Redrawn congressional map passes final hurdle with House vote along party lines

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Republican legislative leaders completed their remapping of the state’s U.S. House districts on Wednesday, intent on picking up one more seat to help President Donald Trump’s efforts to retain GOP control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

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

Republicans hold majorities in both General Assembly chambers, and Democratic Gov. Josh Stein is unable under state law to use his veto stamp on redistricting maps. So the GOP’s proposal would be implemented following affirmative House votes, unless likely litigation by Democrats or voting rights advocates stops it. Candidate filing for 2026 is scheduled to begin Dec. 1.

Republican lawmakers made the intent of their proposed changes crystal clear — it’s an attempt to satisfy Trump’s call for GOP-led states to secure more seats for the party nationwide, so that Congress can continue advancing his agenda. Democrats have responded with rival moves in blue states. A president’s party historically loses seats in midterm elections, and Democrats currently need just three more seats to flip House control.

“The purpose of this map was to pick up a Republican seat. We’ve stated that over and over again,” state Sen. Ralph Hise, who helped draw the altered map, said this week.

Republican-led Texas and Missouri already have revised their U.S. House districts to try to help Republicans win additional seats. Democratic-led California reciprocated by asking the state’s voters to approve a map revised to elect more Democrats.

North Carolina’s replacement map would exchange several counties in Davis’ current 1st District with another coastal district. Statewide election data suggests this would favor Republicans winning 11 of 14 House seats, up from the 10 they now hold, in a state where Trump got 51% of the popular vote in 2024.

Davis is one of North Carolina’s three Black representatives, and his 1st District includes several majority Black counties. Map critics have suggested that this latest GOP map could be challenged as an illegal racial gerrymander in a district that’s elected African Americans to the U.S. House continuously 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 congressional districts nationwide where both Trump and a Democratic House member was elected last year, according to the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Davis on Tuesday called the proposed map “beyond the pale.”

Hundreds of Democratic and liberal activists swarmed the legislative complex this week, blasting GOP legislators for doing Trump’s bidding and criticizing what they called a power grab through a speedy and unfair redistricting process.

“If you pass this, your legacy will be shredding the Constitution, destroying democracy,” Karen Ziegler with the grassroots group Democracy Out Loud, told senators this week. Instead, she added, “we’re letting Donald Trump decide who represents the people of North Carolina.”

Democrats allege the proposed map creates a racial gerrymander that would dismantle decades of voting rights progress for people living in North Carolina’s “Black Belt” region. Republicans counter that no racial data was used in forming the districts, and the redrawing was based on political parties, not race.

Based on last week’s arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in a Louisiana redistricting case, the Democrats may lose this line of attack. A majority of justices appears willing to neuter a key tool of the Voting Rights Act that for decades has protected political boundaries created to help Black and Latino residents elect favored candidates, who have tended to be Democrats.

State GOP leaders say Trump won North Carolina’s electoral votes all three times that he’s run for president — albeit narrowly last year — and thus merits more potential support in Congress to carry out his agenda.

“It is something that is an appropriate thing for us to do under the law and in conjunction with basically listening to the will of the people,” Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters.