Politics
Inside the overlooked multi-million dollar fight to block Republicans’ Missouri gerrymander
Republicans and Democrats are quietly pouring millions of dollars into a fight trying to block Missouri’s new gerrymandered congressional map, as each party scrambles for any advantage they can find in the national fight for the House majority in 2026.
Missouri is one of six states that have redrawn their congressional lines — after President Donald Trump kicked off the redistricting war by pushing Texas to redraw — with the GOP-dominated legislature passing a new map in September that would eliminate Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-based seat.
But unlike in many other states, Democrats have a clearer path to try to block the map, at least for next year’s midterms. They’ve now launched an effort that operatives in the state say is attracting an unprecedented amount of money — and legal fights.
“Imagine the kind of democratic paralysis our state would be in if this happened every 10 years, or every time we decided to draw new maps,” said Aaron Blake, a GOP strategist based in Missouri. “That would just be chaos.”
Almost immediately after the map passed, Democrats in the state organized a campaign to repeal the new map through popular referendum. The campaign committee, People Not Politicians, will need to submit about 107,000 valid signatures before the Dec. 11 deadline to send the new maps to a referendum. If they submit enough valid signatures, the state would be temporarily unable to enact the new maps until voters can weigh in on the ballot measure.
Well-funded organizations on both sides have since rushed into the state, duking it out in a fight that has already spawned a complicated nest of court cases and some aggressive tactics seeking to undermine Democrats’ referendum campaign.
If the state’s new maps do come to a referendum, some Republicans are concerned voters might reject their bid to aid Trump’s effort to skew the odds of maintaining control of the House in Republicans’ favor.
“It will be a very uphill battle for Republicans if [the referendum] is on the ballot,” Blake said.
Democrats in Missouri, meanwhile, are confident they’ll have enough signatures to push the maps to a referendum — and they’re optimistic voters will be on their side when it comes time to vote on the maps.
“[Republicans] are afraid for this to go on the ballot, because they believe that Missourians will vote it down,” said Doug Beck, the top Democrat in the state Senate. “That’s why they’re trying as hard as they can to not let it go to the ballot.”
The Republican National Committee and the National Republican Campaign Committee donated a combined $100,000 days after the Put Missouri First PAC, the GOP’s ballot measure-focused committee, was formed. That was followed by two separate $1 million contributions from the Trump-aligned Securing American Greatness PAC and the American Action Network, the nonprofit arm of House Republicans’ primary super PAC.
Officers for Put Missouri First — including the group’s treasurer and a law firm that shares the organization’s address — did not respond to interview requests.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. urged his social media followers to support the effort to block the referendum — a sign of the battle’s growing significance to Republicans outside of the state.
For the most part, Democrats in Washington have stayed out of People Not Politicians’ signature gathering campaign. But Democratic-aligned dark money groups have stepped in to contribute over $1.25 million to People Not Politicians, including a $500,000 contribution from American Opportunity Action, a newly-created left-leaning nonprofit that is also supporting a ballot measure campaign in Michigan to block a rewriting of the state’s constitution.
The committee also received $250,000 from former Rep. Cori Bush, the Missouri progressive who was first elected in 2020 but lost a primary in her St. Louis-area district last year. Bush is running for Congress again in the same seat, which would be largely unaffected by Missouri’s new map.
That level of fundraising from both parties is striking for a ballot measure fight in a state with a long history of referendum battles. Benjamin Singer — who has worked on different referendum committees in Missouri since 2018, and is the campaign director for a group seeking to put a constitutional amendment in front of voters to strengthen the state’s referendum laws — said he’s never seen a ballot measure fight with as much money coming in for both sides of the issue.
“They haven’t dominated with the big money, because they haven’t needed to,” he said.
Some opponents are seeking to impede Democrats’ signature collecting through questionable tactics. The Kansas City Star obtained a copy of a contract offering a canvasser for People Not Politicians $5,000 to stop collecting signatures. The paper could not identify the source of the contract, which Blue Light News has not independently verified.
And Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, has sought to use Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration moves to target a firm working on signature collection for People Not Politicians that she accused of employing “illegal aliens.”
In a pair of social media statements, Hanaway said her office is investigating the firm, Advanced Micro Targeting, and said she’s contacted ICE about the situation. Advanced Micro Targeting has denied Hanaway’s claims.
Hanaway is also fighting against a potential referendum in the courtroom — she filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to declare that a referendum to block the legislature’s new maps violates both the U.S. Constitution and Missouri’s Constitution, leaning on principles of the “independent state legislature” theory that the Supreme Court largely rejected in the Moore v. Harper case in 2023.
In a statement, Hanaway said “Missouri will not allow out-of-state political groups to silence the voices of our citizens or override our state’s constitutional process. The Missouri Attorney General’s Office will defend the authority of Missouri’s elected representatives at every turn.”
Zachary Bluestone, a Trump-appointed judge assigned to the case, said he’ll decide whether to block the referendum ahead of the Dec. 11 deadline to submit signatures.
The federal case is one of at least seven lawsuits filed over the new maps or the potential referendum. Among those is a case brought to a Missouri state court by the ACLU, which has partnered with People Not Politicians, seeking to nullify the new congressional districts on the grounds that mid-decade redistricting violates a clause in the state’s constitution.
People Not Politicians is separately suing Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins for his handling of referendum procedure, including authoring language for the potential ballot measure that frames the old maps with six GOP-leaning seats as “gerrymandered,” and the new district lines with seven GOP-leaning seats as being a “more compact” map that “better reflects statewide voting patterns.”
“What’s going on in Missouri is an example of constitutional hardball,” said Travis Crum, a professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis who specializes in election law.
