By DAVID A. LIEB and ANDREW DeMILLO, Associated Press
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo (AP) — Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe said Friday that he is calling Missouri lawmakers into a special session to redraw the state’s U.S. House districts as part of a growing national battle between Republicans and Democrats seeking an edge in next year’s congressional elections.
Kehoe made the announcement just hours after Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a new congressional voting map designed to help Republicans gain five more seats in the 2026 midterm elections. It marked a win for President Donald Trump, who has been urging Republican-led states to reshape district lines to give the party a better shot at retaining control of the House.
Missouri is the third state to pursue an unusual mid-decade redistricting for partisan advantage. Republican-led Texas took up the task first but was quickly countered by Democratic-led California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking voters to approve a map aimed at giving his party five more seats.
Kehoe scheduled Missouri’s special session to begin Sept. 3. He released a proposed new map that targets Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-area district by stretching it eastward into rural Republican-leaning areas.
His agenda also includes another Republican priority — a proposed constitutional amendment that would make it harder to approve citizen-initiated ballot measures, such as abortion-rights and marijuana legalization amendments adopted in recent years.
Kehoe cast both items as a defense against liberal politicians and activists.
“Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values should be truly represented at all levels of government,” he said in a statement.
Democrats were quick to express outrage. Missouri state House Minority Leader Ashley Aune called Kehoe a “Trump puppet” attempting to “steal a congressional seat for Republicans” and gut the ballot initiative process.
It “marks the worst threat to the integrity of our state government since pro-slavery lawmakers voted for Missouri to join the Confederacy in 1861,” Aune said in a statement.
Missouri is represented in the U.S. House by six Republicans and two Democrats — Cleaver and Reps. Wesley Bell in St. Louis.
Cleaver called the proposed redistricting an attack on democracy perpetrated by Trump.
“This attempt to gerrymander Missouri will not simply change district lines, it will silence voices. It will deny representation,” Cleaver said in a statement while vowing not to concede the seat.
Missouri Democrats have little ability to prevent Republican lawmakers from enacting a new map. Unlike in Texas, where Democrats left the state for two weeks to delay a vote, Missouri Democrats’ absence would not prevent a quorum for business. And although Democrats could filibuster in the Senate, Republicans could use procedural maneuvers to shut that down, as they did earlier this year to pass a proposed constitutional amendment restricting abortion.
Republicans won a 220-215 House majority over Democrats in 2024, an outcome that aligned almost perfectly with the share of the vote won by the two parties in districts across the U.S., according to a recent Associated Press analysis. Although the overall outcome was close to neutral, the AP’s analysis shows that Democrats and Republicans each benefited from advantages in particular states stemming from the way districts were drawn.
Democrats would need to net three seats in next year’s election to take control of the chamber. The incumbent president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterm elections, as was the case for Trump in 2018, when Democrats won control of the House and subsequently launched investigations of Trump. Seeking to avoid a similar situation in his second term, Trump has urged Republican-led states to fortify their congressional seats.
In Texas, Republicans already hold 25 of the 38 congressional seats.
“Texas is now more red in the United States Congress,” Abbott said in a video he posted on X of him signing the legislation.
Newsom, who has emerged as a leading adversary of Trump on redistricting and other issues, tauntingly labeled Abbott on X as the president’s “#1 lapdog” following the signing. Democrats already hold 43 of California’s 52 congressional seats.
Voting rights groups filed a lawsuit this week ahead of Abbott’s signing the bill, saying the new map weakens the electoral influence of Black voters. Texas Democrats have also vowed to challenge the new map in court.
Some Missouri Republicans had pushed for a map that could give them a 7-1 edge when redrawing districts after the 2020 census. But the GOP legislative majority ultimately opted against it. Some feared the more aggressive plan could be susceptible to a legal challenge and could backfire in a poor election year for Republicans by creating more competitive districts that could allow Democrats to win three seats.
Republican officials in Florida, Indiana and elsewhere also are considering revising their U.S. House districts, as are Democratic officials in Illinois, Maryland and New York.
In Utah, a judge recently ordered the Republican-led Legislature to draw new congressional districts after finding that lawmakers had weakened and ignored an independent commission established by voters to prevent partisan gerrymandering. Republicans have won all four of Utah’s congressional seats under the map approved by lawmakers in 2021.
DeMillo reported from Little Rock, Arkansas. Associated Press journalist Jim Vertuno contributed from Austin, Texas.
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