The U.S. Supreme Court just threw a major wrench into Republicans’ plans for the 2026 midterms — and the stakes could hardly be higher.

In a dramatic Thursday intervention, the nation’s highest court blocked Missouri from using its newly drawn Republican congressional map in November, temporarily shutting down a redistricting effort that could have helped the GOP capture seven of the state’s eight U.S. House seats.

The brief Supreme Court order came with no noted dissents.

Instead, the justices granted an emergency request from People Not Politicians and activist Richard von Glahn, halting a lower federal court ruling that would have required Missouri to conduct November’s elections under the controversial new boundaries.

The immediate result is enormous.

Unless something changes, Missouri’s 2022 congressional map will remain in effect for November, preserving districts that currently send six Republicans and two Democrats to Washington.

And at the center of the entire political showdown is Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-area 5th Congressional District.

The Republican-backed map approved in 2025 would have dramatically reshaped Cleaver’s district, potentially opening the door for Republicans to flip the seat and walk away with seven of Missouri’s eight congressional districts.

Now, that plan has hit a massive roadblock.

“The law is the law, the Missouri constitution is clear, as was the Missouri Supreme Court,” von Glahn said in a statement.

He then took direct aim at Republican Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, who had fought to conduct the November election using the new boundaries.

Hoskins “has shown that he cannot effectively do the job he was elected to do,” von Glahn added.

A Legal War Erupts

The Supreme Court’s intervention is the latest twist in an extraordinary legal battle involving Missouri’s highest court, a federal judge, Republican state officials and now the U.S. Supreme Court.

Just two days earlier, U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark ordered Missouri to use the 2025 congressional map despite a conflicting decision from the Missouri Supreme Court.

Hoskins’ attorneys raced to the Supreme Court in an eleventh-hour attempt to preserve that ruling.

They argued that Clark’s order was the only thing “preventing the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters” who had already cast ballots in Missouri’s August primary under the new districts.

With the November election rapidly approaching, they argued that using the new map was the only practical way to “conduct congressional elections that comply with the federal election calendar.”

The Trump administration backed Hoskins as well, warning the Supreme Court that blocking the federal judge’s ruling would “jeopardize state officials’ ability to conduct a timely and lawful federal election.”

The justices nevertheless intervened.

And remarkably, this wasn’t even the first time the Missouri map battle reached the Supreme Court this week.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday rejected an earlier attempt by Hoskins to block the Missouri Supreme Court ruling preventing implementation of the 2025 map.

Trump-Era Redistricting Fight Explodes

The showdown dates back to a Republican redistricting push launched in 2025 as President Donald Trump encouraged GOP-controlled states to redraw congressional boundaries ahead of the crucial 2026 midterm elections.

Missouri Republicans ultimately approved a new map that would make Cleaver’s Democratic-held district considerably harder for his party to defend.

But opponents didn’t simply accept it.

They launched a referendum campaign — and gathered more than 300,000 signatures in an effort to put the new congressional boundaries directly before Missouri voters.

Hoskins rejected the referendum effort, maintaining that congressional redistricting legislation wasn’t subject to Missouri’s referendum process.

Missouri’s Supreme Court unanimously disagreed.

The state court ruled Sept. 3 that Missouri’s Constitution gives voters the power to approve or reject “any act of the general assembly” through referendum unless the Constitution specifically creates an exception.

The court concluded that no such exception exists for congressional redistricting.

It ordered Hoskins to certify the referendum and place the issue before voters in November.

Even more consequentially, the court ruled that the 2025 redistricting legislation never took effect because of the referendum petition.

That meant Missouri’s existing 2022 congressional map remained legally in force.

Then A Federal Judge Stepped In

Republican congressional nominee Rick Brattin, GOP Rep. Bob Onder and two voters subsequently brought a separate federal challenge.

Judge Clark sided with them Tuesday, concluding Missouri should conduct its general election using the same congressional districts that were used during the August primary.

Suddenly, Missouri was staring at two conflicting judicial directives — one coming from the state’s highest court and another from the federal judiciary.

That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in.

Thursday’s order halted Clark’s ruling, leaving the old congressional map standing as Missouri barrels toward November.

And time is rapidly disappearing.

Missouri’s deadline for finalizing ballots already passed Tuesday, while the first ballots are scheduled to be sent out Sept. 19.

Missouri’s Secretary Of State Faces Even More Trouble

For Hoskins, the congressional map fight isn’t his only problem.

