New York
The Civil Fraud Ruling on Donald Trump, Annotated
Former President Donald J. Trump was penalized $355 million, plus millions more in interest, and banned for three years from serving in any top roles at a New York company, including his own, in a ruling on Friday by Justice Arthur F. Engoron. The decision comes after the state Attorney General Letitia James sued Mr. Trump, members of his family and his company in 2022.
The ruling expands on Justice Engoron’s decision last fall, which found that Mr. Trump’s financial statements were filled with fraudulent claims. Mr. Trump will appeal the financial penalty and is likely to appeal other restrictions; he has already appealed last fall’s ruling.
The New York Times annotated the document.
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New York Times Analysis
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This ruling by Justice Arthur F. Engoron is a result of a 2022 lawsuit filed by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, against Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization; his adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump; the company’s former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and former controller Jeffrey McConney; and several of their related entities. Mr. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, was also initially a defendant until an appeals court dismissed the case against her.
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The law under which Ms. James sued, known by its shorthand 63(12), requires the plaintiff to show a defendant’s conduct was deceptive. If that standard is met, a judge can impose severe punishment, including forfeiting the money obtained through fraud. Ms. James has also used this law against the oil company ExxonMobil, the tobacco brand Juul and the pharma executive Martin Shkreli.
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Justice Engoron is now providing a background of this case. This ruling comes after a three-year investigation by the attorney general’s office and the conclusion of a trial that ended last month. But this likely won’t be Mr. Trump’s last word on the matter — he will appeal the financial penalty and is likely to appeal other restrictions, as he has already appealed other rulings.
4
In late 2022, Justice Engoron assigned a former federal judge, Barbara Jones, to serve as a monitor at the Trump Organization and tasked her with keeping an eye on the company and its lending relationships. Last month, she issued a report citing inconsistencies in its financial reporting, which “may reflect a lack of adequate internal controls.”
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Here, Justice Engoron is laying out the laws he considered in his ruling beyond 63(12). The attorney general’s lawsuit included allegations of violations of falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements, insurance fraud and related conspiracy offenses.
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For over 50 pages, Justice Engoron describes his conclusions about the testimony of all of the witnesses who spoke during the trial.
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Justice Engoron discusses Mr. McConney’s important role in preparing Mr. Trump’s financial statements. The judge points out that Mr. McConney prepared all the valuations on the statements in consultation with Mr. Weisselberg.
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In his discussion of Mr. Weisselberg, Justice Engoron calls his testimony in the trial “intentionally evasive.” Justice Engoron then brings up Mr. Weisselberg’s separation agreement from the Trump Organization, which prohibited him from voluntarily cooperating with any entities “adverse” to the organization. Justice Engoron says that this renders Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony highly unreliable.
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When Donald Trump Jr. testified in court, he disavowed responsibility for his father’s financial statements despite serving as a trustee of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust while his father was president. But Justice Engoron specifically cites here that Donald Trump Jr. certified that he was responsible for the financial statements, and testified that he intended for the banks to rely on them and that the statements were “materially accurate.”
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During his testimony, Eric Trump, the Trump Organization’s de facto chief executive, initially denied knowing about his father’s financial statements until this case. As Justice Engoron points out here, Eric Trump eventually conceded to knowing about them as early as 2013. As a result, Justice Engoron calls Eric Trump’s credibility “severely damaged.”
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Justice Engoron points to Mr. Trump’s testimony when he took the witness stand in November when Mr. Trump acknowledged that he helped put together his annual financial statements. Mr. Trump said he would see them and occasionally have suggestions.
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After four pages of describing Mr. Trump’s testimony, Justice Engoron says Mr. Trump rarely responded to the questions asked and frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches, which all “severely compromised his credibility.”
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For more than a dozen pages, Justice Engoron provides background on specific assets that Mr. Trump included in his annual financial statements.
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The judge is clarifying that Ms. James had to prove her claims by a “preponderance of the evidence,” meaning she had to demonstrate it was more likely than not that Mr. Trump and the co-defendants should be held liable. This is a lower standard than that of a criminal trial, which requires that evidence be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
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During the trial, Mr. Trump and his legal team tried to shift the blame for any inaccuracies in his financial statements onto his outside accountants. But Justice Engoron criticizes that argument here.
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During the monthslong trial, Mr. Trump, his legal team and several witnesses stressed that real estate appraisals are an art, not a science. But here it’s clear Justice Engoron, while agreeing with that sentiment, also believes it’s deceptive when different appraisals rely on different assumptions.
