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      Democrats Lose Control of N.Y. Election Maps, as Top Court Rejects Appeal

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      The Court of Appeals said Democrats violated the State Constitution and ignored the will of the voters. The judges ordered a court-appointed expert to draw replacements.New York’s highest court ruled on Wednesday that Democratic leaders had violated the State Constitution when they took it upon themselves to draw new congressional and State Senate districts, and ordered that a court-appointed special master draft replacement lines for this year’s critical midterm elections.In a sweeping 32-page ruling, a divided New York State Court of Appeals chided Democrats for ignoring a constitutional amendment adopted by voters in 2014 to curb political influence in the redistricting process. The amendment also created a new outside commission to guide the process.The judges additionally found that the congressional districts designed by Democrats violated an explicit state ban on partisan gerrymandering, undercutting the party’s national campaign to brand itself as the champion of voting rights.Writing for the four-judge majority, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore said that Democratic lawmakers created congressional and State Senate maps in a way that was “procedurally unconstitutional,” and that the congressional map in particular was “drawn with impermissible partisan purpose.”The ruling, which is not subject to appeal, was expected to delay the June 28 party primaries for the congressional and State Senate districts until August, to allow time for new maps to be drawn and for candidates to collect petitions to qualify for the ballot.The verdict delivered a stinging defeat to Democrats in Albany and in Washington and cast this year’s election cycle into deep uncertainty.Party leaders had been hopeful that the Court of Appeals, with all seven judges appointed by Democratic governors, would overturn earlier decisions by a Republican judge in Steuben County and a bipartisan appeals court in Rochester.Instead, the high court issued an even more damning verdict that denied the Democrat-dominated State Legislature a chance to redraw the maps itself. That task, the judges said, should be handled by a politically neutral special master, who would be overseen by a trial court.National Democrats had been counting on the New York congressional maps adopted in February to deliver as many as three new seats this fall and offset redistricting gains by Republicans across the country. Now, with Democratic gains likely to be erased or minimized in New York, Republicans are on track to make modest gains nationally, easing their path to retaking control of the House of Representatives this fall.Democrats were likewise expecting the State Senate maps they adopted in February to help safeguard the party’s supermajority in Albany.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.Wednesday’s decision was a milestone in New York jurisprudence, the first time since the 1960s that the Court of Appeals has struck down district lines approved by lawmakers in their once-in-a-decade redistricting process.But the ruling is part of a growing trend across the nation in which state courts have taken up more active stances against partisan gerrymandering as federal courts have been removed from these battles by the Supreme Court.This year alone, state courts in Ohio, North Carolina, Kansas and Maryland have scrapped plans put in place by lawmakers because they ran afoul of state constitutional language outlawing partisan mapmaking, like that adopted by New York voters in 2014. The courts are widely expected to scrutinize new lines in Florida that overwhelmingly favor Republicans, as well.“States can be the laboratories of redistricting reforms,” said Samuel Wang, the director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “And this just goes to show that if a state court is willing to look carefully to its constitution and laws, it will find principals that can restrict the most extreme partisan acts.”Unlike New York, though, some of those courts have indicated they will allow 2022 elections to take place on tainted maps, potentially putting Democrats at a greater disadvantage nationally.The judges in New York were silent on whether to reschedule primary elections for other contested seats — including for governor, lieutenant governor and the State Assembly — leaving it to a trial court judge, Patrick F. McAllister, and the State Board of Elections to work out the details with “all due haste.” The board said Wednesday evening that it did “not foresee” moving those contests.But the judges appeared to bless the idea of separating them, pointing out that New York has a history of holding bifurcated primaries. They were more explicit in rejecting Democrats’ plea to allow this year’s elections to proceed on tainted lines and fix them later.“We reject this invitation to subject the people of this state to an election conducted pursuant to an unconstitutional reapportionment,” Judge DiFiore wrote in the majority opinion.Justice McAllister has already appointed Jonathan Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, as special master to draw the congressional and State Senate lines by late May.Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Wednesday afternoon that she was reviewing the decision. Michael Murphy, a spokesman for Senate Democrats, said they still “believe in the constitutionality” of their maps and plan to argue their case to the special master.Republicans and several nonpartisan public interest groups lauded the decision.“The will of the people prevailed over the Corrupt Albany Machine in a tremendous victory for democracy, fair elections & the Constitution!” Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a New York City Republican, wrote on Twitter.Ms. Malliotakis’s Staten Island-based district was among several that the Democrats’ congressional map would have made more challenging for Republicans, in her case by adding liberal voters from Park Slope in Brooklyn. The map also created new Democratic pickup opportunities on the eastern end of Long Island and in Central New York, and shored up Democrat-held swing seats in the Hudson Valley, by cramming conservative voters into just a handful of districts.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      N.Y. House Districts Illegally Favor Democrats, Appeals Court Rules

