“For the first time in anyone’s memory, nearly all 170 state legislative races in North Carolina will feature both a Republican and Democratic candidate,” the Raleigh News and Observer reports.

“Candidate filing ended at noon Wednesday, leaving just one uncontested race for state House or state Senate after a heavy recruiting push from both the NC Democratic Party and the NC Republican Party.”

“North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature and its Democratic governor announced late Wednesday that they had reached an agreement to repeal the controversial state law that curbs legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and sets rules that affect transgender bathroom use in public buildings,” the New York Times reports.

“But gay rights advocates raised objections, arguing that the compromise would continue to allow discrimination. And it was unclear late Wednesday whether the deal, if approved, would end the boycotts by sports leagues, businesses and others that have harmed the state’s reputation and economy.”

Washington Post: “This week, lawmakers are facing a clear deadline imposed by the NCAA, which gave North Carolina until Thursday to change the law if it wants to host any college sports championships through 2022.”

“Despite Republican assurances that North Carolina’s ‘bathroom bill’ isn’t hurting the economy, the law limiting LGBT protections will cost the state more than $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years,” according to an Associated Press analysis.

“Over the past year, North Carolina has suffered financial hits ranging from scuttled plans for a PayPal facility that would have added an estimated $2.66 billion to the state’s economy to a canceled Ringo Starr concert that deprived a town’s amphitheater of about $33,000 in revenue. The blows have landed in the state’s biggest cities as well as towns surrounding its flagship university, and from the mountains to the coast.”

Politico: “The road to political morass began six years ago in North Carolina, when national Republican donors and strategists launched a concerted effort to create a bulwark against the emerging multiracial, center-left coalition that swept Barack Obama into the White House. They sank millions of dollars into cheaply bought local and state races, seizing control of the statehouse for the first time since a now-unrecognizable Republican Party that supported racial integration and voting rights for African-Americans held it during Reconstruction.”

“Because 2010 happened to be a once-a-decade redistricting year, the new Republican majority gerrymandered districts in which Democrats couldn’t win—which resulted in ever-more-hardline conservatives winning primaries in each election. A Southern economic powerhouse once known for a careful, if awkward, political balance (from 1999 to 2003, the state’s voters sent both John Edwards and Jesse Helms to the U.S. Senate) became a conservative lab experiment.”

Rick Klein: “With the North Carolina legislature keeping the so-called ‘bathroom bill’ in place, 2017 gets to deal with some more unfinished business from 2016. But the issue serves as a reminder that this new era of Republican dominance has severe limits. The tide has already turned in North Carolina, and new efforts to repeal the bill – under public and economic pressure – are likely to be more successful after Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper takes office. While there’s no predicting the president-elect’s Tweets, does anyone think Donald Trump will provide air cover on the issue next year? It’s a reminder – like the minimum-wage increases that passed last month – the country is shading red, but not necessarily moving right.”

Paul Waldman: “This isn’t just hardball politics. This is a fundamentally anti-democratic approach to government, one that says that when we win, we get to implement our agenda, and when you win, you don’t.”

“To put this in context, perhaps nowhere in the country have Republicans moved more aggressively to solidify power by disenfranchising their opponents as they have in North Carolina.”

“Republicans in the North Carolina legislature on Wednesday took the highly unusual step of moving to strip power from the incoming Democratic governor after a bitter election that extended years of fierce ideological battles in the state,” the New York Times reports.

“After calling a surprise special session, Republican lawmakers who control the General Assembly introduced measures to end the governor’s control over election boards, to require State Senate approval of the new governor’s cabinet members and to strip his power to appoint University of North Carolina trustees.”

Rick Hasen: “And here’s the kicker: any lawsuit over these alleged rules will end up before the state Supreme Court with its new Democratic majority, unless the special session itself produces a court-packing plan, and if that happens the Court itself would have to resolve a key question about its own membership.”

First Read: “It is one thing to lose a close race. It’s another thing to be bitter about it. But it’s ENTIRELY different to try to jam through changes to strip away your opponent’s powers. This is partisanship gone too far, and it’s corrosive to our democracy.”