Trump Panics as His Supreme Court Blocks Use of MAGA Congress Maps at the Midterm

0:00Michael Popok:We got some breaking news and slightly surprising news coming out of the United States Supreme Court has to do with congressional maps in Missouri. Because Justice Kavanaugh, by himself, he hasn't even referred it over to the other members of the Supreme Court, has just ruled that the Missouri Supreme Court is right. At least there's no federal reason that they are wrong in finding unanimously that before a brand new redrawn gerrymandered map creating seven Republican congressional districts out of eight can be used. It needed to be put on a referendum on a ballot to be approved by the voters because more than 300 ,000 people signed a petition to have the legislative action by Missouri to redraw the maps be put to the voters.

0:49Michael Popok:And since it wasn't put to the voters, they got to go back to the 2022 map coming off the 2020 census, which means that there's at least one or two more Democratic seats coming out of Missouri. and we need every seat we can get because Trump is trying to lie, cheat and steal his way and remap his way to trying to gain control of the House. It could come down to just one vote. I mean, it's likely the Democrats are gonna overwhelmingly win the House, but it could come down to one vote. It could come down to one vote in a seat in Missouri. And this was so fundamentally wrong by the Missouri Secretary of State, Denny Hoskins, that Brett Kavanaugh, the justice, who's not generally in favor of voting or preserving your right to vote, he made the decision to deny the application for an appeal to reverse the Missouri Supreme Court ruling and keep that old map in place.

1:48Michael Popok:He did that without even consulting the other members of the United States Supreme Court. He did it on his own as the judge over emergency applications in places like Missouri and the Eighth Circuit. Michael Popak, Good morning. Good morning. On Wednesday morning, I'm in Detroit at the Democratic Attorneys General Conference interviewing Democratic Attorneys General, about 15 of them, about protecting the right to vote and things at the United States Supreme Court. You'll be seeing my interviews throughout the day. In the meantime, hit that free subscribe button. Help us to continue to grow our pro-democracy channel.

2:21Michael Popok:Let's talk about what just happened. You had a plaintiff named Richard Van Glon, who filed a case before the lower courts of Missouri up to the Missouri Supreme Court. He argued that the Republican led legislature in Missouri could not put on and use the maps that redistrict away a safe Democratic seat eliminated effectively, giving the Republicans a seven out of eight seat advantage. They could not do that because he and his group had successfully signed a petition of the right amount delivered at the right time that said that that legislative action has to be put to a referendum of the voters.

3:08Michael Popok:And under Missouri's Constitution, it's very clear that if you don't like any action of your statehouse, you can put it up for a referendum to be voted on by the voters if you get 300 ,000 or more signatures. The Republican, Danny Hoskins, the Secretary of State, didn't like that. And so he announced at a press conference that he was rejecting the signatures, that they were too late and too little. And under his interpretation, which was wrong, of the state constitution, the petition didn't mean and didn't apply to maps and actions by the legislature about congressional maps. Here's a clip of him fighting it out.

3:49Well, because it's a moot point. Both the referendum as well as IP 2026-16 have been ruled unconstitutional. So, again, it doesn't matter if there's one signature or 500 million signatures. they're unconstitutional according to Missouri state constitution. What gives you the authority to make this decision though, to determine that it's unconstitutional instead of to just determine whether or not there are enough valid signatures. What gives you this authority? What gives me this authority is when I was elected to secretary of state, I took an oath to follow the Missouri constitution. And that oath means a lot to me.

4:26And so I'm going to continue to follow Missouri state law. I'm going to continue to follow the Missouri constitution. I know some folks out there will be mad that I am following state law in the Missouri Constitution. And I've told, here's what I tell them. Contact your state rep, contact your state senator, and ask them to change state law. Our legislature is the one who makes laws. As Secretary of State, I just administer the law, and that's what I'm doing.

4:49Michael Popok:And he's wrong. He's wrong about that. Also, they never raised any federal issues in the state court action. This was purely interpretation of state law. And if you're going to jump the tracks and you're going to try to take a case from state court and the highest state court, in this case, Missouri's, over to the United States Supreme Court, you've got to show that you've got a federal right or a federal claim that you haven't waived. But what the plaintiffs argued to the Supreme Court successfully and certainly to Justice Kavanaugh is that they had an adequate and independent state rationale and right that barred any federal interference.

