Your main problem is the sort function here. See, sort is an in-place operation, and object types in javascript are stored as references. So in your code you:

1. Use useState to create newArticles (newArticles is a reference)
2. set a new const sorted as newArticles.sort(...), this is the same reference that points at newArticles since sort is in-place.
3. Use setNewArticles on sorted which is just the same reference with newArticles. React sees the same value and does not see a reason to re-render.

One option to fix this is to copy the object first send set newArticles to this newly created object like this:

function sortVotes() {
  const sorted = [...newArticles].sort((a, b) => a.upvotes - b.upvotes);
  setNewArticles(sorted);
}

Important note: trying to mutate state variables directly is a bad practice and can cause bugs. Please avoid that.