JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Republicans handed President Donald 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, who said he will sign it into law soon. 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 also are considering 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.

On his social media site Friday, Trump touted Missouri’s “much fairer, and much improved, Congressional map” that he said “will help send an additional MAGA Republican to Congress in the 2026 Midterm Elections.”

Missouri Republicans are targeting a Kansas City district

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. That proposal, which still needs voter ratification, would require future initiated amendments to pass in each of Missouri’s congressional districts instead of by a simple statewide majority. No other state has such a standard.

The Republican-led Senate passed both measures Friday after changing the chamber’s rules, then shutting off Democratic opponents. Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck said afterward that he plans to help gather the more than 100,000 signatures needed in 90 days to force a referendum on the redistricting plan.

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

Missouri’s revised map targets a seat held by Democratic 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 state Legislature after the 2020 census. He said he plans to challenge the new map in court and seek reelection in 2026, regardless of the shape of his district.

“Together, in the courts and in the streets, we will continue pushing to ensure the law is upheld, justice prevails, and this unconstitutional gerrymander is defeated,” Cleaver said in a statement Friday.

Three lawsuits already have been brought, including two Friday on behalf of voters who contend mid-decade redistricting isn’t allowed under the Missouri Constitution. A hearing is scheduled for Monday on another lawsuit previously filed by the NAACP.

Kansas City residents raise concerns about new districts

Cleaver’s revised Kansas City district would stretch from near the city’s St. James United Methodist Church — which Cleaver once led — 180 miles (290 kilometers) 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 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 map splits fewer overall counties and municipalities into multiple districts than the current one.

Republican Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin said in a statement after the Senate vote that the map “strengthens Missouri’s conservative voice and ensures every Missourian is fairly represented in Washington.”

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Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook referred to a condominium she purchased in June 2021 as a “vacation home” in a loan estimate, a characterization that could undermine claims by the Trump administration that she committed mortgage fraud.

President Donald Trump has sought to fire Cook “for cause,” relying on allegations that Cook claimed both the condo and another property as her primary residence simultaneously, as he looks to reshape the central bank to orchestrate a steep cut to interest rates. Documents obtained by The Associated Press also showed that on a second form submitted by Cook to gain a security clearance, she described the property as a “second home.”

Cook sued the Trump administration to block her firing, the first time a president has sought to remove a member of the seven-person board of governors. Cook secured an injunction Tuesday that allows her to remain as a Fed governor.

The administration has appealed the ruling and asked for an emergency ruling by Monday, just before the Fed is set to meet and decide whether to reduce its key interest rate. Most economists expect they will cut the rate by a quarter point.

Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee to the agency that regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has accused Cook of signing separate documents in which she allegedly said that both the Atlanta property and a home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, also purchased in June 2021, were both “primary residences.” Pulte submitted a criminal referral to the Justice Department, which has opened an investigation.

Claiming a home as a “primary residence” can result in better down payment and mortgage terms than if one of the homes is classified as a vacation home.

The descriptions of Cook’s properties were first reported by Reuters.

Fulton County tax records show Cook has never claimed a homestead exemption on the condo, which allows someone who uses a property as their primary residence to reduce their property taxes, since buying it in 2021.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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AP writer Jeff Amy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal health officials intend to award a contract to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to investigate whether there is a link between vaccinations and autism, according to a government procurement notice.

The Troy, New York, engineering school is getting the no-bid contract because of its “unique ability” to link data on children and mothers, according to the notice posted this week.

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to questions about the notice, including how much the contract is for or what exactly the researchers intend to do.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading voice in the antivaccine movement before President Donald Trump selected him to oversee federal health agencies, announced in April a “massive testing and research effort” to determine the cause of autism by this month. He has repeatedly tried to link vaccines to the condition.

An RPI biotech engineering professor, Juergen Hahn, has used artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to look for patterns in blood samples of children with autism. Hahn “is renowned for the quality and rigor of his research,” RPI officials said in a statement acknowledging the intended grant.

“If this project is awarded, he intends to publish the results of his work at the conclusion of the project,” the statement added.

The Associated Press left messages seeking comment from Hahn.

The notice raises many questions, said Alycia Halladay, who oversees research activities and grants for the Autism Science Foundation.

RPI is not known in the field as having any special access to data on this kind of question and “wouldn’t be the obvious choice,” Halladay said.

It’s also not clear how the contract fits into other autism research that the government may be planning, she said.

But perhaps the biggest question is why money is being spent on such a study at all, she added.

Scientists have ruled out a link between vaccines and autism, finding no evidence of increased rates of autism among those who are vaccinated compared with those who are not.

“The question has been studied for 20 years, multiple times by researchers around the world using millions of people, and there has never been a credible association found between vaccines and autism,” Halladay said.

Those who have spent decades researching autism have found no single cause. Genetics play a role, and other factors include the age of a child’s father, the mother’s weight, and whether she had diabetes or was exposed to certain chemicals.

Whatever amount is being spent on the project could instead be going to “other important research questions,” including studies of genetics and environmental factors, Halladay said.

“I think that’s the most frustrating part,” she said.

For months, HHS officials have been trying to use vaccine safety data compiled by the CDC to look for harms that might be tied to shots. Kennedy has accused CDC leaders of stonewalling those efforts, but the actual obstacle has been something else, said one former federal health official familiar with the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

About a dozen medical research organizations collect the vaccine safety data and report it to the CDC. Contracts that stretch back nearly two decades give those entities — not the CDC — control over the data, and HHS has not yet been able to get it, the official said.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.