Protesters march on NC legislature as House lawmakers advance new congressional districts

Hundreds of protesters marched on the North Carolina legislature Tuesday as state House lawmakers advanced new congressional districts designed to help protect Republicans' slim majority in Congress.

They gathered at the state capitol for speeches decrying the maps, then marched several blocks to the state legislature, where dozens were eventually ejected from a committee hearing after launching into a chant calling the map racist.

Democrats, including state leaders who helped organize the protests, have opposed the GOP-led redistricting effort in part because it targets one of the state's few Black members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The redistricting was approved by the state Senate in a series of votes Monday and Tuesday before clearing key House committees along party lines. The full House is expected to debate the bill Wednesday. If the Republican-controlled chamber approves the plan, the districts become law.Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, a chairman on the Senate elections committee who drew the map, reiterated Tuesday that the intent was to maximize his party’s power in eastern North Carolina in an effort to protect the GOP’s edge in the U.S. House.

“The motivation behind this draw was to produce a new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to North Carolina's congressional delegation,” he said.

Republicans, who control both chambers of the North Carolina General Assembly, say they're acting under requests from Republican President Donald Trump to further gerrymander the state in favor of GOP candidates ahead of the 2026 elections, when Democrats have a chance to flip control of Congress, particularly the U.S. House.

Hise noted Trump’s request of Republican-controlled states to redraw congressional maps to help advance his agenda. “This map answers that call,” Hise said.

Republicans have also used the examples of Democratic-led states that are also gerrymandered and the outcome of the presidential election to justify their move. "Less than a year ago, the people of North Carolina voted for President Trump," state Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters Monday night.

North Carolina Democrats criticized Republican lawmakers, accusing them of circumventing normal democratic processes — and of doing Trump’s bidding, rather than listening to the voters of the state. They pointed to North Carolina’s long history of unconstitutional gerrymandering, saying this is the most egregious example yet.

“We're tired of congressional districts being shuffled every election because you'd rather pick your voters than have them pick you,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Alma Adams told Republican state lawmakers during a public comment portion of the House redistricting committee meeting Tuesday.

A U.S. House majority requires 218 seats in the chamber. Republicans currently hold 219 seats, and the president's political party almost always loses seats during midterm elections. North Carolina is represented by 14 members in the U.S. House. Ten of them are Republicans. The new map would give Republicans an advantage in 11 districts.

Adams, a former state lawmaker, noted how North Carolina had an even 7-7 split in its congressional map as recently as 2023, when Republicans threw out that map and replaced it with the current, more lopsided map. “You focus on stealing another congressional seat, after you've already stolen three, and rigging our democracy,” Adams said.

Map eliminates only competitive district

The map would eliminate the state's only competitive district — currently held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis — by carving up a part of eastern North Carolina with a large Black population. That strategy has drawn accusations of racism by Democratic opponents. The area has been represented by a Black Democrat since 1993, Davis being the latest.

The new map would all but guarantee a GOP victory in Davis’s district in any election, except for a major Democratic wave, according to data provided by Republican lawmakers. Trump in 2024 likely would've won more than 55% of the vote in the new version of the district, substantially higher than his statewide margin of victory. Trump won 50.9% of the vote in North Carolina in 2024.

To turn Davis' district red, the new map would swap some more diverse and politically competitive counties he represents, including Wilson and Wayne, with some more heavily conservative counties currently represented by Rep. Greg Murphy, a Greenville Republican. Murphy's district would still favor Republican candidates but would be more competitive in the future.

The map also carves Davis' house in Snow Hill out of his district, placing it in Murphy's district. Members of Congress don't have to live in their districts, so that wouldn't necessarily stop Davis from running for reelection.

Republican lawmakers said they drew the map without using racial data. Rather, they said, they relied on political data to draw the boundaries to their advantage.

