The remaking of the U.S. political map accelerated this week in courts and legislatures, all of it in this round expected to boost Republicans in their attempt to keep control of Congress in November’s elections.

This week’s major action came in Southern states, with a significant state court ruling in Virginia and continued fallout from a U.S. Supreme Court decision last month.

Here’s a look at where things stand.

In a 4-3 decision Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court stuck down a Democratic congressional redistricting plan that was approved by voters in April.

The new map was intended to give Democrats an inside track for 10 of the state’s 11 seats in the U.S. House — a jump from the six they currently hold. The new lines were drawn as part of a push by both parties to redistrict for their advantage in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

The court majority cited procedural reasons for rejecting the amendment to the state constitution that paved the way for new maps. To send a constitutional amendment to voters, lawmakers are supposed to approve the measure twice — once before and once after a legislative election. The court found that they didn’t comply because the initial approval came in October after early voting had begun for the general election.

The result is that the state’s previous maps will remain in place for this year’s elections.

Multiple GOP-controlled Southern states pushed this week to redraw their congressional maps in the aftermath of an April 29 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down a Louisiana congressional district drawn to have a Black majority of constituents.

The ruling was seen as a blow to a provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires political maps to include districts where minority populations’ preferred candidates can win elections.

Louisiana quickly suspended primaries scheduled for May 16 so lawmakers could create new districts. Voting rights activists there packed the statehouse to oppose proposals for new maps that could eliminate at least one of the two current majority-Black districts.

Republicans in Alabama enacted a law Friday that would ignore the results of its May 19 congressional primaries and instead hold a new election — if a federal court agrees to lift an order for the state to have a second congressional district where a majority or near-majority of residents are Black. Republicans currently hold four of the state’s six seats in the House and want to instead use a map that could allow them to win an additional seat.

South Carolina’s GOP-dominated legislature met Friday to discuss a proposal to create a new map that gives the party a shot at winning all seven of the state’s House seats. But some worried that breaking up the one Democratic-controlled district could make some other districts vulnerable to Democratic election wins.

Tennessee enacted a law Thursday creating a new U.S. House map that carves up a majority-Black House district in Memphis, the only one now held by a Democrat. That would give Republicans a strong chance of winning all nine of the state’s seats.

Normally, House districts are reworked only after results from the once-a-decade U.S. Census are tallied.

This time it’s different.

President Donald Trump urged Texas officials to draw new districts to help his chance of keeping Congress in GOP control after the 2026 midterm elections. Texas officials complied with a plan designed to bring them as many as five new seats.

Democratic-dominated California responded with a map intended to bring them five new states. Other states have followed. And in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling, the pace has picked up, though it’s been mostly in states where Republicans have nearly all the seats already and thus not much room for gains.

Without counting the pending possible map changes in Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina, the mid-decade redistricting has created 14 more House seats that Republicans believe they could win and six that could give Democrats an edge. Overall, that would mean a potential eight-seat advantage for the GOP ahead of a midterm election, when the president’s party normally loses seats.

But as changes and court challenges play out — along with voters having their say — the results aren’t certain.

Currently, Republicans have 217 seats in the House to Democrats’ 212. There’s one independent member. Five seats are vacant.

NEW YORK (AP) — A note that a former cellmate said he discovered after Jeffrey Epstein’s first suspected jail suicide attempt was all but certainly penned by the same person as a note that authorities found in the millionaire sex offender’s cell after he killed himself, handwriting experts say.

Three forensic document examiners who reviewed the notes at the request of The Associated Press concluded that they have or appear to have common authorship, with shared characteristics such as the same spacing, letter shapes, usage of capital letters and unique punctuation.

In the first note, made public this week, the writer states: “They investigated me for month — found nothing!!!” and talks about being able to choose the “time to say goodbye.” The other note, which has been public for years, is a list of grievances about conditions at the jail, including the showers, food and “Giant Bugs.”

While no one has definitively said Epstein wrote the notes, they point to his grim outlook before his death and echo some frustrations he conveyed to jail personnel about being confined in the crumbling Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan after living in luxury for decades. They also contain phrases he had used in the past.