The Republican secretary of state is now facing mounting pressure inside Missouri as well.

The Missouri Supreme Court scheduled a Thursday hearing to consider whether Hoskins should be held in contempt over his response to its previous order.

That adds another extraordinary dimension to a political and constitutional battle that has already traveled from Missouri’s courts to the federal judiciary and all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And behind all of the legal maneuvering sits a brutally simple political reality:

Control of Congress is on the line.

Republicans saw Missouri’s new map as an opportunity to potentially turn an already strong 6–2 congressional advantage into a commanding 7–1 edge.

For now, the Supreme Court has stopped that plan in its tracks — leaving Missouri Republicans scrambling as the clock races toward November.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing fresh scrutiny after a disturbing connection from his political past resurfaced — involving a former campaign worker who was later arrested and convicted after targeting Jewish high school students with an alarming social-media post.

Iman Abdul worked as a paid canvasser on journalist Ross Barkan’s unsuccessful 2018 Democratic campaign for New York State Senate — a campaign where Mamdani served first as field director and later as campaign manager.

Seven years later, Abdul would find herself in handcuffs.

Authorities arrested Abdul in 2025 after she allegedly posted the location of Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences in Brooklyn while appearing to suggest the school as a target for an attack.

Her words were chilling.

“If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason … Lexus driving Israhell [sic] loving Zionists [sic] all attend here,” she added in a caption to the now-deleted post.

The post reportedly included a Google Maps image identifying the school — a public high school attended by minors on the Kingsborough Community College campus in Brooklyn.

According to an NYPD spokesperson quoted by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Abdul, then 27, was arrested after allegedly making what police described as a “terroristic threat” against the school.

Police arrested Abdul on Aug. 8, 2025, on charges that included aggravated harassment, making a threat of mass harm and acting in a manner injurious to a child.

The episode immediately sparked outrage.

This wasn’t simply an inflammatory political statement posted into the void. Authorities said the post identified an actual school and appeared to target students she characterized as Zionists and supporters of Israel.

The political connection to Mamdani dates back to Abdul’s work years earlier.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that New York campaign-finance records showed the Barkan campaign paid Abdul $540 between July and August 2018 for canvassing work.

At the time, Mamdani was deeply involved in the campaign’s operation, initially serving as field director before becoming campaign manager.

Abdul’s criminal case ultimately ended with a guilty plea.

According to reporting published in August 2026, Abdul pleaded guilty on Aug. 5 to aggravated harassment as a hate crime, a felony under New York law.

But she avoided jail.

The other charges stemming from her arrest were dismissed as part of the disposition, and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s office agreed to a deal under which completing 20 counseling sessions would allow the charge to be reduced to a misdemeanor.

That outcome only added another layer of controversy to an already explosive case.

Meanwhile, the revelation about Abdul’s previous campaign work has put renewed attention on Mamdani’s political rise and the network of campaigns he worked on before becoming an elected official.

Mamdani began working in electoral politics years before winning office himself.

He worked on Khader El-Yateem’s 2017 New York City Council campaign, followed by Barkan’s 2018 state Senate campaign and Tiffany Cabán’s 2019 campaign for Queens district attorney.

Barkan ultimately lost the Democratic primary to Andrew Gounardes, who went on to defeat Republican incumbent Marty Golden.

The timeline is important.

There is no evidence that Mamdani had any involvement whatsoever in Abdul’s threatening 2025 social-media post, her arrest or the criminal case that followed.

The two events were separated by roughly seven years, and Abdul’s disturbing post came long after the Barkan campaign had ended.

But the newly resurfaced campaign records establish an undeniable historical connection: Abdul worked as a paid canvasser for a political operation in which Mamdani played a significant leadership role.

And the revelation arrives as Mamdani continues facing intense scrutiny over his record on Israel and accusations from critics that his rhetoric and political positions have contributed to hostility toward the Jewish state.

Mamdani has rejected accusations that criticism of Israel amounts to antisemitism, arguing that criticism of the Israeli government and advocacy for Palestinian rights should not be conflated with hatred of Jewish people.

He has also maintained that his administration has a responsibility to protect Jewish New Yorkers from threats, harassment and hate crimes.

Still, the resurfaced campaign connection is likely to fuel an already heated debate surrounding Mamdani’s political history — especially now that a woman who once worked for a campaign he managed has been convicted in a case involving threats directed at Jewish high school students.

