(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday ahead of his meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
Joining the virtual meeting will be other European leaders, who, alongside Zelenskyy, have been sidelined from the summit regarding an end to the war in Ukraine, according to the Associated Press.
Zelenskyy has said he believes Putin is not interested in negotiating during the meeting in Alaska, which will be Putin’s first trip to the United States since 2015.
Trump has said he wants to see whether Putin is serious about ending the war, now in its fourth year, and has described the summit as “a feel-out meeting” in which he can assess the Russian leader’s intentions. Trump has suggested land swaps could play a role in bringing the war to an end.
However, Zelenskyy has rejected the idea that his country would give up land to end the war. Zelenskyy said Ukraine “will not give Russia any awards for what it has done” and that “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other European leaders are demanding Putin first agree to a ceasefire before any peace talks or land swaps between Moscow and Kyiv can take place, Politico reported. In addition, Merz and other leaders are requesting, should any land swaps happen, they must be agreed to by Kyiv and that Russia should give Ukraine security guarantees to protect it from future attacks.
Calling the North Carolina Republican Party’s new congressional district map “surgical racism with surgical precision,” Bishop William J. Barber II of Repairers of the Breach was in Raleigh Thursday, announcing a lawsuit challenging the redistricting effort—pledging that the state’s voters will “challenge gerrymandering in the courts, in the streets, and at the ballot box.”
“This is a direct attack on the state’s Black Belt district and marginalized communities,” said Barber at a news conference announcing the legal challenge, a day after the state House of Representatives approved the new map in a party-line vote.
The new map, which was passed by the state Senate earlier this week and cannot be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein under state law, will likely give the GOP an additional seat in the US House after the 2026 midterm elections.
President Donald Trump has called for mid-decade redistricting efforts by the GOP in states including Missouri and Texas, as well as North Carolina, with state Republicans heeding his demands.
North Carolina’s new map will likely give Republicans 11 of the state’s 14 districts by moving some Black voters out of the 1st District and into the 3rd District. Had the new map been in place in 2024, Trump would likely have won 55% of the vote in the new 1st District in 2024, up from the 51% he won.
Barber denounced the redistricting efforts across the country as “political robbery” by a party that wants “to rob people of their rights through this racially based gerrymandering... so that they can give power or keep power in the US Congress to engage in political violence,” including by cutting healthcare and blocking the passage of living wages.
“We’ve seen this pattern before—the use of redistricting and voting laws to divide, diminish, and deny,” said Barber. “But the truth is simple: When you steal people’s representation, you steal their healthcare, their wages, and their future. That’s why we will fight back... to make clear that in North Carolina, and across America, the people’s will cannot be gerrymandered out of existence.”
Barber said Republicans in the state Legislature are “gambling” to win another seat, instead of trying to win over voters.
“They’re saying, ‘Let’s move this county over here, let’s move this county over here,’ he said at the press conference. ”Black voters in Congressional District 1 make up approximately 40% of the population, and there’s a growing Latino population that makes up 7%... Black communities, Latino communities, and rural, working-class, poor white voters, if the districts are fair, have the power to build a fusion electorate that can overcome the greedy oligarchs’ will to control elections in our state.“
Along with filing a legal action against state lawmakers to challenge the legality of the map, Barber said Repairers of the Breach will hold a ”Mass Moral Fusion Meeting“ and public hearing on November 2.
”If they won’t hold public hearings, we will,“ said Barber. ”This is our Edmund Pettus Bridge moment... Black, white, and brown together—because our democracy is not for sale.“
