The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday blocked a bid to revive Missouri’s Trump-backed congressional map for November, leaving the 2022 districts in place as absentee voting continues. The court left intact a state ruling that bars the new map unless voters approve it in November.
Republicans hoped the revised map would help them win a seventh of Missouri’s eight House seats. It reshaped Kansas City’s 5th District, held by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver, and shifted more than 1 million potential voters—nearly one in four statewide—between districts, changing the candidates on their ballots.
August’s primaries were held under the revised boundaries, but Cleaver and Republican Rick Brattin remain candidates in the 5th District general election despite the return to its prior lines. Brattin won a six-way Republican primary. Some local election officials had urged absentee voters to wait amid the legal uncertainty.
