North Carolina Republicans complete redistricting to gain GOP seat

Republican legislative leaders in North Carolina completed their redistricting of the state’s U.S. House districts on Wednesday, aiming to gain another seat to help President Donald Trump in his efforts to maintain GOP control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

The new boundaries approved by the state House of Representatives could derail the re-election bid for Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who currently represents more than 20 northeastern counties. The state Senate approved the plan on Tuesday in a party-line vote.

Republicans hold a majority in both chambers of the General Assembly, and Democratic Gov. Josh Stein is barred by state law from using his veto stamp on redistricting. So the Republican proposal can now be implemented, unless likely litigation from Democrats or voting rights advocates stops it. The application deadline for 2026 is scheduled for December 1st.

Republican lawmakers have made clear the intent of their proposed changes – an attempt to meet Trump’s demand for Republican-led states to secure more seats for the party nationwide so Congress can further advance its agenda. Democrats responded with rival moves in blue states. Historically, a president’s party loses seats Midterm electionsand Democrats currently only need three more seats to take control of the House of Representatives.

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“The new congressional map strengthens the political strength of Republicans in the East.” North Carolina and will add an additional Republican seat to North Carolina’s congressional delegation,” Republican Rep. Brenden Jones said during a debate that Republicans abandoned after an hour.

Democratic state Rep. Gloristine Brown, an African-American who represents a district in eastern North Carolina, gave a passionate speech in opposition, saying, “You are silencing Black voices and acting against the will of your constituents.”

“North Carolina is a proving ground for the new era of Jim Crow laws,” Brown said.

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The Republican-led states of Texas and Missouri have already redrawn their U.S. House districts to help Republicans gain additional seats. Democratic-led California retaliated by asking the state’s voters to approve a revised map to elect more Democrats, and Jones blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom to intensify the fight for redistribution.

“We will not let outsiders tell us how to govern, and we will never apologize for doing exactly what the people of this state elected us to do,” Jones said.

North Carolina’s replacement map would replace several counties in Davis’ current 1st District with another coastal county. Statewide election data suggests that would help Republicans win 11 of 14 House seats, up from the 10 they currently hold, in a state where Trump won 51% of the vote in 2024.

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Davis is one of North Carolina’s three black representatives. Map critics have recently suggested this GOP map could be challenged as an illegal racist gerrymander in a district that includes several majority-black districts and has continually elected African-Americans to the U.S. House of Representatives since 1992.

Davis is already vulnerable — he won his second term by less than 2 percentage points, and the 1st District was one of 13 nationwide that elected both Trump and a Democratic House member last year, according to the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

Davis called the proposed map “unrealistic” on Tuesday.

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Hundreds of Democratic and liberal activists milled through the legislative complex this week, criticizing Republican lawmakers for doing Trump’s bidding with what they called a power grab through a quick and unfair redistricting process.

“If you pass this, your legacy will be to destroy the Constitution and destroy democracy,” Karen Ziegler of the grassroots group Democracy Out Loud told senators this week. She accused the state GOP of “renting.” Donald Trump Decide who represents the people of North Carolina.”

Democrats said this map is racially discriminatory and will undo decades of progress on voting rights in North Carolina’s Black Belt region. Republicans counter that no racial data was used in drawing the districts and that redistricting was based on political parties, not race.

Based on last week’s arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in a Louisiana redistricting case, Democrats may lose this line of attack. A majority of justices appears poised to neutralize a key Voting Rights Act tool that protects political boundaries created to help Black and Latino residents elect preferred candidates, who have typically been Democrats.

The state’s GOP leaders say Trump has won North Carolina all three times he ran for president – albeit narrowly last year – and therefore deserves more GOP support in Congress. Senate President Phil Berger described this as appropriate “within the law and in conjunction with fundamentally listening to the will of the people.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.