Mark Maxwell
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Mark Maxwell is the Political Editor for KSDK — 5 On Your Side. Former Capitol Bureau Chief at WCIA.
09/24/2026
BULLETIN: St. Louis City Hall — Please do not die or give birth.
This aired at 5 last night. By this morning the clock had changed.
Overnight, the referendum group filed at the U.S. Supreme Court, the third time in 3 weeks. Justice Kavanaugh gave the other side until 1 p.m. Central today to respond. The "Monday at 5" deadline in the video is still the backstop, but a ruling could come well before it.
What's in the video: the map. The new districts redrew Kansas City most, but the lines moved here too. St. Louis County estimates about 60,000 of its voters are in one congressional district under the old map and another under the new one, before you count St. Charles, Lincoln, Warren, Gasconade, Washington and Jefferson counties. About 10,000 ballots have already gone out in St. Louis County, all on the 2022 lines.
And the prediction. I asked Rick Stream, the Republican director of elections, whether the Supreme Court goes along with the new map. His answer: "They've already ruled twice against changing the map. Personally I think that's what they're going to do this time too." His Democratic counterpart agrees.
What's new since: the referendum group's leader cast his own ballot yesterday on the 2022 map. And the filing points to a state law barring absentee voters from voting again on Election Day, with no replacement ballot in the federal order.
Your ballot today is valid. Prop A is on it either way.
This aired at 6 last night. Here's what's changed since.
The referendum group went back to the U.S. Supreme Court overnight, the third time in 3 weeks. Justice Kavanaugh gave the other side until 1 p.m. Central today to respond. That's the shortest window he's set in this case. A ruling could come today.
Two new details from the filing. Richard von Glahn, who leads the referendum group, cast his own absentee ballot yesterday morning on the 2022 map. If the map changes, his is one of the ballots in limbo. And the filing points to a Missouri law that bars anyone who voted absentee from voting again at the polls on Election Day, and says nothing in the federal order gives those voters a replacement ballot.
What you'll see in the video still holds. About 10,000 ballots have gone out in St. Louis County alone, growing by thousands a day. The county estimates roughly 60,000 of its voters change congressional districts between the two maps, before you count St. Charles, Jefferson, Lincoln, Warren and Gasconade counties. Democratic director Eric Fey on a ballot already returned: "once a ballot is cast, he can't have another bite at the apple." Republican director Rick Stream on the Supreme Court: "They've already ruled twice against changing the map. Personally I think that's what they're going to do this time too."
One thing to watch. The new filing calls a map switch "impossible." Fey told us yesterday it can be done, in about a week, at a cost that grows daily. The justices will have both in front of them.
Your ballot today is valid. Prop A stays on it either way.
09/23/2026
I’m afraid there has been a grave error.
Spotted in the record at the U.S. Supreme Court: someone has mistaken me for an authority.
09/23/2026
I'm afraid there has been a grave error.
Spotted in the record at the U.S. Supreme Court: someone has mistaken me for an authority.
Viewer Tim Simpson sent us one line: "Mark, please fact check Ann Wagner's attack ad against Fred Wellman." So we did.
The ad says Wellman supports transgender girls in girls' sports, wants "gender mutilating procedures for minors," and wants taxpayers to "fund it all." It cites no sources on screen. Wellman called it "outright lies."
Wagner's campaign sent us Wellman's own words. We checked every one. In 2023 he opposed Missouri's ban on surgery, puberty blockers and hormones for minors. This May, at a forum during his primary, he was asked if he supports taxpayer money paying for trans medical care. He said "Yes." He didn't say which care, or for whom.
Some of the rhetoric in the ad goes further than the record. So we gave Wellman the chance to draw that line himself. He declined an interview. We sent 12 written questions, six of them yes or no. His campaign answered none, disputed no quote, and told us we'd have more credibility investigating Wagner's finances instead.
Wagner's finances are a fair question. So is what a candidate for Congress believes. We'll keep asking both. The full fact check is in the video.
The Missouri map war is headed back to the U.S. Supreme Court for the third time in 3 weeks. Here's what today's ruling does, and what it doesn't.
It does hold, 2 to 1, that Missouri can't switch congressional maps between the primary and the general election. The 8th Circuit ordered the new map, the one 1.2 million people voted on in August, for November.
