NY Times: “A panel of three federal judges in North Carolina on Wednesday allowed the state’s newly redrawn congressional map to go into effect for the 2026 midterm elections, a victory for the Trump administration and Republican efforts to retain control of the U.S. House next year.
The judges, at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, unanimously sided with the state’s Republican leaders, whose lawyers had argued that their motivations to draw a new map were partisan — not because of race or political retaliation, as the plaintiffs had claimed. That distinction was important because the U.S. Supreme Court effectively blessed partisan gerrymandering in a 2019 ruling.”