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      A divided five-judge panel found that Democrats engaged in gerrymandering in creating new district maps. The case is expected to head to New York’s highest court.A New York appeals court ruled on Thursday that new congressional districts drawn by Democrats violated the state’s ban on partisan gerrymandering, partially upholding a lower-court ruling that would block the state from using the lines in this year’s critical midterm elections.A divided five-judge panel in Rochester said Democratic legislative leaders had drawn the new House map “to discourage competition and favor Democrats,” knowingly ignoring the will of voters who recently approved a constitutional amendment outlawing the practice.“We are satisfied that petitioners established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Legislature acted with partisan intent,” a three-judge majority wrote in its opinion. Two judges dissented.Gov. Kathy Hochul and top legislative leaders are expected to immediately appeal the decision to the state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals. The judges there, all of whom were appointed by Democratic governors, have indicated they could render a final verdict as soon as next week.The outcome in New York will have significant implications in the broader fight for control of the House of Representatives. National Democratic leaders are counting on the maps their party drew in New York to help offset gains by Republicans.Without them, Democrats are at risk of emerging from this year’s redistricting cycle having been bested by Republicans for the second consecutive decade. Republican gains were on track to grow further after Florida lawmakers this week approved a map drawn by Gov. Ron DeSantis that would create four new Republican-friendly seats.The ruling was the second consecutive setback for New York’s Democratic mapmakers, and this time it came in an appellate court that was viewed as generally friendly to the party.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.“Like other state courts around the country, New York courts aren’t finding the question of whether a map is a partisan gerrymander a particularly hard one to decide,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s very hard to defend a map like New York’s, and ultimately if it quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.”Still, Mr. Li added, Thursday’s decision was only the second of three acts in New York’s redistricting legal drama.On Thursday, the judges from the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court ordered the Democrat-led Legislature to promptly redraft the map by April 30 or leave the task to a court-appointed neutral expert. The judges were largely silent on another key question at stake: whether some of the primaries scheduled for June should be postponed until August to accommodate new districts.The congressional lines in question, adopted by Democratic supermajorities in the Legislature in February, would give Democrats a clear advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts by shifting voters favorable to their party into redrawn seats on Long Island and Staten Island and in Central New York, and packing Republicans in a smaller number of districts. Republicans currently hold eight districts on a map that was drawn by a court-appointed special master in 2012.State leaders did emerge with some good news from the latest ruling. The panel rejected more sweeping parts of the decision by the lower-court judge, Patrick F. McAllister of Steuben County, that held that lawmakers lacked the authority to draw any maps at all after New York’s newly created redistricting commission failed to agree on a plan for the state.As a result, the appeals court ruling reinstated State Senate and Assembly maps that Justice McAllister had thrown out.Mike Murphy, a spokesman for Senate Democrats, said they were “pleased” that the appeals court had validated the Legislature’s right to draw the maps this year, and predicted the higher court would reinstate the congressional maps as well.“We always knew this case would end at the Court of Appeals and look forward to being heard on our appeal to uphold the congressional map as well,” he said.John Faso, a spokesman for the Republican-backed voters challenging the maps, said that they would file their own appeal to try to strike the state legislative maps. But he called Thursday’s decision a “great victory.”The broader legal dispute turns on two interlocking questions: whether the mapmaking process properly adhered to procedures laid out in a 2014 amendment to the State Constitution, and whether the maps themselves violated an accompanying ban on drawing districts for partisan gain.The procedural changes made in 2014 were designed to remove the line-drawing process from the hands of politicians by creating an outside commission to solicit public input and forge a bipartisan proposal for House, State Senate and Assembly districts. If the commission had reached agreement, the Legislature’s role would have been to ratify the maps.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Effort to Remove Marjorie Taylor Greene From Ballot Can Proceed, Judge Says