Both notes, written in pen on notepad paper, include the underlined phrase “NO FUN” and end with double exclamation points — the first of which is bowed slightly with similar curvature. The first few words of each note are larger than the rest and each successive line slants away from the left margin.

“These are the kinds of things that would suggest that we’re dealing with the same writer,” said Thomas Vastrick, the president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners.

“They are written by the same person,” said Bart Baggett, who founded the forensic analysis firm Handwriting Experts Inc. and has testified in court as an expert witness more than 130 times.

“Both of those documents have the same author,” said Grace Warmbier, who worked for a decade for the New York City Police Department performing document examinations and handwriting analysis.

None of the experts were able to say definitively that Epstein wrote the notes, in part because there are few if any confirmed examples of his handwriting in the millions of pages of records the Justice Department recently released on the late financier.

In addition to the two jail notes, Warmbier and Vastrick also reviewed writing samples from the former cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, including part of a note he sent to the New York Daily News in 2019 in which he denied any involvement in Epstein’s death.

Warmbier ruled out Tartaglione as the author, finding “significant dissimilarities between his handwriting and the handwriting in question.”

Vastrick said Tartaglione’s writing samples had “a wide range of variation from one to another” and that there were at least some similarities that require further examination.

“At this point, I certainly would not eliminate him as a potential writer,” Vastrick said. “I don’t at the same time want to suggest that he is the writer.”

For years, only a few people known about the note that Tartaglione claimed he found. Then, last summer, he mentioned it on writer Jessica Reed Kraus’ podcast. That piqued the interest of writers at The New York Times, who convinced a judge on Wednesday to release the note, which had been sealed in an unrelated case.

Tartaglione, an ex-police officer serving a life sentence for killing four people, said he discovered the note in a book in his cell after Epstein was found on July 23, 2019, on the floor with a strip of bedsheet around his neck. Epstein was placed on suicide watch and moved to a different cell. He had no cellmate when he was found dead on Aug. 10, 2019.

Epstein and Tartaglione shared a cell for about two weeks, beginning soon after Epstein’s July 6, 2019, arrest on sex trafficking charges and ending with the suspected suicide attempt. Both men were awaiting trials.

According to a chronology in the Justice Department’s files on Epstein, Tartaglione told his lawyer about the note four days after the suspected July 23 attempt. There is no indication that anyone alerted jail officials or Epstein’s representatives.

The note was later submitted as evidence in Tartaglione’s criminal case and placed under seal amid a dispute over his legal representation. It wasn’t mentioned in government reports examining the circumstances of Epstein’s death, nor did it surface in the Justice Department’s files. The other note, found after Epstein’s death, was shown on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in 2020 and is in the files.

Beyond handwriting analysis, the phrasing of the notes could give clues to their authorship. The note Tartaglione said he found contains the line: “Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!”

Epstein previously referenced that line, mimicking dialogue from a 1931 “Little Rascals” film, in three emails that were included in the Justice Department’s files, including one he sent to his brother four months before going to jail.

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Associated Press videojournalist David R. Martin contributed.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration and a non-profit group that runs Washington, D.C.’s public golf courses reached a deal on Friday under which the organization will have a new long-term lease of two courses while federal officials will overhaul a third one.

The two sides released a joint statement on Friday. Here are some details:

• The National Links Trust non-profit will have a new long-term lease to operate and redevelop Langston Golf Course and Rock Creek Park Golf, the statement said.

• The statement added that the non-profit will continue to operate East Potomac Golf Links on an interim basis until the Interior Department’s National Park Service starts what it calls a “historic restoration” of the waterfront course.

• All three public golf courses in the U.S. capital will remain open, the statement added.

• In December, the Trump administration ended National Links’ previous deal to oversee D.C.’s public golf courses.

• Critics saw the cancellation as another step in Trump’s push to remake the look of the nation’s capital.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Sergio Non and Kim Coghill)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military’s latest strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean killed two men Friday while leaving one survivor.

Video posted on social media by U.S. Southern Command shows a black, boat-shaped image before what appears to be an explosion, followed by a column of fire rising from the ocean.

