U.S. President Donald Trump addresses House Republicans at their annual issues conference retreat, at the Kennedy Center, renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center by the Trump-appointed board of directors, in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 6, 2026.
President Donald Trump and his supporters are trying to make sure Republican cannot lose the 2026 midterm elections, including by gerrymandering key races so that Democrats are less likely to win those races. In Missouri, this took the form of trying to force pro-Republican maps on the state's House races even after the Supreme Court found that they could not legally do so.
Now, according to a group of MAGA judges, the Supreme Court's ruling saying they cannot legally impose those maps may not literally mean they cannot legally impose those maps.
"Though the high court’s order last week appeared to be the death knell for the GOP-led redistricting measure — once expected to net Republicans one additional seat — a panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals attempted to breathe new life into the issue, suggesting the justices may have been hoping for one more chance to address the matter," reported Politico's Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney on Thursday. Describing the matter on X, Cheney wrote that "like Monty Python's Black Knight, Missouri's redistricting push is not dead yet. A federal appeals court panel says the SCOTUS order that appeared to kill the state's GOP-friendly map might have just been a message for courts to move even faster."
The journalists quoted Judge James Loken, the presiding member of the three-judge panel, who said that the case is “on our plate and I think the Supreme Court has said ‘get to it.’ He added, "So, here we are. They told us: Get to work. Given the election-year pressures and confusion and need for voters and everyone else to know, can we do that? … Can we come to a disposition in time?”
Loken also expressed anger at a lawyer opposing Republican gerrymandering by saying explicitly that he wants to impose the new map by election day if possible.
“You're not going to get a remand so you can write more briefs until the election passes,” Loken told attorney Charles Hatfield.
Cheney and Gerstein reported, "It was not entirely clear whether the two other members of the appeals court panel —Trump appointees David Stras and Justin Smith — shared Loken’s view of the Supreme Court’s action and the urgency of the dispute. Smith, a former Trump attorney just confirmed to the 8th Circuit in June, seemed to be considering a ruling that could complicate future efforts to suspend redistricting pending a statewide vote, but perhaps would not apply in the current fight due to the Supreme Court’s action."
Writing about the Missouri case earlier in September, The New York Times columnist David French warned that Missouri Republicans' seeming determination to gerrymander out Democrats despite the law foreshadows MAGA's larger plans to rig the midterms.
"It’s only September, and America just barely averted the first constitutional crisis of this year’s midterm elections," French argued on Sunday. "Hang with me here because this gets a bit complicated. Last September, the Missouri Legislature passed a redistricting bill called H.B. 1. This bill was part of the wave of mid-decade census redistricting initiated after President Trump essentially ordered the state of Texas in July to redistrict to create more Republican-majority congressional districts and diminish Democratic voting power in the state."