North Carolina Republicans are poised to deliver another victory for Donald Trump’s redistricting battle

By Fredreka Schouten, Dianne Gallagher, CNN

(CNN) — A full-scale redistricting battle is raging across the country – largely at President Donald Trump’s behest – with Republican-controlled legislatures in multiple states facing increasing calls from the president and his allies to eke out additional GOP seats to fortify the party’s majority in the US House.

In North Carolina, the Republicans who control the legislature on Monday moved quickly to advance a new congressional map, joining a growing list of states carrying out redistricting ahead of next year’s midterm elections. The state’s Senate is slated to vote on the map Tuesday morning and send it to the House.

The proposed map targets the US House district currently represented by Democratic Rep. Don Davis and aims to give Republicans the advantage in 11 out of 14 House seats from North Carolina, up from the current 10.

The Tar Heel State is the latest Republican-controlled state to begin work on a once-rare, mid-decade redistricting. The president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections, and Democrats need to flip just a handful of seats to take control of the House after next year’s congressional elections.

North Carolina Sen. Ralph Hise, a Republican who is helping oversee the map-drawing, acknowledged the high stakes in stark terms Monday.

“The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular: draw a new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to the congressional delegation,” he said during a meeting of a Senate election committee Monday. If Democrats take control of the House, they will “torpedo President Trump’s agenda,” Hise added.

Hise said the president “has called on Republican controlled states across the country to fight fire with fire. This map answers that call.”

Democrats called the map – and Trump’s moves around the country – a brazen power grab.

Democratic state Sen. Val Applewhite said Republican lawmakers were going along with Trump’s “coordinated national effort to reshape this country’s political map in his image to guarantee one thing: that Donald Trump and only Donald Trump remains in power.”

State-by-state battle

Legislators in deep-red Texas kicked off the political arms race this year with a map that seeks to send five more Republicans to Congress. Missouri Republicans also have drawn new lines aimed at adding an additional GOP member to the state’s congressional delegation. Both face court challenges, and activists in Missouri are seeking to overturn the map through a petition drive.

So far, the biggest pushback from Democrats comes from California, which launched a redistricting effort in response to Texas. A multimillion-dollar advertising and get-out-the vote campaign now is underway to persuade voters to temporarily override congressional maps drawn by an independent commission next month and create as many as five new US House seats for Democrats.

Republicans have a clear advantage over Democrats in the number of states that could redraw maps. The GOP holds control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature in 23 states, compared to Democrats’ 15.

Lawmakers in other Republican states also are contemplating new maps, including Kansas, where legislators have approved $460,000 to fund a special session that would target the lone Democrat representing the state in Washington, four-term Rep. Sharice Davids. Two-thirds of the state House and Senate must agree to call a special session.

In Indiana, where Republicans hold a 7-2 edge in the US House, the White House has repeatedly urged the GOP lawmakers in the majority in the state legislature to target at least one of the Democratic-held seats. Vice President JD Vance has twice visited the state to lobby legislators.

Two other Republican-controlled states, Ohio and Utah, also are in throes of redistricting battles that began before Trump took office.

In Utah, a judge found that an existing map hadn’t followed guidelines imposed by a citizen ballot measure. Earlier this month, the GOP-dominated legislature passed a new congressional map that could give Democrats a slim chance of breaking the GOP’s monopoly on the state’s congressional delegation.

That map needs to go back before the judge for her approval, with a final decision expected in early November. At the same time, Republicans in the state have launched a signature-gathering petition in the hopes of blocking the new map.

In Ohio, the redrawing of its congressional districts is an outgrowth of a state law that requires maps approved without bipartisan support be redrawn after four years. Crafting new maps will ultimately fall to the Republican-controlled General Assembly, likely next month.

The top Democrat in the US House, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, is weighing an effort to counter Republicans in Ohio. If the map is passed along partisan lines, state law allows a voter referendum that could invalidate the map, and Jeffries is prepared to go all-in to support that effort — including raising money, according to a person familiar with his planning who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose internal deliberations.

Democratic fury in North Carolina

Republicans in North Carolina have moved quickly to accede to Trump’s wishes. Under North Carolina law, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein does not have veto power over the maps.

State lawmakers began working on a map last week, and a Senate elections committee took it up publicly for the first time on Monday morning.

The president has praised the map, writing last week on Truth Social that the map “would give the fantastic people of North Carolina the opportunity to elect an additional MAGA Republican in the 2026 Midterm Elections, which would be A HUGE VICTORY for our America First Agenda, not just in North Carolina, but across our Nation.”

Davis’ district representing a swath of eastern North Carolina is the only competitive US House seat remaining in North Carolina after previous rounds of redistricting.

Trump won the district last November even as Davis won a second term by less than two percentage points. The new map makes the district more favorable to Republicans by swapping out several counties with more conservative communities on the coast.

During debate Monday, some North Carolina Republicans complained that the actions in California required them to respond. “This is a political arms race that Republicans did not start,” Hise said, pointing for former President Barack Obama’s support of the California redistricting initiative.

But Democratic state lawmakers along with multiple members of the public who spoke during the elections committee meeting denounced the map.

“California hasn’t redistricted a thing,” Mark Swallow of Democracy Out Loud, a liberal activist group, said during the public comment period Monday in the Senate committee meeting. “What they’ve done is respond to Texas, which started this fiasco for our country, and put an initiative on the ballot to ask Californians if they should be redistricted.”

“You should do the same,” he told legislators, “but I doubt that you will because you know that North Carolinians will never approve this scheme. So, you are liars and cheats. That’s what this boils down to. You’re liars and cheats.”

During Senate floor debate Monday afternoon, Democratic state Sen. Lisa Grafstein, called the map “DEI for Republicans” in a sarcastic reference to the diversity, equity and inclusion programs often derided by Trump.

“It is beyond dispute that Republicans started the fire,” she said. “They poured the gasoline. They lit the match. They are watching it burn, and they are bragging about it.”

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CNN’s Ethan Cohen contributed to this report.