New map takes aim at state’s only swing sweat and gives Republicans chance to flip seat as part of Trump campaign
A federal three-judge panel on Wednesday allowed North Carolina to use a redrawn congressional map aimed at flipping a seat to Republicans as part of Donald Trump’s multi-state redistricting campaign ahead of the 2026 elections.
The new map takes aim at North Carolina’s only swing seat, currently held by Democrat Don Davis, an African American who represents more than 20 counties in the state’s north-east. The first district has been represented by Black members of Congress continuously for more than 30 years.
The three-judge panel denied the preliminary injunction requests after a hearing in Winston-Salem in mid-November. The day after the hearing, the same judges separately upheld several other redrawn US House districts that GOP state lawmakers initially enacted in 2023. They were first used in the 2024 elections, contributing to Republicans gaining three more congressional seats.
North Carolina is one of several states this year in which Trump has broken with more than a century of political tradition in directing the GOP to redraw maps in the middle of the decade – without courts requiring it – to avoid losing control of Congress in next year’s midterms.
Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House and impede Trump’s agenda. Besides North Carolina, Republican-led legislatures or commissions in Texas, Missouri, and Ohio all have adopted new districts designed to boost Republicans’ chances in next year’s elections.
In California, voters have countered by adopting new districts drawn to improve Democrats’ chances of winning more seats. And the Democratic-led Virginia general assembly also has taken a step toward redistricting with a proposed constitutional amendment.
Thus far, many lower courts have blocked Trump’s initiatives, only for the conservative majority on the US supreme court to put those rulings on hold. That includes a recent ruling in Texas, where a redrawn US House map is engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats.
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled general assembly gave final approval on 22 October to changes that could help preserve a slim Republican majority in the US House Democratic governor Josh Stein’s approval was not needed.
In a statement, North Carolina Republican Senate leader Phil Berger said the decision “thwarts the radical left’s latest attempt to circumvent the will of the people” in a state that voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
“As Democrat-run states like California do everything in their power to undermine President Trump’s administration and agenda, North Carolina Republicans went to work to protect the America First agenda,” Berger said.
The ruling covers two lawsuits.
In one filed by the state NAACP, Common Cause and voters, the plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction on First Amendment grounds. They say Republican lawmakers unconstitutionally targeted North Carolina’s “Black belt” instead of Democratic-voting areas with higher white populations because in 2024 they organized and voted for their preferred candidates and had sued over the 2023 configuration of the district.
In the second lawsuit, filed by voters, the case for a preliminary injunction rested in part on an argument that the use of five-year-old census data due to the mid-decade redrawing of districts violates the constitution, including the 14th amendment’s one-person, one-vote guarantee. Additionally, it says lawmakers relied on race in mapmaking in violation of the first and 14th amendments.
Republicans now hold 10 of the state’s 14 House seats — thanks to the 2023 map – and they hope to flip an 11th under the latest redistricting changes to the first district and the adjoining 3rd District. This effort happened in a state where Trump got 51% of the popular vote in 2024 and statewide elections are often close. Candidate filing in these and scores of other 2026 North Carolina races has been slated to begin 1 December.