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      The case that Ms. Greene unsuccessfully sought to have dismissed mirrors efforts against other Republicans centered on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.A federal judge cleared the way on Monday for a group of Georgia voters to move forward with legal efforts seeking to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for re-election to Congress, citing her role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The disqualification effort is based on a constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War that barred members of the Confederacy from holding office. It mirrors several other cases involving Republican members of Congress, whose roles leading up to and during the deadly riot have drawn intense criticism.The judge, Amy Totenberg, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by President Barack Obama, denied Ms. Greene’s request for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order in the high-profile legal feud.Ms. Greene, 47, who is known for her unflinching loyalty to former President Donald J. Trump and for her clashes with Democrats, has steadfastly denied that she aided and engaged in the attack on the Capitol.In the 73-page ruling, Judge Totenberg wrote that Ms. Greene had failed to meet the “burden of persuasion” in her request for injunctive relief, which she called an extraordinary and drastic remedy.“This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import,” Judge Totenberg wrote. “The novelty of the factual and historical posture of this case — especially when assessed in the context of a preliminary injunction motion reviewed on a fast track — has made resolution of the complex legal issues at stake here particularly demanding.”James Bopp Jr., a lawyer for Ms. Greene, said on Monday night that the ruling was flawed and minimized the adverse effect that the disqualification effort was having on Ms. Greene’s right to run for office.“This is fundamentally antidemocratic,” Mr. Bopp said, maintaining that Ms. Greene had “publicly and vigorously condemned the attack on the Capitol.”He called the effort to remove her from the ballot part of a well-funded nationwide effort to strip voters of their right to vote for candidates of their choice, with elections determined by “bureaucrats, judges, lawyers and clever legal arguments.”In her request for an injunction, Ms. Greene argued that it would be impossible to fully resolve the case before Georgia holds its primary elections on May 24. Absentee ballots will start to be mailed on April 25, Ms. Greene’s motion said.In the ruling, Judge Totenberg determined that Ms. Greene had failed to prove that there was a strong likelihood that she would prevail on the merits of her legal claims. A state administrative judge is scheduled to hear the case on Friday.The decision by Judge Totenberg stood in stark contrast with a recent ruling in a similar case involving Representative Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina. In blocking that disqualification effort, U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II, an appointee of Mr. Trump, ruled that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution narrowly applied to members of the Confederacy after the Civil War.Ms. Greene’s critics have said that she frequently referred to efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results as “our 1776 moment” in public comments that led up to the riot at the Capitol. They contend that the phrase was a code used to incite violence, and point to the third section of the 14th Amendment in their argument to drop her from the ballot.That section says that “no person shall” be a member of Congress or hold civil office if they had engaged in insurrection or rebellion after “having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State.”Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Debating a criminal referral. More

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      Your Monday Evening Briefing

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      Daniel E. Slotnik and (Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.)Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.Firefighters at the scene of a missile strike in Lviv, Ukraine, today. Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times1. Russia has begun its offensive in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.“Now we can state that the Russian forces have started the battle for the Donbas that they have been getting ready for a long time,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address.Russia claimed today that it had hit some 300 Ukrainian targets, mostly in the east, in one of the broadest barrages of missile attacks in weeks. There was also a missile strike on the western city of Lviv, which had been relatively unscathed until now. Seven people there died. Russian forces are closing in on a complete capture of the city of Mariupol, which would be a major strategic prize in the fight.In Russia, the central bank chief warned that ripple effects from Western sanctions were only beginning to spread, despite President Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia’s economy remains stable. Moscow’s mayor said 200,000 jobs were at risk in the Russian capital alone.Travelers may no longer need to wear masks in U.S. airportsAlyssa Pointer for The New York Times2. A federal judge struck down the mask requirement on