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President Donald Trump got another victory in the high-stakes political battle between Republicans and Democrats over congressional redistricting.
The Missouri state Senate, meeting Friday in a special legislative session, passed by a 21-11 vote a new congressional map that is likely to hand Republicans an additional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Missouri, a one-time swing state that has dramatically shifted to the right over the past decade and a half, is the latest battleground in the congressional redistricting showdown after the passage of new maps in GOP-dominated Texas and a redistricting push by Democrats in heavily blue California.
With passage of the redistricting bill in the Missouri House of Representatives earlier in the week, the measure now heads to Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe’s desk.
TRUMP-BACKED REDISTRICTING PUSH TURNS MIDWESTERN STATE INTO NEXT POLITICAL BATTLEGROUND
“Missouri’s conservative, commonsense values should be truly represented at all levels of government, and the Missouri First Map delivers just that,” Kehoe said as he recently announced the special session and unveiled the proposed map.
Trump, in a social media statement following the Missouri Senate’s vote, called the new map “FANTASTIC” and said it “will help send an additional MAGA Republican to Congress in the 2026 Midterm Elections.”
The new map targets longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-area district by shifting it eastward to include rural right-leaning voters. The new map would likely flip Cleaver’s seat and give Republicans a 7-1 advantage in the state’s House delegation.
Cleaver has vowed to take legal action if the new map is signed into law by the governor.
“I want to warn all of us that if you fight fire with fire long enough, all you’re going to have left is ashes,” Cleaver said Thursday as he testified in front of a Missouri Senate committee.
And pointing to recent public opinion polling, he called the redistricting plan “immensely unpopular.”
Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement that “in passing a gerrymandered map that breaks up Kansas City and pairing the map with undemocratic legislation that would eliminate the public’s ability to pass ballot initiatives, Missouri Republicans are sending a dreadful but clear message: they don’t work for the people of Missouri, they work for themselves.”
Missouri Democrats staged a sit-in last weekend, refusing to leave the chamber in protest of the Republican-backed map. And Democrats held another rally at the Missouri Capitol on Wednesday.
State House Minority Leader Ashley Aune accused Republicans of pushing to “rig our maps and eliminate our representation in Congress.”
And former Rep. Russ Carnahan, the chair of the Missouri Democratic Party, warned there are political consequences for Republicans pushing to redistrict.
“They’re choosing to bow down to Washington demands to do some things that I think are going to stir the ire of Missouri voters, and they’re about to see what p—ed-off Missouri voters look like,” Carnahan told Fox News Digital.
But with Republicans in firm control of both chambers in Missouri’s legislature, Democrats were without any good options to prevent passage of the new map.
Kehoe’s announcement of the special session came hours after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed into law a redistricting bill passed by the Republican supermajority in the state legislature that aims to create up to five right-leaning congressional districts at the expense of current Democrat-controlled seats in the reliably red state.
ABBOTT CLEARS FINAL REDISTRICTING HURDLE AS TEXAS SENATE PASSES NEW TRUMP-APPROVED MAP
The efforts in Missouri and Texas are part of a broad effort by the GOP to pad its razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.
Trump and his political team are aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House, when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections.
Democrats are fighting back against the rare, but not unheard-of mid-decade redistricting.
State lawmakers in heavily blue California have approved a special ballot proposition this November to obtain voter approval to temporarily sidetrack the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democrat-dominated legislature.
The effort in California, which aims to create five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts and counter the shift in Texas, is being spearheaded by two-term Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential contender.
With Democrats currently needing just a three-seat pickup in next year’s midterms to win back the House majority, Indiana, South Carolina and Florida are mulling their own GOP-friendly redistricting plans ahead of the 2026 elections. And right-leaning Ohio is under a court order to draw new maps ahead of the midterms.
Democrats, as they push back, are looking to New York, Illinois and Maryland in the hopes of creating more left-leaning congressional seats.
In Illinois and Maryland, where governors J.B. Pritzker and Wes Moore are discussing redistricting, Democrats hope to pick up to three more left-leaning seats.
And Democrats could pick up a seat in Republican-dominated Utah, where a judge recently ordered the GOP-controlled legislature to draw new maps after ruling that lawmakers four years ago ignored an independent commission approved by voters to prevent partisan gerrymandering.
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