Gov. Mike Kehoe (R-MO) called a special session on Friday to draw up a new congressional map for Missouri.

Kehoe announced the move in a video statement published on X. He said the state would “take action on redistricting” to ensure districts “truly put Missouri values first.” The governor held up the proposed new map, showing the state stripped of one of its last two remaining Democratic seats.

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“Missourians are more alike than we are different, and our Missouri values, across both sides of the aisle, are closer to each other than those of the extreme Left representation of New York, California, and Illinois,” he said, arguing that it was fairer than the current map.

Kehoe noted that the map wouldn’t displace any representative from their current seats.

State Sen. Doug Beck, the top Democrat in the state senate, responded to the development by sharing conspiracy theories, claiming the move was an elaborate maneuver to prevent the release of the Epstein Files.

“If Democrats retake the House, they will release the Epstein Files, and this scares the hell out of President Trump. That’s why the President has ordered Missouri to rubber stamp a rigged map drawn in Washington, D.C., because he knows Missouri Republicans would rather protect pedophiles than say ‘no’ to Donald Trump,” Beck said in a statement.

President Donald Trump praised the development on Truth Social, calling the governor “GREAT” in the process. The session will allow the Republicans to remove one of two remaining Democratic Congressional seats in the state, bringing another victory for Trump’s national redistricting strategy.

Trump said the special session would allow the “passage of a new, much fairer, and much improved, Congressional Map, that will give the incredible people of Missouri the tremendous opportunity to elect an additional MAGA Republican in the 2026 Midterm Elections — A HUGE VICTORY for our America First Agenda, not just in the ‘Show-Me State,’ but across our Nation.”

He boasted of his victory in the 2024 election and claimed he currently has the best “polling numbers I’ve ever had.”

“I call on all of my Republican friends in the Missouri Legislature to work as fast as they can to get this new Congressional Map, AS IS, to Governor Mike Kehoe’s desk, ASAP. THANK YOU MISSOURI – MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” the president concluded.

Missouri Republicans were some of the first in the nation to respond to Texas’s lead on redistricting, pursuing a redistricting effort to reshape the state’s electoral map to ensure Republican dominance. Missouri Republican Lt. Gov. David Wasinger argued that the measure would be in the interest of most Missouri voters, who voted for Trump by an 18.4-point margin in 2024.

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“Missouri is a solidly conservative state, consistently electing Republicans to every statewide office and sending strong supermajorities to Jefferson City. Despite this, our current congressional map still sends two progressive Democrats to push a liberal agenda in D.C., misrepresenting the will of Missouri voters,” Wasinger said earlier this month.

“We missed the chance to secure a 7-1 map in 2022, a mistake President Trump rightly calls on us to fix. Missouri’s next congressional map must protect Missouri values and ensure our representatives in Congress are as conservative as the voters who send them,” he added.