planes and public transit in the U.S.The ruling came days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended the federal transportation mask requirement through May 3. The judge in Florida said that the mandate “exceeds the C.D.C.’s statutory authority.”The judge’s decision apparently shuts down the requirement for people to wear masks on airplanes, in airports and while taking other public transportation. It was not immediately clear whether the Justice Department would appeal the judge’s order, which could keep the rule in place while the matter undergoes further litigation.In other Covid news, Philadelphia became the first major city in the U.S. to reinstate a mask rule in response to rising cases of the coronavirus. In China, several economic indicators show that Covid lockdowns could have a disastrous effect on the country’s economy.And in Shanghai, the authorities announced that some workers might have to live at their workplaces even after the city lifts its lockdown.Allies of former President Donald Trump are renewing a push to overturn the 2020 election.Veasey Conway for The New York Times3. Some Trump allies are pushing to “decertify” the 2020 vote in key states and overturn the election.More than a year after failing to cancel the 2020 election results, some of the same lawyers and associates are still insisting that former President Donald Trump won. In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, Trump allies are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud. The efforts, dismissed as preposterous by many legal experts, are nonetheless stoking Trump supporters’ grievances. Democrats and some Republicans have raised deep concerns about the effect of the decertification efforts, including the potential to incite violence of the sort that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021.Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir won the 126th Boston Marathon’s women’s division.Winslow Townson/Associated Press4. Peres Jepchirchir and Evans Chebet won the Boston Marathon.Jepchirchir finished the 26.2-mile course in 2 hours 21 minutes 1 second, beating Ababel Yeshaneh in the women’s division by just four seconds in a sprint to the finish line.Evans Chebet won the men’s race with a time of 2 hours 6 minutes 51 seconds, his first victory at a major marathon. The Boston Marathon returned to its traditional slot on the springtime calendar after three years.In 2020, the race was canceled for the first time in its history. And last year, the race was pushed to October, when it competed for elite entrants with a cluster of other marathons. We have highlights from the race.Alex Jones addressed Trump supporters in 2020.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times5. Alex Jones’s Infowars and two affiliated companies filed for bankruptcy.The Infowars filing, which was made yesterday, came after courts in two states ruled against Jones, a far-right broadcaster, in defamation lawsuits by families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012.For years, Jones spread bogus theories that the shooting, which killed 20 elementary school students and six educators, was part of a government-led plot to deprive Americans of their guns and that the victims’ families were actors in the scheme. Two other companies connected to Jones, IWHealth and Prison Planet TV, also filed for bankruptcy protection. A homeless encampment along Glendale Boulevard in Los Angeles last month.Mark Abramson for The New York Times6. More than ever it has become deadly to be homeless in the U.S., especially for men in their 50s and 60s.There are many factors behind these lonely deaths: the aging of the unsheltered population; the wider availability of fentanyl, a fast-acting and dangerous opiate; the lack of treatment for chronic illnesses and the long-term health damage from years on the street. In many cities the number of homeless deaths doubled during the pandemic, and the problem is especially acute in California, where about one in four of the nation’s 500,000 homeless people live.“It’s like a wartime death toll in places where there is no war,” said Maria Raven, an emergency room doctor in San Francisco who co-wrote a study about homeless deaths.The four co-CEOs of the Lede Company at their New York City office.OK McCausland for The New York Times7. Meet the women of the Lede Company. They’re some of Hollywood’s top publicists (just don’t ask why).Their clients include Lady Gaga, Pharrell Williams, Emma Stone, Ariana Grande, Charlize Theron and the Obamas. And oh yes, an actor named Will Smith (about whom they have no comment). Discretion is their craft, making it tough for our reporter to get her subjects to open up.Marcy Engelman, Julia Roberts’s longtime publicist, did say of Amanda Silverman, one of Lede’s heads: “She knows how to play the game. She is very well liked, so she must take care of people.”Workers on the production line of the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning.Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times8. Ford’s new pickup truck could determine whether the automaker can survive in an industry dominated by Tesla.Driven by the dizzying success of Tesla, sales of electric vehicles appear to be on an unstoppable rise, and automakers are spending tens of billions of dollars to prepare to meet that demand.The question for Ford is whether Jim Farley, the company’s chief executive and a car guy from the Detroit area, can channel his inner Elon Musk. Farley, and Ford, are betting big on the F-150 Lightning, an electric version of the company’s signature pickup that could become one of the most important vehicles in the company’s 113-year history.The Gravity Diagnostics lab in Kentucky where an unwanted birthday party was thrown. Liz Dufour/The Enquirer via Imagn Content Services, LLC9. They wished him a “Happy Birthday!” he didn’t want. He sued and won $450,000.A Kentucky man, Kevin Berling, asked his manager at a medical lab to be sure no one threw him a birthday party. Berling has an anxiety disorder and knew the party would trigger it. But while the manager was away, Berling’s colleagues planned a celebration.After hearing of it, Berling spent the time in his car. Two supervisors confronted him about his “somber behavior.” After having a panic attack in the meeting, he was fired. A month later, he sued the company for disability discrimination.In other acts of workplace dissent, a Dollar General employee who loved her job but thought it needed improvements opened up on a TikTok series that went viral. She was fired.We say we like creative thinking and thinkers but our gut response isn’t always in sync.Illustration by Yoshi Sodeoka10. And finally, we look up to great artists, scientists and inventors. Or do we?The new science of implicit bias suggests we may talk a good game about admiring creativity but many of us are suspicious of it. Without realizing it, we may see creativity as disturbing.“People actually have strong associations between the concept of creativity and other negative associations like vomit and poison,” said Dr. Jack Goncalo, a business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Goncalo has looked at what spurs or hinders creators in studies. One main conclusion? Often, people’s subconscious views of creativity reflect a fear of change or uncertainty; creativity disrupts, and we like stability.Have an original eveningHannah Yoon and Eve Edelheit compiled photos for this briefing. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.Here are today’s Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee and Wordle. If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here. More

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      Judge Keeps New York’s New Electoral Map Intact for Now

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      The stay by an appellate judge puts on hold a lower-court ruling that New York’s newly drawn congressional and legislative districts were unconstitutional.A New York appellate judge on Monday hit the brakes on a sweeping lower-court decision that invalidated newly drawn legislative districts favorable to Democrats and threatened to throw the state’s election season into turmoil.Justice Stephen K. Lindley of New York’s Fourth Appellate Department in Rochester issued the temporary stay after state Democratic leaders formally contested the lower court’s opinion last week that the maps were unconstitutional and, in some cases, gerrymandered for partisan gain.He did not address the merits of the case but indicated that he hoped to expedite his own ruling on whether the lines were constitutional.“The appeal will be greatly accelerated for obvious reasons, and I anticipate that a decision could be rendered within the next three weeks, if not sooner,” Justice Lindley wrote in a note instructing both Democrats and the Republicans challenging the maps to attend a Thursday hearing.In the short term, the stay means that the maps approved by the Democrat-led Legislature in February, as well as the state’s June primary calendar, will remain in effect. But it remains to be seen whether the maps will survive the appeals process.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Analysts generally believe the Appellate Division is more likely to defer to the Legislature’s prerogative to draw the maps and less likely to intercede in a way that would blow up this year’s elections calendar than was the lower court judge, Patrick F. McAllister, a State Supreme Court justice in rural Steuben County and a Republican.The outcome in New York has attracted intense national interest, with partisan control of three to four seats in the House of Representatives hanging in the balance at a time when the two parties are vying for the majority from coast to coast. The New York lines as currently construed promise to boost House Democrats while also safeguarding the party’s State Senate majority, prompting national Republicans to spend richly on the legal challenge.Inside New York, the tangled legal machinations have had a more immediate effect on candidates for office from both parties, who are watching the proceedings carefully.Before it was stayed, Justice McAllister’s decision had set campaigns racing to determine what districts — if any — they were actually running in. Candidates who had already spent a month gathering petitions to run in the newly drawn congressional, State Senate and Assembly districts faced the prospect that the lines would be erased, their costly work temporarily nullified and June’s primary elections postponed just days before the petitioning process was scheduled to end.“On the eve of the petitioning deadline, candidates — incumbents and insurgents alike — were thrown for a loop,” said Jerry H.​ Goldfeder, an elections lawyer at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan who advises Democratic candidates.He called it “a perfect example of why courts shouldn’t interfere with election procedures at the 11th hour.”Though Justice McAllister did not explicitly delay the primary, his order for lawmakers to redraw new district lines that could win bipartisan support almost certainly would have required the primary to be rescheduled.The ruling prompted the State Board of Elections to issue guidance late last week that prematurely said the decision had been stayed and advised candidates that “all other deadlines provided for by law are still in effect pending further court determinations and the petitions would still be due this week.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Judge Tosses Out New York’s New Political Districts

