Twice-struck map is the only one the Constitution allows, three Republican appointees find six weeks before ballots print

…(cont) That is normally where a case ends. By the 17th a federal appeals panel was already weighing how to revive the districts anyway, block and all. On Monday it did. The panel held that Missouri's plan to use the 2022 map "violates the Constitution," and that "only use of the 2025 map complies with the Constitution and federal law." The map two Supreme Court orders threw out is now, per the 8th Circuit, the only lawful map in the state. All three judges were appointed by Republicans: James Loken by George H.W. Bush, David Stras and Justin Smith by Trump.

The New York Times notes the order may have little practical effect, because the Supreme Court's block still stands. Sit with that. It is not written to run an election. It is written to be appealed — a third ticket to the same nine people, punched by three judges who know the address. The escalator runs one direction. On August 28th the full D.C. Circuit denied a White House trade adviser's bid for rehearing, and the reporting on it shrugged: the case was always headed to the Supreme Court. Lose, appeal, lose, appeal, and the calendar does the work the argument couldn't.

Because the calendar is the argument. Six weeks out from ballots printing, Missouri's clerks, candidates and voters do not know which districts exist. Nobody in this fight has to win on the merits; they have to still be filing when the presses roll. The third appeal is already moving and the clock is not. When you're this far down the only thing left to do is climb — and to keep the count out loud, because the next time this map is struck down, somebody will call that the end of it.