side of Chicago on Sunday, according to the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which closely tracks immigration enforcement activity.
And it appears that those who have been arrested don’t exactly have the kind of raging criminal record that the Trump administration described in its plans.
“They’re targeting hardworking people in the community. … At this point, everybody is a target,” Chicago city council member Jeylú B. Gutiérrez told the Times.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration today in granting an emergency appeal that lifts a U.S. district judge’s restraining order that blocked ICE agents in LA from stopping and detaining people on the streets based solely on what they look like, what language they speak and where they work.
In a 6-3 vote with all liberal justices dissenting, the high court has allowed immigration agents to continue conducting “roving patrols” in LA, meaning they can stop and detain anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally.
Per the LA Times:
Although Monday’s order is not a final ruling, it strongly signals the Supreme Court will not uphold strict limits on the authority of immigration agents to stop people for questioning.
The court’s conservatives issued a brief, unsigned order that freezes the district judge’s restraining order indefinitely and frees immigration agents from it. As a practical matter, it gives immigration agents broad authority to stop people who they think may be here illegally.
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