In Missouri, the Republican-led government is moving quickly to redraw state election maps to secure its political grip on the state, continuing a national trend of anti-democratic gamesmanship that one Democratic lawmaker from the state says will leave the nation’s democracy “with only cinders remaining.”
On Aug. 29, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe called the state legislature together for a special session after prodding weeks earlier from President Donald Trump. In that session, he advanced plans for congressional redistricting, namely a map that would give Republicans one more seat in the House. Dubbed the “Missouri First Map“, the plan significantly expands the blue bastion of the Kansas City-area District 5 in three directions, into more rural, GOP-voting counties, with the hope of diluting Democratic votes and turning District 5 red.
On September 9, the Missouri House of Representatives passed the new map, which now heads to the Senate.
Critics have called the effort a naked power grab by Missouri conservatives, the new map upending a status quo that, according to an analysis by Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project, does not confer any partisan advantage.
In particular, Republicans are looking to split up District 5 and put long-time Democratic Rep. Rev. Emanuel Cleaver II out of a job. Cleaver, speaking to Salon, argued that’s because Republicans nationwide are “headed toward defeat” in the 2026 midterm elections.
“This is happening in Missouri, in the mid-decade, because the president … looks at the same polling data that I see, which suggests that the big bogus boogey man deal is one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation approved during my term in Congress,” Cleaver told Salon, referring to the Republican-passed “Big Beautiful Bill” that pairs tax cuts for the wealthy with trillion-dollar cuts to the social safety net.
Cleaver suggested that Trump and Kehoe have colluded in a “power play” to gerrymander the state. “The best way to do it was to just pick up the phone and call one of the governors,” Cleaver said. “It’s just that simple.”
“We are now in a situation where the president was able to get what he wanted from the governor of Texas,” Cleaver added, referencing the partisan gerrymandering of that state, “and he moved to make sure that they could get a few more, so he chose Missouri.”
In an August statement announcing the special session, Kehoe called on the general assembly to “take action” on the new map, which he said would “truly put Missouri values first.”
“Missourians are more alike than we are different, and our Missouri values, across both sides of the aisle, are closer to each other than those of the extreme Left representation of New York, California, and Illinois,” Kehoe said. “Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values should be truly represented at all levels of government, and the Missouri First Map delivers just that.”
Kehoe went on to accuse “out-of-state special interests” of influencing Missouri’s Constitution. “It’s time we give voters a chance to protect our Constitution.”
Terrence Wise, leader of the labor rights organization Stand Up KC, does not see it that way. He says the new map is an “attack on the community,” for Republican and Democratic workers alike, who would find a cold shoulder in a galvanized conservative government.
Wise also noted Kehor’s July reversal of voter-approved sick leave and minimum wage in the state as another threat to democracy in Missouri.
“I’m seeing a dangerous pattern here in Missouri,” said Wise.
“As Missourians, we all deserve the same thing: good health care, good wages and good quality of life,” Wise told Salon. “Speaker of the House Jon Patterson and Governor Mike Kehoe — they’re not doing the business of working Missourians. They’re doing a mandate from the Resolute Desk at 1600 Pennsylvania.”
“This is a working family and working American issue,” Wise added. “We need representation.”
Concerns about representative democracy don’t appear to bother Trump, who called Kehoe’s plan a “tremendous opportunity to elect an additional MAGA Republican in the 2026 Midterm Elections.” In a post to Truth Social, Trump said the map was “A HUGE VICTORY for our America First Agenda.”
“I call on all of my Republican friends in the Missouri Legislature to work as fast as they can to get this new Congressional Map, AS IS, to Governor Mike Kehoe’s desk, ASAP,” Trump wrote.
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Geoffrey Skelley, chief elections analyst for Decision Desk HQ, an election results reporting company, said that the Trump-backed plan in Missouri is “fundamentally problematic” for democracy. He warned of “tit-for-tat” redistricting across the country.
“The concern for the public and for representative democracy is that you’re going to have a lot of tit for tat moving forward,” Skelley told Salon. “If you have a situation where states are constantly redistricting, it’s changing the rules in the middle of the game It speaks to the pursuit of power at the expense of everything else.”
Skelley pointed to the retaliatory redistricting effort underway in California, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom. He called it “a race to the bottom” in an already “divided” country with partisan leadership.
“If you add in that with the tense political divisions, that high degree of competitiveness leads parties to go for any advantage they can grab hold of,” Skelley said. “I think it could continue on. It may not end for another election cycle or two.”
Cleaver, meanwhile, said that he is going to “rear back and scream” in the face of redistricting, floating possible lawsuits and promising that Democrats “will retaliate” with gerrymandering of their own.
“I would hate for that to happen, but that’s where we are,” Cleaver said. “We have to respond. We have to fight fire with fire,” he continued, “but I want everyone to know that we’re going to end up with only cinders remaining.”
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