Texas can use a redrawn congressional map that adds as many as five Republican-friendly congressional districts, the supreme court ruled on Thursday, handing Donald Trump a major win in his push to boost Republican seats ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
In an unsigned order, the 6-3 conservative majority court granted a request by Texas to lift a lower court’s ruling that struck down the state’s new map in November. The supreme court’s three liberal justices dissented.
“The district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” the supreme court said in an order explaining its decision.
The ruling comes amid a nationwide battle over the redrawing of electoral maps. Texas is a key piece in Trump’s effort to transform the US House map to secure Republicans’ fragile House majority for the second half of his presidential term. Democrats need to flip only a handful of congressional seats to win the House gavel, and the opposition party has historically gained ground during the midterm elections, particularly if the president’s approval ratings are low, as Trump’s are.
US supreme court approves redrawn Texas congressional maps
The lower district court had previously found that Texas had likely sorted voters based on their race – an unlawful practice called racial gerrymandering – when it adopted the new maps, and ordered the state to use the maps it had adopted after the 2020 census for next year’s election.
In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the decision by the supreme court’s majority, arguing that it disrespected the work of the lower court, whose ruling actually was authored by a judge appointed by Trump.
Pentagon announces it has killed four people in another boat strike
The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military’s southern command had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing four men in the eastern Pacific.
The latest operation comes as the Pentagon and the White House have struggled to answer questions about the legality of the campaign to kill suspected drug smugglers with military strikes.
Trump replaces architect overseeing $300m gilded ballroom project
According to the Washington Post, which first reported the news on Thursday and cited three people familiar with the matter, architect James McCrery II and his boutique firm had been leading the project for more than three months, up until late October.
It is unclear whether McCrery chose to step aside voluntarily. However, one source noted that he and Trump parted on good terms.
Grand jury declines to re-indict Letitia James
A grand jury declined to indict Letitia James on Thursday, according to a source familiar with the decision, which came less than two weeks after a judge ruled a similar mortgage fraud case brought by federal prosecutors against the New York attorney general was unlawful.
Arrest made in attempted pipe bombing in lead-up to Capitol riot
US authorities have made an arrest in connection with pipe bombs that were planted outside the headquarters of both the Democratic and Republican parties in Washington DC on the eve of 6 January 2021, according to reports on Thursday morning.
Appeals court allows Trump’s national guard deployment in DC to continue
In a written order, the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit lifted an injunction that said the troops needed to leave the nation’s capital by 11 December.
The DC circuit’s order, while not a final judgment, allows Trump to continue a deployment he began this summer and has ramped up in response to a 26 November shooting of two national guard members near the White House.
Student describes ‘horror show’ ICE deportation
Any Lucia López Belloza had not seen her parents and two little sisters since starting her first semester at Babson college, near Boston in August. A family friend gave her plane tickets so she could fly home to Austin and surprise them for Thanksgiving. But the next morning, she was shackled at her wrists, ankles and waist and deported to her native Honduras, a country which she left at the age of seven and of which she has virtually no memory.
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees face ‘harrowing human right violations’, report alleges
Detainees at the notorious Florida immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” were shackled inside a 2ft high metal cage and left outside without water for up to a day at a time, a shocking report published on Thursday by Amnesty International alleges.
The human rights group said migrants held at the state-run Everglades facility, and at Miami’s Krome immigration processing center operated by a private company on behalf of the Trump administration, continue to be exposed to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” rising in some cases to torture.
New York Times sues Pentagon over Trump team’s limits
The New York Times said it is suing the US defense department and the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, after the Trump administration imposed restrictions for the press on access privileges and source-based reporting at the Pentagon.
What else happened today:
Top Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress on Thursday said that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had not ordered the military to kill surviving members of a deadly attack on a boat alleged to be carrying drugs in the Caribbean, but differed over whether the double strike was appropriate.
The Department of Defense’s inspector general released the much-anticipated unclassified report on Thursday about Hegseth’s disclosure of plans for military airstrikes in Yemen in a Signal group chat earlier this year.
Dozens of people have been detained across the New Orleans area as the Trump administration’s latest sweeping federal immigration crackdown in a Democratic-led city entered its second day.
After a contentious meeting, vaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted on Thursday to delay a vote on restricting hepatitis B vaccination for infants until Friday.
Maurene Comey, the federal prosecutor who helmed criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, appeared at Manhattan federal court on Thursday, in a lawsuit claiming she was fired as political retaliation against her father, James Comey.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 3 December 2025.
