The Missouri governor, Mike Kehoe, has moved to help the Republican party gain an additional seat in Congress, calling a special legislative session to redraw congressional districts in his state.
Kehoe’s announcement on Friday followed a pressure campaign from Donald Trump, who has urged Republican states to reshape district boundaries to more heavily favor Republicans, boosting the party’s chances of maintaining control of the House of Representatives in 2026.
The announcement came hours after Texas governor Greg Abbott ratified a new congressional voting map that is designed to help Republicans gain five more congressional seats in next year’s elections.
Trump has also pushed Indiana lawmakers to redraw that state’s maps, and has pushed lawmakers in Florida and Ohio to help net three or more seats for the Republican party.
The president celebrated Kehoe’s announcement on social media, and urged Missouri lawmakers to pass “a new, much fairer, and much improved, congressional map, that will give the incredible people of Missouri the tremendous opportunity to elect an additional Maga Republican in the 2026 midterm elections”.
In response, Democratic-led states sought to fight back by redrawing their district maps as well, but the party controls fewer state legislatures. California’s governor Gavin Newsom has signed two redistricting bills to counter Texas’s move, which will have to be approved by voters on 4 November.
Following the approval of Texas’s new congressional maps, the Democratic Governors Association released the following statement: “Republicans can’t defend their toxic and unpopular agenda of gutting healthcare for millions of Americans, so they’re trying to rig our elections before a single vote has even been cast.
“Democratic governors are on the frontlines of this fight – and they will use every tool available to stand up for their states and ensure fair representation.”
It is highly unusual for states to redistrict in the middle of a decade; they normally adjust their districting following the decennial census, to reflect population changes.
Kehoe also said the special legislative session would focus on initiative petition reform, which would render citizen-led initiative petitions – such as those overturning Missouri’s abortion ban and enacting a minimum wage increase and paid sick days – harder to enact.
Emanuel Cleaver II, a Democratic representative from Missouri whose district could be carved up when maps are redrawn, said that in remaking the state’s congressional maps, “lawmakers would be working to drown out Missouri voices in favor of a single man a thousand miles away”.
“But let us be clear: should this effort move forward, we will not concede,” he added.
“I will not surrender the voices of the people who entrusted me to fight for them.”
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