RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) - North Carolina Republicans progressed a new congressional map Tuesday, passing it through the state Senate and through a House Redistricting Committee despite public opposition.
The new map is expected to be taken up for final votes in the House Wednesday and, if passed, will be adopted for the 2026 midterms.
The 2025 map will likely boot Democratic moderate Representative Don Davis from one of the state's only competitive seats in northeastern North Carolina.
In the House Redistricting Committee Tuesday, all members of the public who spoke criticized the map, with many denouncing it as a racial gerrymander and condemning lawmakers for failing to pass Medicaid funding and a state budget. Several asked lawmakers to put the map to the voters and place a referendum on the ballot. Hundreds of protesters marched on the legislature Tuesday.
"What you are doing today means that you are against democracy," former U.S. Representative Eva Clayton told House lawmakers. "This redistricting strips indeed the majority Black counties from the first congressional district and buries them in a heavily Republican area. That is an act of gerrymandering."
U.S. Representative Alma Adams also spoke in opposition to the map.
North Carolina's 2023 map, the previous map adopted, elected 10 Republicans and four Democrats. The proposed 2025 map is expected to secure Republicans an additional seat, also impacting Republican Representative Greg Murphy's district. Both Murphy and Davis have said they are evaluating their options.
The map only changes two of the state's congressional districts, shifting counties between them to increase the number of Republican voters in what had previously been Davis' district, Congressional District 1. This should give Republican candidates better opportunity to win, Senate Election Chair Ralph Hise, the map author, told House representatives Tuesday, without impacting the 12 other congressional districts.
Racial and age data were not included in the redistricting process, Hise said, and the map "answers the president's call for redistricting." Hise has also said he has not had conversations with the president or his staff.
"The chairs do not believe the use of racial data would have been helpful in reaching any political or other legislative redistricting goals," he said.
"The motivation behind this new plan is straightforward," Hise said on the Senate floor Monday, shortly before the map passed its second reading along party lines. "The congressional map improves Republican political strength in eastern North Carolina."
Democrats and voting rights organizations have slammed the measure as diluting the votes of Black residents in the state's eastern Black Belt area, where racial redistricting has been the source of dozens of lawsuits for decades. A landmark 1984 case over racial redistricting, Ralph Gingles v. Rufus Edmisten, established preconditions for minority vote dilution cases that current-day redistricting challenges are still weighed against.
"You've decided to erase and silence the voices of hundreds of thousands of Black voters of Northeastern North Carolina to satisfy the request of one Donald Trump," Democratic Senator Jay Chaudhuri said Monday, calling the redistribution of voters a partisan power grab. "Will you exercise your oath to Donald Trump or the Constitution?"
The party of the president normally loses support during the midterms after the presidential election. Republicans have a very narrow majority in the U.S. House, occupying 219 seats, one more than the 218 needed to have a majority, and Democrats have sought to secure additional seats in the House to flip the chamber.
Texas began the redistricting process, striving to flip five Democratic seats Republican in the midterms, and California followed, passing a measure to use congressional maps skewed toward Democrats through 2030, which will be on the ballot to be approved by voters in November.
Missouri has already completed pre-midterm redistricting, and Ohio and Kansas have begun the process. President Donald Trump has pushed for Indiana to also create new maps.
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to regulate partisan gerrymandering claims, and in North Carolina, the courts have upheld that political redistricting is legal.
The redistricting follows a September rumor that Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger asked Trump for an endorsement in his primary in exchange for redrawing Congressional District 1. Berger slammed the rumor in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
"I've never spoken to President Trump about this or an endorsement," he said. "The Democrats are spreading lies to hurt President Trump."
Berger denied that he participated in the map-drawing process, saying that he had "no involvement at all," and told Courthouse News that he had not had any conversations with the president or his staff regarding the maps.
Trump has voiced support for the process.
"Thank you to North Carolina's incredible Republican state legislators, who just introduced a new, fair, and improved congressional map, a situation I am watching, and strongly supporting, very closely," he said on Truth Social.
North Carolina is the only state in the country where the governor is powerless over the map process. The state's General Assembly has the power to redraw districts, but approved maps do not go to the governor, and Democratic Governor Josh Stein has no veto oversight.
Source: Courthouse News Service
