RALEIGH, N.C. — At the request of President Donald Trump, North Carolina lawmakers officially entered the national redistricting war by advancing a new congressional map intended to pick up another seat for Republicans in the 2026 midterms.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans voted 26-20 along party lines to approve the map after an initial vote the previous day marked by hours of fiery debate and interruptions from protesters in the gallery. The map must now be passed by the House before it becomes law. Democratic Gov. Josh Stein is prohibited from vetoing the map due to a provision in the state constitution.

Republican leaders were brazen about their intentions, with Sen. Ralph Hise, who said he drew the map, acknowledging that the goal of the new map was to prevent Democrats from winning a majority in Congress in 2026.

“Republicans hold a razor-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Hise, of Mitchell County, said during debate Monday. “If Democrats flip four seats in the upcoming midterm elections, they will take control of the House and torpedo President Trump’s agenda.”

During over two hours of debate, nearly every Democratic senator spoke out against the map, accusing Republicans of bowing to the president and disenfranchising Black voters in Eastern North Carolina.

“This map represents the highest and most egregious form of unadulterated and unfettered partisan power grabs I’ve witnessed in my nine years serving in the Senate,” Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, a Wake County Democrat, said.

Others were even more blunt.

“History will remember the day fascism came to North Carolina,” Sen. Terence Everitt, a Wake County Democrat, said. “And y’all couldn’t wait to get on your knees.”

Republicans shut down debate on the map after Democrats made a variety of unsuccessful procedural efforts to kill the bill, Senate Bill 249. After the vote, each Democratic senator filed a “constitutional protest” which states, in the official legislative journal, their opposition to legislation “injurious to the public.”

NC enters national redistricting battle

Republicans repeatedly acknowledged they were heeding Trump’s call to redistrict ahead of the midterms, but Hise said he had not had any specific conversations with the White House about the map, nor was he aware of any other Republicans having such a conversation.

Senate leader Phil Berger has denied claims that he agreed to redistrict in exchange for an endorsement from Trump in his contentious primary campaign.

North Carolina joins Texas, California, Missouri and others in beginning a mid-decade redistricting push. Speaking in a committee hearing earlier in the day, Hise referred to the redistricting frenzy as a “political arms race that Republicans did not start.”

In fact, the national redistricting wars began when Republicans in Texas announced a Trump-backed plan to redraw the map to pick up five more seats for the GOP. Afterward, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, quickly announced a retaliatory redistricting plan to pick up Democratic seats in his state.

“Let’s just do away with the fiction that California has started this process — they have not,” Sen. Julie Mayfield, a Buncombe County Democrat, said in committee. “Everybody in the country knows that, and it is, frankly, shocking to me that the intelligent and thoughtful Republicans that I work with continue to perpetuate this fiction.”

North Carolina’s congressional map already heavily favors Republicans, resulting in a 10-4 split in the most recent election. The new map, however, could pick up one more seat for the GOP by redrawing the 1st Congressional District in northeastern North Carolina to include more Republican-leaning counties along the coast.

Trump endorsed the effort last week, writing on social media that it would give North Carolinians “an opportunity to election an additional MAGA Republican.”

North Carolina’s current congressional map is already being challenged in federal court for alleged racial gerrymandering. The new map undercuts the influence of Black voters in Eastern North Carolina even further in an area that has elected Black lawmakers for over 30 years.

“The goal here is to undermine the Black electorate, silence rural Black voices and secure seats not by merit — but by manipulation,” Sen. Kandie Smith, a Pitt County Democrat, said.

Hise said repeatedly that lawmakers did not use racial data when drafting the new map.

Opportunity for public comment?

Democrats also criticized legislative leaders for the map’s rapid and opaque rollout, with no in-person public forums being held for constituents in the affected districts.

“Why not follow that process? What’s the rush?” Sen. Mujtaba Mohammed, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, said. “Why do we have to see this map ... without an opportunity to have public hearings — especially in District 1 and District 3, where these people are directly impacted?”

Hise said he didn’t feel additional public comments were necessary, since some forums were held in 2023 when the map was last redrawn.

“There’s a lot of partisan comments that are in those comments, or how bad and evil we are for doing things,” he said.

While no forums have been held in the affected districts, lawmakers did accept public comment at Monday’s committee hearing. All of the comments were in opposition to the map and Trump’s influence on the state.

“I’ve come merely as a person of the cloth to ask you to remember that you will not have to stand before Trump, but you will have to stand before a greater throne,” the Rev. Marc Lavarin, senior pastor of the first Calvary Baptist Church in Durham, said. “What tragedy that would be, to gain Trump’s approval and lose your own soul.”

Greg Flynn, a former member of the Wake County Board of Elections, noted that over the weekend, Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself, wearing a crown, dropping excrement on No Kings protesters.

“This is the God you worship, the dictator you appease, the king you would pander to,” Flynn said. “... Are you monarchists? Are you not Republicans? Absolute power is corroding the Republic. Just because you can legally eat everything at a buffet, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”

Critics also said that North Carolina is a purple state, which Trump won by only 51% in 2024 and which elected seven Republicans and seven Democrats to Congress in the 2022 midterms. Despite that, this new map would likely give Republicans nearly 80% of the state’s representation in Congress.

Lawmakers are also accepting public comments through an online portal.

Legal challenges ahead

If enacted, the new map is likely to face legal challenges — though the avenues for doing so have narrowed significantly in recent years.

Both the U.S. Supreme Court and North Carolina Supreme Court have ruled that partisan gerrymandering is a political question that cannot be remedied by courts. This essentially gives lawmakers free rein to brazenly draw maps that favor their own party.

Critics of the map can still sue for racial gerrymandering, though a federal judge recently rejected one such case that challenged North Carolina’s state Senate map. The U.S. Supreme Court is also currently considering a case that would gut the section of the Voting Rights Act that is often used as the basis for racial gerrymandering claims.

_____

©2025 Raleigh News & Observer. Visit newsobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.