Missouri’s GOP governor calls special session to redraw congressional districts

Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe announced on Friday that he was calling for a special legislative session that will include redrawing the state’s congressional map — setting the stage for mid-decade redistricting in the state after Texas just finished doing the same.

The special session, which will begin Wednesday, will also focus on reforming the state’s ballot initiative petition process.

“Today, I am calling on the General Assembly to take action on congressional redistricting and initiative petition reform to ensure our districts and Constitution truly put Missouri values first,” Kehoe said in a statement on Friday.

Kehoe also unveiled a proposed congressional map that he called the “Missouri First Map,” which he said splinters counties and towns less than the state’s current one and preserves two districts as they are.

“Missouri’s conservative, common sense values rooted in faith, family and freedom, should be truly represented at all levels of government – local, state and federal, because representation isn’t just about districts and lines on one map,” Kehoe said in a video accompanying the announcement.

President Donald Trump, who pushed for mid-decade redistricting in Texas and has said he’d support it being done in other states, had posted on his social media platform last week, “The Great State of Missouri is now IN. I’m not surprised. It is a great State with fabulous people… We’re going to win the Midterms in Missouri again, bigger and better than ever before!”

In his Friday video, Kehoe thanked Trump, saying, “I appreciate President Donald Trump for raising the level of conversation on this matter, because his leadership on this nationally underscores just how important this moment is for Missouri.”

And Trump, in a subsequent social media post on Friday, praised the map proposal as “much fairer, and much improved… that will give the incredible people of Missouri the tremendous opportunity to elect an additional MAGA Republican in the 2026 Midterm Elections — A HUGE VICTORY for our America First Agenda, not just in the “Show-Me State,” but across our Nation.”

Missouri’s current congressional delegation is made of six Republicans and two Democrats.

Kehoe’s proposed congressional map significantly redraws the 5th congressional district — represented by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat, who was first elected to the U.S. House in 2004 — to include a significantly larger swath of the state.

In a statement on Friday, Cleaver slammed the proposed map redrawing.

“President Trump’s unprecedented directive to redraw our maps in the middle of the decade and without an updated census is not an act of democracy – it is an unconstitutional attack against it. This attempt to gerrymander Missouri will not simply change district lines, it will silence voices,” he wrote.

Cleaver said that he and his constituents would not “concede” if the map redrawing moves forward: “The people of the Fifth District and I will fight relentlessly to ensure Missouri never becomes an antidemocratic state, where politicians choose their voters instead of voters choosing their representatives. In the courts and at the ballot box, we will demand that the rule of law is upheld, our voices are heard, and democracy prevails.”

National Democrats also slammed Kehoe’s announcement.

“Another Republican governor just caved to the demands of Donald Trump at the expense of Missouri families and American democracy,” Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “Time and time again, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe has undermined the voice of Missouri voters. Now he is attempting to dilute their power altogether by removing the ability of Missourians to stand up against this power grab.”

Missouri legislators have struggled in the past over whether to try for a map with seven Republican seats.

In 2022, infighting erupted among Republicans in Missouri over whether to pursue a 7-1 Republican-dominated map, which would require splintering Kansas City voters into neighboring rural districts. The legislature ultimately pushed forward the existing 6-2 map, amid concerns that the change could backfire and make several GOP-held districts more competitive.

ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.