Missouri governor calls special session to redraw congressional maps in push to boost GOP seats

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced Friday that he will convene the state’s General Assembly for a special session next week to redraw congressional maps as Republicans push to create more GOP-leaning districts ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Kehoe said in a statement outlining the move that for the special session starting Wednesday he is directing the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to “take action on redistricting” to ensure districts “truly put Missouri values first.”

“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,” he said.

The Missouri General Assembly has a Republican supermajority, with the party controlling two-thirds of the seats in both the House and Senate.

Though Democrats in Missouri are limited in their ability to prevent their GOP colleagues from moving ahead with new maps, state Sen. Doug Beck, the top Democrat in the chamber, said in a fundraising post on X that the party will “fight this at every step.”

“If Democrats retake the House, they will release the Epstein Files, and this scares the hell out of President Trump. That’s why the President has ordered Missouri to rubber stamp a rigged map drawn in Washington D.C. because he knows Missouri Republicans would rather protect pedophiles than say ‘no’ to Donald Trump,” Beck said in a statement.

Kehoe’s directive makes Missouri the second Republican-led state to move ahead with redrawing its congressional maps to favor the GOP heading into the 2026 midterm elections. The effort is backed by President Donald Trump as the party seeks to keep control of the House, where Republicans have a slim majority over Democrats.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday signed new congressional maps into law that could create as many as five new pickup opportunities for the party. The Republican governor said in a post on X that the maps ensure a “fairer representation” of Texas, which he posited “will be more RED in Congress.”

Several Democratic governors have promised to respond to the Republican effort with partisan redistricting moves of their own, with California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Kathy Hochul among the most vocal proponents.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature in California recently passed a bill that will allow voters to decide in November whether the state should adopt new gerrymandered maps that could yield the party up to five new seats, a direct response to the GOP gains in Texas.

New York Democrats last month introduced a bill that would allow their state to conduct mid-decade redistricting if another state does so first, but that effort would require a state constitutional amendment and referendum, likely taking years to accomplish.

Utah will also redraw its congressional boundaries after a judge found that the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature “unconstitutionally repealed” a ballot measure in 2020 that banned partisan redistricting and weakened the role of an independent commission in drawing maps. The judge prohibited the state from holding future elections with its current congressional maps and said it must submit a new map before the end of September.