And even if the ballot referendum goes in front of voters, it isn’t a guarantee the map will be blocked for 2026. The plethora of redistricting-related court cases in Missouri are being adjudicated in hearings and rulings that will likely occur before the end of January — giving state election officials enough time to schedule a potential ballot measure election next year, operatives and court watchers said.
“I just think the noise has peaked or will be peaking between now and mid-January,” Blake, the GOP consultant, said.
A version of this article first appeared in Blue Light News Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to Blue Light News Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.
NEW YORK — As South Korea’s largest automobile manufacturer, Hyundai Motor Group is known for its cars. But now, as one of FIFA’s longest-running commercial partners, it’s using the World Cup stage to announce a new focus: robots.
That ambition is clearly laid out in the FIFA Museum presented by Hyundai in New York City. At the iconic 50 Rockefeller Plaza, a robot dog greets visitors at the entrance, nodding its head up and down and shaking its hind. Another humanoid robot, referred to as Atlas, strikes a pose by the door. Above that door, there’s a banner of Atlas rejoicing with its arms up. Inside the building, Atlas stands with a soccer ball in its hands — it’s a popular photo spot with children.
And once inside the elevator leading up to the exhibition hall, the closing doors reveal yet another picture of Atlas, merged into the iconic image of Diego Maradona hoisting the World Cup trophy in 1986. The robots, they are everywhere.
Aside from the museum, Hyundai has also released a five-part documentary on teaching Atlas to play soccer as part of its World Cup marketing. And to cement the role of its robots in the tournament, a number of its robot dogs have been deployed in stadiums to patrol the area for added security.
The incessant display of robots is meant to send a message: Hyundai is now a robotics company — and it wants the world to know. What better place to advertise that than the largest sporting event on the planet?
Hyundai’s robotics ambitions began in earnest in 2020, when the automaker agreed to acquire a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics, the company behind Atlas and the dog-like robot Spot. Since then, the company has increasingly positioned itself as more than a carmaker, describing robotics as a core pillar of its future and investing in robots that can automate factory work and assist with other industrial tasks. The World Cup campaign is the latest step in that bid.
The effort, of course, is not without controversy. Hyundai’s plan to stock its factories in South Korea with robots has met strong resistance from its union, which fears that the humanoid robots will one day replace factory workers. As talks to negotiate wages and the deployment of these robots has stalled, the union overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to authorize a strike. Industrial action from the union, which is considered one of the largest and most influential in South Korea, would be a blow for Hyundai and cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars.
That labor dispute is notable because it could land in the U.S. as well: Hyundai plans to deploy its Atlas humanoid robots in the U.S. by 2028, starting with the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Georgia, ultimately deploying more than 25,000 robots.
It’s why the PR push for Atlas during the World Cup is so crucial to Hyundai. Hyundai Motor Group is one of FIFA’s select group of global sponsors, ensuring that no other automakers can advertise at official World Cup locations worldwide. When Hyundai renewed its sponsorship contract with FIFA in 2023, it included Boston Dynamics to “showcase future mobility solutions,” as a press release put it at the time.
Within the FIFA Museum, visitors look at the robots with awe rather than the fear associated with job loss and an uncertain future. At a table dedicated to miniature Atlas figures recreating iconic goal celebration poses — Lionel Messi raising his fingers to the sky, Son Heung-min making a camera gesture, Cristiano Ronaldo throwing his arms down — people lean in to take pictures, widening their eyes at the display.
“Mobility and robotics turn every match into a glimpse of new talent, energy, and possibilities,” a nearby sign about Hyundai’s future reads — a promise of optimism that can only be bottled inside the World Cup bubble.
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LOS ANGELES — Despite months of controversy beforehand, Friday’s encounter in Seattle did not turn out to be much of a “Pride Match” at all. Expressions of sexual and gender identity were sparse in the crowd, perhaps due to the random lottery pairing of Iran and Egypt, which have two of the world’s least hospitable societies and most repressive governments towards LGBT people.
Chance has produced a political pairing today that has a much stronger political claim to a “Pride Match” designation: the opening round-of-32 fixture in Los Angeles this afternoon. Canada and South Africa will meet because of the tournament’s bracket architecture, but they are parallel pioneers in gay and lesbian rights — the first two non-European countries to legalize same-sex marriage.
Canada got there first. Courts in its most populous provinces began to rule in 2003 that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, making it possible for gay men and lesbians to marry in much of the country. In 2005, the Liberal Party government led by Prime Minister Paul Martin introduced the Civil Marriage Act, creating a single legal standard for all provinces and territories. It passed a parliamentary vote on July 19, 2005, and became law the next day — placing Canada alongside the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain as the only countries that allowed same-sex marriage nationwide.
South Africa joined them the following year. In December 2005, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the common-law definition of marriage violated the equal-protection promises of the country’s post-apartheid constitution, which specifically protect people from discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” After the court essentially ordered Parliament to rewrite the law, lawmakers drafted the Civil Union Act, which passed and became law on November 30, 2006.
Now more than three dozen countries allow same-sex unions, including the World Cup’s three North American co-hosts and all of the tournament favorites including Argentina, France, Brazil, Germany, Portugal and England (which along with Wales legalized them in 2014). South Africa, however, remains the only country in Africa.
Canada and South Africa have different constitutional regimes and cultural traditions, but one person links their shared arc as pioneers in LGBTQ+ rights: Montreal human-rights attorney Irwin Cotler, who served on Nelson Mandela’s legal team before becoming Canada’s justice minister. In that role, he was the driving force with Martin’s government to codify same-sex unions through the Civil Marriage Act.
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