On Trump’s orders, Missouri Republicans plan to gerrymander a Black lawmaker out of office

Donald Trump’s plan to rig the 2026 midterms through a series of unprecedented mid-decade gerrymanders shifted from Texas to Missouri on Wednesday, as the GOP-controlled Missouri legislature began a special session to pass a new redistricting map that would eliminate one of two Democrat-held US House districts and net Republicans an additional seat. If successful, the new map would give Republicans 90 percent of seats in a state Trump carried with 58 percent of the vote in 2024.

The Republican leader of the state senate said the plan was designed “to be sure Missouri’s representation matches Missouri’s Christian conservative majority.”

The map targets the seat of Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, one of two Black members of the state’s congressional delegation, by stretching his Kansas City-based district 200 miles east into red, rural counties that have little in common with the urban areas he’s represented for 20 years in Congress. Cleaver’s hometown of Kansas City, where he served as mayor before joining the US House, would be split into three districts to dilute Democratic voting strength. According to The Downballot, Cleaver’s district, which he won by twenty-four points in 2024, would now favor Trump by 18 points.

“President Trump’s unprecedented directive to redraw our maps in the middle of the decade and without an updated census is not an act of democracy—it is an unconstitutional attack against it,” Cleaver said in a statement. “This attempt to gerrymander Missouri will not simply change district lines, it will silence voices. It will deny representation. It will tell the people of Missouri that their lawmakers no longer wish to earn their vote, that elections are predetermined by the power brokers in Washington, and that politicians—not the people—will decide the outcome.”

After pressuring Texas to pass a new congressional map that is expected to net Republicans five new seats, Trump is now lobbying legislators state by state—much like he attempted to overturn the 2020 election— in an outlandish bid to prevent Democrats from retaking the House and investigating his administration. Even if California approves a new map that would offset Texas’s gains, Republicans believe they can net up to seven additional seats in a gerrymandering arms race, making it much tougher for Democrats to turn Trump’s unpopularity into a wave election. “Trump made the demand and all the Republicans folded,” says Sean Soendker Nicholson, a Democratic political consultant who’s worked on nonpartisan redistricting campaigns in Missouri for many years. “This would be the most extreme Missouri gerrymander since the Civil War.”

Gerrymandering is not the only way Missouri Republicans are attacking democratic norms. Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe also asked lawmakers to severely restrict the state’s ballot initiative process after Missouri voters passed a slew of progressive policies in recent years, including redistricting reform, paid sick leave, a higher minimum wage, Marijuana legalization, Medicaid expansion, and a constitutional right to an abortion.

Instead of needing a simple majority to pass a citizen-led initiative, Kehoe’s proposal would require a majority of support in each of the state’s congressional districts (which the legislature is currently gerrymandering). That would allow 50.1 percent of voters in one district to thwart the will of a majority of the state’s voters overall. “You could get 90 percent of the vote to pass a constitutional amendment and it still wouldn’t pass,” says Nicholson. “It’s minority rule on steroids. It would allow any part of the state to veto something supported by the rest of the state.” The plan would still need to be approved by the state’s voters, likely in November 2026.

It’s telling that the gerrymandering of congressional districts and the gerrymandering of the ballot initiative process are happening at the same time. Missouri Republicans are trying to predetermine election outcomes through extreme gerrymandering while taking away voters’ ability to do anything about it.

Nicholson predicts these efforts will backfire, however. He says the Missouri courts will likely reject the mid-decade gerrymander because the Missouri Constitution states that redistricting must follow the decennial census. And he believes the state’s voters will oppose efforts to undercut the ballot initiative process.

“Republicans are pulling out all the shenanigans,” he says. “People will see through what they’re trying to do.”