Princeville, North Carolina — On a single-lane road in Eastern North Carolina, surrounded by farmland, the congregation at Mark Chapel Baptist Church listens to a sermon on faith — and the importance of their vote as part of the “Black Belt,” a stretch of majority-Black congressional districts in the South. 

The 1st Congressional District hasn’t elected a Republican since 1883, and African Americans have represented the district since 1992, but this year, that could change.

Residents here find themselves in a new political reality. The key swing state has 16 electoral votes at stake, and though a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won the state since 2008, the margins for Republicans have diminished in the past two elections. Donald Trump won in 2016 by 3.6 points and in 2020, just eked out a win over Joe Biden by 1.3 points. The First District has the state’s only competitive congressional race after North Carolina’s redistricting. 

Currently, there are seven Democrats and seven Republicans in North Carolina’s congressional delegation. The new map is expected to result in 10 Republicans and three Democrats, with the 1st District a tossup, according to the Cook Political Report.

On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited East Carolina University in Pitt County, which was redistricted out of the Democratic-leaning 1st Congressional District to the 3rd Congressional District, which is expected to elect a Republican. The 1st District’s incumbent Democratic Rep. Don Davis, spoke shortly before Harris took the stage.

“The young man who’s now in the 1st Congressional District went in on the old map,” said former Rep. Eva Clayton, who used to represent the district. “Now he’s doing the new map, and that’s — he’s having some challenges.”

The 1st Congressional District is home to some of the oldest Black communities in the U.S. and a centuries-long legacy of political organizing. Princeville is the oldest town chartered by African Americans in the country, formed at the end of the Civil War. In nearby Warren County, a 1982 protest is credited with originating the term “environmental justice.” The district is also home to Soul City, a utopian project inspired by the 1970s civil rights movement. 

Princeville has suffered frequent flooding that has threatened residents for decades. One of Mayor Bobbie Jones’ biggest challenges has been protecting the historic town from increasingly severe flooding.

“It makes me feel disenchanted, frustrated, but by the same token, it’s the hand that we’ve been dealt,” Jones told CBS News. “There’s nothing we can do about that outside of moving, and that’s not an option.”

Princeville has benefited from the Biden administration’s focus on climate infrastructure. In 2024, the town was awarded $11 million to build flood reduction infrastructure through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The funding is also part of President Biden’s Justice40 initiative, which aims to give 40%  of federal climate grants to disadvantaged communities like Princeville.

And this year, Jones is seeing his community invigorated in ways he hasn’t seen in over a decade.

“I’m excited to see the enthusiasm from our young people who want to vote and who are talking about voting. I haven’t heard this a lot lately, since President Obama,” Jones told CBS News.

In nearby Warren County, community leaders focus on teaching younger generations about historical political movements that began in their backyards. Rev. Bill Kearney’s family lived next to a landfill where the federal government dumped PCB chemicals. In the 1980s, protesters gathered at the nearby Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church to march to the landfill to protest the adverse effects of dumping toxic soil in a majority-Black community. Five hundred people were arrested, and the protest is considered to be the beginning of environmental justice as a movement. 

“They’re about two or three generations moved from that, and they’re looking somewhere else for heroes, and we got so many heroes right here who are doing great things,” Kearney told CBS News. 

The PCB protests also propelled change in race relations. Wayne Mosely, who is White, marched in the protests and believes it changed the political landscape of the county.

“You rarely saw Blacks and Whites socializing together, but this is the first time I had ever known Blacks and Whites to eat together, join hands, march together, sing together,” he told CBS News. 

He believes the protests represented a turning point, when the predominantly Black county began electing more Black elected officials, including Clayton.

Clayton, the first Black woman elected to Congress from North Carolina, was elected in 1992. She believes turnout in the Black Belt’s rural Black communities, which have been overlooked by Democratic campaigns in the past, is key to winning both the1st District and the state for a Democratic presidential candidate. 

“You can’t do it just on the urban front,” she said. “You should not ignore that the Blacks who are in rural areas are there.”

Across rural Eastern North Carolina, organizations, like Woke Vote, a nonprofit working to increase voter turnout and community engagement in politics, are working to get out the vote. 

One Sunday this summer, the group paid a visit to Mark Chapel Baptist Church to speak to the community. Tilda Whitaker-Bailey, Edgecombe County Lead at Woke Vote, helped register voters and inform them about the identification they’ll need to vote and a plan to get to the polls. 

“They are waking up to the fact that they need to get involved,” she said. “They need to do something to change those numbers. They are aware that they haven’t shown up well because they haven’t gotten the results that they want to see.”

As a result, church leaders have been urging their congregants to register. Some, like Pastor Douglas Leonard at Mark Chapel, are coordinating transportation. 

