Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe on Friday announced a special session to draw new congressional maps – becoming the latest governor of a Republican-run state to accede to President Donald Trump’ s demands to undertake mid-decade redistricting.
Kehoe ordered lawmakers to return to the state capitol next week to take up the map-drawing, along with legislation aimed at weakening the state’s citizen initiative process.
The proposed map unveiled by Kehoe takes aim at long-serving Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-area district and could put Republicans on track to win seven out of the state’s eight US House seats in next year’s midterm elections. Cleaver, in his 11th term, has previously vowed to take legal action to block any map that targets his seat.
In a statement, Kehoe said the measures before lawmakers will “ensure our districts and Constitution truly put Missouri values first.”
On Friday, Trump hailed Kehoe’s move in a social media post, saying the session would yield a “new, much fairer, and much improved, Congressional Map, that will give the incredible people of Missouri the tremendous opportunity to elect an additional MAGA Republican” next year.
Kehoe’s action came the same day that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law new maps in Texas, which Republicans hope could net them five additional House seats.
The Missouri special session will start Wednesday.
Trump and his allies have urged Republicans in several states – including Missouri Ohio, Indiana and South Carolina – to take aim at a handful of Democratic seats in their states in a quest to preserve or grow the GOP’s narrow majority in the US House after the 2026 midterm elections. Florida has also launched a legislative committee to examine redistricting, but any action is likely to occur next year.
Earlier this week, a contingent of Indiana lawmakers visited the White House to discuss redistricting.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin denounced Kehoe’s action Friday. “Another Republican governor just caved to the demands of Donald Trump at the expense of Missouri families and American democracy,” he said in a statement.
Mid-decade redistricting is rare, and the effort to draw new lines marks an extraordinary campaign by the president to keep Democrats from controlling the House during the last two years of Trump’s second term in the White House.
In a counterpunch to Texas’ action, the California legislature recently advanced a plan to set aside maps drawn by a nonpartisan commission to create five more Democratic-friendly seats. Voters in California will decide in a November referendum whether to approve that plan in what is expected to be a costly campaign.
Other Democratic states are weighing redistricting efforts of their own. But Republicans – who control the governors’ offices and legislatures in 23 states compared to just 15 held by Democrats – have more avenues to squeeze out additional seats that benefit their party as the redistricting battles spread.