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Justice Engoron is now going through the defendants one by one and articulating the evidence that shows each of their “intent to defraud,” which is required by the statute against falsifying business records. Notably, his first paragraph describing the former president’s intent provides examples including Mr. Trump’s awareness that his triplex apartment was not 30,000 square feet and his valuation of Mar-a-Lago as a single-family residence even though it was deeded as a social club.
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Among the defendants, Justice Engoron finds only Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney liable for insurance fraud. Here, he doesn’t provide an explanation for why the other defendants, including Mr. Trump and his adult sons, were not found liable, and he says that both Mr. Weisselberg and Mr. McConney made false representations to insurance companies about Mr. Trump’s financial statements.
20
While Mr. Trump and his adult sons were not found liable for insurance fraud, here Justice Engoron finds them liable for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, explaining that they all “aided and abetted” the conspiracy to commit insurance fraud by falsifying business records.
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Justice Engoron here adopts the approximations of the attorney general’s expert witness Michiel McCarty, whom Justice Engoron says testified “reliably and convincingly,” and finds that the defendants’ fraud saved them over $168 million in interest.
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In finding that the defendants were able to purchase the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C., through their use of the fraudulent financial statements, Justice Engoron rules that the defendants’ proceeds from the sale of the post office in 2022 should be considered “ill-gotten gains.” He penalizes Donald Trump and his companies over $126 million, and Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump $4 million each, for this one property.
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Justice Engoron blasts the defendants for failing to admit that they were wrong in their valuations — adding that “their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.” He says that this inability to admit error makes him believe they will continue their fraudulent activities unless “judicially restrained.”
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Justice Engoron states that Judge Barbara Jones, who has been serving as an independent monitor at the Trump Organization since 2022, will continue in that role for at least three years. He clarifies that going forward, her role will be enhanced and she will review Trump Organization financial disclosures before they are submitted to any third party, to ensure that there are no material misstatements.
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Justice Engoron lays out his bans against the defendants, ruling that Mr. Trump, Mr. Weisselberg and Mr. McConney cannot serve as officers or directors of any corporation or legal entity in New York for the next three years, and bans his sons Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump for two years from the same. He also prohibits Mr. Trump from applying for any loans from any New York banks for the next three years. The ruling goes further in the cases of Mr. Weisselberg and Mr. McConney, permanently barring them from serving in the financial control function of any New York business.
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Justice Engoron also ordered that Mr. Trump and his sons pay the interest, pushing the penalty to $450 million, according to Ms. James.
New York
How a Physical Therapist and a Retiree Live on $208,000 in Harlem
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
It has never really occurred to Marian or Charles Wade to live anywhere but the city where they were born and where they raised their children.
New York is in their bones. “We have our roots here, and our families enjoyed life here before us,” Ms. Wade said.
And they feel lucky. Between Mr. Wade’s pension, earned after more than 40 years as an analyst at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and his Social Security benefits, along with Ms. Wade’s work as a physical therapist at a psychiatric center, they bring in about $208,000 a year.
Still, it’s hard for the couple not to notice how much the city has changed as it has become wealthier.
About 10 years ago, Ms. Wade, 65, and Mr. Wade, 69, sold the Morningside Heights apartment they had lived in for decades. The Manhattan neighborhood had become more affluent, and tensions over how their building should be managed and how much residents should be expected to pay for upkeep boiled over between people who had lived there for years and newer neighbors.
They found a new home in Harlem, large enough to fit their two children, who are now adults struggling to afford the city’s housing market.
All in the Family
Ms. Wade knew it was time to leave Morningside Heights when she spotted her husband hiding behind a bush outside their building, hoping to avoid an unpleasant new neighbor. They had bought their apartment in 1994 for $206,000, using some money they had inherited from their families, and sold it in 2015 for $1.13 million.
The couple found a new apartment in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem for $811,000, and put most of the money down upfront. They took out a loan with a good rate for the remaining cost, and had a $947 monthly payment. They recently finished paying off the mortgage, but they have monthly maintenance payments of $1,555, as well as two temporary assessments to help improve the building, totaling $415 a month.
Their two children each moved home shortly after graduating from college.
The couple’s son, Jacob Wade, 28, split an apartment with three roommates nearby for a while, but spent down his savings and moved back in with his parents. He is searching for an affordable one bedroom nearby and plans to move out later in the year. Their daughter, Elka Wade, 27, came home after college but recently moved to an apartment in Astoria, Queens, with roommates.
