'Given this Court’s two prior orders in this litigation, our conclusion that this was error should come as no surprise,' the high court ruled.
Page A3From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 26 September 2026
THIRD TIME
Missouri Republicans lose their map a third time, the Court hands them a voter purge tool instead
As it ran on the front
In 2022, the Missouri Legislature enacted a congressional map. In 2025, like Republican legislators in several other states responding to pressure from the White House, it enacted a new one — a 7-1 House map, the design Republicans wanted. Under the Missouri Constitution, a new law doesn't take effect if enough voters sign a referendum petition against it, and enough had. The Missouri Supreme Court ordered the state back onto its 2022 lines pending that vote.
On September 5, Missouri asked the U.S. Supreme Court to override that order before November, telling Justice Brett Kavanaugh the block had created a "federal-election-administration disaster." Three days later, on September 8, the Court denied the state's bid to reinstate the 2025 map. That same week, the Trump administration filed its own emergency application, asking the same bench to let it screen state voter rolls with a modified database that now runs Social Security numbers against citizenship records.…
…(cont) Friday, both threads closed. The Court blocked the Missouri map a third time, unsigned, warning that restoring the 2025 lines this close to an election "would usher in electoral chaos." The same Friday, it cleared the Trump administration's database — the one running Social Security numbers against citizenship records — to start reviewing state voter rolls. A federal 90-day quiet period will likely blunt how much gets done with it before November; that's a scheduling limit, not a use limit, and the clock is already running.
Missouri Republicans lost the redistricting fight in public, for the third time this year, on the same Friday the same court cleared the administration to start checking who belongs on the rolls it screens. One ruling restrained a state legislature's map. The other authorized a federal database against voters, state by state, ahead of the first midterm since the citizenship-and-Social-Security merger was built.
“They want you watching the map fight because a 7-1 district plan is easy to hate on sight. Same court, same Friday, quietly cleared the citizenship database to start matching Social Security numbers against the voter rolls — that's the ruling with no scoreline, so it barely got a headline. One's a scandal you can count in districts; the other's the tool that decides who's still on the rolls when you show up in November.”
“Look, the Court sided with Missouri's own process here too — the map's dead because the referendum petition worked exactly as the state constitution designed it to, that's federalism, not a loss. And the database is just Social Security records confirming citizenship on voter rolls, which is — basic list maintenance, states do versions of that all the time. Did I say "all the time"? Let me just say it's routine, and if it weren't necessary the administration wouldn't have needed a Supreme Court order to start using it.”
Earlier in this story
- Supreme Court blocks Missouri Republicans' congressional map for third time this year. By Sal · the sunrise edition, 26 September 2026
- Same voter database, blocked by an appeals court, approved by the Supreme Court twenty days later, unaltered. By Sal · the midnight edition, 26 September 2026
The receipts
Although the US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority on Friday greenlit President Donald Trump's voter purge database, it also helped deliver yet another blow to Missouri Republicans' push for a rigged congressional map. "In 2022, the Missouri Legislature enacted a redistricting map for elections to the US House of Representatives.…
Federal law requires a 90-day “quiet period” before elections, likely restricting the immediate scope of a decision that allows the use of a citizenship database to examine voter rolls.
The Supreme Court said in an unsigned decision that ordering Missouri to restore its 2025 map "would usher in electoral chaos."
The Supreme Court on Friday sided with the Trump administration in its push to use a controversial database to review state voter rolls. David Becker, executive director at the Center for Election Innovation and Research, joins CBS News to discuss what this means for voters.
The Supreme Court rejected a Trump-backed Missouri congressional map, ensuring the state will use its 2022 districts for the midterm elections.
A federal appeals court had sided with Republicans seeking to use redrawn congressional district boundaries to give their party an advantage in the midterms elections.
The Supreme Court on Friday again blocked a Missouri congressional map that could have given Republicans an edge in the midterms. Earlier, the high court also allowed the Trump administration to use an expanded database to check voter citizenship. CBS News legal reporter Katrina Kaufman has more.
· Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow use of citizenship database from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· DOJ asks Supreme Court to unblock voter database linking Social Security and citizenship records from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Missouri asks Supreme Court to overturn block of new congressional map before election 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.