Kirksville residents gather in protest of the Missouri government’s efforts to redraw congressional maps and the Trump administration
A group of protestors gathered in response to Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe’s call for a special session to redraw congressional maps in order to give the state more Republican seats in the house after President Donald Trump called on the state to do so. The Labor Day protest in Rotary Park had around 30 protesters holding a variety of signs, most of which criticized the national government and the Trump administration.
Missouri has eight congressional seats for its eight districts with the Republican Party holding six seats while the Democratic Party currently holds two seats. The proposed Missouri first map by Kehoe has Republicans projected to win seven of the eight seats. The redrawing of congressional maps typically occurs after the nationwide census every ten years, however with the upcoming midterms Trump asked Texas to draw five more congressional seats which they were successful in doing. Trump then posted on Truth Social that Missouri was “now in” and that Republicans were “gonna win the midterms in a landslide.”
The Kirksville protest was organized by resident Bob Giovannini, who did most of the advertising and planning for the civil unrest via Facebook groups. The 50501 Facebook group “50 states, 50 protests, one movement” is a local branch of the national movement that formerly held the “No Kings Rallies” April 19 and June 14 ,and will hold the next “No Kings Rally” Oct. 18.
Giovannini found the call from Kehoe to redraw congressional maps to be a clear example of cheating, and made clear the protest wasn’t just a rally against one action, but a protest against the Republican establishment as a whole.
“We’re just unhappy about what the administration is doing overall in Missouri,” Giovannini said. “They are putting forth an amendment to the Constitution to overturn what we voted on last year about abortion, and it’s going to have really deceptive ballot language that’s very concerning. They’ve already undone what we voted on last year with respect to the paid sick leave, so there’s just a mountain of stuff.”
The age range of the protesters skewed to the older side of the population in Kirksville, with no Truman State University students attending the holiday rally. Giovannini wants to grow the outreach his organization does to the students on campus through TikTok and Instagram.
A member of the protest, Peter Nye — who worked in Washington for 35 years at Ralph Miller Magazine and the National Voter Magazine published by the League of Women Voters of the United States — was there in opposition to Trump’s actions as President and the Missouri government.
“We just want to register our opposition to the rising fascism [in the government],” Nye said. “Trump recently worked to pass a federal budget that increases our national debt by more than three trillion dollars, and it’s really difficult to imagine that at the expense of cutting Medicare and Medicaid. Senator Josh Hawley, the son of a banker, expressed to the media how it wasn’t really a good idea to deprive residents of qualifying for Medicare and Medicaid [of that care], but he went ahead and voted against it with the budget anyway.”
