Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe declared on Friday his plans to call a special session of the state’s General Assembly next week to revise congressional maps. This move aligns with Republican efforts to shape more GOP-friendly districts before the 2026 midterms.
In a statement regarding the special session set to commence on Wednesday, Kehoe urged the state’s Republican-majority Legislature to address redistricting. He emphasized the necessity of creating districts that prioritize “Missouri values.”
Kehoe stated, “Missourians share more commonalities than differences, and our Missouri values, regardless of political affiliation, are closer than those of the extreme Left seen in New York, California, and Illinois.”
The Missouri General Assembly has a Republican supermajority, with the party controlling two-thirds of the seats in both the House and Senate.
Although Missouri Democrats have limited power to stop their Republican peers from advancing with new maps, state Senator Doug Beck, the leading Democrat in the chamber, indicated in a fundraising post on X, that the party will “oppose this at every stage.”
Beck expressed that “if Democrats regain control of the House, they will disclose the Epstein Files, a prospect that alarms President Trump. This urgency has led the President to instruct Missouri to endorse a manipulated map created in Washington D.C., as he believes Missouri Republicans would prefer protecting wrongdoers over opposing Donald Trump,” Beck stated.
Kehoe’s announcement positions Missouri as the second Republican-governed state proceeding with redistricting to benefit the GOP prior to the 2026 midterm elections. This initiative, supported by President Donald Trump, aims to maintain the Republican control of the House, where they hold a slight majority over the 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.
