Supreme Court blocks ruling that ordered New York to redraw its congressional maps
The U.S. Supreme Court as seen on February 24, 2026 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court of the United States on Monday blocked a New York state court ruling that had ordered the Empire State’s congressional map redrawn ahead of the 2026 midterms.
A state judge in New York ruled earlier this year that New York must redraw its congressional map and cease using its current one because the current map’s 11th Congressional District violates the state’s Constitution and dilutes the votes of Black and Latino voters.
U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, the Republican representing the district, had appealed the ruling initially in state court and later asked the Supreme Court to block the order, as did other Republicans.
The district currently covers Staten Island, along with several neighborhoods across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in Brooklyn.
In a statement posted on social media, Malliotakis praised the Supreme Court’s decision, arguing that it “helps restore the public’s confidence in our judicial system and proves the challenge to our district lines was always meritless.”
“The plaintiffs in this case attempted to manipulate our state’s courts to use race as a weapon to rig our elections. That was wrong and, as demonstrated by today’s ruling, clearly unconstitutional,” Malliotakis’ post said.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the state court order that knocked down New York’s current map “blatantly discriminates on the basis of race” and that the court had no choice but to step in — even so close the election.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a sharply worded dissent, accused her colleagues of prematurely intervening in a state-law case, even before New York courts had fully resolved the appeals.
“By granting these applications, the Court thrusts itself into the middle of every election-law dispute around the country, even as many States redraw their congressional maps ahead of the 2026 election,” Sotomayor wrote. “It also invites parties searching for a sympathetic ear to file emergency applications directly with this Court, without even bothering to ask the state courts first.”
The ruling from SCOTUS allows appeals to play out in lower courts, but it means New York will not be redrawing its map for the 2026 election.
“This blatantly political case violated both the New York State and federal constitutions and, as Justice Alito stated, the lower court’s decision was a full-blown racial gerrymander,” New York Republican Party chair Ed Cox wrote in a statement Monday.
Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, March 26, 2026. (Photographer: Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Top Trump administration officials have touted diplomatic efforts to end the war in Iran as the president signals it could end without pursuing the challenging military operation of opening the Strait of Hormuz with naval escorts.
In an interview with “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not cite the reopening of the strait, the vital chokepoint of which 20% of the world’s oil flows through, which has been largely closed to shipping traffic, as a U.S. objective. President Donald Trump in the early days of the war said the U.S. Navy would take measures to ensure ships could sail there.
Rubio listed the “destruction” of Iran’s air force, navy, missile-launch capacity and military industry as the four objectives of what he termed a U.S. “operation.”
“All of this so that they can never hide behind it to acquire a nuclear weapon,” Rubio said. “That was our objective from the beginning; that remains our objective now.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Tuesday also omitted freedom of movement in the Strait of Hormuz as one of the Pentagon’s priorities, instead calling on other nations with energy interests there to be involved in reopening it.
The president shifted responsibility over the strait — whose access has been largely blocked by Iran as a response to the U.S. and Israel attacks on the country — to those allies and partners.
“They can police it themselves,” Trump told ABC’s Jonathan Karl on Tuesday. “Why should I do it for them?”
The apparent recalibration — just days after Trump threatened intensified military action if Iran did not move to open the strait — signals the US could be plotting an exit in which it declares it’s accomplished the outlined military objectives without seeking to repair the war’s most devastating economic consequence, a former senior U.S. diplomat said.
“I think Rubio may have signaled one option the president has,” said the former diplomat who engaged in negotiations with Iran. “It’s not a very good one, but … of the bad and worse options, it’s probably the better bad option.”
The former U.S. official said a hasty exit from the conflict without addressing two of its thorniest issues — the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear stockpile — suggests there is a diplomatic deal to be achieved that would end the fighting.
“I think Rubio, at least, sounds like he just wants to bring this [conflict] to closure along the parameters that he outlined, and then hope that world pressure opens the Strait of Hormuz,” the former official said.
Objectives articulated by the administration earlier in the conflict — like regime change and denuclearization — would remain unmet by such a deal, the former diplomat said.
Tehran’s diplomatic view Whether or not the U.S. is pursuing a diplomatic exit, it will be complicated for a battered Iran to deal with a country that initiated a war with it a month ago, analysts of Tehran’s government told ABC News.
Iran may be open to diplomacy, the analysts said, but it would seek durable assurances that it will not be attacked by the U.S. — or Israel — in the future.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tuesday that his country was not negotiating with the U.S. but that messages were being passed.
