As previously reported, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) decided to pick a fight he couldn’t win—this time with North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger (R)—over redistricting. In typical fashion, Newsom tried to score cheap political points by amplifying a bogus story claiming Berger had promised President Trump a new congressional map in exchange for a primary endorsement ahead of Berger’s 2026 re-election fight.
In his response, Berger said that, “If we have to draw one more map this year, we will. That said, I’ve never spoken to President Trump about this or an endorsement.”
Some analysts noted at the time that Berger likely wanted to avoid another redistricting fight altogether, given how Democrats’ relentless “sue ‘til blue” strategy has kept both state legislative and congressional maps tied up in court for years. But then along came Newsom, eager to make headlines and too arrogant to know when to stay out of someone else’s backyard.
By poking the bear, Newsom may have done exactly what Democrats feared most — given Berger every reason to pick up the pen again.
North Carolina currently has 14 congressional districts, and Democrats hold just four of them — a painful reality for a party that once dominated the state’s politics. The big prize in the GOP’s sights is the First Congressional District, held by so-called “moderate” Democrat Don Davis. Republicans see it as their best pickup opportunity, and for good reason: the district has been trending red for years.
In 2024, Davis barely hung on, beating Trump-backed Republican Laurie Buckhout by just 6,000 votes — a razor-thin margin considering the Libertarian candidate, Tom Bailey, siphoned off 10,000 votes. The new map looks like this, with District One being lavender-colored on the top right:
In an X post, Berger noted the reality of how Democrats have jerry-rigged their states for “decades”:
Across the country, Democrat-run states have spent decades ensuring that Republicans would be drawn out of Congress. North Carolina Republicans will not sit quietly and watch Democrats continue to ignore the will of the people in an attempt to force their liberal agenda on our citizens. This new map respects the will of the North Carolina voters who sent President Trump to the White House three times.
As for what comes next, Democrat Gov. Josh Stein has no power to veto the map — meaning the next stop is the courtroom, as usual. Democrats will almost certainly roll out the same playbook they always do: cry “racial discrimination,” file a flurry of lawsuits, and hope a friendly judge bails them out.
But this time, that strategy may not hold up. Depending on how the Supreme Court rules in the ongoing Louisiana case involving the Voting Rights Act, Democrats’ go-to race-based arguments could lose much of their legal weight. That’s bad news for a party that’s relied on identity politics as its legal and political shield for decades.
Meanwhile, Republicans are already locking in their defense — and it’s a smart one. They’re not hiding behind semantics; they’re openly stating that the maps were redrawn for partisan, not racial, reasons:
The GOP rationale is likely an attempt to get ahead of lawsuits, said Chris Cooper, director of Western Carolina University’s Haire Institute for Public Policy.
Both North Carolina courts and the U.S. Supreme Court have ruled in recent years that they will not overturn maps on the basis of partisan gerrymandering but could if a map represents a racial gerrymander. (The U.S. Supreme Court may soon rule differently on racial gerrymanders.)
“If [North Carolina Republicans] can say that partisanship part out loud, I think they probably think that puts them on even better, firmer grounds,” Cooper said.
We’ll keep you posted as to how all this will play out in the coming months ahead of next year’s midterms, so keep an eye on the site.