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      The ruling puts the state’s June primary elections in doubt, but Democrats said they would appeal.Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at the latest twist in redistricting in New York. We’ll also catch up on the state budget in Albany, about to be officially late.Pool, Vaughn Golden/WSKGThe decision surprised even some Republicans: A judge declared New York’s new legislative maps unconstitutional, saying the map-drawing process led by Democrats had been irrevocably tainted.The ruling by Justice Patrick McAllister of Steuben County Supreme Court, above, blocked the maps from being used in this year’s elections, potentially throwing midterm congressional contests into turmoil. Candidates have already begun campaigning in the new districts for the primaries, scheduled for June 28. McAllister also invalidated the maps for the Assembly and the State Senate.The judge, a Republican, said the new congressional maps had broken New York’s new prohibition on partisan gerrymandering — essentially accusing Democrats of the same tactics they have complained about when Republicans used them in red states. “The court finds by clear evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt that the congressional map was unconstitutionally drawn with political bias,” McAllister wrote in his 18-page opinion. The New York congressional maps favor Democrats in 22 of 26 new districts.McAllister gave the Democrat-led Legislature until April 11 to prepare new “bipartisanly supported maps” for Congress, the State Senate and Assembly. He said that he would appoint an independent special master to draw the lines if lawmakers failed to do so, raising the possibility that June’s party primaries could be delayed.Gov. Kathy Hochul and Letitia James, the state attorney general, issued a statement together saying they intended to appeal. My colleague Nicholas Fandos writes that such a move would be likely to stay McAllister’s decision and could allow this year’s elections to go ahead using the districts adopted in February.“This is one step in the process,” said Michael Murphy, a spokesman for the State Senate Democrats. “We always knew this case would be decided by the appellate courts.”Democrats could challenge the ruling in either the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court or the State Court of Appeals — New York’s highest court. Both tribunals are expected to be more favorable to Democrats than Steuben County, which borders Pennsylvania. It is home to Corning Inc., the glass manufacturer.“The plaintiffs got what they wanted by going to court in Steuben County,” said Jeffrey Wice, an adjunct professor at New York Law School’s Census and Redistricting Institute. “Whether they carry their victory all the way to the State Court of Appeals is an uphill battle for them.”What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Republicans hailed the ruling and expressed confidence they would win on appeal. John Faso, a former congressman who is serving as a spokesman for the Republican plaintiffs, called it a “complete victory” for the petitioners, who were voters from across the state. But the lawsuit was financed and overseen by Republicans in Washington and Albany who filed it soon after Hochul had signed the new maps into law.WeatherPrepare for a chance of showers in the early afternoon, with steady temps in the mid-50s. The evening is partly cloudy with temps in the high 30s. alternate-side parkingIn effect until April 14 (Holy Thursday).Missing a deadline in AlbanyCindy Schultz for The New York TimesAs a reporter, I don’t like to think about blowing a deadline. But the State Legislature just blew a big one. The state budget was supposed to be signed, sealed and delivered by midnight — or at least agreed to and maybe voted on.But my colleagues Luis Ferré-Sadurni and Jesse McKinley write that the State Senate adjourned on Thursday until Monday. The Assembly — which tends to be the slower-moving chamber — also gaveled out.Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a statement offering a hopeful prognosis, even though her first budget is late. “We are getting closer to agreement, with consensus on major policy items,” she said. “New Yorkers should know that progress is being made.”While the April 1 deadline is in the State Constitution, the state comptroller’s office said no state checks would be delayed unless a deal is delayed past 4 p.m. on Monday.Hochul, a Democrat, had proposed a $216.3 billion budget with an eye to jump-starting the state’s recovery from the pandemic. The Legislature, controlled by fellow Democrats, wanted to spend at least $6 billion more. They proposed pumping more money into the State University of New York and the City University of New York — we’re unlikely to know how much until other issues have been settled.One of those issues is re-reforming the state’s bail law, which the Legislature revised in 2019. Hochul, responding to a pandemic-era rise in crime and perhaps to Republican success in attacking Democrats, called for making more categories of crimes eligible for bail. She also suggested allowing judges to consider how dangerous a defendant was in making bail decisions for those accused of serious felonies. Mayor Eric Adams supports those changes, but they have run into resistance from progressives in the Senate and the Assembly.Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who leads the State Senate, flatly rejected the dangerousness provision on Thursday. “We’ve always stood the same way,” she said. “We’re not introducing dangerousness.”Everybody into the poolMarian Carrasquero for The New York TimesIt’s a sign that summer is coming: The Department of Parks and Recreation is making a final push to recruit lifeguards for the city’s eight beaches and 53 outdoor pools.Iris Rodriguez-Rosa, the first deputy parks commissioner, said that finding enough qualified swimmers had been more difficult than before the pandemic. “It’s a national issue, trying to get lifeguards,” she said. “Because of Covid, there were fewer high schools that had swim teams competing. Swimmers missed out on training time because of closed pools. They’re not in as good shape.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? 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      Maryland Judge Throws Out Democrats’ Congressional Redistricting Map

