Black lawmaker set to be gerrymandered out of seat at Trump's direction

President Donald Trump has shifted his focus from Texas to Missouri in the fight to control the 2026 midterm elections and the House with a new redistricting map targeting the seat of Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

The GOP-controlled Missouri legislature started a special session Wednesday in the heated battle over Congressional maps, Mother Jones reports. The move to shift Missouri's 5th District could change the political boundaries across the "Show-Me State," potentially eliminating one of two Democratic U.S. House districts and gaining an additional seat for Republicans. The new district would stretch from urban Kansas City to rural areas that do not have much in common.

If the "Missouri First Map" is adopted, Republicans would land 90 seats in Missouri, a state Trump led with 58 percent of the vote in the 2024 presidential election.

The mid-decade redistricting move follows Texas lawmakers' gerrymandering, pressured by Trump, plus the mid-decade redistricting efforts in multiple GOP-led states.

GOP Missouri state Sen. Cindy O'Laughlin told Bloomberg that Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe is pushing the redistricting plan.

“He wants to be sure Missouri’s representation matches Missouri’s Christian conservative majority,” O'Laughlin said.

Kehoe also wants to advance a constitutional amendment that would make it more difficult for people to pass future amendments of their own, according to the Down Ballot.

Cleaver has vowed to fight back. He is one of two Black lawmakers in the state's congressional delegation and has represented urban areas in the state for more than 20 years.

“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.”

Cleaver's lawyers are looking into whether White House officials are violating the law by pressuring GOP leaders in Missouri to gerrymander the district lines, Newsweek reports.