The Battleground State Where Democrats Want DOGE Cuts to Come Into Play

When the Department of Government Efficiency started slashing federal grants, North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District was the hardest hit in the country.

The solidly Democratic district in the Raleigh-Durham area is home to two tier-one research universities, 11,000 federal workers and the largest research park in the country. As of May 2025, when Elon Musk left DOGE, the district had lost 186 federal grants, according to a tracker from the Center for American Progress.

The area is still reeling from the millions in lost federal funds. And those impacted said the cuts could play a role in the midterms, especially with the state home to one of the most closely watched Senate races of 2026.

“If you care about North Carolina as a purple state and as a state that could swing presidential elections, the House makeup, and the Senate makeup, these conversations that we’re having about the people who have lost their jobs are going to be economic stories,” said Brianna Clarke-Schwelm, executive director of the North Carolina Global Health Alliance. “Next year, people aren’t necessarily going to be talking about was it USAID or was it some other federal institution. They’re going to be talking about how many people don’t have jobs.”

Democrats in Virginia specifically cited the chaos surrounding DOGE cuts as one reason they did so well in November, as did labor unions who told NOTUS they saw increased engagement during the off-year election cycle.

It’s unlikely that DOGE cuts in North Carolina will be as salient an issue as they were in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, but they may be another reason voters are growing dissatisfied with Trump, said Thomas Mills, a former Democratic political consultant and election watcher in the state.

“You’re going to have motivated Democrats who are the people that are getting impacted by these — they are going to come out,” Mills said. “The biggest single driver of Democratic turnout is going to be Donald Trump and his policies.”

Rep. Valerie Foushee, who represents North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, said she doesn’t think the administration’s claim, that is rooting out waste and fraud, will land well in her district.

“You’re solving a problem that doesn’t exist, and in so doing, you’re creating a bigger problem by way of taking away people’s jobs, taking away people’s livelihoods and destroying local economies, even as you are destroying the national economy,” she told NOTUS.

RTI International, an independent scientific research institute in the Research Triangle Park, bore the brunt of the cuts, according to a report by Harris Search Associates, a consultancy for the higher education and research sectors. The firm’s report found that DOGE cuts cost RTI about $1 billion and forced the company to lay off one-third of its workforce.

Most of the grants stripped from RTI International came from the now dismantled United States Agency for International Development. Others came from NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health.

“RTI is proud to partner with the current Administration in scientific and technical areas that are aligned with our mission,” Tim J. Gabel, president and CEO at RTI International, told NOTUS in an emailed statement.

He said that RTI is actively changing its business.

“This means expanding beyond our traditional federal portfolio into high-growth commercial sectors such as health, energy, and food/agriculture,” Gabel said.

The administration’s decision to shutter USAID had direct impacts in the battleground state.

North Carolina is the fourth-highest recipient of USAID awards, according to the NC Global Health Alliance. The state received 153 active awards across 15 organizations from the agency. Nine of those went to the 4th District. Since January, North Carolina institutions have lost $3 billion in future USAID-funded awards.

“That was a massive hit to our institutions. We have major implementing partners here that employed thousands of people and impacted millions of lives around the world,” said Clarke-Schwelm.

FHI 360, a global health nonprofit in the Research Triangle Park, lost about half its revenue and laid off more than a quarter of its workforce, including 144 workers in North Carolina, after Trump dismantled USAID.

The alliance estimates that at least 625 North Carolinians lost their jobs due to the cuts.

Leonardo Williams, the Democratic mayor of Durham, called DOGE cuts a “self-inflicted wound.” He said that he’s never seen more middle-class people apply for unemployment.

“They’re basically not only dismantling some of these companies, they’re dismantling households. That’s what I see at the ground level in District 4,” he said. “I see less people shopping at the grocery stores. I see less people opting in to have their child at daycare. I see more daycares closing.”

He said voters in Durham and District 4 will consider Trump’s push to downsize government and promote fiscal responsibility, led by billionaire Elon Musk, to be “out of touch.”

“I think people are going to remember that in the midterms. I’m damn going to do my part to make sure they know about it,” Williams said.

The campaign arm for Senate Republicans, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, did not respond to a request for comment.

Universities also suffered cuts to their operations. University of North Carolina atChapel Hill has lost $38.4 million in federal grants since Trump took office, reported The Daily Tar Heel. Most of those awards came from the National Institutes of Health. At Duke University, the federal government terminated or froze more than $135 million in grants.

Mills said that Republicans may struggle to convince voters that blocking money from flowing into the state and downsizing the federal workforce will benefit them.

“A lot of this new populist Republican base is going to be motivated by things that the government can do for them, and that’s not historically where Republicans have been,” Mills said. “It makes it difficult to say, ‘We cut the size of the government, and somehow it benefited you.’”