Southern Command said it “immediately notified the U.S. Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivor.”

The White House announced Wednesday that President Donald Trump has signed off on a new U.S. counterterrorism strategy that sets eliminating drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere as the administration’s highest priority.

The Trump administration’s campaign of blowing up alleged drug-trafficking vessels in Latin American waters, including the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean Sea, has gone on since early September and killed at least 193 people in total. The military has not provided evidence that any of the vessels were carrying drugs. The strikes have ramped up again in recent weeks.

At the same time, Trump has sought to press regional leaders to work more closely with the U.S. to target cartels and take military action themselves against drug traffickers and transnational gangs that he says pose an “unacceptable threat” to the hemisphere’s national security.

Critics, meanwhile, have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes.

By Hannah Lang

May 8 (Reuters) – U.S. senators are set to consider long-awaited legislation that would create a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency next week, potentially ending a deadlock over the bill that pitted crypto companies against U.S. banks.

The bill, dubbed the Clarity Act, would, if signed into law, clarify financial regulators’ jurisdiction over the burgeoning sector, potentially boosting digital asset adoption.

U.S. Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said on Friday the panel would hold an executive session on May 14 at 10:30 a.m. (1430 GMT) in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.

The crypto industry has been pushing for the legislation, saying it is existential to the future of digital assets in the U.S. and necessary to fix core, longstanding problems for crypto companies. Among other things, the legislation would define when crypto tokens are securities, commodities or otherwise, giving the industry legal clarity.

The bill also includes a provision aimed at settling a heated dispute between crypto companies and the banking industry. Under the compromise brokered by Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senator Angela Alsobrooks, customer rewards on idle holdings of dollar-backed crypto tokens known as stablecoins would be prohibited, given their resemblance to bank deposits.

Rewards on other activities associated with stablecoins, such as sending a payment, would be permitted. Banking trade groups have pushed back on this provision, saying it gives crypto companies too much latitude and could shift deposits away from the regulated banking system.

Banks have launched a last-ditch effort to peel support from some Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee before the hearing, but it is unclear if they will be able to do so.

Lobbyists for the banking industry have been seeking a fix in the Clarity Act to close a “loophole” stemming from legislation signed into law last year that allows intermediaries to pay interest on stablecoins. Banks say this would lead to a flight of deposits from the insured banking system, potentially threatening financial stability.

Crypto companies say that prohibiting ‍third parties, such as crypto exchanges, from paying interest on stablecoins would be anti-competitive.

The industry hopes the Clarity Act gets passed in the coming months before the November midterm elections, in which Democrats could wrest control of the House of Representatives.

The House passed its version of the Clarity Act in July last year, but the Senate needs to pass the bill by the end of 2026 in order to send it to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Many congressional Democrats have been opposed to the bill, arguing it is too weak on anti-money laundering provisions, and that it should do more to prevent political officials from profiting from crypto ventures.

The bill would need support from at least seven Democrats in the full Senate to gain approval.

President Trump courted industry cash, pledging to be a “crypto president,” and his family’s own crypto ventures have helped to propel the sector into the mainstream.

(Reporting by Hannah Lang in New York; Additional reporting by Carlos Méndez in Mexico City; Editing by Tom Hogue)

‘They Trifled With Us’: President Trump Downplays Clash in Strait of Hormuz, Says Deal Could Happen ‘Any Day’  

By The Media Line Staff  

President Trump played down a military clash between US and Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday and said a ceasefire agreement with Tehran could happen “any day,” despite renewed exchanges of fire that included US strikes and Iranian missile and drone launches.   

“Yeah, it is. They trifled with us today. We blew them away,” President Trump told reporters while touring construction at the Washington, DC, Reflecting Pool, characterizing the confrontation as a “trifle” and a “love tap.”   

President Trump also said a deal with Iran remained possible despite the escalation.   

“A deal with Iran might not happen, but it could happen any day. I believe they want the deal more than I do,’” he said.   

The US military reported that the destroyers USS Truxtun, USS Rafael Peralta, and USS Mason were attacked by Iranian drones, missiles, and fast-attack boats while transiting the Strait of Hormuz.   

