President Trump signaled Thursday that Missouri will be the next state to redraw its congressional lines to benefit the Republican Party ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
It’s a continuation of the arms race between Republican-and Democratic-controlled states over redistricting, kickstarted by President Trump. At the president’s urging, the GOP-controlled Texas state House passed a new, heavily Republican map this week, with the state Senate expected to vote on the new districts Friday.
In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump wrote, “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!” He later said in a radio interview the same day that Missouri, Indiana and Florida are the next GOP-controlled states he believes will redraw congressional maps to create more Republican districts.
Missouri has eight U.S. House seats in Congress, and two of them are held by Democrats. Any effort to draw a new district to give Republicans one more seat in their favor would likely focus on changing the Kansas City-focused district represented by longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
A spokesperson for Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, who has not yet made the call for a special session for redistricting, said he’s continuing to have conversations with state leadership “to assess options for a special session that would allow the General Assembly to provide congressional districts that best represent Missourians.”
Missouri’s treasurer and lieutenant governor, both Republicans, also say they favor a new map.
“We missed the chance to secure a 7-1 map in 2022, a mistake President Trump rightly calls on us to fix. Missouri’s next congressional map must protect Missouri values and ensure our representatives in Congress are as conservative as the voters who send them,” Lt. Gov. David Wasinger said in a statement in July.
The expectation in the state capital of Jefferson City is that redrawing to add one more Republican-friendly seat is “for sure happening,” according to one Missouri Republican operative familiar with conversations among lawmakers.
“[Governor Kehoe] is doing everything that can be done to prevent a legal challenge. They’re just crossing the Ts and dotting the I’s. I haven’t heard anything about any reservation from the governor’s office,” the operative said.
“The appetite is there and I think everybody just knows it’s going to happen,” the operative added.
The redistricting plan would likely be tacked onto a veto session in the state that was already scheduled to take place on Sept. 10.
Most of Missouri’s GOP congressional members have already thrown their support to a map proposed by the White House and Mr. Trump’s orbit, according to this operative. Mr. Trump won the Show-Me State by 18 points in 2024.
“I believe that President Trump’s team and his White House staff are very interested in redistricting because really, a lot is at stake,” Republican Rep. Bob Onder said in a local NBC News interview in late July.
Some Missouri Republicans pushed — and failed — to draw a map including a new Republican-leaning seat that would result in a GOP-Democratic split of 7-1 during the last redistricting cycle in 2021 and 2022.
“We should have enacted a 7-1 map three years ago, but better late than never,” Missouri GOP State Senator Curtis Trent posted.
Missouri GOP lawmakers visited the White House earlier this summer for what was characterized as a general meeting with administration officials before the larger redistricting war began. Another previously scheduled meeting at the White House with Indiana lawmakers is also planned for Aug. 26, according to a White House official.
While the gain Republicans could make in Missouri is likely just one seat, a GOP-led shift could have a major impact. If Democrats win as few as three GOP seats in the U.S. House in next year’s midterm elections, they could flip control of the chamber. The number needed to shift who leads the chamber may be affected by the final outcome in the broader redistricting clash between Republicans and Democrats in the coming weeks and months.
At Mr. Trump’s urging, Texas Republicans triggered the redistricting feud with its efforts in recent weeks to overhaul the state’s maps and make five congressional districts held by Democrats more favorable to the GOP. With that shift on the brink of becoming law, California Democrats are working to offset those gains with their own redrawing, which would take five of its GOP-held districts and make them more winnable for Democrats.
California Democrats face a higher hurdle than Texas Republicans because they must amend the state’s constitution, in order to sideline a citizen redistricting commission for the next few cycles and force through more overly partisan lines. That means California voters will essentially be able to decide in a November special election whether to sign off on Democrats’ plan.
If California and Texas essentially cancel each other out with their new congressional lines, the shifts the White House is pushing in smaller states including Missouri and Indiana could loom larger. While both are red states with Republican governors, each has Democrats in their congressional delegations.
In Missouri, any move to try and make Cleaver’s Kansas City district a GOP seat is likely to be met with a major outcry, similar to what Democrats have seen in other states this year where mid-decade redistricting could be in play. Cleaver, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, first won his House seat in the 2004 election after having served as mayor of Kansas City, Missouri.
In response to Mr. Trump’s Thursday Truth Social post, Missouri Democratic state Sen. Stephen Webber said on social media that it “Looks like Republicans in the #MoLeg have received their marching orders from the federal government. Pathetic to watch grown adult “leaders” flop around like caught fish when a New Yorker that thinks the Chiefs play in Kansas tweets at them how to run Missouri.”
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