An appeals court agreed Tuesday that a federal trial judge acted properly last month in declining to rule on the eligibility of tens of thousands of voters last fall in an unresolved North Carolina Supreme Court election and returning the matter to state court.

Three counts found an incumbent Democrat won a State Supreme Court race. But the Republican candidate is trying to nullify more than 60,000 votes.

The Federal Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the fight over North Carolina’s Supreme Court race will remain in state court.

Before leaving the governor's office, Roy Cooper stated in media interviews that Republican state legislators passed a bill that "actually took money away from western North Carolina." WFAE's Marshall Terry and WRAL's Paul Specht fact-check Cooper's claim.

A photo of a house in North Carolina that caught fire in 2007 has been miscaptioned online as showing a location from the television show "Hannah Montana" purportedly destroyed by the Los Angeles fires in January 2025.

After Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina last September, tens of thousands of homes were damaged and large swaths of the region were damaged by flooding. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to speed up recovery,