North Carolina Republicans will introduce a redrawn Congressional map next week with the intention of giving them an electoral advantage in 11 of the state's 14 U.S. House districts.
Right now, Republicans are strongly favored in 10 seats and Democrats in three. There is one swing district, in northeastern North Carolina, currently held by Rep. Don Davis, a Democrat.
North Carolina House and Senate leaders announced the intention to redraw the map Monday. Leadership plans to have the General Assembly vote on the new plan when the General Assembly returns to Raleigh next Tuesday.
"We are doing everything we can to protect President Trump's agenda, which means safeguarding Republican control of Congress,” Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, wrote in a statement.
Berger and other legislative leaders pointed to California's referendum this November on a map that would give Democrats the advantage in five additional House seats, a plan that itself was in response to new Texas maps giving Republicans a boost in five seats.
"Our state won't stand by while Democrats like Gavin Newsom redraw districts to aid in their effort to obtain a majority in the U.S. House. We will not allow them to undermine the will of the voters and President Trump’s agenda," Speaker of the House Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, wrote in a statement.
Princeton University's Gerrymandering Project gives North Carolina's existing Congressional map an F, finding that it offers Republicans a significant advantage and is "very uncompetitive" when compared to other potential maps.
A copy of the map lawmakers plan to consider next week was not publicly available on Monday.
Democratic response
Democrats started to respond within minutes of Republicans' announcement.
"The General Assembly works for North Carolina, not Donald Trump. The Republican leadership in the General Assembly has failed to pass a budget, failed to pay our teachers and law enforcement what they deserve, and failed to fully fund Medicaid. Now they are failing you, the voters. These shameless politicians are abusing their power to take away yours," Governor Josh Stein wrote in a statement Monday afternoon.
Under North Carolina's constitution, Stein, a Democrat, is unable to veto maps redistricting legislative or Congressional districts. That means the new map would only need to clear the House and the Senate, where Republicans hold significant majorities, to become law.
House Minority Leader Robert Reives, D-Chatham, said in a statement that Republicans' priorities are misplaced. The party's politicans are more focused, Reives wrote, on consolidating power than on lowering costs or funding the state's Medicaid program.
"Call it what it is: They are stealing a congressional district in order to shield themselves from accountability at the ballot box," Reives wrote.
Anderson Clayton, the chair of North Carolina's Democratic Party, called redrawing the maps an act of corruption in a statement.
"North Carolina Republicans Phil Berger and Destin Hall are weak, subservient cowards, willing to steamroll the people of our state so they can give Donald Trump what he wants – power without accountability," Clayton wrote.
A national redistricting effort
In a U.S. House where Republicans hold a 220 to 215 advantage, small margins matter. (Three of those seats are currently vacant, including two held by Democrats and one held by a Republican.)
Traditionally, the party that controls the White House has a difficult time holding on to seats in mid-term elections. To stave that off, the Trump Administration has been asking Republican-controlled legislatures to redraw maps to help give their party the advantage.
In addition to Texas, Missouri lawmakers have passed a new map with the intention of shifting one of the state's eight seats to Republican control. An effort is afoot there to gather enough signatures to put the map to a referendum.
Both the Missouri and Texas maps are also facing legal challenges.
The Trump Administration is also eyeing Indiana, with Vice President J.D. Vance visiting the state twice and meeting with its leaders three times. Vance is seeking to shift the state's two Democratic districts to Republican control, Politico has reported.
Courts won't stop partisan gerrymanders
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that federal judges cannot overturn electoral maps on the basis of partisan gerrymanders.
That dates back to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, where a 5-4 majority found that federal courts lack a "discernible and manageable" way to measure that a map is drawn to offer one party or the other an unfair advantage.
The case considered maps drawn to give Republicans an advantage in North Carolina Republicans and Democrats an advantage in Maryland.
"Federal courts are not equipped to apportion political power as a matter of fairness, nor is there any basis for concluding that they were authorized to do so," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion in Rucho.
As recently as 2022, North Carolina sent seven Democrats to the U.S. House under maps drawn by a panel of three former judges after the N.C. Supreme Court found that lawmakers had drawn maps to gave Republicans an unfair advantage.
A year later, with a new Republican majority on the Supreme Court, the justices took the 2022 case back up. They reversed course, ruling that the court does not have the power to curb the General Assembly's redistricting power on the basis of a map's partisan advantage.
Under those rules, the General Assembly drew the maps giving Republicans a 10-4 advantage.
