third time

WASHINGTON — For the third time this month, the Supreme Court has rejected Missouri’s bid for one more Republican-leaning congressional district.

With no dissents, the justices upheld a state court order requiring the use of a 2022 election map, which favors Republicans in six of the eight districts.

“At this late date, ordering reversion to the 2025 map in the midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos,” the justices wrote.

The GOP, with the backing of conservative federal judges, wanted to use a new 2025 election map that redrew the district in Kansas City that had elected a Black Democrat.

That would have given Republicans a 7-1 advantage, but the Supreme Court stood in the way.

“As a matter of state law, the 2022 map — not the 2025 map — must be used in the 2026 congressional election,” the justices said in an unsigned opinion. “This Court has repeatedly cautioned that lower federal courts should not ‘alter the election rules of a state on the eve of an election.”

Each side in this messy dispute accused the other of seeking to change the voting districts on the eve of the election.

On Tuesday, the opponents of the newly drawn GOP-friendly map appealed to the Supreme Court for the third time. They said it is too late to switch the districts because ballots had gone out based on the existing map.

They said the Republicans “demand a new map after votes have already been cast. Ballots using the 2022 map have been printed and mailed, and absentee voting, both by mail and in-person, began today.”

But the state’s Republican attorneys said the primary elections took place under the new 2025 map, and that argues for keeping those districts in place for the general election in November.

Last September, the Missouri General Assembly, following President Trump’s lead, voted to redraw its eight congressional districts. In recent years, the state had sent six Republicans and two Democrats to Congress.

The Legislature’s goal was to flip one more seat in favor of Republicans. The new map would do that by breaking up the Kansas City district that had elected Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Black Democrat, with a new district that favored a Republican.

But a group called People Not Politicians and its executive director, Richard von Glahn, gathered more than 300,000 signatures for a referendum to challenge the new law before it took effect.

After waiting nine months to respond, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, denied the referendum in early August on the same day the primary elections got underway.

Von Glahn and his group of voters sued and won a unanimous decision from the Missouri Supreme Court on Sept. 3. Its judges said the state Constitution authorizes such a referendum and a new election map cannot take effect until the voters have spoken.

Hoskins filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court and cited the “chaotic fallout” from the state court “irresponsible decision.”

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who oversees appeals from the 8th Circuit Court based in St. Louis, denied the appeal without comment on Sept. 8.

But shortly after his decision was issued, U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark, a Trump appointee, issued a temporary restraining order that prohibited the state from using the any voting map other than the new one.

People not Politicians appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.

On Sept. 10, Kavanaugh and the full court granted the appeal and blocked the judge’s order from taking effect.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, but the meaning of the order was clear. The state Supreme Court ruling meant the new map could not be used for this year’s election.

But that did not stop the 8th Circuit Court from ruling the state must use the new map.

Siding with several Republican candidates, a 2-1 majority said the use of 2022 map was unconstitutional because the primary elections were held under the new map. Its decision ordered the elections to be held using the new map.

This was a surprising ruling, since the Supreme Court’s order on Sept. 10 barred judges in Missouri from intervening further in the dispute over the voting maps.

But after a third trip to the court, the justices said the state must use the 2022 map.

WASHINGTON — For a third time, the U.S. House has voted to end the war in Iran, approving a war powers resolution that would halt President Trump’s ability to continue military action without congressional approval.

The roll call late Tuesday, 220-204, was similar to earlier efforts this summer, with a few more Republicans joining all Democrats voting to bring an end to the conflict. None of the resolutions have made it to the president’s desk, where Trump would almost certainly veto the measure.

“Remember when Donald Trump said that this war would last just a few weeks?” said Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who served as a Marine during the Iraq War and pushed the resolution forward.

He said it’s time for Congress to “actually ask tough questions, as the Constitution directs us to do, rather than be subservient to another warmongering administration.”

Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, questioned which military resources Democrats would want to remove from the region where he said Iran remains a threat.

Mast said Trump is against “forever wars, and that is what he is ending” — the decades of hostilities from Iran.

“They are a continuous ongoing threat to the United States,” Mast said. “Enough is enough.”

Last war powers vote before the midterms

The action is likely the last House vote on the Iran war ahead of the midterm elections, where the conflict overseas is playing a substantial role in the political campaigns. The war that Trump launched Feb. 28 has dragged, with on-again, off-again deadly missile strikes being exchanged and causing havoc in the region for nearly seven months.

Lawmakers are heading home at the end of the week to campaign nearly full-time, with less than 50 days to go before the elections that will determine control of Congress as Democrats try to wrest power from Republicans.

Voters are confronting high prices, particularly for gas at the pumps, as the conflict disrupts the flow of oil resources through the vital Strait of Hormuz.

The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the war has cost more than $38 billion, as of Aug. 1, and is projected to be costing between $2 billion and $3 billion monthly, depending on the intensity of the fighting. The budget office projected inflation will be 0.5 percentage points higher than expected heading into 2027 due to the war.

Trump himself had promised not to involve the U.S. in foreign wars when he won a second term in the White House, and his actions against Iran are weighing on the Republican Party that controls the House and Senate. Most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting, according to an AP-NORC poll in July.

In the previous House actions, four Republicans voted to halt the war in Iran, but that number rose to seven in Tuesday’s war powers vote, including GOP lawmakers from battleground Iowa, Rep. Zachary Nunn and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and retiring Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.

They joined GOP Reps. Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky voting in favor of the war powers resolution, with all Democrats.

War powers being put to the test

Congress has tried repeatedly to alter the trajectory of the war against Iran, but efforts to limit the Trump administration’s military action remain a longshot so long as the president is able to fend off or veto the measures.

The House first approved a war powers resolution in June, and followed up with another one in July, all seeking to halt U.S. action in Iran. The Senate on its 10th try also approved a war powers resolution to end the conflict, but GOP senators quickly reversed course the next day after Trump berated them during a closed-door lunch.

While the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war, it also gives the president authority as the commander in chief to engage in some military actions. The War Powers Act, created in the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict, sought to put a more specific time limit on the president’s power, requiring congressional approval for sustained military actions after 60 or 90 days.

House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged at a press conference Tuesday the need to bring gas prices down.

But the Republican speaker said he believes the Iran conflict is entering a “new phase” as allies step up to help stabilize the region. When that happens, he said, “you’re going to see, as the president said, anytime gas prices will go down again, the cost of groceries will as well.”

Johnson said Trump expects the shift after the election, and the speaker added, “I’d love it to happen today.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.