President Donald Trump is criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court for blocking a Missouri congressional map he pushed Republican state lawmakers to adopt, adding another chapter to a redistricting fight that began with his call for GOP-led states to redraw their districts before the 2026 midterm elections.
“The Supreme Court of the United States will just not let Missouri have an Election Victory,” Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social, two days after the court ruled for the third time that Missouri must use its previous congressional map in the Nov. 3 election. “They continuously, three times now, overrule Judges who came to the correct decisions.”
Trump also thanked Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe and others in the state “who are fighting so hard for Fairness and Election Security.”
The ruling means Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City will seek reelection in the 5th District under the 2022 boundaries rather than the Republican-drawn lines approved last year. The 2025 map significantly reshaped Cleaver’s district as part of an effort to improve Republicans’ chances of winning seven of Missouri’s eight U.S. House seats instead of the six they now hold.
Cleaver is one of Missouri’s two Black members of Congress. The other, Democratic Rep. Wesley Bell of St. Louis, represents the 1st District, which was largely unchanged by the 2025 map.
Trump began pressing Missouri Republicans more than a year ago to take the unusual step of redrawing the state’s congressional districts in the middle of the decade rather than after the next census.
Some Republican lawmakers initially expressed reluctance. In July 2025, Missouri House Speaker Pro Tem Chad Perkins said the White House contacted him after he publicly questioned another round of redistricting. Perkins said White House officials told him they planned to contact every Republican member of the Missouri House as well as Kehoe.
“If you’re a Republican state senator, a Republican state representative,” Perkins said at the time, “you don’t want to be on the wrong side of this president.”
Kehoe ultimately called lawmakers into a special session, and Missouri’s Republican-controlled Legislature approved the new map. During the session, Trump personally spoke to Republican state senators and publicly urged them to pass the map without changes.
Opponents of the new boundaries collected more than 300,000 signatures seeking a statewide referendum. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected the petition Aug. 4, but the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously ruled Sept. 3 that the petition was legal, sufficient and timely. The court held that the referendum petition prevented the 2025 map from taking effect.
Conflicting state and federal court orders followed, repeatedly putting the map for November in doubt.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court settled which map will govern the November election.
“As a matter of state law, the 2022 map — not the 2025 map — must be used in the 2026 congressional election,” the court said in an unsigned opinion.
There were no noted dissents.
The ruling came four days after the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Missouri to use the 2025 map. The appeals court ruled that using one set of districts for the August primary and another for the general election would violate the U.S. Constitution.
By then, however, Missouri’s general election was already underway. Ballots had been sent to military and overseas voters, and absentee voting had begun.
“The election is not merely upcoming; it has already started,” the Supreme Court said, adding that changing maps again at this stage “would usher in electoral chaos.”
The court also noted that it had intervened twice previously in the dispute.
“Given this Court’s two prior orders in this litigation, our conclusion that this was error should come as no surprise,” the justices wrote.
Missouri therefore will use the same congressional districts used in the 2022 and 2024 elections, even though the 2025 boundaries were used for the August primary.
The fight over the new map is not over.
Voters will decide its future when they vote on Proposition A on Nov. 3. A yes vote would approve the 2025 map, which would take effect 30 days after the election. A no vote would leave the 2022 boundaries in place.