5:30Michael Popok:And they're right about that. In fact, here's an interview with Richard Van Glaan, the now successful plaintiff, who just put on the ballot for the voters of Missouri to decide, not a bunch of cowardly legislators sitting in some dark room, smoke-filled room, trying to figure out how to screw the Democrats. Let the voters decide. Here's Richard Van Glaan. This is the man suing him, Richard Van Glaan, on behalf of the group People, Not Politicians. Mr. Van Glaan, welcome. Thanks for having me. Let's start by establishing what's not in dispute. The Secretary of State's office confirmed on camera this week that the county clerks finished verifying your signatures and his office completed its duplicate check of those signatures.

6:10So before we get to any legal theory or political argument here, did you turn in enough valid signatures and how many over the line were you? Yeah, we needed to turn in about 110 ,000. We turned in over 305 ,000. So we knew that we were in good shape on December 9th when we turned those in. Let's go back to the Secretary of State's own words, and we'll put them on screen. He said it does not matter if it had one signature or 500 million signatures. It's unconstitutional. We'll note there are only 330 million people roughly in the United States. So that would be quite something. Simple question.

6:46Where in the Missouri Constitution or where in state law is the Secretary of State given the power to make that call? He isn't. The Secretary of State is actually not a lawmaker. It's an administrative office. So he does not get to be a single person veto on democracy and the constitutional rights of Missouri. Okay, well, here's the question that he would not answer at his own news conference. Has any Missouri Secretary of State ever rejected a petition with sufficient signatures on constitutional grounds? Because if the answer is no, viewers should know this is a first. Not that I know of. Denny Hoskins has been an obstructionist throughout all of this.

7:25It is also true that the clerks that he tasked with assigning this showed that there were enough valid signatures in mid-March and that in May, the Supreme Court issued a ruling on May 12th saying that it was impossible to know which map was legally in effect until he acted. Now, he could have read that and said, OK, I've got a concern about this. Let's get this resolved before the August primary. He chose not to, which, according to the letter of the law, he had the right to do. But it does bring chaos.

8:00Michael Popok:This is a simple matter of reading statute. The Constitution in Missouri is quite clear. This is why even even the alt-right wing Brett Kavanaugh took one look at it and said, yeah, And no, I don't think that this is going to pass federal muster. There is obviously an adequate independent state bar to this. The Missouri Supreme Court has spoken on this issue that they are the highest court in the land for that particular issue on referendums going on about voting. And that's it. Draw a line under it. Now, that's not the only case that's up at the United States Supreme Court about voting. But I think this is a good data point.

8:40The Supreme Court and the MAGA 6 love to screw around with voting and maps.

8:46Michael Popok:However, already they've denied Donald Trump's first attempt to go after mail-in balloting. Remember, just three months ago, he argued mail-in ballots all have to be received on election day and counted on election day. No, says the United States Supreme Court. That's not true at all. They don't have to be counted all on the same day or received on all the same day. Now you've got Kavanaugh who's saying, no, you're going to have to use the old map, even though it gives the Democrats a one or two seat more advantage, because there is a referendum provision in your in your constitution of the state that I cannot overturn and it's being applied properly.

9:26Michael Popok:That's the second data point. Then you've got this attack on mail-in voting, where with less than 55 or 56 days left till the midterms, the Trump administration is trying to use the Postal Service to upend the process, require states out of the blue to use some sort of portal or database of citizen registration that isn't even created yet, and use some sort of scanner process and new envelopes, and try to do that for hundreds of millions of voters who want to vote by mail. There were about 50 million of them actually at the last election and try to do that, oh, in the next month or so. That is going to die at the United States Supreme Court.

10:03Michael Popok:Final briefing comes in later today. I'll report on it. It'll come in through Ketanji Brown-Jackson coming off of an appeal from the First Circuit and Judge Talwani in Boston with the states weighing in with their briefing at 4 p.m. Eastern time later today. From there, the Supreme Court is going to rule. Not many things shock me. I would be shocked if the Trump administration is able to convince the Supreme Court to let them throw sand in the gears of our election process and let the post office decide which ballots they're going to deliver or not. I don't see that happening. Of course, we'll report on it right here on Legal AF.

10:45Michael Popok:Thanks for being with me. Thanks for being such fervent supporters. Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button as we continue to grow our pro-democracy channel. I'll see you in about an hour. I'm Michael Popak.

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