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Republicans want to redraw congressional districts and increase their party’s chances of flipping a seat long held by a Democrat in the Kansas City area.
Sept. 9, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET
The Missouri House of Representatives is poised to vote on Tuesday on new congressional boundaries that would create an additional Republican-leaning district, part of President Trump’s national push to redraw maps to favor his party ahead of the midterm elections.
As lawmakers gathered at the Missouri State Capitol this week, Democrats, who are outnumbered, decried the new boundaries as “brazen,” “shameless,” cheating or “all to protect Trump,” and questioned whether drawing a new map now was even legal. States generally pass new congressional boundaries once a decade, after the results of the census are published.
“If we sanction this midcycle redraw, we will be joining the long and shameful line of the states that have used legal language to silence voters rather than to protect them,” said State Representative Kem Smith, a Democrat from the St. Louis area.
But Republicans used their large majority on Monday to advance the new map, which would split a Kansas City-based district now held by Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who has held a congressional seat for two decades. The proposed boundaries would favor Republicans in seven of Missouri’s eight districts, up from the six seats they currently hold. The new boundaries would splice Kansas City’s core into districts with large rural areas.
“This is a better map,” said State Representative Dirk Deaton, a Republican who argued that it was well within the General Assembly’s authority to revisit district lines between censuses. He added that the new map “comports with every legal standard and every constitutional requirement.”
If the map is approved by the Missouri House on Tuesday, it must still be passed by the State Senate before being sent to the desk of Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican who called the special session to draw a new map. The measure is widely expected to become law because Missouri Democrats, diminished by years of election losses, have few legislative options to slow its passage.
