The Missouri Supreme Court just upheld the state's new congressional map, sending Democrats and their army of redistricting lawyers home empty-handed after a four-day trial. House Bill 1, enacted in 2025, redraws Missouri's congressional districts for the 2026 midterms — and the left absolutely hated it, which is usually how you know it's a good map.
Shocking, truly. Democrats went to court, brought in expert witnesses, argued about "compactness" and district shapes, and the court looked at all of it and said: not enough. The challengers failed to present sufficient evidence. Four days of testimony for nothing. Somewhere a redistricting lawyer is updating his LinkedIn.
The heart of the fight was over Districts 4, 5, and 6 in the Kansas City area. Kansas City Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas and his allies wanted the old lines preserved — the ones from the 2012 and 2022 maps that carved up the metro in ways that suited their electoral math just fine. The new map, according to the court's own analysis, actually keeps local communities together better by splitting fewer counties and cities than previous versions.
Read that again. The GOP map splits fewer communities. The Democrats' map split more. And yet somehow Republicans were the ones accused of gerrymandering. The audacity never gets old.
This ruling doesn't exist in a vacuum, either. Just recently, a Florida judge rejected an attempt to block Florida's new congressional map as well. That map alone could net Republicans four additional seats. Missouri's new map is projected to add one more GOP seat on top of that.
So let's do the math the media won't do for you. Between Florida and Missouri alone, we're looking at potentially five more Republican seats heading into the 2026 midterms. Five. That's not gerrymandering — that's what happens when Republican legislatures do their jobs and courts follow the law instead of inventing new standards to bail out the minority party.
The Democrats' redistricting strategy has been the same for years: draw the lines you want, and when you lose, sue. When the courts don't play along, scream about "democracy dying." It's a tired playbook, and state supreme courts are finally calling the bluff.
The Missouri Supreme Court looked at the evidence, looked at the maps, and ruled that House Bill 1 passes legal muster. Period. No dramatic dissent. No "the walls are closing in" moment for cable news to loop for 72 hours.
Just another quiet Republican win that the national press will forget to mention, as reported by the Daily Wire.
The judicial tide is turning, one state supreme court at a time. Democrats can keep filing suits. Courts can keep tossing them.