RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — 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 President Donald Trump’s multistate redistricting campaign ahead of the 2026 elections.
The new map takes aim at North Carolina’s only swing seat, currently held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis, an African American who represents more than 20 counties in the state’s northeast. The 1st 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 U.S. 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. The results have been mixed.
Many lower courts have blocked Trump’s initiatives, only for the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court to put those rulings on hold. That includes a recent ruling in Texas, where a redrawn U.S. House map is engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats.
Mattise reported from Nashville, Tennessee.
