A federal appeals court sided with Republicans seeking to use district boundaries redrawn last year to give the G.O.P. an advantage in the upcoming midterms.
Page A2From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 23 September 2026
Missouri's map loses at the Supreme Court, wins after a federal court reverses itself, returns for round three.
As it ran on the front
Missouri's congressional map is back at the Supreme Court for the third time this year, and the map hasn't changed as much as the room it's standing in.
On September 5, Missouri's attorney general, Catherine Hanaway's office, filed an emergency application asking Justice Brett Kavanaugh to reinstate the Republican-drawn boundaries, three days before the court would rule. The filing called the lower court's block a "federal-election-administration disaster" and "unprecedented chaos" — language aimed at a single state supreme court order.…
…(cont) On September 8, Kavanaugh denied it. The Missouri Supreme Court's ruling held: voters would have to approve the new map themselves, through a ballot measure, before Republicans could use it.
The next day, People Not Politicians — the group that had already fought once to put a map before Missouri's voters — went back to the same building, asking the justices to restore a different map ahead of the same election. The Washington Examiner's headline on the filing: "Supreme Court urged to wade into legal mess over Missouri congressional map."
Then a federal appeals court did what the Missouri Supreme Court hadn't: it reversed itself, and handed Republicans the boundaries drawn last year to give the G.O.P. an advantage in the midterms. That reversal is why the map is at the Supreme Court again today, for the third time in eighteen days, six weeks before Missourians vote under whichever map wins.
Two courts, two rulings, two directions, and only one destination for the case each time: back up. This is a machine that keeps rerunning the same play until the refs stop calling it. The map didn't win an argument. It won a rematch, then another rematch, and it's asking for a third with the clock at six weeks and closing.
Missourians will vote this fall under a map that has been blocked, unblocked, reversed, and re-reversed by institutions that answer to no one on the ballot. The district lines are supposed to be decided before the election. In Missouri, they're being decided during it.
“This ain't about maps, it's about who gets to keep asking until somebody says yes. Missouri's own courts said no twice and a federal appeals court said try again anyway, and now six weeks before people vote, the boundaries are still up for grabs. The guy voting for his kid's congressman doesn't get a redo — the map does.”
“Look, the attorney general's office called it a "federal-election-administration disaster" because it was — you can't run an election on a map that keeps changing... though I guess the map keeps changing because we keep taking it to court. Did I say that? That's not — that's just process working exactly as designed.”
The receipts
The fight over Missouri's congressional map has returned to the U.S. Supreme Court for the third time
· Missouri asks Supreme Court to overturn block of new congressional map before election from the morgue, 5 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court urged to wade into legal mess over Missouri congressional map from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court denies bid to reinstate new congressional map in Missouri from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Missouri asks Supreme Court to restore GOP-friendly congressional map from the morgue, 5 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.