Pakistan, who along with Turkey and Egypt has positioned itself as an intermediary between the U.S. and Iran, have been delivering those messages between the warring nations, establishing an important “venue” for talks, said Syed Mohammad Ali, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and analyst of Pakistani politics.
“I think the most important thing here is to have created a channel of mediation,” Ali said. “And in conflict situations that is of vital importance.”
Ali, who is familiar with the early negotiations, said early diplomatic exchanges have been “maximalist” as the two sides remain far apart.
He cautioned that Pakistan, which has offered to host direct talks, would by itself “not be in a position to really help hammer this out … they can continue playing this role, but the terms are going to be set elsewhere.”
The introduction of China to diplomatic discussions, he said, could bring the kind of “big power pressure” and “strategic leverage” that the US and Iran, whose economies are intertwined with Beijing’s, might respond to.
The Chinese and Pakistani governments released a five-point plan, which called for an immediate ceasefire and “normal passage” through the Strait of Hormuz, after a meeting of their foreign ministers in Beijing on Tuesday. Trump is set to visit China in May.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an expert on Iranian politics and economics and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins, said any durable diplomatic breakthrough would likely follow a set of “high-level principles” that enables a ceasefire.
Leaders of the Iranian regime won’t readily come to the negotiating table, Batmanghelidj said, unless the conflict is perceived as a “stalemate” with the U.S. and talks are not framed as capitulation to Trump. Hardliners in Tehran, including leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps which would be allergic to negotiating with Washington, are still believed to wield considerable influence.
But “the elements” for a deal “are there,” Batmanghelidj said.
“Ultimately, this war has gone well enough for the Iranians that they can also point to a victory, but it has also been painful enough that even those that are very hardline in the Iranian system will understand that they don’t want to run a country that has been turned into some sort of basket case.”
(WASHINGTON) — The White House will host America’s oil titans Friday as President Donald Trump is expected to lay out his plan for a post-Nicolas Maduro Venezuela with an economic revamp of its oil industry as its centerpiece.
The president, who said a recovery plan for Venezuela could require years of American involvement, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday that the U.S. would be “running the oil” and that he expected “at least $100 billion” of investment from the major companies.
“We’re going to rebuild the oil and the oil infrastructure, we’ll be in charge of it,” Trump said. “It’s going to do great, make a lot of money, and we’re going to take it from there, but we’re going to rebuild the country. And ultimately, you’re going to have elections.”
A White House official told ABC News that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has led the administration’s Venezuela policy, will attend the meeting that will include Chevron, Exxon, Conoco Phillips, Continental, Halliburton, HKN, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Trafigura, Vitol Americas, Repsol, Eni, Aspect Holdings, Tallgrass, Raisa Energy and Hilcorp.
A handful of those companies are European.
Only hours after American aircraft returned from an audacious mission in Caracas to arrest Maduro and take him to the U.S. for prosecution, Trump identified oil as the key to the U.S. strategy, asserting that American oil companies would quickly seize on a market newly friendly to them, generating revenues for America’s energy industry and establishing favorable ties with Venezuela. Trump and Rubio have said those revenues would ultimately benefit the people of Venezuelan people, some 82% of whom live in poverty, according to a 2024 report by the United Nations.
A risky choice for private industry
Experts told ABC News that the plan’s heavy reliance on the private American oil sector will present the industry with a risky choice to do business in a country some argue is less stable and harder to predict after the toppling of its president.
“The very first thing on oil all the oil companies checklist is going to be the outlook for political stability – durable political stability – that, by the way, needs to last a lot longer than the Trump administration,” said Clayton Seigle, a senior fellow at the Centers for Strategic and International Studies who focuses on energy security.
On Tuesday, the White House announced Venezuela would relinquish 30 to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S., which would then sell the crude on the market and store revenues in American accounts.
Rubio on Wednesday fleshed out a three-phase strategy, including stabilization in Venezuela, economic recovery, and finally, a political transition there.
“They understand that the only way they can move oil and generate revenue and not have economic collapse is if they cooperate and work with the United States,” Rubio said. “And that’s what we are going to [see] happen.”
Rubio said the U.S. would continue enforcing a legal “quarantine” of illicit oil tankers transiting to and from Venezuela to bend Caracas to Washington’s will, citing the U.S. seizure of two such tankers this week. A third was seized Friday morning.
“We don’t want [Venezuela] descending into chaos,” he said, arguing the threat to the tankers would force the government, run by interim President Delcy Rodriguez, to the table.
Venezuela’s leadership, which has condemned the U.S. attack on its capital and the ouster of its president, has signaled a lukewarm embrace of cooperation on oil.
