Gov. Mike Kehoe on Friday called a special session to redraw Missouri’s congressional districts. The move is an effort to change the state’s 5th District — which has been held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver since 2005 — and give President Donald Trump one additional Republican vote in the U.S. House.
The special session, to begin Sept. 3, also will focus on initiative petition reform “to ensure our districts and Constitution truly put Missouri values first,” Kehoe said in a statement. The initiative petition changes, pushed by conservative lawmakers for years, would make citizen-led initiative petitions — like those overturning Missouri’s abortion ban and enacting a minimum wage increase and paid sick days — harder to enact.
The redistricting special session has been pushed by Trump since July, when he gave orders to Republican states to redraw their political boundaries to turn seats or make them safer for Republican candidates in the midterm elections.
Kehoe’s call comes the same day that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the state’s newly gerrymandered map into law, setting up Republicans to win five additional House seats. Voting rights groups and Texas Democrats have vowed to challenge the new map in court.
Cleaver has repeatedly spoken out against the effort to redistrict his seat, calling the effort illegal. He has called on Democrats to fight against redistricting.
"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 in a statement Friday, minutes after the special session was announced.
"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," he added.
Last week, Trump wrote in a social media post that “The Great State of Missouri is now IN. I'm not surprised… We're going to win the Midterms in Missouri again, bigger and better than ever before!”
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement Friday that Missouri Republicans are choosing to "take orders from Washington" instead of from their constituents.
“Republicans enacted the current congressional map in response to public pressure from Missouri voters," he said. "Their sudden reversal shows that their pursuit of a mid-decade gerrymander is nothing more than a power grab at the expense of the people. Heading into this special session, Missouri Republicans have a choice: they can listen to Missourians, who oppose a mid-decade gerrymander, or they can fold to Donald Trump’s demands and face the same level of fierce resistance displayed in Texas.”
Missouri has eight congressional districts. Only two, in Kansas City and St. Louis, are held by Democrats. Democratic U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell’s 1st District seat in St. Louis is likely to remain intact.
Missouri Republicans are hoping to dilute 5th District voters into the surrounding 4th and 6th districts, creating a 7-1 Republican-leaning map.
In Missouri’s current map, the 5th District stretches from the Kansas state line to include all of Kansas City and most of its suburbs, including Independence, Blue Springs, Raytown, Lee’s Summit and Gladstone. The new map would stretch the 5th District to include about 150 miles of the state, from U.S. Highway 71 to Osage County.
Under Kehoe’s proposed map, Kansas City would be split. All of Platte and Clay counties, along with parts of the city south of the Missouri River in the East Bottoms and the Historic Northeast, would go to the 6th District, represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Sam Graves.
All of downtown Kansas City and midtown west of U.S. Highway 71, along with Lee’s Summit and Blue Springs, would move to the 4th District, represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Alford.
The 5th District would keep portions of Kansas City east of U.S. Highway 71, as well as Independence and Raytown. But it also would include more than a dozen other counties.
The idea of a 7-1 map was considered and rejected in 2022, when Republicans publicly fought about whether to go after Cleaver’s seat. In the end, the legislature decided on a so-called "6-2" map because they feared splitting Kansas City up could make the 4th and 6th districts more competitive.
But many Republican lawmakers in the state now support Trump’s call to redistrict Missouri in favor of the Republican Party. U.S. Rep. Bob Onder represents the state’s 3rd Congressional District, which covers east-central Missouri. Onder was a strong supporter of redistricting in 2022.
“We are a Republican state. Republicans have supermajorities in the Missouri House and the Missouri Senate,” Onder, of St. Charles County, said in an interview with St. Louis Public Radio. “Republicans hold all of our statewide elected offices, including, of course, governor. And I believe that we should pass a congressional map that reflects the values of the state of Missouri.”
Redistricting is typically done earlier in the decade following the national census, which determines how many congressional seats each state gets. But Trump has pushed GOP-led states to leap into the process early, with the explicit goal of helping Republicans maintain their slim control of the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm elections.
It's set off a flurry of legislative action across the country. In response to Texas, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing to adopt a map that could eliminate an equal number of Republican-leaning districts — but the plan still has to be approved by voters this November.
Missouri may be followed by Republicans in Indiana and Florida, and by Democrats in Illinois and Maryland. But no other states have made it official yet.
Redistricting also comes with some risks. The map Republican lawmakers want could make it less likely that Alford and Graves win their currently safe Republican seats. The influx of voters from the Kansas City area could make those districts more competitive.
Alford, for his part, said he’s trying to stay neutral. His district covers portions of the Kansas City area and western and mid-Missouri.
“I don't care where the lines are drawn,” Alford said in an interview with St. Louis Public Radio. “...I will still work just as hard. I will listen even more. And I will make sure that when I am sworn into office on Jan. 3, 2027, if there is this new district, I will fight just as hard for every individual in that district, no matter what your party affiliation is.”
More than 500 workers and civil rights leaders gathered in Kansas City last week to protest the redistricting effort and express their belief that many of their basic rights would be violated if the congressional map is successfully redrawn.
Another protest against the redistricting effort is planned for noon on Monday, Sept. 1. Area unions, workers and community allies planned the protest at Mill Creek Park before Kehoe announced the special session.
Voter advocacy groups on Friday condemned the special session. Denise Lieberman, director and general counsel of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, said in a statement that gerrymandering Missouri's congressional districts will harm voters.
"If cities like Lee's Summit, Columbia and Kansas City are split into multiple congressional districts, they will lose their representation," she said. "The promise of ‘one-person, one vote’ is that districts reflect voters’ communities. All Missourians deserve for their voices to be heard. Missouri lawmakers should reject this effort to rig the district lines and split up local communities."
