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North Carolina lawmakers will soon return to work after keeping the General Assembly session in a holding pattern for weeks while Republicans negotiated some bills and awaited court rulings. The Senate and House have floor meetings Wednesday, and a spokeswoman for Senate leader Phil Berger says senators could vote on legislation.
The U.S. Supreme Court late Tuesday rejected some but not all of the North Carolina legislative districts that federal judges redrew for this year's elections. The justices partially granted the request of Republican lawmakers who contend the House and Senate maps they voted for last summer were legal and didn't need to be altered.
The U.S. Supreme Court's Jan. 18 decision to pause a nine-day-old federal court ruling against North Carolina's congressional map was the latest turn in a legal war that has made the state's electoral system the most chaotic in the U.S. The temporary stay is part of a wider, national challenge to the kind of political gerrymandering that has helped breed hyperpartisanship across the country. The Supreme Court gave North Carolina a reprieve while it What sets North Carolina apart, though, is the breadth of institutions that have been thrown against a wall.
Federal judges have approved North Carolina legislative districts redrawn by an expert they hired to address their concerns about continued racial bias with some boundaries and new constitutional violations. The three-judge panel signed off Friday on changes made by a Stanford University law professor appointed as a special master.
North Carolinians may vote in the 2018 midterm elections under a congressional map that has been gerrymandered by Republicans. The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked a lower court ruling ordering the U.S. House of Representatives district lines be redrawn by January 24. "The three-judge panel ruled that the Republican-drawn districts violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law by intentionally hobbling the electoral strength of non-Republican voters.
House Republican leaders are moving toward a vote Thursday to avoid a shutdown, but as a new day dawns in Washington, it's still unclear if GOP leaders have enough support to keep the government open. House Speaker Paul Ryan and his lieutenants were up against the clock and their own ranks as they scrambled to lock down votes.
This photo taken Dec. 19, 2017, shows Gov. Roy Cooper announcing that Triangle Tire Company will be building a manufacturing facility at the Kingsboro megasite in Edgecombe County in Tarboro, N.C. Federal judges ruled Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018, that North Carolina's congressional district map drawn by legislative Republicans is illegally gerrymandered due to excessive partisanship that gave GOP a rock-solid advantage for most seats and must quickly be redone. The ruling marks the second time this decade that the GOP's congressional boundaries in North Carolina have been thrown out by a three-judge panel.
Federal judges said Tuesday that North Carolina will have to quickly redraw its 13 congressional districts because the map is unconstitutionally partisan. The three-judge panel rejected the previous map drawn by the Republican-controlled General Assembly, saying it violates the Equal Protection Clause, the First Amendment, and Article I of the Constitution.
Federal judges have ruled that North Carolina's congressional district map drawn by legislative Republicans is illegally gerrymandered because of excessive partisanship that gave the GOP a rock-solid advantage for most seats and must quickly be redone. The ruling late Tuesday marks the second time this decade that the GOP's congressional boundaries in the state have been thrown out by a three-judge panel.
Nine North Carolina legislative districts redrawn by the Republican-controlled General Assembly over the summer still may be unlawful, a federal court said Thursday while announcing it planned to hire an outside expert to evaluate them and possibly retool them again. A three-judge panel, which last year determined that 28 of the 170 state House and Senate districts approved in 2011 were illegal racial gerrymanders, say problems remain in the latest version of the legislative maps.
As Congress prepares to consider the first serious tax reform in decades, the old talking points are being trotted out: the Republican proposals will destroy the middle class and send the economy into a downward spiral. Not so fast, says North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis.
The White House has significantly scaled back an annual gathering of the nation's historically black colleges presidents and advocates after a series of potentially offensive actions by President Donald Trump, including his much maligned statement this summer on the deadly race-fueled rally in Charlottesville, Va. Organizers worried some presidents would not attend and students would protest next week's event, initially scheduled to be held at a hotel just outside the nation's capital, according to three people familiar with the situation.
North Carolina Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, a Republican, during a Senate 2016 session. Of Democratic criticisms of his party's redistricting efforts, Berger says, "It's easier to blame the maps, blame a process, blame anything, really, than it is to take responsibility for losing touch with the politics of voters in 75 of North Carolina's 100 counties."
North Carolina voters got less than half a loaf from three federal judges last week. The decision was just one more step in tweaking an election system that is hopelessly broken.
Gov. Roy Cooper's administration wants the state's pending Medicaid overhaul to integrate physical and mental health treatment more quickly and expand coverage to more of the working poor in North Carolina, according to its plan unveiled Tuesday. The Department of Health and Human Services released a report explaining how it wants the Medicaid program to look when a 2015 state law directing the reorganization takes effect, possibly in July 2019.
It would be very surprising if North Carolina Democrats didn't make significant gains in the next election for General Assembly - whenever that may be. Normally, we'd be talking in the summer of 2017 about legislative elections to be held in the fall of 2018.
North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is pushing Republican state legislators to immediately redraw General Assembly districts, now that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed that nearly 30 House and Senate maps are illegal racial gerrymanders. Cooper announced Wednesday he's calling a special session - to begin Thursday and run simultaneously with the current General Assembly work session - to get new maps drawn.
The Supreme Court handed down a brief order on Monday affirming a lower court's ruling that North Carolina's state legislative maps were an illegal racial gerrymander . That sounds like good news for advocates who oppose the maps drawn by the Republican-controlled legislaturea S-a Sbut the decision could actually encourage state lawmakers to attempt more gerrymandered maps in the future.
Last month, a federal judge found that a voter ID law in Texas, similar to the one in North Carolina, was enacted with the goal to discriminate against blacks and Hispanics in the state. The justices left in place the lower court ruling striking down the law's photo ID requirement and scaling back of early voting.