redistricting plan

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.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to temporarily redraw California’s congressional districts has more support than opposition — but with many voters undecided, the measure’s prospects remain uncertain, a new poll found.

One thing, however, has become clear: Newsom’s standing with voters appears tethered to the fate of his high-stakes redistricting gamble.

The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, conducted for the Los Angeles Times, asked registered voters about the Newsom-backed redistricting push favoring California Democrats, which serves as a counterattack to President Trump and Texas Republicans reworking election maps to their advantage.

When voters were asked whether they agree with California’s redistricting maneuver, 46% said it was a good idea, while 36% said it was a bad idea. Slightly more, 48%, said they would vote in favor of the temporary gerrymandering efforts if it appeared on the statewide special election ballot in November. Nearly a third said they would vote no, while 20% said they were undecided.

“That’s not bad news,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. “It could be better. With ballot measures, you’d like to be comfortably above 50% because you got to get people to vote yes and when people are undecided or don’t know enough about initiatives, they tend to vote no just because it’s the safer vote.”

Among voters who regularly cast ballots in statewide elections, overall support for redistricting jumped to 55%, compared with 34% opposed.

That, DiCamillo said, is significant.

“If I were to pick one subgroup where you would want to have an advantage, it would be that one,” he said.

The high-stakes fight over political boundaries could shape control of the U.S. House, where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority. Newsom and Democratic leaders say California must match Texas’ partisan mapmaking move to preserve balance in Congress. Texas’ plan creates five new Republican-leaning seats that could secure the GOP’s majority in the House. California’s efforts are an attempt to cancel those gains — at least temporarily. The new maps would be in place for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 congressional elections.

However, critics say that the plan undermines the state’s voter-approved independent redistricting commission and that one power grab doesn’t negate another.

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Not surprisingly, the partisan fight over election maps elicited deeply partisan results in the poll. Nearly 7 in 10 Democratic voters said they would support the redistricting measure , while Republicans overwhelmingly (72%) panned the plan.

Former President Obama endorsed it, while California’s former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, told the New York Times he would fight it. The effort faced opposition this week in Sacramento during legislative hearings, where Republicans blasted it as a partisan game-playing. California Republicans attempted to stall the process by filing an emergency petition at the state Supreme Court, arguing that Democrats violated the California Constitution by rushing the proposal through the Legislature. The high court rejected the legal challenge Wednesday.

The effort has by all accounts moved swiftly, with newly reworked maps released late last week and, by Monday, lawmakers introduced legislation to put it before voters. Lawmakers approved those bills Thursday, which secures the measure’s place on the ballot in November.

Newsom, who has become the face of California’s redistricting effort, has seen his once-stagnant approval ratings tick upward as he takes on Trump and Republican leaders. Beyond the high-profile push to reshape the state’s congressional districts, his office has drawn recent attention with a social media campaign that mimics Trump’s own idiosyncratic posts.

More voters now approve than disapprove of the governor’s job performance (51% to 43%), which represented a turnaround from April, when voters were split at 46% on each side. The poll, which surveyed 4,950 registered voters online in English and Spanish, was conducted from Aug. 11 to 17.

A majority of respondents — 59% — back Newsom’s combative stance toward Trump, while 29% want him to adopt a more cooperative approach. Younger voters were especially supportive of Newsom styling himself as Trump’s leading critic, with 71% of those between 18 and 29 years old backing the approach.

Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach, said having Newsom as the face of the redistricting campaign would have been more of a liability a month ago. But Newsom’s profile has been rising nationally during the spiraling fight over congressional maps and been buoyed by his prolific Trump trolling, which has struck a nerve with conservative commentators. That has opened up a lane for Newsom to spread the campaign’s message more broadly, he said.

“If he keeps this pace up, he’s right on a pressure point,” Lesenyie said.

Political scientist Eric Schickler, who is co-director of the Berkeley Institute that conducted the poll, said asking Californians to hand back control of redistricting to politicians — even temporarily — after voters made the process independent would normally be a tough sell.

“Voters don’t trust politicians,” Schickler said. “On the other hand, voters see Trump and don’t like what he’s doing. And so it was really a test to see which of those was more powerful and the results suggest, at least for now, Newsom’s winning that argument.”

Winning in November, however, will require pushing undecided voters over the finish line. Among Latino, Black and Asian voters, nearly 30% said they have yet to decide how they would vote on redistricting. Women also have higher rates of being undecided compared with men, at 25% to 14%. Younger voters are also more likely to be on the fence, with nearly a third of 18- to 29-year-olds saying they are unsure, compared with 11% of those older than 65.

Among Democrats, there are still some skeptics about the proposal. One in 5 polled said they were undecided. A quarter of voters with no party preference say they are undecided.

“That suggests there are a bunch of votes left on the table,” Schickler said. “While I wouldn’t be surprised if the margin narrows between now and November, this is a good place for the proposition to start.”

COTTONWOOD — When the talk turned to politics at the OK Corral bar in this historic stagecoach town on Tuesday night, retired nurse Ovie Hays, 77, spoke for most of the room when she summed up her view of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan.

“I don’t want Democrats around,” she said. “They have gone too far in controlling us. We won’t have a say in anything.”

Nearby, a man in hard-worn cowboy boots agreed with Hays — using much more colorful language. He works as a ranch hand and said he’d just come from fixing a goat pen.

“The morons in charge, and the morons that put [those] morons in charge need to understand where their food comes from,” he said. He declined to see his name printed, like a lot of folks in this part of Shasta County and neighboring counties.

