Missouri spent Tuesday afternoon being told two opposite things by two different federal courts. First, Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied the state’s emergency bid to keep its new congressional map. Then, minutes later and seven minutes shy of the 5 p.m. ballot deadline, Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark told election officials they had to use that same map anyway.
Clark, a Trump appointee sitting in St. Louis, issued a 14-day temporary restraining order in a separate lawsuit. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins is barred from printing, publishing, or running November’s congressional races on anything other than House Bill 1, the 2025 “Missouri FIRST” map already used in the August 4 primary. Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said the state will comply.
That is the whole fight in one sentence. Democrats and their petition operation wanted a do-over after the votes were already cast. A federal judge told them no.
Two Cases, Two Clocks, One Ballot Deadline
Kavanaugh’s denial was not a ruling on the merits. He sat on the emergency application from Hanaway and Hoskins, declined to send it to the full Court, and left standing last Thursday’s Missouri Supreme Court decision in the state-court case. That state opinion had tossed HB 1 for this cycle, restored the 2022 lines, and parked the new map on the November ballot as a referendum. The Gateway Pundit reported the denial without comment from the justice.
Clark was deciding a different case. Rep. Bob Onder, Republican 5th District nominee Rick Brattin, and two Missouri voters sued Friday in the Eastern District after the state high court tried to unwind a primary that had already happened. The New York Post first detailed that filing. Onder called the state ruling “a startling act of judicial supremacy” that “effectively disenfranchised 1.2 million Missourians.”
Clark agreed the swap would break the election.
Missouri already held its primaries using the HB 1 map. Using a different map for the general election would wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness of Missouri’s congressional elections, calling into question the candidacy of those nominated in the primaries and the votes of those who voted in the primaries. Widespread voter confusion would inevitably follow.
He added that candidates spent money and time in districts the state’s own election authority put in front of them. Voters nominated people in those districts. Sending those same voters into a different district in November is not “democracy.” It is a bait-and-switch.
What the Map Actually Does
Republican legislators passed HB 1 last year and Gov. Mike Kehoe signed it. The plan takes Missouri’s 6-2 congressional split and aims at 7-1 by carving up the Kansas City seat held by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver. Rural Republican counties get folded into what had been a safe Democratic fortress.
President Trump praised the vote on Truth Social and later blasted the state Supreme Court for trying to drag the state back to what he called “Ancient History.”
The Gateway Pundit noted the House passed the plan 90-65. That is not some midnight scribble on a napkin. It is a Republican legislature doing what Republican voters sent it to Jefferson City to do, in a mid-decade redraw Trump asked red states to pursue.
Opponents collected more than 300,000 signatures and called themselves reformers. The Missouri Supreme Court bought the argument that those signatures froze HB 1 before it ever became law, which is a neat trick when the state had already run a statewide primary on those lines. Hanaway did not mince the stakes after that Thursday opinion.
Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election. This unprecedented decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full-fledged constitutional crisis.
Just the News carried her promise to go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kavanaugh would not stay the state case. Clark, looking at the federal rights of actual candidates and actual primary voters, would not let the state pretend August never happened.
Confusion Is the Point
Left-wing lawyers will call HB 1 a gerrymander and pretend the 2022 map fell from the sky as holy writ. Spare us. Both maps were drawn by politicians. The difference this week is timing. One map is the one Missourians already used to pick nominees. The other is a late judicial rewrite dressed up as a citizen veto.
Scripture is not shy about that kind of disorder. “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.”
A court that waits until after a primary to change the districts is not keeping the peace. It is manufacturing chaos and hoping the public gets tired enough to accept it.
Clark’s order lasts 14 days while he considers a longer injunction. Map opponents have already noticed an appeal to the Eighth Circuit. The ballots still have to be locked. Hanaway’s office says Missouri will follow the federal TRO and run November on the Missouri FIRST map. That is the only result that treats the August electorate as something other than a prop.
If Democrats want a different map, they can win the argument with voters on the merits. What they should not get is a second bite after the first election in the cycle is already in the books. Judge Clark, at the last possible hour, refused to hand them that bite.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
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