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      The ruling, in which the judge said Democrats had drawn an “extreme gerrymander,” was the first time this redistricting cycle that the party’s legislators had a congressional map defeated in court.A Maryland judge ruled on Friday that Democrats in the state had drawn an “extreme gerrymander” and threw out the state’s new congressional map, the first time this redistricting cycle that a Democratic-controlled legislature’s map has been rejected in court.The ruling by Senior Judge Lynne A. Battaglia of the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County found that the map drawn by Democrats had “constitutional failings” and ignored requirements of focusing on “compactness” and keeping similar communities together.“All of the testimony in this case supports the notions that the voice of Republican voters was diluted and their right to vote and be heard with the efficacy of a Democratic voter was diminished,” Judge Battaglia wrote in her opinion.The congressional map drawn by Democrats would have most likely guaranteed them at least seven of Maryland’s eight House seats, or 87 percent of the state’s seats. President Biden carried the state with 65 percent of the vote in 2020.Judge Battaglia ordered the General Assembly to redraw the map by March 30, an extraordinarily tight deadline for a complicated process that often takes weeks, and she set a hearing for the new map for April 1. This year, the Maryland Court of Appeals moved the state’s primary election from June 28 to July 19 because of pending legal challenges to the new map.Democrats across the country have taken a much more aggressive tack this redistricting cycle than they have in the past, seeking to counteract what they have long denounced as extreme Republican gerrymanders from the 2010 cycle. Republicans’ map-drawing gains that year helped the party maintain power in the House of Representatives despite a Democratic victory at the presidential level in 2012. Democratic state legislatures in New York, Illinois and Oregon drew new maps this year that would have given them a significant advantage over Republicans — and congressional delegations at odds with the overall partisan tilt of each state. What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Rather than looking to aggressively add new seats this cycle, Republicans, for the most part, have sought to shore up their previous advantages in gerrymandered maps in states like Texas and Georgia, removing competition and packing Democrats together in deeply blue districts.Maryland was one of the few states during the last redistricting cycle where Democrats enacted an aggressive gerrymander, pushing to add a Democratic seat to the state’s delegation, which consisted of six Democrats and two Republicans at the time. The eventual map added a batch of new Democratic voters to the Sixth District, leading to the defeat of Representative Roscoe Bartlett, a 20-year Republican incumbent. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat and former presidential candidate, has since acknowledged in a court deposition that the goal of the last redistricting process was to draw a map that was “more likely to elect more Democrats rather than less.”Judge Battaglia’s decision comes as state courts have emerged as a central battleground for parties and voters to challenge maps by calling them partisan gerrymanders, after a 2019 Supreme Court ruling that partisan gerrymandering could not be challenged at the federal level. This year, state courts in Ohio and North Carolina have tossed out maps drawn by legislators as unconstitutional gerrymanders. Judge Battaglia, who was appointed by former Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat, is a former U.S. attorney in Maryland. She also served as chief of staff to former Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland. Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican whose veto of the map was overridden by the Democratic-controlled legislature, praised the decision and called on the General Assembly to pass a map drawn by an independent commission he created. “This ruling is a monumental victory for every Marylander who cares about protecting our democracy, bringing fairness to our elections, and putting the people back in charge,” Mr. Hogan said in a statement. The office of Brian Frosh, the attorney general of Maryland and a Democrat, said that it was reviewing the decision and that it had not yet decided whether to appeal it.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Trump Campaign Owes $300,000 in Legal Fees After Another Failed NDA Case

