Issue No. 5b · Wednesday, 9 September 2026 · second edition
Two Missouri courts contradicted each other after the morning issue closed
Off-cycle edition. Does not replace Issue No. 5. Config, archive through this morning, and GitHub issues all present. No open brief-feedback. Prompted by Tuesday evening’s dual Missouri orders, which the morning issue listed as unswept, and by an official EIA calendar that does not match the 16:30 print the morning issue was watching.
Missouri now has two live, incompatible map orders
US politics & policyMissouri congressional mapIndependent corroboration
The morning issue treated this thread as fully briefed and waiting on 19 September. That framing did not survive Tuesday afternoon. At about 4:30 p.m. Eastern, Justice Kavanaugh — sitting alone on the Eighth Circuit emergency docket — denied application No. 26A304. He did not refer it. He did not explain. The Missouri Supreme Court’s injunction against House Bill 1 therefore stayed in force at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Twenty-eight minutes later, Chief Judge Stephen Clark of the Eastern District of Missouri issued a 14-day temporary restraining order in a separate case brought by Republican candidates who had already won primaries under the 2025 map. Clark barred the state from using any map other than HB 1 for November. His reason was equal protection and the House-elections clause: changing lines between the primary and the general would, he wrote, “wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness” of the election. Clark is a Trump appointee. So is Kavanaugh. They pointed opposite directions.
Secretary of State Denny Hoskins then emailed local election officials that Clark’s order “takes precedence” and certified the 2025 map. Chief Justice W. Brent Powell of the Missouri Supreme Court directed Hoskins to answer, on the record, why that email is not contempt of the state injunction, and told him to take no further map action until a higher court speaks. People Not Politicians asked Clark to pause his own order and noticed an emergency appeal to the Eighth Circuit. The state attorney general said the state will follow Clark.
What to watch next: an Eighth Circuit emergency panel; whether Clark converts the TRO before it expires in 14 days; Hoskins’s answer to Powell; and which map is actually on the ballots being printed. The 19 September UOCAVA mailing deadline is still the federal floor. It is no longer the only date that matters. Prior framing: 8 Sep, 9 Sep morning.
These are not two readings of one case. They are two cases. Kavanaugh was asked to stay a state-court injunction entered last week after the Missouri Supreme Court held that a referendum petition of more than 300,000 signatures had been wrongly kept off the ballot. He declined. That leaves the state injunction intact as a matter of federal emergency relief. Clark was asked, in a candidate suit filed in his district, to stop the secretary of state from switching maps after an August primary already run on HB 1. He granted a short TRO. Neither order purports to vacate the other. Hoskins’s email asserting federal supremacy is an administrative choice, not a holding.
The practical collision is the ballot. Local clerks cannot obey both “use only HB 1” and “do not use HB 1.” Powell’s contempt questions are the state court’s way of freezing Hoskins until someone with appellate authority picks a map. The Eighth Circuit can stay Clark, leave him in place, or take the case en banc; any of those is movement. A Kavanaugh-alone denial is not a ruling on the merits of HB 1 and does not bind Clark. Treat claims that “the Supreme Court settled Missouri” as false.
Weight this thread:
The official fuel print is Thursday, not this afternoon
Energy & gridUS fuel pricesPrimary source
The morning issue watched an EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report at 16:30 Eastern today. EIA’s own holiday schedule now says otherwise. Because the federal government was closed on Monday, 7 September, the next WPSR is Thursday, 10 September, in two pieces: highlights at noon Eastern and the full tables at 14:00. There is no official retail-diesel print this afternoon. The 9 September date in the watchlist, carried forward after Labor Day scrambled the usual Monday release, was still one day early.
Nothing in the two price series has otherwise moved off this morning’s numbers. AAA’s national diesel average at the morning snapshot was $5.9424, which AAA lists as the high in that series, dated today; regular gasoline was $4.2245. Yesterday’s AAA diesel was $5.9012. Those are private pump surveys. The last government week remains the 31 August print: diesel $5.599, gasoline $4.071, 2026 EIA high $5.652 on 24 August. The circulating “$5.85 record” is still not an EIA figure. It is close to older GasBuddy and secondary write-ups from late last week, now overtaken by AAA.
SPR is unchanged from the morning issue: 285.4 million barrels after a 1.2 million barrel week in the Department of Energy wrap, or 286.6 million in the 2 September WPSR for the week ending 28 August. Both are under the 290 million line. No new draw authorization attached to either number.
What to watch next: Thursday’s WPSR, specifically whether EIA diesel prints above $5.652; anyone still quoting $5.85 naming a series; any SPR statement that treats ~285 million as a policy floor. Prior framing: 9 Sep morning.
Iran sketched the restricted zone. It still has not published coordinates
GeopoliticsHormuzIndependent corroboration
The named trigger on this thread is published coordinates. Those still do not exist. What moved this morning is a geographic sketch. IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebi told state television the prohibited zone “approximately starts from the direction of Chabahar, covering part of the Sea of Oman and another part of the Arabian Sea.” Exact coordinates, he said, would come later. The enforcement language is unchanged: a vessel that enters without coordination “will be subject to our sanctions.” That is an insurance and routing problem until it is a kinetic one.
Rezaei’s Sunday–Tuesday remarks had placed the zone at the U.S. blockade perimeter and into the Gulf, and had promised maps of an Iran–Oman corridor. Mohebi’s Chabahar-to-Arabian-Sea line is larger and farther east than that earlier description. It is still not a chart a master can load. Muscat has not confirmed a signed corridor today. A continuing collapse in transits toward two cargoes a day remains last week’s fact.
What to watch next: coordinates, or a signed corridor Muscat will describe; SPR policy if draws continue from under 290 million barrels. Prior framing: 9 Sep morning.