US Central Command later confirmed what it described as “self-defense strikes” against Iranian military targets, including drone and missile launch sites. The US said Iranian boats involved in the confrontation were destroyed.   

Iranian state media reported that Iranian forces fired on what it described as “enemy units” and said the action came in retaliation for a US strike on an Iranian oil tanker.   

Explosions were reported near Iran’s Qeshm Island and Bandar Abbas following the exchange.   

The United Arab Emirates said its air defense systems were activated against incoming Iranian missiles and drones.   

“UAE air defenses are currently engaging missile and drone attacks originating from Iran,” the UAE defense ministry said on X, adding that interception sounds were heard “across various parts of the country.”   

According to a Fox News reporter, the US strikes on an Iranian port city and an island in the Strait of Hormuz followed anger from the UAE and Saudi Arabia over earlier Iranian attacks on the UAE that US officials had downplayed.   

The confrontation took place as negotiations continued over a possible ceasefire. The United Nations reported that around 1,500 ships remained trapped in the Gulf because of the ongoing Iranian blockade of the strait, while oil prices rose sharply amid the renewed hostilities.   

By Kanishka Singh and Christian Martinez

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. military said on Friday it struck a vessel in the Eastern Pacific, killing two people and leaving one survivor.

It marked the latest such attack that rights groups label as “extrajudicial killings” and which Washington describes as targeting “narco-terrorists.” Here are some details:

• The U.S. Southern Command said on X that two males were killed in the strike while one person survived.

• The U.S. Coast Guard was notified for search and rescue operations, the Southern Command said.

• A U.S. official cited by the New York Times said the Mexican Navy was in charge of the search for the survivor.

• There have rarely been survivors of the U.S. strikes.

• U.S. forces have attacked multiple boats in the Eastern Pacific in recent weeks through deadly strikes.

• The U.S. military’s strikes on such vessels have killed more than 190 people since September.

• President Donald Trump’s administration says the vessels were transporting narcotics.

• The Southern Command said on Friday the targeted vessel was operated by “Designated Terrorists Organizations” and was “transiting along known narco-trafficking routes.”

• It did not identify the organizations or the individuals and did not provide details on its claims.

• Experts and human rights advocates, both in the U.S. and globally, have questioned the legality of the strikes.

• Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International call the strikes “unlawful extrajudicial killings.”

• The American Civil Liberties Union casts the assertions by the Trump administration against those it targets as “unsubstantiated, fear-mongering claims.”

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Christian Martinez; Editing by Sergio Non, Kim Coghill and Tom Hogue)

PHOENIX (AP) — A federal judge on Friday threw out a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, ruling for a second time against a former Donald Trump supporter who said he received death threats when the network aired false conspiracy theories about his involvement in the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

Raymond Epps, a former Marine, was falsely accused by Fox of being a government agent causing trouble near the Capitol that day so that it would be blamed on Trump fans. He said he and his wife sold an Arizona ranch where they lived and moved into a recreational vehicle because of the harassment they faced after Fox’s reports.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Hall in Delaware granted Fox’s motion to dismiss the case, finding Epps failed to show enough evidence to prove that Fox knew its statements were false.

The judge previously dismissed the case in 2024 but gave Epps a second chance to file his case. Her Friday ruling said he still fell short.

Epps had named Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox in April 2023, as being the most active promoter of the conspiracy theory. At the time, Carlson hosted Fox’s most popular show. Epps was featured in more than two dozen segments on Carlson’s prime-time show, the lawsuit said.

“In the aftermath of the events of January 6th, Fox News searched for a scapegoat to blame other than Donald Trump or the Republican Party,” lawyers for Epps wrote in their lawsuit. “Eventually, they turned on one of their own.”

In a statement Friday night, Fox News said it was “pleased with the federal court’s ruling, further preserving the press freedoms of the First Amendment.”

Epps pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge related to the Jan. 6 riot and was sentenced to a year of probation. He was later pardoned by Trump alongside 1,500 others who received clemency for their roles in the insurrection.