Until their daughter moved out a few weeks ago, she and her brother each took a bedroom, and Mr. and Ms. Wade slept in the dining room, which they had converted into their bedroom with the help of a Murphy bed and a new set of curtains for privacy.
There is very little storage space. A piano occupies an entire closet in their son’s bedroom, because the family has no other place to fit it.
The setup is cramped, but close quarters have their benefits: When their daughter, a classically trained cellist, was living there, she often practiced at home in the evenings. “I love listening to her play,” Ms. Wade said.
Three Foodtowns and a Thrift Shop
The Wades do what they can to keep their costs low. They’ve decided against installing new, better insulated windows in their drafty apartment. They don’t go on vacations, instead visiting their small weekend home in rural upstate New York. And they’ve pulled back on takeout food and retail shopping.
Instead, Mr. Wade surveys the three Foodtown supermarkets near their home for the best deals, preferring one for produce and another for meat. The weekly grocery bill has been around $500 with both kids living at home, and the family usually orders delivery twice a week, rotating between Chinese and Indian food, which typically costs $70, including leftovers.
For an occasional splurge, they love Pisticci, a nearby restaurant where the penne with homemade mozzarella costs $21.
The couple owns a car, which they park on the street for free. But they often use public transportation to avoid paying the $9 congestion pricing fee to drive downtown, or when they have a good parking spot they don’t want to give up. They have a senior discount for their transit cards, which allows them to pay $1.50 per subway or bus ride, rather than $3.
Ms. Wade stopped shopping at the stores she used to frequent, like Eileen Fisher and Banana Republic, years ago. Instead, she visits a thrift store called Unique Boutique on the Upper West Side. She was browsing the aisles a few months ago, before a big Thanksgiving dinner, and spotted the perfect dress for the occasion for just $20.
But she has one nonnegotiable weekly expense: a private yoga lesson in an instructor’s apartment nearby, for $150 a session.
Swapping Mortgage Payments for Singing Lessons
For every member of the Wade family, life in New York is all about the arts.
The children each attended the Special Music School, a public school focused on the arts. Their son, an actor, teacher and director, works part time at the Metropolitan Opera and the Kaufman Music Center, a performing arts complex in Manhattan. His sister works in administration at the Kaufman Center.
Mr. Wade is still close with friends from high school who are now professional musicians, and the couple often goes to see them play at venues like the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, where shows typically have a $12 cover and a two-drink minimum.
The couple has cut back on going to expensive concerts — they used to try to see Elvis Costello every time he came to New York, for example — but have timeworn strategies for getting affordable theater tickets.
They recently splurged on tickets to “Oedipus” on Broadway for themselves and their daughter, who they treated to a ticket as a birthday gift. The seats were in the nosebleed section, but still cost $80 apiece.
The couple has a $75 annual membership to the Film Forum, which gives them reduced price tickets to movies. They occasionally get discounted tickets to the opera through their son’s work, and when they don’t, they pay for family circle passes, which are usually $47 a head, plus a $10 fee.
Ms. Wade, who grew up commuting from Flushing, Queens, to Manhattan to take dance lessons, sometimes takes $20 drop-in ballet classes during the week at the Dance Theater of Harlem, just a few blocks away from the apartment.
Recently, when the couple paid off their mortgage, Ms. Wade celebrated by giving herself a treat: weekly private singing lessons, for $125 a session.
New York
Inside the Birthplace of Your Favorite Technology
The technology industry is obsessed with the future.
Many of our modern marvels are rooted in the legacy of Bell Labs, an innovation powerhouse in suburban New Jersey.
Bell Labs, the once-famed research arm of AT&T, celebrated the centennial of its founding last year.
In its heyday, starting in the 1940s, the lab created a cascade of inventions, including the transistor, information theory and an enduring computer software language. The labs’ digital DNA is in our smartphones, social media and chatbot conversations.
“Every hour of your day has a bit of Bell Labs in it,” observed Jon Gertner, author of “The Idea Factory,” a history of the storied research center.
Bell Labs’ most far-reaching idea — information theory — forms the bedrock of computing. The mathematical framework, known as the “Magna Carta of the information age,” provided a blueprint for sending and receiving information with precision and reliability. It was the brainchild of Claude Shannon, a brilliant eccentric whom the A.I. start-up Anthropic named its chatbot after.