“Venezuela is open to energy relations where all parties benefit,” Rodriguez said.
Democrats called what the administration labels “leverage” as a form of brute control over the country.
“This is an insane plan,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat. “They are talking about stealing the Venezuelan oil at gunpoint for a period of time – undefined – as leverage to micromanage the country. I mean, the scope and insanity of that plan is absolutely stunning.”
‘Realist’ view of facts on the ground
Kimberly Breier, a former assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs during the first Trump administration, said the U.S. plan – which removed Maduro from power but kept the rest of his regime, including other U.S.-sanctioned officials, in place – was a “very realist” view of the facts on the ground.
“I think this is a transition to a transition,” Breier said. “I think this current situation is an intermediate step where there’s a hope and a plan that you’re going to be able to get the regime to do some of the harder things that are going to need to be done to allow for a real democratic transition to the rightfully elected government.”
Whether the energy dimension of the plan, which would require U.S. energy companies to work with the same regime that was hostile to them, is only “a hope and an aspiration” at this stage, said Seigle. “We don’t know how feasible it is.”
Oil executives who will sit down with the president in Washington will bring a checklist of questions on sanctions, tax regime, property rights, and political stability, experts told ABC News. Investments the White House might ask of them, which would include rebuilding and modernizing infrastructure, would require years and billions of dollars, they said.
“When it comes to energy, item number one is giving confidence in enduring political stability,” Seigle said.
The administration knows that oil companies “are looking for stability,” said Breier, who is now a senior adviser at Covington. “I think they’re looking for a leader that they think is not a transitional leader.”
“Certainly, oil companies operate all over the world in places that are not democracies. But from a policy standpoint…the durable, lasting leadership of Venezuela is the democratically elected one,” she said, referring to Edmundo Gonzalez, who won the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election but has been exiled.
Oil execs may not be ready to jump in
Oil companies will “express interest and to sincerely look into the matter and try to understand what their contributions could be and maybe some of the associated planning,” Seigle predicted. “But I do not think that we will see major new commitments from U.S. oil companies to leap into the Venezuelan operating environment until a lot of things on their checklists are satisfied.”
“The problem is [the administration] got the sequence backwards,” he said. “The sequence is the oil companies need to see that Venezuela is an attractive environment with a long runway of stability, and then in the future, the oil can flow.”
Breier said the energy dimension of the president’s plan is part and parcel of a broader set of objectives to counter migration and drug flows and promote a democracy in the country.
ABC News reported that the administration has made two demands to Rodriguez that must be met for the U.S. to allow the country to pump more oil. Venezuela must cut its economic ties with China, Russia, and Iran, sources said, and must agree to partner exclusively with the U.S. on oil production and favor America when selling heavy crude oil.
Breier said the reporting rings true with her experience at the State Department, where she worked with the former opposition leader of Venezuela, another elected president in exile, Juan Guaidó.
“With the Guaidó team, there were conversations about…not going [through] all this trouble for [Venezuela] to then cut deals with the Russians and the Chinese and the oil sector,” she said. “So that’s a very consistent approach.” Breier said the administration’s approach will be “private sector led” by Western companies, including the Europeans.
The White House “view[s] US companies as the most nimble and able to go in and start rebuilding the sector quickly so that you don’t end up with the U.S. taxpayer having to put the tab for reconstructing Venezuela,” she said.
Motor Tanker Veronica is seized in the Caribbean by U.S. Coast Guard tactical team, Jan. 15, 2026. U.S. Southern Command
(WASHINGTON) — The United States seized another tanker in the Caribbean Thursday morning, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced — saying in a social media post that the vessel was “operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the seizure in an X post along with video of the operation, which she said happened without incident.
“Early this morning, a Coast Guard tactical team conducted a pre-dawn boarding and seizure of Motor Tanker Veronica in the Caribbean,” she said.
“As another sanctioned ghost fleet tanker, Motor Tanker Veronica had previously passed through Venezuelan waters, and was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean,” she added.
The U.S. Southern Command said the Marines and sailors from Joint Task Force Southern Spear launched from USS Gerald R. Ford and “apprehended Motor/Tanker Veronica without incident.”
This is the sixth tanker linked to Venezuela boarded by U.S. troops in the last several weeks, following growing escalations between the U.S. and Venezuela.
The tanker’s seizure comes less than two weeks after U.S. military forces captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who are facing federal charges including narcoterrorism conspiracy and conspiracy to import cocaine. Both Maduro and his wife have entered not guilty pleas.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
