Indianapolis
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The Indiana Senate on Thursday voted down a plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts to produce two more GOP-friendly seats, rejecting President Donald Trump’s months-long marketing campaign to stress the Republican supermajority within the deep-red state to bend to his will.
The 31-19 vote noticed 21 Republicans be a part of 10 Democrats in voting down the proposed map that will have positioned the GOP, which at present holds seven of Indiana’s 9 US House seats, for a sweep of all 9 seats in subsequent yr’s midterm elections.
The vote comes with important ramifications for the 2026 midterm elections as some Democratic- and Republican-led states intention to redraw their US House maps beforehand. Not gaining two seats limits the positive aspects Republicans are looking for to make within the redistricting arms race that Trump launched.
Indiana’s rejection additionally revealed the boundaries of Trump’s political would possibly. The Trump administration dispatched Vice President JD Vance to Indiana for 2 visits and invited state lawmakers to the White House as a part of their lobbying effort. Trump, Vance, and Republican allies threatened to run major challengers in opposition to senators who voted no.
Republican Sen. Greg Goode criticized “over-the-top pressure from inside the Statehouse and outside,” in addition to “threats of violence, acts of violence.” Goode was one in all a number of lawmakers who faced swatting attempts final month hours after Trump posted on social media calling him a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only.”
“Whether we realize it or not, whether we accept it or not, the forces that define this vitriolic political affairs in places outside of Indiana have been gradually and now very blatantly infiltrated the political affairs in Indiana,” Goode mentioned Thursday earlier than voting no.
Goode mentioned that the “overwhelming feedback” from constituents in his Terre Haute-based district was to oppose the redistricting effort. He additionally raised the chance that the brand new maps may “politically backfire” in opposition to Republicans by weakening their help in some districts.
A professional-redistricting Republican, Sen. Liz Brown, mentioned that passing new maps “actually is about trying to predetermine political outcomes — absolutely. It’s a privilege policy-makers have.”
“The only way we can bolster Republican voices in Congress is to do this,” Brown mentioned.
The state’s two legislative leaders, House Speaker Todd Huston and Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, beforehand met with Trump. As it turned clear the Indiana House would vote for the brand new map however that the Senate’s consequence was unsure, Trump led a weeks-long stress marketing campaign in opposition to Bray, threatening to again major opponents in opposition to him and different reluctant Republican senators in 2026 and 2028.
His allies, together with the Club for Growth, Turning Point USA and a brand new group led by veteran Indiana Republican operative Marty Obst and several other veterans of Trump’s presidential campaigns, aired ads, held a statehouse rally and took to social media to vow to unseat senators who broke with the president’s needs.
Gov. Mike Braun, who’s finishing his first yr in workplace, additionally publicly backed Trump’s redistricting push and floated the potential for a problem to Bray’s Senate management submit, after Bray insisted final month that the chamber didn’t have sufficient votes to move new maps.
“Anybody that votes against Redistricting, and the SUCCESS of the Republican Party in D.C., will be, I am sure, met with a MAGA Primary in the Spring,” Trump wrote in a prolonged Truth Social submit on Wednesday evening, forward of the Indiana Senate vote. He focused Bray, saying the state Senate chief is “either a bad guy, or a very stupid one!”
“Rod Bray and his friends won’t be in Politics for long, and I will do everything within my power to make sure that they will not hurt the Republican Party, and our Country, again,” Trump wrote. “One of my favorite States, Indiana, will be the only State in the Union to turn the Republican Party down!”
Ahead of the vote Thursday, Trump’s allies escalated their claims that they may marketing campaign in opposition to Indiana Senate Republicans who opposed redistricting.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, mentioned: “If Indiana Republicans side with these Never Trumpers to do the dirty work of Democrats, I’ll be spending a lot of time in Indiana next year campaigning against every single one of them.”
Vance focused Bray by identify, claiming the Senate chief had advised the White House he wouldn’t combat in opposition to redistricting whereas privately working to show his caucus in opposition to the brand new maps.
“That level of dishonesty cannot be rewarded, and the Indiana GOP needs to choose a side,” Vance mentioned.
But senators refusing to vote for the map argued their constituents didn’t need redistricting – and dozens of Indiana residents who spoke to NCS mentioned they agreed.
Bray, Braun and several other senators were swatted or faced other threats amid the rising stress over the controversy. Law enforcement officers haven’t linked the threats to any group or marketing campaign.