Aggregator

Supreme Court Again Rejects Missouri Congressional Map Backed By Republicans

Zero Rss
3 days 17 hours ago
Supreme Court Again Rejects Missouri Congressional Map Backed By Republicans

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to let Missouri Republicans run November's House races on the 2025 map that would have given them a 7-1 edge in the state's delegation, leaving in place the 2022 lines, which split the eight seats 6-2.

The Supreme Court in Washington on Sept. 14, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The court's unsigned, five-page opinion in People Not Politicians v. Onder drew no dissents. "In short, as a matter of state law, the 2022 map - not the 2025 map - must be used in the 2026 congressional election," the justices wrote.

The fight has run through three courts in a month. Missouri's Aug. 4 primaries, run by Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, were held on the 2025 lines. On Sept. 3, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously ordered the 2022 map for November, and county clerks began mailing military and overseas ballots on it. On Sept. 21, an Eighth Circuit panel ordered the 2025 map restored, ruling that holding the general election on different districts than the primary would violate the Constitution. People Not Politicians, the group opposing the 2025 map and seeking a referendum on it, asked the justices to step in the next night.

As The Epoch Times notes further,

In the high court's new opinion, the justices summed up the legal theory argued by the federal plaintiffs - Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.), Republican congressional nominee Rick Brattin, and two Republican voters.

Their argument was that three parts of the U.S. Constitution - Article I, Section 2, which establishes the fundamental rules governing the U.S. House of Representatives, the Elections Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment - combine to forbid Missouri from using different congressional maps in the primary and general elections.

The justices did not reject Onder's constitutional theory. Instead, they said they did not have to rule on it.

"On the merits, the Court's precedents have not previously stated that Article I, Section 2 requires a state to use the primary election map in a general election, and given that the equities heavily favor staying this late-breaking intervention, it suffices that the merits are not entirely clearcut."

In other words, the justices did not hold that using different maps in the primary and general elections is constitutional. They held that the claim was too unsettled - and the election too far along - to justify an injunction.

The justices then turned to the Purcell principle, the doctrine that federal courts should not change a state's election rules close to an election. The justices said the principle "applies with even greater force here" because the election "is not merely upcoming; it has already started."

Local election officials told the courts it was "practically impossible to revert" to the 2025 map. "At this late date, ordering reversion to the 2025 map in the midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos. Purcell protects against such disorder."

The Eighth Circuit argued the opposite: that Purcell favored the 2025 map because that was the map used in the August primary, and that the Missouri Supreme Court's Sept. 3 ruling constituted the last-minute disruption.

The justices said that federal courts' interpretation of Purcell was incorrect because Purcell constrains federal courts, not states.

"Even though federal courts should not impose changes close to an election, States are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests," the justices said, quoting Allen v. Milligan (2023).

The Missouri Supreme Court, the justices added, was not the source of the late change. In opinions issued in May 2026 - months before the primaries - the state high court had already said the 2025 map would not take effect unless voters approved it in a referendum, as long as the petition calling for it was legally sufficient.

Hoskins "was well aware that conducting the August primary election with the 2025 map carried significant risks," the justices said.

"The Secretary nonetheless chose to proceed with the 2025 map for the primary."

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/27/2026 - 16:55
Tyler Durden

Almost Half Of Americans Now Hold Positive Views Of Socialism

Zero Rss
3 days 17 hours ago
Almost Half Of Americans Now Hold Positive Views Of Socialism

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

Karl Marx believed that "Democracy is the road to socialism." Socialists seem to have found a generation of dupes to buy their ahistorical, fanciful pitch. A new poll shows 43% now have a positive view of socialism. An astonishing 65% of Democrats have a positive view. Socialism is now the rage on the left.

Like clothing styles, if you wait long enough, socialism tends to come back into style with generations with no memory of past failures. However, it is an astonishing trend in one of the most prosperous nations on Earth that outlasted a history cluttered with the broken failures of socialist and communist systems.

A new slick packaging of socialism has emerged with leaders such as Zohran Mamdani offering to teach people of the "warmth of collectivism." The Democratic Socialists of America are enticing voters with narratives like "Imagine the end of capitalism." Those words promise voters that there is a brave new world without landlords, debt, mandatory work hours, and "food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation... are common goods and utilities."

What is incredible is that many are buying this pitch.

It is also ironic that this is happening not just on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence but also on the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

As I write in Rage and the Republic:

"While he never visited the United States, his theories seemed quintessentially American to many of his generation. For a revolution that was triggered by tariffs and fueled by events like the Boston Tea Party, Smith's general principles read like an economic version of Common Sense. It was a type of declaration of independence not just from the British policy of mercantilism (emphasizing British exports over imports) but from economic controls over individual productivity and self-determination....

In summary, Smith was first and foremost viewed as a political theorist, and his economic theories were closely tied to his views on the natural liberties of humanity. He saw capitalism as a liberating system for individuals to allow them the wealth and resources to pursue their own chosen paths. Conversely, he saw government controls and subsidies as forms of control and potentially forms of suppression of the human will. If people are to be truly free, they must have the resources to pursue that freedom. The government dole can become a type of servitude or at least a subterfuge for citizens. If they are dependent on the government, they are never truly free."

The book compares many of these proposals to identical policies of the Jacobin movement in the French Revolution. Both the American and French revolutions arose during the same period, but one became the world's oldest democracy while the other became the blood-soaked "The Reign of Terror."

Notably, the Jacobins pushed for the same unicameral system that the socialists are now advocating as well as attacks on the wealthy.

The DSA is the direct descendant of the Jacobins in seeking to tear down moderating institutions and replace the president and justices with democratically elected figures by a Congress composed only of the House of Representatives.

As with the original Jacobins, those demanding these changes are not the working class but professors, pundits and young college-educated voters.

Pushing this analogy to a more menacing level, another poll shows that roughly 60 percent of Democrats now would support a military coup to remove President Donald Trump.

The return of socialism is like the reappearance of low-rise jeans. You are left mystified by anyone who believes that this is a worthy theory to emulate after consistent and catastrophic failures. Long forgotten is the disaster of the socialist government of François Mitterrand in France.

Most recently, Prime Minister Andy Burnham condemned the privatization policies of Margaret Thatcher: "The country surrendered control of the essentials - housing, water, energy, transport - and left people exposed to higher costs." What he does not mention is that she followed the collapse of socialist policies under Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977-78 during the so-called "winter of discontent," which I also discuss in the book.

Perhaps Marx was right after all: "History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce."

Jonathan Turley is the best-selling author of "Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution."

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/27/2026 - 16:20
Tyler Durden

zero rss