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Similarly, Trump’s recent demand that Texas Republicans embark on a rare mid-decade congressional redistricting binge wasn’t even presented as anything other than a blatant power grab for Republicans. “We are entitled to five more (House) seats� from Texas because Trump won the state last year, he declared, ludicrously, to an interviewer last month.

If today’s Trumpified GOP no longer even pretends to possess a modicum of shame in its obsessive pursuit of power, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe apparently didn’t get the memo. How else to explain Kehoe’s pathetic attempt to cast this week’s special legislative session as a bid to ensure that “Missouri’s values are reflected in Washington, D.C.�?

Here’s what’s actually happening in Jefferson City starting on Wednesday, thanks to Kehoe and his so-called “values�: The Legislature’s Republican supermajority, on direct orders from a power-obsessed president, will engage, Texas-style, in a virtually unheard-of mid-decade redistricting process aimed at stealing one of the state’s two remaining Democrat-held House seats for the Republicans in next year’s midterms.

Never mind that the current six-two split of seats already overrepresents statewide Republican strength in Missouri. Never mind that Kehoe’s plot … er, plan … is to divvy up overwhelmingly Democratic Kansas City among Republican politicians, casting aside the electoral will of the almost 800,000 residents represented by the current Democratic office-holder, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

Never mind that the 1.2 million Missourians who voted for the Democratic presidential candidate last year — comprising fully 40% of the state’s voters — will, after this broad-daylight theft of democracy is complete, be represented by just one House seat, or about 12% of the state’s House delegation.

And never mind that this particular disenfranchisement will target one of Missouri’s only two Black congressmen, who represents a city with a significant Black population that will now, by deliberate design, almost certainly be represented in Washington by only Republican House members. Which, in the real world today, almost certainly means only white members.

Never mind even that top lawmakers in Kehoe’s own party initially balked at this scheme as being beyond the pale, until they predictably buckled under Trump’s glare.

All due respect, Gov. Kehoe, but why even blather about “values� at this point? Just say what you’re doing: You’re disenfranchising a major swath of your state’s residents on orders from a blatantly unethical president whose rhetoric and tactics skew more authoritarian by the day.

It’s wrong. And you know it’s wrong.

A secondary purpose of Kehoe’s special session is to make it harder for Missourians to pass citizen-initiated ballot measures like the one that recently restored reproductive rights. This, too, is a power grab, by a Republican supermajority that has gotten tired of passing laws that most Missourians don’t like, only to see them overturn those laws via the ballot. It makes a twisted kind of sense. Hey, as long as you’re back in town to undermine the will of the voters, why not go all out?

Redistricting is such a complicated issue that Trump and his minions have been able to plant some misconceptions to make this unmitigated outrage sound borderline acceptable to too many Americans.

The primary misconception is that “everyone does it� — that is, that both parties routinely gerrymander like crazy in the states they each control. Blue-state Illinois, we’re constantly reminded, is the national poster child for this grubby enterprise.

That’s largely true, but with a huge caveat: States normally carry out their redistricting process (gerrymandering and all) right after the completion of each decade’s census; with rare exceptions having to do with court orders, states don’t revisit that process for another 10 years. Anyone who glosses over that urgent caveat is simply misrepresenting the entire issue.

Redistricting mid-decade, for no reason but a president’s stated goal of retaining control of the House in the next mid-term, is not only a completely different and far more blatant undermining of democracy. It also invites a chaotic scenario in which both parties will attempt to redistrict the states they control ahead of congressional elections every two years, even though there’s no new census data to go by.

Indeed, the only reason California and New York, both controlled by Democrats, haven’t already matched Texas’ recent stunt is because both those states have reforms in place that make it more difficult for the politicians to just willy-nilly mess with district lines whenever they feel like it.

Missouri, unfortunately, has no such reforms in place — meaning, Kehoe & Co. can impose their warped version of “values� at will for no reason but that a president of their party has decreed it.

But they should be honest about what they’re doing. That, at least, would demonstrate they still have a passing notion of what “values� actually means.