Raleigh, North Carolina – RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Republican legislative leaders in North Carolina are poised Wednesday to complete a retooling of part of the state’s U.S. House map in hopes of clinching an additional GOP seat and helping President Donald Trump retain majority control of Congress’s lower chamber in next year’s midterm elections.
The House has scheduled a debate and vote on proposed limits that if enacted would attempt to derail next year’s reelection Democratic US Representative Don Daviswhich currently represents more than 20 northeastern provinces of the country. The state Senate already approved the plan along party lines on Tuesday.
Republicans hold majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, and Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, under state law, cannot veto redistricting maps. So the GOP proposal would go ahead after a positive vote in the House — barring successful lawsuits likely brought by Democrats or voting rights advocates to stop it. Applications for 2026 candidates are scheduled to begin on December 1.
Republican lawmakers said Proposed changes An attempt to answer Trump’s call in Republican-led states to secure more seats for the party nationwide, maintain his grip on Congress, and advance his agenda. Democrats are resisting these attempts with competing moves and need to gain only three additional seats to control the House of Representatives. Historically, the president’s party has lost seats in midterm elections.
“The purpose of this map is to get a seat for Republicans,” Senator Ralph Hice, who helped draw the revised map, said this week. “We’ve said that over and over again.”
The national redistricting battle began over the summer when Trump urged Republican-led Texas to redistrict its U.S. House districts. After Texas lawmakers acted, California Democrats responded in kind By passing their own plan, which still needs voter approval in November.
Under the alternative map, which would swap several counties in Davis’ current 1st District with another coastal district, the proposed map would favor Republicans winning 11 of the state’s 14 congressional district seats — statewide election data show — up from the 10 they hold now.
Davis is one of North Carolina’s three black state representatives, and his 1st District includes several majority black counties. Critics of the map have suggested that upcoming lawsuits could accuse Republicans of creating an illegal racial gerrymander in a district that has elected African Americans to the U.S. House of Representatives continuously since 1992.
Davis won his second term in 2024 by less than 2 percentage points, and the 1st District was one of 13 congressional districts won by a Democratic House member and Trump, according to the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Davis on Tuesday called the proposed map “out of the ordinary.”
Hundreds of democratic and liberal activists They stormed the legislative complex this week, registering their opposition to the plan. They criticized Republican lawmakers for following Trump’s orders and criticized what they described as a power grab through a quick and unfair redistricting process.
“If you pass this, your legacy will be to shred the Constitution and destroy democracy,” Karen Ziegler, of the grassroots group Democracy Out Loud, told senators this week. Instead, she added, “we will let Donald Trump decide who represents the people of North Carolina.”
Democrats claim the proposed map creates racial gerrymandering that would undo decades of progress in voting rights for those living in what is known as North Carolina’s “Black Belt” region. Republicans dispute that no such gerrymandering occurred and state that no racial data was used in shaping the districts.
State GOP leaders defended their actions, saying Trump won the state’s electoral votes all three times he ran for president — albeit by narrow margins — and therefore deserved potentially more support in Congress to implement his agenda.
“It’s an appropriate thing for us to do under the law and in conjunction with essentially listening to the will of the people,” Senate Leader Phil Berger told reporters.