Cleaver

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Rev. Emanuel Cleaver III wants a second civil rights movement in response to President Trump and his fellow Republicans who are redrawing congressional district boundaries to increase their power in Washington.

In Missouri, the GOP’s effort comes at the expense of Cleaver’s father, Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, and many of his Kansas City constituents, who fear a national redistricting scramble will reverse gains Black Americans won two generations ago and will leave them without effective representation on Capitol Hill.

“If we, the people of faith, do not step up, we are going to go back even further,” the younger Cleaver told the St. James Church congregation on a recent Sunday, drawing affirmations of “amen” in the sanctuary where his father, also a minister, launched his first congressional bid in 2004.

Trump and fellow Republicans admit their partisan intent, emboldened by a Supreme Court that has allowed gerrymandering based on voters’ party leanings. Democratic-run California has proposed its own redraw to mitigate GOP gains elsewhere.

Yet new maps in Texas and Missouri — drafted in unusual mid-decade redistricting efforts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections — are meant to enable Republican victories by manipulating how districts are drawn.

Civil rights advocates, leaders and affected voters say that amounts to race-based gerrymandering, something the Supreme Court has blocked when it finds minority communities are effectively prevented from electing representatives of their choice.

“It’s almost like a redistricting civil war,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, whose organization is suing to block the Texas and Missouri plans.

‘Packing and cracking’

In redistricting lingo, it’s called “packing and cracking.” Those maneuvers are at the heart of Trump’s push for friendlier GOP districts as he tries to avoid reprising 2018, when midterms yielded a House Democratic majority that stymied his agenda and impeached him twice.

Because nonwhite voters lean Democratic and white voters tilt Republican, concentrating certain minorities into fewer districts — packing — can reduce the number of minority Democrats in a legislative body. By spreading geographically concentrated minority voters across many districts — cracking — it can diminish their power in choosing lawmakers.

The elder Cleaver, seeking an 11th term, said the Trump-driven plans foster an atmosphere of intimidation and division, and he and fellow Kansas City residents fear the city could lose federal investments in infrastructure, police and other services.

“We will be cut short,” said Meredith Shellner, a retired nurse who predicted losses in education and healthcare access. “I just think it’s not going to be good for anybody.”

Missouri’s U.S. House delegation has six white Republicans and two Black Democrats. The new map, which could still require voter approval if a referendum petition is successful, sets the GOP up for a 7-1 advantage.

Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe says the new map better represents Missouri’s conservative values. And sponsoring state Rep. Dirk Deaton says it divides fewer counties and municipalities than the current districts.

“This is a superior map,” the Republican legislator said.

Cleaver’s current 5th District is not majority Black but includes much of Kansas City’s Black population. New lines carve Black neighborhoods into multiple districts. The new 5th District reaches well beyond the city and would make it harder for the 80-year-old Cleaver or any other Democrat to win in 2026.

In Texas, Abbott insists no racism is involved

A new Texas map, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law, is designed to send five more Republicans to Washington, widening his party’s 25-13 advantage to a 30-8 one.

The old map had 22 districts where a majority of voters identified as white only. Seven were Latino-majority and nine were coalition districts, meaning no racial or ethnic group had a majority. By redistributing voters, the new map has 24 white-majority districts, eight Latino-majority districts, two Black-majority districts and four coalition districts.

Abbott insists new boundaries will produce more Latino representatives. But they’ll likely reduce the number of Black lawmakers by scrambling coalition districts that currently send Black Democrats to Washington.

Democratic Rep. Al Green was drawn out of his district and plans to move to seek another term. On the House floor, the Black lawmaker called GOP gerrymandering another chapter in a “sinful history” of Texas making it harder for nonwhites to vote or for their votes to matter.

Green said it would hollow out the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “if Texas prevails with these maps and can remove five people simply because a president says those five belong to me.”

The NAACP has asked a federal court to block the Texas plan. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act broadly prohibits districts and other election laws that limit minority representation.

The NAACP’s Johnson suggested Republicans are playing word games.

“Was this done for partisan reasons? Was it done for race? Or is partisanship the vehicle to cloak your racial animus and the outcomes that you’re pursuing?” he asked.

In Missouri, the NAACP has sued in state court under the rules controlling when the governor can call a special session. Essentially, it argues Kehoe faced no extenuating circumstance justifying a redistricting session, typically held once a decade after the federal census.

Saundra Powell, a 77-year-old retired teacher, framed the redistricting effort as backsliding.

She recalls as a first-grader not being able to attend the all-white school three blocks from her home. She changed schools only after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional in 1954.

“It seems worse 1758147903 than what it was,” Powell said.

Hollingsworth, Barrow and Ingram write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta. AP reporter John Hanna contributed from Topeka, Kan.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Republicans handed President Trump a political victory Friday, giving final legislative approval to a redistricting plan that could help Republicans win an additional U.S. House seat in next year’s elections.

The Senate vote sends the redistricting plan to Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe for his expected signature to make it law. But opponents immediately announced a referendum petition that, if successful, could force a statewide vote on the new map.

“This fight is not over. Missouri voters — not politicians — will have the final say,” said Elsa Rainey, a spokesperson for People Not Politicians, which is leading the referendum effort.

U.S. House districts were redrawn across the country after the 2020 census to account for population changes. But Missouri is the third state to take up mid-decade redistricting this year in an emerging national battle for partisan advantage ahead of the midterm elections.

Republican lawmakers in Texas passed a new U.S. House map last month aimed at helping their party win five additional seats. Democratic lawmakers in California countered with their own redistricting plan aimed at winning five more seats, but it still needs voter approval. Other states could follow with their own redistricting.

Each seat could be critical, because Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House, which would allow them to obstruct Trump’s agenda and launch investigations into him. Trump is trying to stave off a historic trend in which the president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections.

