Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe announced a special session Friday to draw a new Congressional map – the latest governor of a Republican-run state to join President Donald Trump’s request for a mid-term re-division.
Kehoe ordered lawmakers to return to the state capitol next week for maps and aims to undermine the state's citizen initiative process.
Kehoe's proposed map is aimed at the Kansas City area of Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democratic Congressman, and could allow Republicans to win seven of the state's eight U.S. House seats in next year's midterm elections. Cleaver had vowed to take legal action during his 11th term to block any maps targeting his seat.
Kehoe said in a statement that the measures before lawmakers will “ensure that our region and constitution really put Missouri’s values first.”
On Friday, Trump praised Keehou's move in a social media post, saying the conference would produce “a new, more equitable, more improved congressional map that would give incredible people in Missouri a huge opportunity to choose additional magazine Republicans.”
Kehoe's action comes the same day that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the new map in Texas, and Republicans hope this could give them five additional home seats.
The Missouri special session will begin Wednesday.
Trump and his allies urge Republicans in several states, including Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, and South Carolina, to target minority seats in their states in order to seek to retain or develop a narrow Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections. Florida has also set up a legislative committee to check for rezoning, but any action may be taken next year.
Earlier this week, Indiana lawmakers visited the White House to discuss rezoning.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin condemned Kehoe's actions on Friday. “Another Republican governor just met Donald Trump's demands at the expense of Missouri's family and American democracy,” he said in a statement.
Re-divisions in the mid-decade are rare, and efforts to draw new lines mark the president's extraordinary campaign to stop Democrats from controlling the House of Representatives in the final two years of Trump's second term in the White House.
In the Texas action, the California Legislature recently proposed a plan that shelved a map drawn by a nonpartisan committee to create five Democratic-friendly seats. California voters will decide whether to approve the plan in November’s referendum, an expensive campaign.
Other democracies are weighing their own rezoning efforts. But Republicans control the governor’s office and legislature in 23 states, while Democrats have only 15 countries – there are more ways to squeeze out other seats that benefit their party as the spread of redistricting the battle.