The midterms dodge their first MAGA bullet. It won’t be the last.
It’s only September, and America just barely averted the first constitutional crisis of this year’s midterm elections.
Hang with me here because this gets a bit complicated. Last September, the Missouri Legislature passed a redistricting bill called H.B. 1 . This bill was part of the wave of mid-decade census redistricting initiated after President Trump essentially ordered the state of Texas in July to redistrict to create more Republican-majority congressional districts and diminish Democratic voting power in the state.
Texas dutifully complied, and this set off a lopsided redistricting arms race between red states and blue states that has resulted in Republicans thus far potentially gaining 10 additional Republican districts , a number that — in a close election — could easily decide control of the House.
To illustrate how important 10 seats could be, the House majority for both Republicans and Democrats hasn’t exceeded 10 members after an election since the 2018 midterms.
Missouri, a bright red state, has eight representatives in Congress, two Democrats and six Republicans. The Legislature altered the maps to eliminate one of the Democratic seats, hoping to create an even more lopsided outcome — leaving the roughly 40 percent of Missourians who vote Democratic with, in essence, only one Democratic representative.
The Missouri Constitution , however, contains a provision that says that the people of the state “reserve power to approve or reject by referendum any act of the general assembly, except as hereinafter provided.”