In its current form, California’s 1st Congressional District, which sweeps south from the Oregon border almost to Sacramento, is larger than Massachusetts or Maryland or eight other states.

This is farm and forest country. From the glittering peaks and dense forests of Mt. Shasta and the Sierra Nevada, rivers course down to the valley floor, to vast fields of rice, endless orchards of peaches and golden, rolling grassland full of more cows than people. Voters here are concerned with policies that affect their water supply and forests, given that the timber industry limps along here and fires have ravaged the area in recent years.

This is also Republican country. For the last 12 years, this district has been represented by Congressman Doug LaMalfa, a rice farmer from Oroville who is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump.

During a Chico town hall meeting, attendees hold up red cards to indicate their opinion on a statement made by Rep. Doug LaMalfa.

(Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee)

But if voters approve the redistricting plan in November, the deep-red bastion that is LaMalfa’s district will be cleaved into three pieces, each of them diluted with enough Democratic votes that they could all turn blue. The northern half of the district would be joined to a coastal district that would stretch all the way down to the Golden Gate Bridge, while the southern half would be jigsawed into two districts that would draw in voters from the Bay Area and wine country.

Northern California finds itself in this situation because of power plays unleashed by President Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Newsom and others. To ensure GOP control of the House of Representatives, Trump pressured Abbott to redraw Texas’ congressional maps so Republicans could take more seats. Newsom responded by threatening to redraw California’s maps to favor Democrats, while saying he’d holster this pistol if Texas did the same.

The California Legislature is expected to approve a plan Thursday that would put new maps on the November ballot, along with a a constitutional amendment that would override the state’s voter-approved, independent redistricting commission. If voters approve the new maps, they would go into effect only if another state performs mid-decade redistricting. Under the proposal, Democrats could pick up five seats currently held by Republicans, while also bolstering some vulnerable Democratic incumbents in purple districts.

Now, voters in Northern California and other parts of the state find themselves at the center of a showdown.

The Silver Dollar Saloon in Marysville, a part of Northern California where a number of voters say that urban California doesn’t understand the needs of rural California.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

And from Marysville to Redding this week, many — including those who call themselves Democrats — said they were outraged at what they saw as another example of urban California imposing its will on rural California, areas that city people generally ignore and don’t understand.

“Their needs and their wants are completely different than what we need here,” said Pamela Davis, 40, who was loading bags of chicken feed into the back of her SUV in Yuba City. Her children scrambled into their car seats, chatting happily about the cows and ducks they have at home on their farm.

Davis, who said she voted for LaMalfa, said voters in California’s cities have no understanding of water regulations or other policies vitally important to agriculture, even though what happens in farming areas is crucial to the state overall.

“We’re out here growing food for everybody,” she said. “Water is an issue all the time. That kind of stuff needs to be at the top of everybody’s mind.”

For years, folks in the so-called north state have chafed at life under the rule of California’s liberal politicians. This region is whiter, more rural, more conservative and poorer than the rest of the state. They have long bemoaned that their property rights, grazing rights and water rights are under siege. They complain that the state’s high taxes and cost of living are crushing people’s dreams. The grievances run so deep that in recent years many residents have embraced a decades-old idea of seceding from California and forming a “State of Jefferson.”

At the Riviera Mobile Estates community in Anderson, Calif., a “State of Jefferson” flag flies alongside the Stars and Stripes.

(Los Angeles Times)

Some residents, including LaMalfa, said if redistricting were to go through, it could further fuel those sentiments. And even some voters who said they abhorred Trump and LaMalfa and planned to vote in favor of the redistricting plan said they worried about the precedent of diluting the rural vote.

Gail Mandaville, 76, was sitting with her book group in Chico and said she was in favor of the plan. “I just am really, really afraid of the way the country is going,” the retired teacher said. “I admire Newsom for standing up and doing something.”

Across the table, Kim Heuckel, 58, said she agreed but also wondered whether a member of Congress from a more urban area could properly represent the needs of her district. “I’m sorry, but they don’t know the farmlands,” she said. “We need our farmers.”

We do, chimed in Rebecca Willi, 74, a retired hospice worker, but “all the things we stand for are going down the drain,” and if the redistricting in Texas goes forward, “we have to offset it because there is too much at stake.”

In an interview, LaMalfa predicted that California’s voters would reject the redistricting plan. “We’re not going anywhere without a fight,” he said.

But should it pass, he predicted that his constituents would suffer. “We don’t have Sausalito values in this district,” he said, adding that politicians in the newly redrawn districts would be “playing to Bay Area voters; they won’t be playing towards us at all.”

One of the biggest issues in his district recently, he noted, has been concern over wolves, who have been roaming ranch lands, killing cattle and enraging ranchers and other property owners. With redistricting, he said, “if it doesn’t go to the dogs, it will go to the wolves.”

The redistricting plan taking shape in Sacramento and likely headed toward voters in November could shift the Golden State’s political landscape for at least six years and determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections.

Maps made public Friday afternoon show how California Democrats hope to reconfigure the state’s 52 congressional districts. The plan targets five of California’s nine Republican members of Congress, and is designed to counteract the redistricting efforts in Texas that would favor Republicans.

The state Legislature is expected to place the new map and a constitutional amendment to override the state’s independent redistricting process on a Nov. 4 special election ballot.

Enter your address below or select somewhere on the current map to see how the districts could change.

Sean Greene and Hailey Wang contributed to this report.