In a unanimous decision, the court ordered that a statewide referendum be held in November to determine the ultimate fate of the new map.
Page A2From§Eachthe milkman edition — 4 September 2026
Map good enough to pick Republicans' nominees ruled too broken for voters to pick their winner
As it ran on the front
I need help understanding something, and I don't say that as a rhetorical trick, I say it because the Missouri Supreme Court knows this cold and I don't. Redistricting law is not the kind of thing a guy figures out on his lunch break, so I called in the actual experts — I mean that, no cynicism, the seven of them wearing robes — and I read every word they gave the press.
I wrote it down before I lost the page. Here it is: on Thursday evening the court ruled, unanimous, that this congressional map — the one Missouri Republicans drew — "did not go into effect" for November. Fine. That's their expertise talking, not mine.…
…(cont) Except I've got another piece of paper in the glovebox of the car, the one that barely turns over some mornings, and it's dated last month. It says candidates ran under these same district lines in the August primary. Winners came out of that primary. Their names are printed in the paper same as anybody's.
So here's my question, and it's the only one I've got today, and I keep coming back to it because I can't get past it: if the lines didn't go into effect, what did those candidates win the right to run in?
I took that question down to the corner store because the guy behind the counter reads more news than I do, and he didn't have it either. He said maybe it's like a check that clears at the register but bounces at the bank two weeks later. I don't know banking. I know a map either drew a district or it didn't.
I found more paper. Politico had a number on it, and I want to be careful with this number because it's the kind people round up without meaning to. Their headline says the ruling is likely netting Democrats one seat. Likely, not will. That's not the whole House. That's not the whole map. That's a hedge, in a vote that hasn't happened yet.
I went back further in my own drawer, because this felt familiar. Back on August 28th, a federal appeals court told Peter Navarro no on his contempt appeal, the full court, no rehearing, and the writeup on it said this was always headed to the Supreme Court anyway. Different case, different building, but the shape of it is the same: you lose downstairs, you say the real court is upstairs, and you keep saying it until somebody upstairs agrees with you. Missouri's attorney general is doing that same walk right now. They've already said they'll appeal.
That familiar feeling didn't let go. A piece from September 1st says House Democrats are folding Supreme Court reform into their affordability pitch for the fall. I don't have an opinion on that, I want to be clear, I'm not paid to have one. I just noticed it landed three days before this ruling, and I wrote the date down, because dates are the only thing in this business I trust completely.
President Trump called Thursday's ruling "ridiculously" decided. I wrote that word down too, ridiculous, because it's a word about a process, not a fact about a map, and I keep two kinds of words in two separate columns of my notebook so I don't confuse them by accident.
One more thing, before I close this notebook — the attorney general already said they'll appeal, straight back up to the same seven who just ruled, unanimous. If they come back down and say the same thing twice, does the count still sit at Politico's one seat?
“They ran the whole primary on a map they knew might not survive the fall, so whoever won already had the seat warmed up before one voter got a say in November. That's not an oversight, that's the play — lock in your guy first, let the courts sort the paperwork later. Now the whole thing gets fought over one lousy seat, while the people who actually get a vote on the lines already cast theirs last month without knowing the rules could change out from under them.”
“Look, the legislature passed this map through the normal process, it was the law of the land right up until Thursday night, so anybody who ran and won under it earned that fair and square — wait, did I just call a map the court ruled never took effect "fair and square"? That's not — let me start over. The point is, seven judges shouldn't get to override an election that already happened, except, well, technically the November election hasn't happened yet, so nothing got overridden, so I'm honestly not sure what I was objecting to.”
The receipts
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied White House trade adviser Peter Navarro’s request to rehear his contempt of Congress case, leaving the Supreme Court as his next avenue for challenging the…
The court said a map redrawn to benefit Republicans could not be used in November and said voters should decide on the new boundaries. The state attorney general vowed to appeal the decision.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that voters can decide the fate of the GOP-passed gerrymander via a referendum this fall.
President Trump on Thursday condemned the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision to block new congressional lines drawn to benefit Republicans from being used in the state’s November election. The state’s highest court unanimously ruled Thursday evening that this map, which were used in the state’s primary elections last month, “did not go…
House Democrats have made affordability a central theme of their 2026 message, and now say Supreme Court reform belongs in the pitch, too. Democrats have increasingly criticized the Supreme Court and its rulings in the second Trump…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.