The GOP-controlled North Carolina legislature, which has already gone to extreme lengths to undermine the will of the voters, is set to pass a new Trump-inspired gerrymandered congressional map this week that is expected to give Republicans one additional seat heading into the midterms. It will make one of the most gerrymandered states in the country even more gerrymandered, likely giving Republicans nearly 80 percent of US House seats in an otherwise closely divided swing state where Trump won 51 percent of the vote in 2024. The state senate passed the bill on Tuesday in near record time, with the state house to follow shortly thereafter.
The map targets the district of Democratic US House Rep. Don Davis, which has been represented by a Black member of Congress for more than three decades, shifting it from a district that Trump won by 3 points in 2024 to 12 points under the new lines. To make the district more Republican, majority-Black counties in eastern North Carolina’s Black Belt, including Davis’ home county, would be moved out of the district and replaced with majority-white counties that favor Trump.
“In the 2024 election with record voter turnout, NC’s First Congressional District elected both President Trump and me,” Davis said in a statement on Tuesday. “Since the start of this new term, my office has received 46,616 messages from constituents of different political parties, including those unaffiliated, expressing a range of opinions, views, and requests. Not a single one of them included a request for a new congressional map redrawing eastern North Carolina. Clearly, this new congressional map is beyond the pale.”
“Instead of nibbling at the margins of participation, today’s strategies are about cheating outright.”
The new map continues the trend of Republicans eliminating the seats of Democrats of color in their unprecedented bid to redraw districts in as many controlled states as possible in advance of the midterms; Missouri’s congressional gerrymanderer dismantled the district of Black Democrat Emanuel Cleaver while Texas’ map, which launched the GOP’s mid-decade redistricting frenzy, seeks to remove three Hispanic Democrats and one Black Democrat from office.
“Instead of nibbling at the margins of participation, today’s strategies are about cheating outright,” said Melissa Price Kromm, executive director of the pro-democracy group North Carolina For the People Action.
Republican leaders in North Carolina have openly admitted that they drew the new map to placate Trump, with reports alleging that Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger spearheaded the effort in exchange for Trump’s endorsement in his contested primary. “We are doing everything we can to protect President Trump’s agenda, which means safeguarding Republican control of Congress,” Berger said.
North Carolina has been ground zero for Republican gerrymandering schemes for more than a decade. The maps passed by North Carolina Republicans after the 2020 census were struck down by the Democratic majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court, leading to an even split in the state’s congressional delegation for the 2022 elections. But after Republicans won a majority on the state supreme court in that election, they overturned the court ruling blocking the gerrymandered map, allowing Republicans to pass a new gerrymander that gave the party three new seats in the 2024 election, which helped the GOP retain control of the US House.
“We would have been in the majority if North Carolina hadn’t egregiously redistricted and eliminated three Democratic seats,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said after the election.
That map, which earned an F from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, attempted to oust Davis, a former Air Force captain and member of the state senate from 2013 to 2023, shifting his district from a Democratic advantage to narrowly favoring Republicans, but he survived in 2024, winning by two points even as Trump carried his district. A federal lawsuit alleges that his current district, which has been represented by a Black member of Congress since 1992, was drawn by Republicans to dilute Black voting strength.
But now Republicans are redoubling their efforts to oust Davis, turning an F map into an F-. “Racist maps make racist reps!” protesters at the North Carolina capitol chanted before the state senate passed the bill. (In 2023, the legislature snuck in a provision to the state budget shielding redistricting records from public view, which could make it harder to challenge the new gerrymander in court.)
“They want to lock in that no Democrat, especially no Black Democrat, can ever win again,” former Democratic Rep. Eva Clayton, who represented the first district from 1992 to 2003, as the first Black woman elected to Congress from North Carolina, said on Tuesday.
It was a case originating in North Carolina that led to the Supreme Court effectively greenlighting extreme partisan gerrymandering in 2019, which has allowed Trump and his Republican allies to redraw districts for partisan advantage in state after state this year.
In 2016, a federal court ruled that two of the state’s congressional districts were illegally racially gerrymandered. When Republicans, under the guidance of the late GOP redistricting godfather Tom Hofeller, redrew the congressional maps, legislative leaders openly admitted their top goal was to maintain a partisan advantage. “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats,” said GOP state Rep. David Lewis, who oversaw the redistricting process. He conceded: “I acknowledge freely that this would be a political gerrymander, which is not against the law.”
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice John Roberts holding in Rucho v. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandered claims couldn’t be brought in federal court—a decision that turbocharged gerrymandering across the country.
Roberts claimed that the Rucho decision did not bar efforts to outlaw racial gerrymandering. But the Supreme Court just heard arguments in a case that could end the Voting Rights Act’s ability to stop racial gerrymandering as well, which would kill the last remaining protection of the landmark civil rights law. Such a ruling could jeopardize majority-minority districts across the country, shifting up to 19 seats to the GOP.
North Carolina Republicans have long been at the forefront of GOP efforts to undermine democracy. The legislature convened a lame-duck session after the 2024 election that was supposed to focus on hurricane relief but instead stripped the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Stein, of the power to appoint a majority of members to the state and county election boards. The new state board is now controlled by Republicans with a long history of limiting access to the ballot who could use their authority to close polling places, cut early voting hours, and contest election outcomes. Already, a North Carolina Republican state supreme court justice, Jefferson Griffin, spent seven months trying to overturn the victory of his Democratic opponent Allison Riggs following the 2024 election.
“They’re abusing their power to take away the people’s power, the voters’ power, because they’re trying to decide for the voters who their congressperson is,” said Stein, who does not have the power to veto the redistricting bill.
Now, the GOP’s toxic attempt to oust a Black Democrat in North Carolina is a disturbing preview of what a post-Voting Rights Act America will look like.