Last month, Nvidia announced a new A.I. chip packed with more than 300 billion transistors — the tiny on-off electrical switches invented in the lab.
Bell Labs became so powerful and renowned that it is entrenched in pop culture. The 1968 sci-fi movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” drew inspiration from Bell Labs, and the father of the titular character in the period dramedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” worked there. Most recently, characters in the show “Severance” report to a former Bell Labs building.
Here are some of the labs’ most prominent inventions.
Bell Labs described itself as a wide-ranging “institute of creative technology.” And it was a well-funded one, thanks to the monopoly held by AT&T — with incentive to expand Ma Bell’s phone business.
One invention was Telstar, the first powerful communications satellite, which could receive radio signals, then amplify them (10 billion times) and retransmit them. This allowed for real-time phone conversations across oceans, high-speed data communications and global television broadcasts.
1960
In 1960, Bell Labs launched an earlier orbital communications satellite in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — a passive balloon satellite called Echo that could reflect signals one way.
1962
The lab again teamed up with NASA to launch the smaller Telstar, which was about three feet in diameter and weighed 170 pounds.
1962
Bell Labs also developed some of the rocket technology that launched the satellite, a byproduct of an antiballistic missile project.
1962
Lyndon B. Johnson, vice president at the time, spoke on the first phone conversation bounced off a satellite. “You’re coming through nicely,” he assured Frederick Kappel, the phone company’s chairman.
PRESENT
In the decades since, those groundbreaking inventions from Bell Labs have become ubiquitous and affordable. International phone calls and television broadcasts are part of daily life. Today, more than 11,000 satellites provide internet, surveillance and navigation services, and are crucial for driverless cars and drone warfare.
While developing mobile-phone service, Bell Labs scientists drove around in a van to check transmission quality.
The labs submitted its plan for a working cellular network to the government in 1971, and AT&T opened the first commercial cellular service in Chicago more than a decade later.
1968
An early, simple version of mobile service was essentially a conventional phone on wheels — the car phone. Through radio technology, it connected to the landline network for calls.
1972
Smaller, more powerful chips, radios and batteries made a truly mobile phone possible. It still weighed nearly two pounds.
PRESENT
The technology continued to improve, as cellphones grew smaller and more sophisticated. Smartphones, which gained popularity with the iPhone’s launch in 2007, helped cement the devices as everywhere, ever-present and the dominant device for communication, information and entertainment — for better or worse.
The Picturephone allowed you to see the person you were talking to on a small screen.
1968
And it was heavily promoted. An ad for the Picturephone said it amounted to “crossing a telephone with a TV set.” Its tagline: “Someday you’ll be a star!”
1964
The Picturephone was introduced to great fanfare at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.
1964
Even the White House was enlisted for a publicized demo. Lady Bird Johnson spoke via Picturephone to a Bell Labs scientist, Elizabeth Wood.
1968
But at the cost of $16 for a three-minute call (more than $165 today), the novelty soon wore off. Though a market failure, the Picturephone had a star turn in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
PRESENT
Decades later, tech giants ran with the vision of talking with people on video. Similar technology is now incorporated in every smartphone, allowing families to chat in real time. Video calls have also transformed the way we work — connecting people around the world for meetings.
The light-sensitive electronic sensor, called a charge-coupled device, opened the door to digital imaging. It captured images by converting photons of light into electrons, breaking images into pixels.
1978
Efforts to use the imaging sensors in cameras and camcorders began in the 1970s, and the products steadily improved. The cameras got smaller and the images sharper. Willard Boyle and George E. Smith earned a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention.
1978
The science is complicated, but the sensor converts light to electrical charges, stores them and then shifts them across the chip to be measured.
PRESENT
By the early 2000s, a smaller, cheaper technology, CMOS, had won out in mass markets like camera phones. But charge-coupled sensors remained the choice for tasks requiring very high resolution, like mapping the Milky Way.
The silicon solar cell was a Bell Labs triumph of material physics.
The solar cell performs a special kind of photon-to-electron conversion — sunlight to energy.
1956
But while a scientific success, the early solar cell technology was a market flop — prohibitively expensive for mainstream adoption. By one estimate at the time, it would have cost $1.5 million for the solar cells needed to meet the electricity needs of the average American house in 1956.
PRESENT
The solar industry would take off decades later, riding the revolution in semiconductor technology, with prices falling and performance soaring. Government subsidies in many countries, eager to nurture clean energy development, helped as well. Today, light-catching panels stretch across fields and deserts.
