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The high-stakes political fist fight between Republicans and Democrats over congressional redistricting ahead of next year’s midterm elections shifted to a new battleground this week.
A special session of Missouri’s legislature to redraw the solidly red state’s congressional districts and give the GOP control of one additional House seat kicked off on Wednesday with public hearings scheduled for Thursday.
“Missouri’s conservative, common-sense values should be truly represented at all levels of government, and the Missouri First Map delivers just that,” Republican Gov. Matt Kehoe argued, as he announced the special session and unveiled a proposed map.
MAJOR REPUBLICAN REDISTRICTING VICTORY IN THIS KEY STATE
Kehoe’s move came hours after GOP Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas on Friday signed into law a redistricting bill passed by the Republican super majority in the state legislature that aims to create up to five right-leaning congressional districts at the expense of currently Democrat-controlled seats in the reliably red state.
The Republican push in Texas, which came at the urging of President Donald Trump, is part of a broad effort by the GOP across the country to pad their 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.
WATCH: CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS AIM TO COUNTER TEXAS REDISTRICTING
Trump, in a social media post, argued that Missouri voters will have “the tremendous opportunity to elect an additional MAGA Republican in the 2026 Midterm Elections.”
Trump and his political team are aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats stormed back to grab 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 last week approved a special ballot proposition this November to obtain voter approval to temporarily sidetrack the state’s non-partisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democrat-dominated legislature.
TRUMP NOT ON BALLOT BUT FRONT-AND-CENTER IN 2025 ELECTIONS
The effort in California, which aims to create five more Democrat-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.
In Missouri, the new map proposed by Kehoe targets longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City area district by shifting it eastward to include rural right-leaning voters.
If passed by the GOP-controlled legislature, the new map would likely flip Cleaver’s seat and give Republicans a 7-1 advantage in the state’s U.S. House delegation.
The Missouri legislature’s special session will also tackle another top Republican priority – a proposed constitutional amendment making it more difficult to approve citizen-driven ballot initiatives. Abortion-rights and marijuana legalization amendments, opposed by many Republican leaders in the state, have passed in recent years.
Missouri state House Minority Leader Ashley Aune on Monday charged that Kehoe and Republican state lawmakers are pushing to “rig our maps and eliminate our representation in Congress.”
Former Rep. Russ Carnahan, the chair of the Missouri Democrats, 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 pissed off Missouri voters look like,” Carnahan told Fox News Digital.
But Democrats in the Missouri state house have limited options to stop the legislature from passing the new map. Unlike in Texas, where Democratic state representatives fled the state for two weeks to delay passage of redistricting, a similar move by Missouri Democrats wouldn’t prevent a quorum needed to conduct business.
And any filibuster by Democrats in Missouri’s state Senate would likely be quickly shutdown by the majority Republicans.
Cleaver, whose seat is threatened, has vowed to take legal action if the new map is signed into law by the governor.
With Democrats currently needing just a three-seat pick-up in next year’s midterms to win back the House majority, Missouri and Texas are far from the only states where Trump and his political allies are urging Republicans to re-write the maps to create more right-leaning congressional districts.
Top Republican state lawmakers in Indiana, which, similar to Missouri, is a former battleground state that’s now red, visited the White House last week to discuss redistricting.
Republicans in GOP-controlled South Carolina and Florida are also mulling redistricting 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.
But they have less attractive options than Republicans.
They control fewer states than the GOP and face constitutional limitations or non-partisan redistricting commissions, which is the case in New York.
In Illinois and Maryland, where Govs. JB Pritzker and Wes Moore are discussing redistricting, Democrats hope to pick up to three more left-leaning seats.
And they could pick up a seat in right-leaning 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.
Fox News Digital reached out to Kehoe’s office to request an interview but did not immediately hear back.
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