JEFFERSON CITY, Mo (AP) — Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe is calling Missouri lawmakers into a special session to redraw the state’s U.S. House districts as part of a growing national battle between Republicans and Democrats seeking an edge in next year’s congressional elections.
Kehoe’s announcement Friday comes just hours after Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a new congressional voting map designed to help Republicans gain five more seats in the 2026 midterm elections. It marked a win for President Donald Trump, who has been urging Republican-led states to reshape district lines to give the party a better shot at retaining control of the House.
Republican-led Texas took up the task first but was quickly countered by Democratic-led California. Missouri would become the third state to pursue an unusual mid-decade redistricting for partisan advantage.
Kehoe scheduled the special session to begin Sept. 3.
Missouri is represented in the U.S. House by six Republicans and two Democrats — Reps. Wesley Bell in St. Louis and Emanuel Cleaver in Kansas City. Republicans hope to gain one more seat by reshaping Cleaver’s district to stretch further from Kansas City into suburban or rural areas that lean more Republican.
Some Republicans had pushed for a map that could give them a 7-1 edge when redrawing districts after the 2020 census. But the GOP legislative majority ultimately opted against it. Some feared the more aggressive plan could be susceptible to a legal challenge and could backfire in a poor election year for Republicans by creating more competitive districts that could allow Democrats to win three seats.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday signed into law a new congressional voting map designed to help Republicans gain more seats in the 2026 midterm elections, delivering a win for President Donald Trump and his desire to hold on to a slim GOP majority in the U.S. House.
The Texas map drafted in rare mid-decade redistricting prompted fierce protests from Democrats and sparked a gerrymandering tug-of-war for voters in states across the country.
“Texas is now more red in the United States Congress,” Abbott said in a video he posted on X of him signing the legislation.
Before Texas lawmakers passed their new map, California passed a bill asking voters to approve new Democratic-leaning districts to counter any Republican gains in Texas.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has emerged as a leading adversary of Trump on redistricting and other issues, tauntingly labeled Abbott on X as the president's “#1 lapdog” following the signing.
The incumbent president’s party usually loses congressional seats in the midterm election. On a national level, the partisan makeup of existing districts puts Democrats within three seats of a majority.
Voting rights groups filed a lawsuit this week ahead of Abbott's signing the bill, saying the new map weakens the electoral influence of Black voters.
Texas Democrats have also vowed to challenge the new map in court. They delayed a vote by two weeks by leaving Texas on Aug. 3 in protest and to rally support nationally. Upon their return, they were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring to ensure they showed up for debate.
But the large Republican majority in the Texas Legislature made its ultimate passage all but inevitable.
The head of Texas' Democratic Party criticized Abbott, saying he and Republicans “effectively surrendered Texas to Washington” with the new map.
“They love to boast about how ‘Texas Tough’ they are, but when Donald Trump made one call, they bent over backwards to prioritize his politics over Texans,” state Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder said in a statement. “Honestly, it’s pathetic.”
The Texas map redraw has already reshaped the 2026 race, with Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the dean of the state’s congressional delegation, announcing that he would not seek reelection to his Austin-based seat if the new map takes effect. Under the proposed map, Doggett’s district would overlap with that of another Democratic incumbent, Rep. Greg Casar.
Trump has pushed other Republican-controlled states to redraw their maps. Indiana's Republican legislative leaders privately met with the president in the Oval Office this week to discuss redistricting.
The president is also pushing Missouri Republicans to redraw their House maps, while Democrats in Ohio are bracing for Republicans to try and expand their congressional majority when the Legislature takes up redistricting later this year.
Trump's push to redraw House districts to his party's advantage has drawn a response from other blue states besides California. Democrats in New York have introduced legislation that would allow mid-decade redistricting, but the earliest new maps would be in place in that state would be ahead of the 2028 election.
Because the Supreme Court has blessed purely partisan gerrymandering, the only way opponents can stop the new Texas map would be by arguing in court that it violates the Voting Rights Act requirement to keep minority communities together so they can select representatives of their choice.
Republican leaders have denied the map is racially discriminatory and contend the new map creates more new majority-minority seats than the previous one. They have also been explicit in their desire to draw a new map for a goal of electing more Republicans.
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This version corrects when Democrats left Texas to Aug. 3 instead of July.
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DeMillo reported from Little Rock, Arkansas.
David A. Lieb And Andrew Demillo, The Associated Press
