Missouris attorney general is warning that a radical decision by the states highest court has thrown the upcoming elections into chaos and pushed the state into what she calls a full-fledged constitutional crisis.
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According to The Gateway Pundit, Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced that her office has formally petitioned the Supreme Court of Missouri for a stay, the mandatory first step before an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The move follows an extraordinary ruling in which the Missouri Supreme Court invalidated the states new congressional map after the primary elections had already been held and before the November general election, a step no American court has ever taken.
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down the Missouri FIRST Map, a 71 congressional plan enacted by Republican lawmakers last year to secure an additional MAGA-aligned seat and dismantle the long-standing Kansas City gerrymander that has shielded Democrat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Instead, the court ordered that the November 3 general election be conducted under the old 2022 district lines and simultaneously placed the new map itself on the November ballot for voter approval.
The timing of the ruling is what has conservatives and election-law observers sounding the alarm. Missouri already conducted its August primary under the new map, candidates campaigned and won in those districts, and voters selected their nominees based on boundaries that a small group of judges in Jefferson City has now effectively declared never existed.
Those same voters are now being told that the general election will proceed under a different set of lines, raising serious questions about fairness, voter intent, and the stability of election rules. For Republicans who spent months organizing, fundraising, and knocking on doors in the new districts, the courts decision amounts to a judicial veto of the legislatures constitutional authority to draw maps.
Hanaway took her case directly to the public on X, invoking the Founders and warning of the stakes for representative government. A republic, if you can keep it. Benjamin Franklin, she wrote, before outlining the unprecedented nature of the courts move and its implications for Missouri voters.
Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election, Hanaway declared, arguing that the decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full?fledged constitutional crisis. She added that her office will move immediately to seek relief from SCOTUS and expressed confidence that the federal courts will not allow every Missouri voter to be disenfranchisedwhich is what todays decision does.
Within hours, Hanaway announced a concrete step in that direction, signaling that the legal fight is only beginning. UPDATE: Weve officially filed for a stay at SCOMO in this unprecedented case, a necessary step before our emergency appeal to SCOTUS, she posted, underscoring that the state will not accept the ruling without a direct challenge in federal court.
The stakes are high because the map at issue was the product of a clear Republican mandate in Jefferson City. Last September, the GOP-controlled Missouri House overwhelmingly approved the Missouri FIRST Map by a 9065 margin, a decisive vote that would have reduced Democrats to a single U.S. House seat in a state that has trended solidly red for years.
The plan dismantled Cleavers Kansas City stronghold by distributing its heavily Democratic voters into neighboring Republican-leaning districts, a move designed to reflect the states conservative tilt rather than preserve a Democrat safe haven. President Donald Trump applauded the legislatures work and called the map much fairer, and improved, aligning with the conservative view that urban Democrat enclaves should not be artificially protected at the expense of statewide representation.
Republican Governor Mike Kehoe signed the map into law, and Hanaways office then spent the better part of a year defeating a series of left-wing lawsuits in Jackson County and Cole County. State attorneys argued that the map was compact, constitutional, andcruciallythe product of the elected legislature, not of dark-money referendum mills seeking to override representative government through well-funded ballot campaigns.
On Thursday, however, a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Judge Ginger Gooch reversed that trajectory and handed a major victory to progressive activists. The court held that the referendum petition spearheaded by the group People Not Politicians was legal, sufficient, and timely, ruled that Secretary of State Denny Hoskins erred in keeping it off the ballot, and declared that the 2025 map is not the law and has never been the law, while barring election officials from using it in November unless voters first approve it.
The ruling prompted immediate and sharp criticism from Missouris top Republican officials, who see the decision as judicial overreach with national implications. Hoskins labeled the situation a constitutional crisis, Hanaway echoed that assessment, and President Trump denounced the ruling as a Dark Day for Justice in Missouri, calling it horrible, ridiculous, and unConstitutional, and insisting that the state be allowed to use the same map that governed the primary so that voters are not whipsawed by last-minute judicial intervention.
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