Newly obtained internal Justice Department emails are pulling back the curtain on former President Joe Biden’s massive, last-minute clemency blitz — revealing confusion inside the DOJ and an admission that many of the cases were never vetted through the department’s traditional pardon office.

The records show Justice Department officials scrambling to determine exactly what some of Biden’s commutations covered, while also dealing with an erroneous notice involving the pardon of the president’s own son, Hunter Biden.

The emails were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust and provided to Fox News Digital.

And one admission buried in the correspondence could raise serious new questions about how Biden’s extraordinary wave of clemency decisions was handled.

“Many of the cases that were granted commutation on January 17 were not vetted through our office,” Deputy Pardon Attorney Kira Gillespie wrote.

That office — the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney — traditionally plays a central advisory and review role in presidential clemency cases.

Yet Biden was issuing clemency on a massive scale as his presidency came to an end.

Biden Commutes Nearly 2,500 Sentences At Once

On Jan. 17, 2025, Biden announced that he was commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses.

Federal records ultimately showed the action covered 2,490 people.

Biden said the sweeping move was aimed primarily at prisoners serving sentences significantly longer than they might receive under modern federal sentencing laws, including people affected by the old sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses.

But behind the scenes, DOJ officials apparently didn’t have all the answers.

Internal correspondence shows department personnel were soon trying to determine precisely which sentences Biden had actually commuted.

One case involved Christopher Damon Spencer.

Spencer’s name appeared on Biden’s clemency list in connection with a 2003 criminal case.

But he also had a separate 2011 case carrying a 235-month federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors wanted to know whether Biden’s clemency action applied to that sentence too.

Deputy Pardon Attorney Gillespie responded that applying the commutation to both cases appeared to be the “most sensible reading” of Biden’s action.

Then came the stunning admission.

“Many of the cases that were granted commutation on January 17 were not vetted through our office,” Gillespie wrote.

According to the records, she also indicated that the information available had not undergone the level of review her office would ordinarily seek.

‘Grand Canyon Gap’

Critics seized on the emails as evidence that Biden’s final clemency operation looked considerably different behind closed doors than it did publicly.

“The process didn’t match the public sales pitch,” former Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox News Digital.

“There is a Grand Canyon gap between the public description and the internal reality,” Miyares said.

Protect the Public’s Trust communications director Alexa Moutevelis was even more pointed.

“This paints a troubling picture of a pardon process driven by politics and haste rather than the careful deliberation such extraordinary acts of executive clemency demand,” Moutevelis said.

And according to Moutevelis, the confusion wasn’t limited to obscure cases buried among thousands of names.

It reached all the way to Hunter Biden.

“The Justice Department pardon office’s own emails show the final Biden auto-pen blitz was so clumsy and rushed that the chaos extended even to the most high-profile and controversial of all: his own son, Hunter,” Moutevelis told Fox.

The records cited in the report include officials correcting an erroneous notice connected to Hunter Biden’s pardon.

Autopen Controversy Adds Another Layer

The newly released emails arrive amid a separate controversy surrounding the Biden White House’s use of an autopen.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of some of Biden’s final pardons, arguing that an autopen was used and questioning whether Biden personally authorized the actions.

Among Biden’s final acts were pardons for members of the January 6 select committee, including former Rep. Liz Cheney.

Trump has alleged those pardons may have been signed using an autopen without Biden’s knowledge.

Those claims remain disputed, and the records described here do not establish that Biden was unaware of the pardons.

But another Trump administration official has made an even more explosive allegation.

Trump AI advisor David Sacks previously claimed that Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren was behind the Biden administration’s use of the autopen.

“Elizabeth Warren controlled the autopen during that administration,” said the Trump advisor, adding that the Massachusetts senator has a “pathological hatred of the crypto community” and wanted to “drive this community offshore.”

Sacks did not provide evidence in the cited interview establishing that Warren actually controlled Biden’s autopen.

Emails Raise New Questions About Biden’s Final Days

Presidents possess extraordinarily broad constitutional authority to grant federal pardons and commutations.

The controversy here is instead about how Biden’s unprecedented wave of clemency decisions was processed and reviewed inside the administration.

And on that question, the internal emails provide a striking glimpse behind the curtain.

DOJ personnel were seeking clarification about individual sentences.

An erroneous notice involving Hunter Biden had to be corrected.

And a senior official inside the Pardon Attorney’s office acknowledged that many of the Jan. 17 commutations had never been vetted through her office at all.

That doesn’t establish that the clemency grants themselves were invalid.