“We just want to educate folk on the importance of voting, how significant it is, and why we as people of color should always go to the polls,” he told CBS News. “So many of our ancestors even died that we will have the right to vote, and we don’t want their death to be in vain.”

Former President Donald Trump says he’s not commenting on the question of whether he’s spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin since he left office, after journalist Bob Woodward reported in his new book that the former president has had as many as seven conversations with the Russian leader.

At the Economic Club of Chicago Tuesday, Trump, in a conversation with Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, was asked whether he’d spoken with Putin. Trump first said he had no comment before going on to defend any conversation with Putin, if it had occurred.

“Well, I don’t comment on that, but I will tell you that, if I did, it’s a smart thing,” Trump said. “If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, in terms of a country. He’s got 2,000 nuclear weapons, and so do we. China has a lot less, but they’ll catch us within five years. If I have a relationship, I don’t talk about, I don’t talk about —.”

“— That sounds like you talk to him,” Micklethwaite said. 

“No, I don’t talk about that,” Trump replied. “I don’t ever say it, but I can tell you what, Russia has never had a president that they respect so much.”

Micklethwait asked Trump about his economic plans, but he received no detailed answers. He challenged Trump on the feasibility of the high tariffs he talks about on the campaign trail, noting that he has talked about tariffs as high as 100% or 200% “on things you don’t really like,” as well as 10%-20% for other countries. “That is going to have a serious effect on the overall economy,” Micklethwait said, adding, “the overall effect could be massive.”

“I agree — it’s going to have a massive effect, positive effect,” Trump replied, before telling Micklethwait, “It must be hard for you to, you know, spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative, and then have somebody explain to you that you’re totally wrong.”

Micklethwait also confronted Trump with an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that estimated his economic plan would cost twice Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan. Trump dismissed criticism of his economic plan by saying his plan is about “growth” and claiming Harris has “got no growth, whatsoever.” 

Asked if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power, Trump responded, “I went to Florida, and you had a very peaceful transfer.” And Trump, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021 rioting, claimed, “Not one of those people had a gun. Nobody was killed, except for Ashli Babbitt. She was killed. She was killed. She was shot in the head by a policeman … So, I think we should be allowed to disagree on that.” He went on at length, telling Micklethwait that “lot of strange things happened there, a lot of strange things with people being waved into the Capitol by police, with people screaming, ‘Go in’ with that never got into trouble.” He did not answer the question.

After Georgia voters began heading to the polls Tuesday for the first day of early voting in the state, a judge enjoined election officials from moving forward with a controversial new rule that would require the hand counting of ballots after polls close on Nov. 5.

The hand count rule and others were passed in September by the five-person State Election Board on a 3-2 vote, pushed through by a trio of supporters of former President Donald Trump. The rule would require precinct poll managers and poll officers to unseal ballot boxes and count the ballots by hand individually to ensure the tallies match the machine-counted ballot totals.

Multiple lawsuits were filed by local and national officials, and the new rules drew criticisms from members of both parties, including Georgia’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state. 

The election board in Cobb County asked a judge to strike down the new rules, which also include other new requirements for the ballot counting process.

Judge Robert McBurney wrote Tuesday that “the hand count rule is too much, too late.” McBurney wrote that with Election Day around the corner, “there are no guidelines or training tools for the implementation” of the rule.

The Cobb County board argued in its complaint that the new rules would “substantially alter Georgia’s election procedures on the eve of” the election. During a hearing on Tuesday, an attorney for the board asked for a temporary restraining order, saying it was too late to adequately adjust staffing and training. He added that such rules are usually implemented in years without major elections.

Lawyers arguing for the Cobb County board pointed to a Sept. 19 memorandum in which Georgia’s attorney general concluded that changing rules so close to an election could “result in voter confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls.”

An attorney arguing for the state board told McBurney that and other concerns amounted to a “hypothetical, on top of conjectures, on top of speculation.”

The state board argued on Tuesday that it would not be difficult to train election workers for the new rules.

Democrats quickly lauded the decision Tuesday.

“From the beginning, this rule was an effort to delay election results to sow doubt in the outcome, and our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision to block it. We will continue fighting to ensure that voters can cast their ballot knowing it will count,” said Vice President Kamala Harris’ Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks, Democratic National Committee co-executive director Monica Guardiola and Rep. Nikema Williams, who is chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, in a joint statement.

It’s a busy week of election cases for McBurney, who on Monday issued a ruling concluding that election officials are required under Georgia law to certify election results even if they have concerns about fraud. He wrote that if such concerns arise, their job is to forward those concerns to law enforcement.

McBurney, who presided over the Georgia special purpose grand jury that in 2023 voted to recommend Trump be indicted for seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 results, is also overseeing a similar case brought by the national and state Democratic parties challenging the rules.

A hearing in that case is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.