Ashley Lopez

So this is an open seat in the Senate being vacated by Tom Tillis.

Tillis has been one of the few elected Republicans in Congress who has openly criticized Trump.

In response, Trump had threatened to get someone to primary Tillis, but the senator chose to retire instead, which I mean, at this point has become a common story in the Trump era.

So this has presented Democrats with a decent shot of flipping a Republican seat.

The frontrunner is former Governor Roy Cooper.

He's got a lot of name recognition and has proved he can win statewide multiple times.

The frontrunner for Republicans is former RNC Chairman Michael Watley.

The last time a Democrat won a Senate seat in the state was in 2008.

So it's been a while.

But if Democrats want to win back power in the Senate, this is one of their better shots as well as a must win for them.

With these latest lawsuits, the Justice Department is now suing a total of 29 states and the District of Columbia over voter data.

Federal officials are asking these states, which now include Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and New Jersey, to turn over complete and unredacted voter files.

These files include information such as driver's license numbers as well as partial social security numbers.

State officials have said that federal privacy laws prohibit them from giving that information over to federal officials.

Until now, the Trump administration had only sued states that he lost during the 2020 election, but this latest group of lawsuits includes some states that did go his way that year.

Ashley Lopez, NPR News.

And I'm Ashley Lopez.

I cover politics.

Yeah.

So basically what we found is that this redistricting fight that was started by Trump when he asked Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional map so that there were more favorable seats for Republicans in the state.