Federal prosecutors have backed up Epps’ vehement denials that he was a government plant or FBI operative. They say Epps has never been a government employee or agent beyond serving in the U.S. Marines from 1979 to 1983.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — U.S. immigration authorities have canceled the visas of more than two dozen people, including some who worked on a Disney Cruise Line ship, amid allegations that they possessed or had viewed child sexual abuse images.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Friday that authorities boarded eight cruise ships in late April and determined that 27 people, mostly from the Philippines, were involved in “the receipt, possession, transportation, distribution, or viewing” of child sexual abuse images.

The agency canceled the visas of those involved and returned them to their home countries, the statement said.

The agency did not say if any passengers aboard the ships were believed to be victims. It also did not say which ships agents boarded, why those ships were targeted or where the operations took place. The statement said no additional information was available.

At least some of the ships had docked in San Diego.

Disney Cruise Line in a statement said the company has a “zero-tolerance policy for this type of behavior and fully cooperated with law enforcement. While the majority of these individuals were not from our cruise line, those who were are no longer with the company.”

Immigrant and workers’ rights groups said they had been trying, without success, to obtain information about the status of the workers and the reason behind the enforcement action. Benjamin Prado, with one of the groups, Unión del Barrio, said they held a news conference Tuesday in San Diego after previously receiving a generic statement from Customs and Border Protection.

The statement the agency subsequently released to news organizations this week did not appear to be on the agency’s website, he said. That information should be readily accessible, he said.

Prado said his group wants to better understand what kind of monitoring or surveillance might have been occurring ahead of the workers being detained and whether due process rights were followed. He acknowledged skepticism around information released by agencies like Customs and Border Protection.

“At this point, we doubt, we question their claims and so we do want to follow up with some of these workers to find out exactly what took place,” Prado said.

Customs and Border Protection has said that a criminal charge is not required for someone’s visa to be revoked.

COHUTTA, Ga. (AP) — A town council in a small north Georgia mountain community passed an ordinance Friday reinstating the community’s police department and restoring the jobs of the police officers two days after the mayor fired them all.

A standing room-only crowd of townspeople, news media and the police officers attended the special meeting of the Cohutta Town Council, council member and Vice Mayor Shane Kornberg told The Associated Press afterward.

The officers were reinstated immediately and will receive back pay, Kornberg said.

A sign posted earlier this week in the town of about 930 people announced that the police department had been dissolved “per Mayor Ron Shinnick.” It told people who need help to call a nonemergency county number.

The jobs of the chief and about 10 officers were terminated as of Wednesday morning. Exact reasons haven’t been shared publicly.

Shinnick said he took action because of some comments officers posted on social media. The now-former Sgt. Jeremy May said it involved a complaint that he and other officers had raised about the mayor’s wife, Pam Shinnick, who had served as the town clerk.

“This all comes to personal vendetta from the mayor, and I wholeheartedly believe that,” May told WRCB-TV. “We took a stand for transparency, and in result, every one of them has lost their jobs.”

The now-former Cohutta Police Chief Greg Fowler told WRCB that he couldn’t comment in detail as the officers were clearing out the police department and removing equipment from the building this week. The mayor told the station he’s not sure what will happen next.

Phone calls and emails left Friday for the mayor were not immediately returned.

Kornberg said the town’s attorney, Bryan Rayburn, told the council the officers’ firings hadn’t followed the town charter, which requires 30 days’ notice be given before employees can be suspended or removed.

The council went into executive session to discuss matters of litigation. When they emerged, the mayor voluntarily didn’t return to the meeting, Kornberg said.

Kornberg, as vice mayor, took over the meeting. The council then passed the ordinance reinstating the officers and another measure preventing the mayor from firing the officers for the next 30 days.

The council then voted to table “for the foreseeable future” the rest of the meeting’s agenda, which involved removing Shinnick.

When no Cohutta officers were working, the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office had said deputies would help the townspeople if needed. Cohutta, just south of the Tennessee line, is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Atlanta.

Multiple townspeople said Friday evening they were attempting to livestream the meeting on social media, but weak cell service in the area did not allow them to do so.