It doesn't take effect. The court paused its own order until next Monday at 5 p.m. so the Supreme Court can weigh in. The justices froze the last federal order in this case 11 days ago. They haven't seen this one.
It doesn't reverse the Missouri Supreme Court. That court's order forbidding the new map still stands. Only the U.S. Supreme Court can undo it, and nobody has asked yet.
It doesn't touch the referendum. Proposition A stays on your ballot.
Absentee voting starts tomorrow, on the old map, lawfully. Tonight's ruling is a step. It isn't the last one.
09/21/2026
Elliott Davis says he's been banned from the mayor's press events. He hasn't, and tonight he told me so.
I called him Sunday to make sure I had his position right. It was a friendly call. We've known each other a long time, and he was candid. Asked whether he'd been banned, he said no. Asked how he'd describe it: "I feel like I've been banned in effect. I used to get invitations. Now I don't."
Asked whether he's ever been turned away, he said no. The mayor says on the record no one is banned and Davis has never been stopped at a door. On that, the two of them agree.
Davis also told me he knew about the mayor's bill signing last week and chose not to go. "I knew about the event; I opted not to create a scene." When I asked whether he had a right to walk into the mayor's office uninvited, he answered his own question: "Right, absolutely,” he doesn't. He was also "banned" from the Board of Aldermen earlier this year. Except I reminded him I've seen him there repeatedly since, including in Megan Green's office last week. He told me he gets news alerts from her office and has "not had any problems with Megan Green."
So what happened is that apparently the mayor's office stopped emailing him the schedule. His evidence? Davis cites an anonymous source he claims told him a staffer saw him as “a disruption" at press conferences and said the office would reach individual reporters directly on big announcements.
In other words, this whole story is about a mailing list, not a ban. Politicians prune their lists all the time, usually of reporters who annoy them. Josh Hawley's office cut me out two years ago, then cut the whole station when they tried to route around me. It's typically a badge of honor, not a bruised ego. For the record, we still cover him anyway, even without the access or the ability to press him with tough questions.
Davis says he'll ask the Attorney General to weigh in on whether he's a journalist. The AG's own website says state law limits its opinions to public officials asking about their official duties, and that opinions can't settle factual disputes. The irony: Davis built a career safeguarding public coffers used in pursuit of personal interests. I asked him if there has been a violation of the Sunshine Act, the state law that dictates public access. He did not allege one. But he thinks the state of Missouri should be his personal attorney? Someone should write a story and title it, “You Paid For It.”
Here’s the bottom line: Elliott Davis can attend any public meeting and pull any public record, same as you. He can't make a mayor email him. That's the real story, and it doesn't need 218,000 people to be mad about it.
One more thing, in fairness: Davis has claimed publicly that, in his opinion, I'm defending the mayor. I'm not. I'm defending the facts, which is why I called him before writing a word of this. I'm not writing it to pile on Elliott, whose career speaks for itself. I'm writing it because a misleading story went out to a very large audience alleging that City Hall rations access to favored reporters. In reality, it turned out to be about an email list.
If the mayor, or any other politician I cover, ever does start deciding who gets to ask the questions, you'll hear about it from me, with actual receipts. Until then, you now know what really happened.
Hot air balloons can't steer. They go where the wind takes them, and tonight the wind took one to the corner of Walton and Olive, just east of Forest Park.
Irv Logan has watched the Great Forest Park Balloon Race since the first one in 1973. He knew one of the original pilots. This year he called his granddaughter, Delilah, and said let's go see the balloon. They never expected to help take one apart.
They weren't alone. Within minutes, a few dozen neighbors were on the rope, folding 77 feet of nylon back into a truck. "I've seen them land in some of the best neighborhoods and some of the ones that are not so great," Irv told us. "But everybody comes out as community and helps."
The pilot, Alan Zielinski, flies jets for a living. He's been landing balloons in strangers' neighborhoods for 43 years, and he says the reason is standing on the ground: the next generation of pilots. Delilah had never seen a balloon before tonight. Now she wants to fly one. From up there, she figures, she'd see birds.
We told Alan about the grandfather and the girl. "That's exactly why we're here."
If it weren't for the wind.
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