Missouri judge keeps Trump-backed GOP map in place — but the fight is headed upstairs

BS BULLETIN

A Missouri judge ruled the state’s referendum provisions don’t apply to congressional redistricting, keeping the Republican-drawn map in force for November.
The map dramatically reshapes Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City district, giving Republicans a shot at a 7–1 congressional advantage.
The challengers immediately appealed, and the Missouri Supreme Court is expected to have the final say before a crucial Sept. 8 ballot deadline.

Donald Trump’s midterm redistricting strategy just picked up another significant court victory — this time in Missouri, where Republicans are trying to turn a 6–2 congressional advantage into a potentially formidable 7–1 map.

Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ruled Wednesday that Missouri voters cannot use the state’s referendum process to challenge congressional districts enacted by the General Assembly. Green sided with Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, who had refused to certify a referendum petition aimed at putting the GOP-drawn congressional map before Missouri voters in November. The immediate result: the new map remains in effect for the 2026 election.

But don’t laminate it just yet. Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians and the plaintiff challenging Hoskins’ decision, filed an appeal Wednesday evening. The case is on an extraordinarily compressed timetable because Missouri has a Sept. 8 deadline for court action affecting the November ballot. The Missouri Supreme Court had already signaled that it wanted the lower courts moving quickly because the justices anticipated the dispute would eventually reach them.

And there is a great deal riding on the answer. Missouri currently sends six Republicans and two Democrats to the U.S. House. The new map was approved during a special legislative session called by Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe after President Trump urged Republican-controlled states to redraw congressional boundaries ahead of the 2026 midterms. The obvious political target is longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-based 5th Congressional District. The new boundaries carve up parts of Kansas City among neighboring Republican districts and extend Cleaver’s remaining district eastward into considerably more Republican territory.

According to an Associated Press analysis, roughly 59% of the voters in the newly configured 5th District weren’t previously in Cleaver’s district. That’s not a little nip and tuck around the district lines. That’s major surgery.

Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin won the GOP nomination for the seat in Missouri’s August primary, while Cleaver ran unopposed on the Democratic side. And here’s an important practical tidbit: Missouri already conducted its August congressional primaries using the new districts. Undoing them now would therefore create a rather extraordinary election-year mess.

People Not Politicians didn’t exactly make a token effort to challenge the map. The organization submitted more than 305,000 signatures seeking a statewide referendum. The group’s argument is straightforward: Missouri’s constitution reserves referendum powers to the people, and voters should be permitted to decide whether the Legislature’s new congressional map stands.

Hoskins disagreed. The Republican secretary of state maintained that Missouri’s constitution doesn’t authorize the referendum process to overturn congressional redistricting enacted by the Legislature.

Judge Green agreed. According to Green’s ruling, Missouri’s constitutional referendum provisions “do not apply to congressional redistricting enacted by the General Assembly.” He therefore found Hoskins’ refusal to certify the referendum lawful and left the Republican-backed map in effect. The Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and Missouri Republican State Committee had intervened in the case on Hoskins’ side.

The state didn’t exactly mince words about the challengers’ theory, either. In a pretrial filing, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office called von Glahn’s petition “frankly, crazy.” The state argued that the challengers’ position would effectively allow approximately 3.3% of Missouri voters — the people signing a referendum petition — to temporarily derail a duly enacted congressional map before the statewide electorate ever votes on it.

Now there’s a legal brief written by somebody who didn’t have his morning decaf.

Missouri is only one battlefield in a much bigger redistricting war. Trump has openly encouraged Republican-controlled states to use the political power voters gave them and redraw congressional maps where legally possible. Texas moved first, and Missouri followed. Republicans see the strategy as potentially crucial to preserving their House majority in November. Democrats and voting-rights groups describe the mid-decade redraws as partisan gerrymandering designed to manufacture additional Republican seats.

And yes — of course they’re partisan. Redistricting has been partisan since approximately five minutes after politicians discovered maps. The meaningful questions are whether the maps comply with state and federal law and whether the state officials drawing them possess the constitutional authority to do so. In Missouri, Judge Green has now answered one important piece of that puzzle in the Republicans’ favor. The challengers hope Missouri’s appellate courts answer differently. This isn’t even the first courthouse fight surrounding the referendum.

In a separate case earlier this week, Cole County Judge Christopher Limbaugh sided with Hoskins over the secretary of state’s decision to reject signatures collected before the referendum petition had officially been approved for circulation. People Not Politicians appealed that ruling as well. So Missouri now has multiple strands of litigation converging on the same enormous question: Which congressional map will actually govern the November election?

For the moment, the answer is the Trump-backed Republican map. The Missouri Supreme Court may soon have the last word.

MY QUICK TAKE

Oh, this is going to be fun.

For approximately my entire adult life, Democrats have treated redistricting like an ancient constitutional sacrament whenever they controlled the pencil.

Illinois? Democracy! Maryland? Democracy! California inventing districts shaped like somebody spilled linguine across a Rand McNally atlas? Democracy with locally sourced organic arugula!

But Donald Trump tells Republican states, Hey fellas, perhaps we should stop showing up to political knife fights carrying a butter spreader, and suddenly everybody discovers an intense spiritual attachment to perfectly rectangular congressional districts.

Please.

Republicans finally appear to have discovered one of the great mysteries of modern American politics:

Winning elections allows you to govern. What a concept.

Now, there is a serious legal question here. Missouri’s Supreme Court will ultimately have to determine whether the state constitution really puts congressional redistricting beyond the referendum power reserved to Missouri voters. That’s for the courts, not the pom-pom section, to decide. But politically?

Trump is doing something Republicans have historically had enormous difficulty learning:

When the other team is playing tackle football, stop insisting on playing touch.

And the target in Missouri couldn’t be clearer. Emanuel Cleaver has represented Kansas City in Congress since George W. Bush’s first term. Republicans now believe they have a legitimate shot at turning Missouri’s delegation from 6–2 into 7–1. Democrats call that gerrymandering. Republicans call it Tuesday. And somewhere an election lawyer just ordered another pot of coffee.