The president has spoken. Will Missouri Republicans obey on redistricting?

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe discusses the 2025 legislative session with reporters in his Capitol office on May 16 (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent)

Once upon a time, Missouri Republicans were proud to declare their independence from Washington, D.C., and anyone associated with it.

During Barack Obama’s administration, they authorized specialty “Don’t Tread on Me” license plates, decorated with the Gadsden Flag. A lot of red states have those now, but Missouri was a trendsetter.

Lawmakers were also fond of floating bills with “freedom” in the name. There was, for instance, a “light bulb freedom act,” a protest against federal energy regulations.

More recently, Republicans rammed through the Second Amendment Preservation Act, which tries to make it illegal to enforce federal gun laws in Missouri. It is unwise legislation that immediately ran into legal challenges, but it did reflect Republicans’ vaunted defiance.

I didn’t like any of those bills, but I kind of miss the defiance — now that so many Missouri Republicans have become quivering, gelatinous flunkies for Donald Trump.

We are about to find out just how subservient our state’s leaders have become. Some time soon, Gov. Mike Kehoe is expected to announce if he will call a special session to redistrict the state’s U.S. Congressional districts.

Most people are expecting he will. Of course he will. President Trump told him to.

In a bid to eke out every advantage for Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections, Trump is leaning on states with Republican governors and legislatures to redraw their Congressional districts now, instead of waiting for the next Census count, as is traditional in most states.

Kehoe felt cowed enough by Trump and his followers to do an about face on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. So he seems an unlikely prospect to withstand pressure from the leader now.

The aim of a special session would be to gerrymander Missouri’s Congressional districts so that Democrats have a reasonable chance of winning only one of eight. Right now two seats are obtainable for Democrats.

The likeliest scenario would be to distort the lines of the 5th Congressional District, currently held by Democrat U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, to encompass more Republican-leaning territory. Jackson County would likely be split into two or possibly three districts, and the now-compact 5th District would stretch farther into mid-Missouri.

This is a terrible idea. Republicans know that. They passed on extensive gerrymandering three years ago when they looked at redistricting Congressional districts after the 2020 Census. Saner lawmakers argued that such a radical redrawing of the lines would invite expensive court challenges and possibly dilute Republican strength in the districts they consider safe.

All that is still the case. But some things are different since the legislature preserved the 6-2 Congressional map in 2022.

Since then, Missourians voted to make abortion legal and Republicans in Jefferson City have taken steps to reinstate the ban that the people overturned. Missourians, by a hefty margin, voted for paid sick leave for workers. The legislature’s Republican majority overturned that. For good measure, they also weakened a voter-approved minimum wage increase.

People’s attitudes toward a legislature that doesn’t respect their votes are toxic now. As a Jackson County resident, I can tell you that a gerrymandering scheme to hand one of Missouri’s Democratic strongholds over to Republican congressional representatives will poison relationships with Jefferson City for years to come.

Kehoe has said he feels a responsibility to “keep the (U.S.) House in Republican control.”

What about his responsibility to his state and his constituents? Is his calling to Missouri or is it to Trump?

This foolish redistricting scheme, it should be said, is purely a defensive crouch for Kehoe and Missouri Republicans — a way to avoid incurring the wrath of Trump and the MAGA multitudes.

There will be no actual reward for blind obedience to the president.

Just ask Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. He has turned his office into an auxiliary law firm for Trump. But when Bailey threw his hat in the ring for the job as FBI director, the president casually dismissed him after an interview.

“He just didn’t have the presence in the room,” Trump reportedly said.

Few people have tried harder to ingratiate themselves with Trump and the MAGA movement than Josh Hawley, Missouri’s senior U.S. senator. In 2021, he became the first senator to announce he would object to the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory, and he cheered the crowds that had gathered to storm the U.S. Capitol.

More recently, Hawley twisted himself into a pretzel trying to be a populist while at the same time staying on Trump’s good side.

First he said he wouldn’t vote for a bill that slashed Medicaid spending. Then he cast the decisive vote for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which did indeed slash Medicaid spending. Then he introduced a new, dead-on-arrival bill to restore the slashed Medicaid spending.

All that, only to have Trump call him a “second-tier senator” a few weeks later, as Hawley attempted to take a stand on a different issue.

This is the calculus for Kehoe. Call a special session and get the redistricting done and maybe Trump won’t blast him on Truth Social or exact some petty revenge down the road. But dysfunction in the legislature will worsen and so will the bad blood between the state of Missouri and Kansas City, its most dynamic region.

Courage is an elusive commodity these days. I think we can guess which way Kehoe will turn.

Missouri earned its slogan as the Show-Me state in part because politicians through the years refused to take orders from outsiders.

We may have to change the motto on our license plates. Odds are Kehoe is about to turn Missouri into the Tell-Me state.

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.