The US Supreme Court, perhaps having decided it’s already done enough violence to democracy this year, blocked Republicans in Missouri from using a gerrymandered congressional map in November’s upcoming midterm elections. In a one-page, unsigned “shadow docket” order issued Thursday, the Supremes ordered Missouri to conduct November’s general election using congressional district lines the Missouri Lege drew in 2022. Since it’s one of those emergency order things, the order didn’t mention the vote count, although there were no noted dissents.
It was the second time this week the US Supreme Court blocked Missouri officials from following the orders of Mad King Donald Trump, who last year demanded red states redistrict in hopes of holding on to the Republican majority in Congress. Too bad, so sad.
The Supremes’ action upholds last week’s unanimous ruling by the (5-to-2 Republican majority!) Missouri state Supreme Court, which held that a gerrymandered map passed by the Legislature in September 2025 can’t go into effect unless it’s approved by voters in a referendum on the November ballot. No vote, no gerrymander, and voters aren’t likely to pass the thing.
Following the US Supreme Court’s order Thursday, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R), who had previously fought to use the Republican-friendly gerrymander, said in a statement that his office would be “directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map.” State Attorney General Catherine Hanaway also said she’d comply with the Supreme Court’s order.
Regrettably, the state Supreme Court let those two off easy, declining to order them formally to cry “Uncle” or to wear dunce caps for a month. Private citizens, however, still have the right to follow them around shouting “Shame!” Or even better, dog their steps while playing a rude oompah tuba, as one does with fascists.
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Let’s very briefly review how we got to this sorry pass: After Trump demanded red state gerrymanders, the Missouri Lege obligingly passed a new, skewed map that would have eliminated one of the state’s two Democratic-leaning congressional districts. At the time, Republicans already held six of the state’s eight seats in Congress; the new map chopped up the Kansas City district currently held by Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver by dividing the city’s Black population into three districts with rural, white, Republican majorities.
Missouri voters quickly formed a political action committee, People Not Politicians, to organize a petition drive that would put the new map to a vote. They gathered over 300,000 petitions by December 2025, which should have put the gerrymander on hold until after the referendum.
Instead, Hoskins sat on the petitions until August of this year, literally the last possible day, when he declared the referendum was illegal, and the state held its primary elections using the new map. Lawsuits flew, leading to last week’s state Supreme Court ruling in favor of the original, less gerrymandered maps. The Republican-majority state Supremes unanimously ruled the referendum was legal under Missouri’s constitution, ordered Hoskins to put the measure on the ballot, and also ordered him very specifically to prepare to hold the general election using the 2022 map and no other.
Hoskins did not do that. Instead, he and AG Hanaway filed an emergency appeal to the US Supreme Court. On Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected the appeal like a skunky cheap beer, which should have been the end of it.
But just a few minutes after Kavanaugh’s order, Chief US District Judge Stephen Clark, a Trump appointee, issued an order in a separate case brought by Republican candidates who said they would be grievously harmed if they couldn’t be elected with the 2025 maps’ unfair advantage in their favor. Clark agreed, and ordered that Missouri should use the new maps. Hoskins obviously liked that idea better, and got right back to work preparing ballots for the map the state Supreme Court specifically told him not to use.
People Not Politicians filed its own emergency appeal of Clark’s order, sending the whole ugly ball of fuck back to the US Supreme Court. Hoskins and Hanaway, joined by Trump’s US solicitor general, cried bitter tears, claiming People Not Politicians lacked standing and that preparations to run the election with the rigged maps were already so far advanced that Missouri simply couldn’t possibly go back to the map its state Supreme Court ordered it to use.
In a rare moment of not fucking democracy over, the US Supremes yesterday stayed Clark’s order, and there was much rejoicing.
Thursday’s SCOTUS ruling doesn’t end the case for all time, but it does allow the election to go forward using the unfucked district maps while the Eighth Circuit hears the appeal, thwarting for now one small part of Trump’s effort to rig the midterms.
Abha Khanna, attorney for People Not Politicians, said, “Missouri Republicans have played their last card, and they lost,” which we certainly hope is the case.
Also too, in a nice coda to the US Supremes’ decision, the Missouri state Supreme Court on Thursday held hearings to decide whether to hold Denny Hoskins in contempt for refusing to follow its order last week specifying that his office must prepare ballots and election materials using the 2022 district lines, and “enjoining him from the implementation, utilization, and mandating of the congressional district districting map (passed in 2025) for the November 2026 general election.”
Hoskins had claimed that Clark’s order gave him the go-ahead to use the 2025 maps, and that the federal court outranked the state Supremes. That didn’t fly with the state judges, who found Hoskins’s actions in preparing to use the verboten 2025 maps were totally in contempt of their September 3 order.
But because Hoskins finally complied Thursday and issued his directive for counties to use the 2022 maps, Missouri Chief Justice W. Brent Powell said, “the secretary has therefore purged himself of said contempt.”
Pretty lucky break for Hoskins, if you ask us.
Missouri tuba players, you know what you must now do. Godspeed.
[Missouri Independent / NYT (gift link) / Missouri Independent]
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Pretty sure i coined this years ago:
Missouri Loves Company
Should be on the license plates.
Folks make sure you have your voting plans together in this unreconstructed state-based regime of terror! (And everywhere in fact).
If voting weren't powerful Republicans wouldn't work so hard to prevent you from doing it! And they know they need the votes, that's why America's Pilonidal Cyst is dangling vaporware of $5,000 to bribe Americans.
Check your registration, check it often.
Vote as early as possible IN PERSON. If you must vote by mail/absentee, use Official Dropboxes Only. DO NOT RELY ON THE USPS.
Mount up!
And Don't Give Up The Ship!