Dueling Missouri Court Decisions Give Us a Preview of the Kind of Midterm We’re in For

Chaos and the Courts

A set of dueling federal court decisions sets the stage for the kind of legal flurry we can expect between now and the midterms.

As Kate Riga reported for TPM, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who oversees appeals for the federal judicial circuit that includes Missouri, denied an effort by the state’s Republican leaders to use a gerrymandered map in the midterms. Moments later, a federal district court judge ruled in another case that those maps should be used.

To catch you up: Voters in Missouri can put any act of the state legislature to a referendum — including these new maps. But Secretary of State Denny Hoskins invited full chaos by waiting months, until the primary election was underway, to reject a petition by thousands of voters to hold a referendum on the new maps, which were produced at Trump’s request. Last week, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously that voters should get their referendum, and the pre-gerrymander maps should be reinstated. Thanks to Hoskins, the state now faces the bizarre situation of having held its primary under different maps than it will use in its general election.

That Kavanaugh rejected Missouri’s appeal without referring it to the full court suggests he felt there was very little chance his colleagues would go along with it. But, as Kate details, U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark — a Trump appointee who is chief judge in the Eastern District of Missouri — on the same night issued a temporary restraining order requiring Hoskins to use the new, gerrymandered maps. The orders point in different directions, and will need to be resolved somehow in the coming days. The main group challenging the gerrymandered map, People Not Politicians, immediately appealed Clark’s order to the 8th Circuit.

This set of court decisions does not directly involve the Trump administration, though Missouri’s new maps were created at the president’s urging. In several other cases, however, the Department of Justice is frantically working to get its assault on the midterms before the Supreme Court. It yesterday appealed its bid to audit states’ voter rolls, using its controversial and faulty SAVE database, to the Court. It has multiple times asked the Court to rule on its bid to implement a Postal Service plan that is poised to sow extensive chaos with mail-in ballots.

The Court’s uneven approach to ruling on election-related chaos that could cause disruption makes it hard to know what to expect here. Yes, the Court tends to side with Republicans — but on something as dramatic and sweeping, with potential to sow chaos, as the USPS rule?

As David Kurtz wrote yesterday, we are seeing an unprecedented assault on the midterms by the executive branch. In past elections, we’ve seen Trump and his allies approach November with little plan beyond flooding the zone with misinformation, and hoping options emerge. Even in 2020, when their attempt to overturn the election resulted in a mob ransacking Congress, they were largely making it up as they went, as TPM has reported through close analysis of White House messages and documents.

This time is different. Chaos is still the plan, but we are seeing a whole-of-government effort to create it, involving not just the president’s close advisors but each federal agency, now fully underway months before the election. The end goal isn’t clear — there may not be any specific one. But chaos presents the administration with more options — more opportunities to spread disinformation, to question the results — than an orderly election.

The question now is the extent to which the Supreme Court will go along with it.

A Senate Swing State That Counters This Year’s Trend

Rep. Chris Pappas (D) will face former Senator John Sununu (R) in New Hampshire’s Senate race this November after both easily defeated primary opponents last night.

• This race shakes up the conventional wisdom a little bit. Though voters are down on Trump, the Sununu family is well known in New Hampshire and has developed a reputation for lightly resisting the president. John Sununu, for that reason, might not be dragged down in the same way his fellow, Trump-aligned Republican Senate candidates will be.
• He was, nonetheless, endorsed by Trump over former senator Scott Brown, who served as an ambassador in Trump’s first administration.
• (Pappas’ family is also well known, for what it is worth: they are the proprietors of the Puritan Backroom, a Manchester restaurant that claims to have invented the chicken tender.)
• Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball — two election prognosticators — both rate this race as leaning toward Democrats. Some recent polls, however, have shown Sununu — but not his primary challenger, Brown — beating Pappas.
• Democrats also worried that primary voters might pick Karishma Manzur, Pappas’ more progressive challenger. In the end he easily defeated her, 65%-33%, with 82% of votes counted, per the AP.

Tabs

• Republicans begin their uncommon midterms convention in Dallas today. Politico Playbook informs us that the “vibes are very bad” as things get underway.
• Elon Musk operates a voter registration website that collects, and can sell, voters’ personal details, Popular Information reports.

Woman of the Hour

Its Natalie Harp, who, along with two other aides, apparently got a Christmas gift of $45,000 from President Trump, per the Washington Post — a seeming violation of the law.