Gov. Mike Kehoe is calling state lawmakers back to Jefferson City to redraw Missouri’s eight congressional districts, acceding to President Donald Trump’s redistricting demands before the 2026 midterm elections.
“Missourians are more alike than we are different, and our Missouri values, across both sides of the aisle, are closer to each other than those of the extreme Left representation of New York, California, and Illinois,” Kehoe said. “Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values should be truly represented at all levels of government, and the Missouri First Map delivers just that.”
The special session, which will begin Wednesday, will include an effort to make passing constitutional amendments significantly harder. Among other changes, any proposed amendment would need a majority of the statewide vote and passage in all eight congressional districts.
Kehoe’s decision could have profound implications for the future of Missouri politics and the 2026 Missouri General Assembly session.
Kehoe announced Friday the legislature would return for the special session. The focus in redistricting will be to split parts of Kansas City into multiple districts in order to convert Democratic Congressman Emanuel Cleaver’s 5th District into a Republican seat.
The map Kehoe’s office released includes a number of significant changes to the Kansas City area:
- The 5th District now includes a portion of Kansas City and Jackson County, as well as a number of rural counties. It also takes in a portion of Boone County, as well as Cole County. While it wouldn't be impossible for Democrats to win, it does tilt toward Republicans for the first time in recent memory.
- The 4th District, which Rep. Mark Alford represents, now includes the eastern part of Kansas City and several Jackson County suburbs. It also includes a number of Kansas City exurban counties, as well as rural counties in southwest Missouri. Alford's seat would still lean Republican but less so than in 2024.
- Congressman Sam Graves’ 6th District now includes all of Clay County, which has become a Democratic stronghold. The seat, which takes in most of northern Missouri, is still strongly Republican, but could be competitive in a general election if Clay and Platte Counties become bluer.
Trump has pressured Republican states, including Texas, Indiana and Florida, to go through unprecedented mid-decade redistricting. The president’s party often does poorly in midterm elections, and Republicans hold a historically small majority in the House.
Missouri would be the second GOP-leaning state behind Texas to make its already Republican-leaning congressional lines more favorable to the party. Supporters of the move in Missouri have made no secret that they’re going through with the special session to prevent Democrats from taking over the U.S. House.
“I would rather see Mike Johnson and Republican leadership pursuing Donald Trump's America First agenda rather than Hakeem Jeffries calling for endless impeachment hearings,” said U.S. Rep. Bob Onder, R-St. Charles County.
If Missouri Republicans accede to Kehoe and Trump’s demands, it will be a turnaround from just three years ago.
In 2022, the heavily Republican Missouri General Assembly soundly rejected efforts to pass a map that placed Cleaver at a distinct disadvantage for reelection. They contended that in a bad year for Republicans, three Kansas City-area seats could be ripe for Democratic takeovers.
That’s because in order to make the 5th District winnable for Republicans, lawmakers will have to place portions of heavily Democratic Kansas City into the districts of Reps. Mark Alford and Sam Graves. And while those seats would still lean Republican, they could become competitive in a potential wave election for Democrats. That could mean national Republican groups may have to spend millions of dollars to prevail in the 4th, 5th and 6th districts.
“In an incredibly competitive year, you do put other U.S. congressional seats at risk,” said House Speaker Pro Tem Chad Perkins, R-Bowling Green. “I think that is true,”
Trump’s staff is exerting pressure on people like Perkins, who received a phone call from the White House after he expressed misgivings to the Missouri Independent.
“Our more moderate Republicans in the legislature were reluctant previously to enact a 7-1 map,” said Gregg Keller, a St. Louis County-based Republican political consultant. “But when the president and his top White House staff started making personal calls to the electeds, that squeamishness disappeared very quickly. No Missouri Republican officeholder wants to risk being embarrassed publicly by a sitting president who wins the state handily and is beloved by our voters.”
Democratic predicament
Democrats, including Cleaver, have condemned the prospect of a redistricting special session as a desperate and illegal Republican effort to tip the scales of the 2026 election their way.
In a scathing statement issued Friday, Cleaver ripped the Trump-led effort to drive him out of office.
“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,” Cleaver said. “This attempt to gerrymander Missouri will not simply change district lines, it will silence voices. It will deny representation. It will tell the people of Missouri that their lawmakers no longer wish to earn their vote, that elections are predetermined by the power brokers in Washington, and that politicians – not the people – will decide the outcome.”
They’ve also been especially critical of GOP leaders who didn’t actively support going after Cleaver in 2022 but have changed course due to pressure from the White House.
“The governor’s complete capitulation to the president’s will proves that Donald Trump – not Mike Kehoe – calls the shots in Missouri, while the man Missourians elected to lead our state is a mere puppet responding to his master’s commands,” said House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, D-Kansas City. “The governor and every rational Missouri Republican knows reopening congressional redistricting six years ahead of schedule to try to create another GOP seat not only is wrong, but likely to backfire. That’s why Republican lawmakers overwhelmingly voted against the idea just three years ago.”
Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, D-St. Louis County, contended that Missouri Republicans are complicit in trying to shield Trump from accountability. That includes the issue of releasing files about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“It's sad to see this day coming when the governor and Missouri Republicans licked Trump's boots to the point where they're letting him draw the maps in D.C. and they're going to hand the maps down here,” Beck said.
Some legal experts have questioned whether the Missouri Constitution authorizes the legislature to redraw congressional districts at this point in the decade. They also have wondered districts could meet equal population thresholds, since the new map will use population data that’s more than four years old.
“The constitution says that after the decennial census comes out, then you have, by law, redistricting. And that's the way it's always been. Usually there's some kind of deal cut, and they do the redistricting, and we move on,” said former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Michael Wolff. “There's no provision in there for going halfway through the game. The game's 10 years long. And you have 10 years of these districts.”
Still, Democrats will have limited ability to stop the maps from passing in a special session. Barring mass defections from Republicans, a new redistricting plan would easily pass the Missouri House. And even though Senate Democrats plan to filibuster any proposal, Republicans could use a maneuver known as the previous question to cut off debate.
Senate Democrats were already fuming over the last week of session, when Republicans used the previous question to force votes on measures counteracting abortion rights and paid sick leave initiatives. Sen. Patty Lewis, D-Kansas City, said her caucus could make the 2026 session even more miserable and unproductive for the GOP majority.
“Even though they have the supermajority, there's a lot of issues that require the Democrats' votes, like the budget,” Lewis said. “If they continue with their plan to gerrymander the maps I have no desire to work with them.”
It’s unclear whether Cleaver, who will turn 81 in October, would run in a reconfigured 5th Congressional District that’s much more Republican. The former Kansas City mayor doesn’t have a track record of raising the millions of dollars necessary to run for Congress in a nationally targeted race.
Asked by NPR this week if he’d run again if Republicans are successful at converting his Democratic seat into a Republican-leaning one, Cleaver replied: “I'm going to have to look at that and think about it. As of this very moment, I am running and not considering retirement.”
In his statement Friday, Cleaver said: “I will not surrender the voices of the people who entrusted me to fight for them.”
“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.
Big changes to St. Louis area
Meanwhile, the districts of some St. Louis-area lawmakers could be in for a major overhaul – though not as dramatic from a partisan standpoint as the Kansas City area.
Republicans could put all of St. Charles County in U.S. Rep. Bob Onder’s 3rd District, meaning he’ll have to cede territory in mid-Missouri to other federal lawmakers. And 2nd District GOP Congresswoman Ann Wagner would pick up voters in Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and Gasconade counties.
Neither of those moves would likely significantly change the partisan composition of those districts. The 3rd District would still be safe for Republicans, while the 2nd District would lean toward the GOP – but still be competitive enough for Democratic groups to target if the national environment is good for the party.
Lawmakers don’t plan to make significant changes to U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell’s 1st District, which takes in all of St. Louis and part of St. Louis County. Not only is that seat protected by the Voting Rights Act, but its configuration arguably helps Republicans by not putting significant numbers of Black voters, who historically vote Democratic, in the 2nd and 3rd districts.
Wagner and Onder have both publicly supported the Trump-inspired redistricting endeavor – as have Missouri U.S. Reps. Jason Smith and Eric Burlison. Lawmakers will likely make marginal changes to Smith’s southeast Missouri-based 8th District and Burlison’s southwest Missouri-based 7th District, which are both GOP strongholds.
Initiative petition changes included
In a surprise move, Kehoe’s special session call will also include efforts to make it much harder for constitutional amendments to pass.
Currently, constitutional amendments only need a simple majority to get approved. The plan Kehoe is pushing would not only require a majority of the statewide vote, but also passage in all eight congressional districts.
That’s a major change even from previous proposals, which would have only required an amendment to pass in a majority of congressional districts.
It would also:
- Require public comment before an initiative petition can gather signatures.
- Establish a criminal election offense for fraudulently signing or gathering signatures for a statewide ballot measure.
- Require that the full text of a statewide ballot measure be printed and available to voters at all election sites and polling places.
- Prohibit foreign nationals from contributing to committees for or against a statewide ballot measure.
“For far too long, Missouri’s Constitution has been the victim of out-of-state special interests who deceive voters to pass out-of-touch policies,” Kehoe said. “It's time we give voters a chance to protect our Constitution.”
Efforts to restrict the initiative petition process in other states have floundered badly. And if lawmakers place the measure on the ballot, it would likely have to go before voters at the same time as another initiative repealing a 2024 abortion rights measure.
Lawmakers failed to place major changes to the initiative petition process on the 2024 ballot. Denise Lieberman, director and general counsel of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, hopes this 2025 effort also fails.
“Missouri lawmakers should also reject efforts yet again to eliminate majority rule from our ballot initiative process,” Lieberman said. “For more than a century, Missourians across the political spectrum have used the ballot initiative process to make their voices heard. Missouri is the Show-Me State; Missourians believe in fairness. Lawmakers should reject efforts to rig our elections and silence the will of the people.”
Benjamin Singer, of Respect MO Voters, called the effort a “shameful attack on majority rule.”
“We will defeat this disgusting proposal, and pass our own amendment to ban politicians from attacking the will of the people, ever again,” Singer said.