Hise said Senators were careful not to use race in drawing the proposed districts to protect the states from lawsuits strictly to protect the state from lawsuits alleging illegal racial gerrymandering. The leaders of the Senate’s elections committee “do not believe the use of racial data would have been helpful in reaching any political or other legislative redistricting goal,” he said. “Any political consideration and line drawings have been influenced by political data, not racial data.”

Adams and others said Republicans didn’t need data to understand the racial implications of their actions.

“You're not just targeting a Democratic member,” Adams said. “That's obvious, and he is Black. You must know that you're trying to dismantle the district with the largest record of Black congressional leadership in North Carolina history, and that's just not right. … You should know your citizens, and you need to respect our wishes.”

Former U.S. Rep. Eva Clayton, a Democrat who in 1993 became the first Black person to represent North Carolina in Congress since 1901, also spoke out against the plan Tuesday. Clayton, 91, accused Republican lawmakers of silencing northeastern North Carolina, which she described as “a true swing district that reflects the diversity value of the state.”

“What you're doing today means that you are against democracy.” Clayton said. “But this redistricting strips the majority-Black counties from the 1st Congressional District and buried them in a heavily Republican area. That is an act of gerrymandering. You also remove one of the three Black representatives. Shame on you."

Davis — a second-term congressman and Air Force veteran who sits on the House Committee on Armed Services, among others — said Tuesday that the constituents who sent him to Washington, who also voted in favor of Trump, didn't ask for the redistricting.

“Since the start of this new term, my office has received 46,616 messages from constituents of different political parties, including those unaffiliated, expressing a range of opinions, views, and requests," Davis said in a statement. "Not a single one of them included a request for a new congressional map redrawing eastern North Carolina. Clearly, this new congressional map is beyond the pale."

Despite objections, North Carolina Democrats, including Gov. Josh Stein, are essentially powerless to stop the map from becoming law. It requires only a simple majority of votes since the governor isn't allowed to veto any new maps.

The top Democratic state House member, Rep. Robert Reives of Chatham County, told reporters Tuesday that this is just part of a larger trend of Republicans losing at the ballot box but then changing the rules. He referenced the ongoing GOP effort to take away the governor’s power over the state elections board, after Stein won the governor’s race in 2024.

“It’s the same thing they're doing with the maps,” Reives said. “Voters give you a result, you don't like the results, so you change everything out.”

Democrats are hoping their protests — whether in fiery remarks from lawmakers inside the chamber or from demonstrators outside — will help sway public opinion and eventually retake control of the state legislature or the state Supreme Court, their two best chances for reversing the state's pro-Republican gerrymanders.

Republicans reject call for reform

On Tuesday, Sen. Michael Garrett, D-Guilford, proposed changing the bill so that, instead of containing a new map, the bill would instead put a constitutional amendment on the ballot letting the state's voters decide if the legislature should lose some of its power to gerrymander the state.

Republicans shot down that proposal without debate or explanation, prompting a fiery speech from Garrett.

He spoke about recent protests against President Donald Trump, which he said were possibly the largest protests in America's history, as millions of people took to the streets. The state legislature is betraying every single one of those people by rigging the congressional map even more than it already is, Garrett said, and by bending to Trump's demand to deliver him more power.

"Future historians will look back at 2025 and ask: When democracy was openly under assault, when a president demanded states rigged their elections, when millions took to the streets, begging their leaders to protect their rights. What did those in power do?" Garrett said. "Did they stand with the people? Or did they stand with the power?"

After Garrett finished his speech Sen. Buck Newton, R-Wilson, proposed that the Senate prevent it from being formally recorded in the journal that the Senate uses as a record of what happened on each day. That effort succeeded, with every Republican voting to block Garrett's speech from being included in the official record.

Sen. Sophia Chitlik, D-Durham, asked Hise why he and other Republicans shot down Garrett's effort to let the people decide on an anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment.

Hise told her that the idea of taking politics out of redistricting is "a fairy tale" and that he supports Republicans having the maximum amount of power anyway.