North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature will vote next week on redrawing the state’s House district map, Republican legislative leaders announced on Oct. 13, teeing up the Tar Heel state to join several others that have launched redistricting efforts after President Donald Trump’s call earlier this year to secure more congressional seats for his party.
Multiple states, set off by Texas, have approved or begun efforts to redraw their House maps mid-decade and mid-cycle as both Republicans and Democrats vie for control of Congress next year. California is pushing forward with a ballot proposition to redraw its maps in response to the GOP-led efforts in Texas, and multiple other states are joining the fray with similar redistricting efforts.
Partisan redistricting is often referred to by critics as gerrymandering, or the process of purposefully drawing districts to benefit one political party over another.
“We’re stepping into this redistricting battle because California and the radical left are attempting to rig the system to handpick who runs Congress,” North Carolina House Redistricting Chairmen Brenden Jones (R) and Hugh Blackwell (R) said in the statement. “President Trump has called on us to fight back, and North Carolina stands ready to level the playing field.”
Phil Berger (R), who leads North Carolina’s Senate, said, “We are doing everything we can to protect President Trump’s agenda.”
“Picking up where Texas left off, we will hold votes in our October session to redraw North Carolina’s congressional map to ensure [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom doesn’t decide the congressional majority,” Berger said in the statement.
Californians will ultimately decide via voting on Proposition 50 if their state will adopt a new House district map, which was redrawn by Democrats in the state’s legislature after Newsom, a Democrat, vowed to retaliate against the Republican-led effort in Texas.
Trump in July told reporters at the White House that Republicans could pick up five seats from redrawing Texas’s maps and possibly “three or four or five” if other states followed suit.
The Department of Justice had stated ahead of Texas’s redistricting efforts that the targeted Democratic seats in the Lone Star State were unconstitutional “coalition districts” that violated the Voting Rights Act and 14th Amendments. Those claims were not raised as Missouri—and now North Carolina—also push forward with redistricting to retaliate against Newsom’s plan in California.
The Biden administration had previously sued Texas in 2021, alleging that the state’s 2021 district map redrawing unconstitutionally discriminated against black and Latino voters, a suit in which the Trump-led Justice Department withdrew itself as a plaintiff earlier this year.
North Carolina Republicans previously redrew the map in 2023, after which they won 10 of the state’s 14 House seats in the 2024 elections. Under the state’s previous map used in 2022, North Carolina’s congressional delegation was split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, 7–7.
There is one seat remaining that is seen as a true swing district and could be a pickup opportunity for the GOP: the 1st District, currently represented by Rep. Don Davis (D-N.C.), who won his first reelection campaign last year by less than 2 percentage points.
“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’re failing you, the voters,” Stein said. “I will always fight for you because the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.”
In their joint statement, Jones and Blackwell said “North Carolina will not stand by while [Democrats] attempt to stack the deck,” referring to the redistricting efforts in California.
“As we head into another round of elections shaped by the 2020 census maps, the stakes couldn’t be clearer: If we don’t stop this arms race now, future elections won’t just be contested. They’ll be meaningless,” Harrison wrote.
He said Republicans have presented their redistricting efforts as “just routine housekeeping” and blamed his party for doing the same in the past.
“But let’s call it what it is: politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians. That’s not democracy—it’s rigging the game,” Harrison added.