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      The award stems from an arbitration claim that was dismissed in part because of the “vague and unenforceable” provisions of a nondisclosure agreement.Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign has been ordered to pay more than $300,000 in legal fees and expenses to a former employee who the campaign’s lawyers said had violated the terms of a nondisclosure agreement when she accused Mr. Trump of forcibly kissing her in 2016.The award, the culmination of an arbitration claim that was dismissed in November, represents the latest instance of Mr. Trump’s failure to use a nondisclosure agreement successfully against an ex-worker.The resolution of the claim, which Mr. Trump’s campaign filed in September 2019, came less than a year after he had lost similar efforts to enforce nondisclosure agreements against Jessica Denson, a former campaign worker, and Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former White House aide and a star on “The Apprentice.”Victor E. Bianchini, a retired federal judge, cited both of those cases in his decision on March 10, when he ruled in favor of Alva Johnson, a former campaign worker who in 2019 unsuccessfully sued Mr. Trump, claiming he kissed her on the mouth against her will during a campaign stop in August 2016.The Trump campaign “was invested in silencing other employees that were terminated or had somehow criticized the candidate in other ways,” Judge Bianchini wrote, adding that the campaign’s “demand for arbitration appears to have been principally motivated by upholding its NDA and curtailing any criticism of the candidate.”Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said the decision to award money to Ms. Johnson and her lawyers after a federal judge had dismissed her case was “pathetic and totally contrary to the rule of law and any reasonable sense of fairness.”“Anyone can see that Johnson’s blatant lies and bad faith conduct completely preclude her from profiting from her illicit conduct,” she said in a statement.After Judge Bianchini dismissed the arbitration claim in November, calling the agreement “vague and unenforceable” in its confidentiality provisions, Ms. Johnson’s lawyers made a motion demanding that the Trump campaign pay for legal fees and other expenses.The March 10 ruling ordered the Trump campaign to pay more than $303,000 for Ms. Johnson’s legal fees and expenses.Ms. Johnson, 46, said she was “really happy” with the decision.Mr. Trump’s lawyers “wanted to handcuff me for four years,” Ms. Johnson said in a brief interview on Friday. “They came after me pretty hard.”Her lawyer, Hassan Zavareei, said on Friday that the Trump campaign had tried to use the nondisclosure agreement “as a cudgel to silence what we view as important public speech by one of the few minority campaign workers.”In early 2019, Ms. Johnson, who is Black, filed a federal lawsuit against Mr. Trump, accusing him of grabbing her during a campaign stop in 2016 and kissing her as she tried to turn away.“I immediately felt violated because I wasn’t expecting it or wanting it,” Ms. Johnson told The Washington Post in February 2019.But a federal judge questioned her version of events after viewing a video of the encounter and ultimately dismissed the suit in June 2019.Judge William Jung of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida described the complaint as “political” and told Ms. Johnson she could file an amended lawsuit. She ultimately decided not to pursue the case, saying she had been threatened by Trump supporters and believed she would not be successful before Judge Jung, who was nominated to the bench in 2017 by Mr. Trump.Judge Bianchini said that he had viewed the video and had concluded that nothing “improper” appeared to have taken place.“No objective person could view the video of the encounter as anything even remotely supporting an accusation of battery, kissed, assaulted or anything else similar,” he wrote. “The federal judge saw it, and the arbitrator sees it.”Mr. Trump’s campaign could have filed complaints against Ms. Johnson for “malicious prosecution or defamation in an appropriate forum,” Judge Bianchini wrote.Instead, his campaign filed an arbitration complaint on Sept. 23, 2019, that said Ms. Johnson had breached a nondisclosure agreement with the campaign by “disclosing confidential information” and “making disparaging statements about Trump.”That agreement, Judge Bianchini wrote, has been “determined to be unconstitutional” in the cases of Ms. Denson, Ms. Manigault Newman and Mary Trump, Mr. Trump’s niece, who wrote a tell-all memoir about the family.Even if the motive of the campaign was not to silence Ms. Johnson, “the enforcement of the NDA was an inappropriate choice because of its unconstitutionality,” Judge Bianchini wrote.Alva Johnson sued Mr. Trump in 2019, claiming that he had pulled her to him during a campaign stop and forcibly kissed her. A judge later dismissed her complaint.Salwan Georges/The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesJudge Bianchini said he had noted in his November dismissal of the arbitration claim that he believed Ms. Johnson was “untruthful in her accusations” against Mr. Trump. In the March 10 ruling, he described how the video showed Ms. Johnson “offering her cheek” with her lips “in the air next to his cheek.”It was “understandable” that the Trump campaign would be upset at Ms. Johnson’s recouping costs in an arbitration that stemmed from a case that was ultimately dismissed, Judge Bianchini wrote.But blaming the arbitration on her “is misguided and incorrect,” he said in his ruling.Mr. Zavareei said that he rejected Judge Bianchini’s characterization of Ms. Johnson’s claims. Their validity should have been determined by a jury, not “two older white judges,” he said.“It’s our position that that is the sort of conduct that shouldn’t be accepted in any workplace,” Mr. Zavareei said. “She’s a worker in the campaign. She’s the only person who he touched and kissed.” More