All computer technology stems from the transistor, the seemingly infinitely scalable nugget of hardware that is essentially an on-off electrical switch that powers digital technology. It was invented at Bell Labs, which licensed the technology to others, paving the way for today’s tech industry.
The versatile transistor can also boost signals by gating electrons and then releasing them.
1956
These transistors — seen on the face of a dime — were the tiniest in their day. The smaller the transistors, the more that can be packed on a chip, using less electricity and enabling faster, more powerful computers.
1950s
Improvements in transistor design led to mass production in the 1950s, helping inspire new products like the portable transistor radio.
1956
The transistor’s inventors — John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley — shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their creation.
1979
The technology continued to improve as a “computer on a chip” in the late 1970s. It was smaller than a fingernail and a few hundredths of an inch thick.
PRESENT
Today’s microscopic transistors animate the chips that go into our phones, computers and cars. The artificial intelligence boom is powered by chips of almost unimaginable scale. Jensen Huang, president of Nvidia, recently showed off the company’s new Rubin A.I. chip, with 336 billion transistors.
New York
Tracking the Battle to Reshape Congress for the Midterms
The first primaries for the 2026 midterm elections are scheduled for early March. For Republican and Democratic state lawmakers still trying to redraw district maps for the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans have a razor-thin margin, there is not much time left.
While legal challenges remain — including a potentially seismic Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act — here is a breakdown of states where maps affecting November’s election have already been redone, or states have taken action to make changes.
These states have changed their maps
Texas could add 5 Republican seats in the midterms
The first group to heed President Trump’s call last year to reshape Congress was the Republican majority in Texas.
Democrats staged a two-week walkout, arguing that the new districts would illegally dilute Black and Hispanic representation. But Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the measure into law in August, and the Supreme Court upheld the map in December.
California could add 5 Democratic seats
In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, persuaded the legislature in August, and voters in November, to counterpunch.
The Supreme Court, echoing its Texas order, upheld California’s new map in February, dismissing Republican claims that it illegally favored Latino voters.
Missouri could add 1 Republican seat
Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, in late September signed into law a new map that would split Kansas City, a Democratic stronghold, into rural and largely Republican districts.
Republicans hope to oust the longtime Representative Emanuel Cleaver, who was the first Black mayor of Kansas City. But lawsuits are in progress.
North Carolina could add 1 Republican seat
The Republican-controlled legislature approved a new map in October that imperils the re-election chances of Representative Don Davis, a Democrat, who represents the northeastern corner of the state.
Under the state Constitution, Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, cannot veto the new map.
Ohio could add 1 to 2 Republican seats
Even before Mr. Trump’s push, Ohio was required, under its state Constitution, to redraw its congressional maps. So in October, a state commission approved plans to dilute Democratic-held districts near Toledo and Cincinnati.
Utah could add 1 Democratic seat
A state judge in November tossed out a map drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature as being unfairly tilted against Democrats. The judge then adopted an alternative proposed by a centrist group that preserved a Democratic-leaning district surrounding Salt Lake City.
The Utah legislature has appealed to the Utah Supreme Court, while two of state’s congressional Republicans have filed a federal lawsuit to void the map.
These states are trying to change their maps
Florida could add 2 to 4 Republican seats in the midterms
Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has proposed that a special legislative session be convened in late April on redistricting. Republicans, who control most of the state’s congressional seats, are eyeing a gain of two to four more in central and South Florida.
Virginia could add 2 to 4 Democratic seats
The Democratic legislature has passed a constitutional amendment allowing lawmakers to redraw congressional districts before the midterms. If voters say yes to a referendum on April 21, the Democrats could net between two and four seats under a proposed new map.
A state judge initially blocked the effort to change the map. But the Virginia Supreme Court has allowed the referendum to proceed, and says that it will rule afterward on whether the plan is legal.
New York could add 1 Democratic seat
A state judge has ruled that a district represented by Nicole Malliotakis, New York City’s only Republican member of Congress, disenfranchises Black and Latino voters. The judge has ordered an independent redistricting commission to come up with new maps for the district, which includes Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. Republicans are appealing.
Maryland could add 1 Democratic seat
In Maryland, a latecomer, the House of Delegates has approved a plan that would ask voters to ratify new congressional boundaries in November — while also choosing the candidates to represent those districts.
The State Senate appears reluctant, so far. But if the plan proceeds, Democrats could turn what is now a 7-1 advantage into 8-0.
Reporting contributed by Nick Corasaniti.
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