Major Defeat for Trump: His Own Judges Strike Down the Congressional Map That Was Supposed to Secure Missouri for Him

A newly drawn congressional map decides whose vote ultimately counts. In Missouri, it was supposed to give the president what voters could not safely deliver for him, a majority in Congress. The Supreme Court of the United States struck it down on Thursday, for the second time in three days.

The order lists no recorded dissent. On a court whose conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Donald Trump, that silence carries weight. One of them is Brett Kavanaugh, who already rejected the Republicans’ emergency request Tuesday night to keep the disputed congressional map alive at the last minute. The president had put these judges on the court so they would stand with him. They did the opposite. Brett Kavanaugh is also a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., the highest court in the United States. More precisely: an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. For Missouri, he is also the Circuit Justice responsible for the 8th Federal Circuit, which is why the emergency request first landed with him.

Federal Judge Stephen Clark, also appointed by Trump, had ruled that Missouri could not simply go back to the old congressional map for the November midterms. The new order from Washington now apparently allows the state to do exactly that, use the old district lines for the coming election. So one court shaped by the president is now working against the word of another judge he appointed. The congressional map that was supposed to win is dead in both directions.

The Supreme Court stopped a federal judge’s decision that would have forced Missouri to use the newly drawn Republican congressional map for the November election. That means this Trump-friendly map remains out of effect for now, and Missouri can go back to using the previous 2022 map in the congressional election. The legal fight can formally continue. But after the decisions by Kavanaugh and the full Supreme Court, Trump’s chances of getting his congressional map into effect for this election look downright hopeless. Der Rechtsstreit kann formal weitergehen. Für den Versuch, Trumps Wahlkreiskarte noch bei dieser Wahl durchzusetzen, sieht es nach den Entscheidungen Kavanaughs und des gesamten Supreme Court allerdings ausgesprochen hoffnungslos für Trump aus.“

The effort to control congressional districts is part of a larger attempt to secure majorities where the numbers refuse to provide them. At stake are the Republicans’ narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress, which they want to defend in November while dissatisfaction across the country keeps growing, driven by a cost-of-living crisis under the president’s tariffs and his war against Iran, which violates international law. Where support is fading, the geometry of district lines is supposed to secure what has become uncertain at the ballot box. The fight centers on the 5th Congressional District, currently held by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver. Following the example of Texas Republicans, who bent their districts in their own favor last year, Missouri Republicans wanted to make the same move. Cleaver fought back, alongside hundreds of thousands of people in the state. The fight therefore goes beyond party politics and straight into the question of who gets to draw the country’s maps.

That resistance is being carried by the bipartisan group People Not Politicians Missouri. The law is the law, its executive director Richard von Glahn said Thursday. Missouri’s Constitution is clear, he said, and the state Supreme Court had ruled just as clearly. More than 305,000 voters across party lines took action last fall to stop this grab for power. The people would have the final word when they vote No on Proposition A in November, the veto referendum against the Republicans’ map.

Von Glahn also went after Missouri’s top election official, Denny Hoskins, who now faces a contempt proceeding before the very court whose order he defied. Hoskins had shown that he could not do the job he was elected to do, running the elections. First, he had refused to certify a referendum that the court unanimously said he had no legal basis to block. Then, after that same court struck down the 2025 map, he instructed local election officials to use it anyway, putting them in a bind just two weeks before early voting was set to begin. That was not leadership, he said, it was chaos of his own making. Missouri voters do not need an election official who creates confusion. They need one who follows the law.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was even more direct. If this extremist continues to defy the law and multiple court orders, he wrote publicly, Missouri’s top court should throw the election official in jail. You lost, he added, the people of Missouri won, it is over. An office that puts itself above the courts already carries its own limit within it.

The president can appoint judges and redraw congressional districts. He can force election officials onto a map that has already been struck down. The one line he cannot redraw runs through the courts he himself helped shape. In Missouri, it held.