Republicans currently hold six of Missouri’s eight U.S. House seats. The revised map passed the Republican-led state House earlier this week as the focal point of a special session called by Kehoe that also includes a proposal making it harder for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to win voter approval.

The Republican-led Senate passed both measures Friday after changing the chamber’s rules, then shutting off Democratic opponents.

Kehoe promoted the reshaped districts as a way to amplify “Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values” in Washington.

Trump had pressed Missouri officials to act, asserting on his social media site earlier this week that the Senate “must pass this Map now, AS IS, to deliver a gigantic Victory for Republicans.”

Missouri’s revised map targets a seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver by shaving off portions of his Kansas City district and stretching the rest of it into Republican-heavy rural areas. The plan reduces the number of Black and minority residents in Cleaver’s district, partly by creating a dividing line along a street that has served as a historical segregation line between Black and white residents.

Cleaver, who was Kansas City’s first Black mayor, has served in Congress for over 20 years. He won reelection with over 60% of the vote in both 2024 and 2022 under districts adopted by the Republican-led state Legislature after the 2020 census.

Cleaver has said he plans to challenge the new map in court and seek reelection in 2026, regardless of the shape of his district.

Cleaver’s revised Kansas City district would stretch from near the city’s St. James United Methodist Church — which Cleaver once led — 180 miles southeast to include another United Methodist church in rural Vienna. In the neighborhood around Cleaver’s hometown church, where his son is now pastor, about 60% of the residents are Black or a mix of Black and another race, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. By contrast, the area around Vienna has just 11 Black residents out of nearly 2,500 people.

Democratic state Sen. Barbara Washington of Kansas City, who described Cleaver as her longtime pastor, said the new map “erases the voice of my community.”

“Carving up Kansas City and silencing our constituents is terrible,” Washington said.

Kansas City resident Roger C. Williams Jr., a 79-year-old former middle-school principal, said the effort to reshape congressional districts reminds him of the discrimination he witnessed against Black residents while growing up in Arkansas.

“What Republicans are doing now in the state of Missouri is they’re taking me back to a time when I, or people that looked like me, would not have an opportunity, because they wouldn’t have a voice,” he said.

Republican lawmakers said little during Senate debate. But sponsoring state Rep. Dirk Deaton, a Republican, has said the new congressional map splits fewer overall counties and municipalities into multiple districts than the current one.

“It is a better map for the state of Missouri,” Deaton told a Senate committee Thursday. “By really every metric I look at, I feel that way.”

Lieb writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo., and John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., contributed to this report.

Sue Cleaver has played Eileen Grimshaw in Coronation Street for 25 years but quit the role earlier this year. She has now revealed if she will ever appear on a rival soap

Former Coronation Street star Sue Cleaver has revealed if she will ever appear on a rival soap following her final appearance as Eileen Grimshaw airing earlier this month. The 61-year-old actress announced her decision to bid farewell to Weatherfield at the start of this year, after an impressive 25 years on the ITV soap.

At the time, she issued a heartfelt statement: “I’ve had 25 privileged years of working on Coronation Street,” adding further, “The door is still firmly open but as I reached my 60th year, I decided it was time to embrace change, look for new adventures and live fearlessly.”

Sue hasn’t been idle during her tenure on the Street – she took a hiatus to tread the boards as Mother Superior in Sister Act before gracing our screens as a panellist on ITV’s Loose Women in 2024.

She also enjoyed a stint on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Back in 2022. But now she has the time to commit to other projects, will Sue be popping up on a rival soap like Coronation Street or EastEnders?

It’s not unheard of for actors to pop up in multiple soap universes, with the likes of Denise Welch and Michelle Collins appearing on both EastEnders and Coronation Street.

Speaking in a new interview, Sue says she is “chuffed” with her Corrie legacy, and believes she was given “a wonderful send off” but admits she is ready to “live fearlessly.”

“I think people forget that you either have courage or you don’t, courage is a muscle, start really small and put yourself out of your comfort zone for a couple of minutes a day, enquire about a book club or evening class, because that muscle really does,” the actress muses.

Sue continues to recall to The Sun how filming her final scenes “was really weird feeling, but it felt right” and it was “the right time” to go. She is now ready to take advantage of her new found “freedom” after spending over two decades at ITV.

“I love doing Loose Women, there are other things I want to do and there is a lot more of the world I want to see,” Sue admits. But when it comes to going over to the dark side and popping into The Queen Vic or the Woolpack, Sue is adamant that she is still loyal to Corrie.

She rules out appearing on another soap “at this stage” as she is still “very committed to Corrie”, adding: “I’ve been incredibly fortunate and it gave me the opportunity that not many actresses have, to be at home, to be there for my son in the morning and put him to bed at night and to have a proper home life, whereas normally you have to go where the work is. I’ve been extremely fortunate, it’s not lost on me how lucky I’ve been, it has a big place in my heart.”

Speaking to the Mirror in May, Sue opened up on her decision to have co-star Ryan Thomas return for her final episodes, as his character Eileen’s son Jason Grimshaw makes a huge offer. Sue shared: “Ryan was there from the start, and he was inconveniently living in Thailand, and it wouldn’t be too far of a jump to expect that if Eileen was going to make a leap, that she would involve her son.

“And so when I decided to leave, like over a year ago, I rang Ryan, and I said, ‘Ryan, I’m going to tell them that I’m going, and if they ask me about exits, I’d really like to say that you’d come back and take me out, but I don’t know whether they’d go for it or not’.

“And he just went, ‘Oh my gosh, of course, I would’, which was so lovely for me. And it was just so nice to have him back and filming those final scenes with him. It just felt like I’d come full circle really.”

Coronation Street airs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm on ITV1 and ITV X.

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .