Trump pressures Indiana GOP senators to pass new redistricting map
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President Donald Trump and allied groups are increasing pressure on Indiana Republican state senators who have resisted the president’s push for the red state to pass redistricting in Congress.
The Indiana Senate reconvened Monday, three days after the state House approved a new map backed by Trump that would create two more right-leaning congressional districts in the deep-red Midwestern state where the GOP now controls seven of Indiana’s nine seats in the U.S. House.
The action in Indiana followed Supreme Court Last week cleared the way for GOP-dominated Texas to use its newly redrawn map, creating five more right-leaning seats in the House of Representatives.
And it marks the latest frontier in Trump’s aggressive national campaign to reshape congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections; Republicans will likely face traditional political headwinds as they defend their razor-thin majority in the House.
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The GOP-controlled Indiana House passed along party lines a congressional redistricting plan put forward by President Donald Trump as it meets in the State House on Friday (seen in a 2017 file photo). (Michael Conroy/AP Photo)
While a supermajority in the Indiana House passed redistricting 57-41, with a dozen GOP lawmakers voting against the measure, the stakes are much higher this week when the state Senate, dominated by Republicans who have resisted Trump’s efforts to draw new congressional maps, meets later in the week to vote on the redistricting bill passed by the state House.
Indiana Senate Republican leader Rodric Bray has repeatedly said there isn’t enough support in the chamber to move forward on redistricting. The state Senate was split 19-19 in a proxy vote last month.
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“RINO State Senator Rodric Bray in DC, who doesn’t care about maintaining the Majority in the House of Representatives, is the root problem. Soon he will be a Fundamental Problem, as will the other politicians who support him in this stupidity,” Trump warned in a recent social media post.
“The issue of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps mid-cycle has received a lot of attention and is causing contention here in our state,” Bray said in announcing that the state Senate would reconvene to take action on redistricting.
The final vote by the State Senate will likely take place on Thursday.
President Donald Trump, seen pointing at the White House on Oct. 10, 2025, is taking aim at Indiana Republican lawmakers who do not support the president’s congressional redistricting push. (Kent Nishimura/Reuters)
Trump is bending over backwards in his attempt to make Indiana the latest Republican-controlled state to flip congressional maps. The President called state lawmakers, and Vice President J.D. Vance visited the state twice earlier this fall to discuss redistricting.
Trump took to social media twice this weekend to keep the pressure on.
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“Why would a REAL Republican vote against this when the Dems have been doing this for years? If they stupidly say no, remove them from office – They are not worthy – And I’ll be there to help! Thank you Indiana!” he warned.
In a separate post, Trump highlighted nine state Senate Republicans who have yet to announce their positions on the new map, saying they “need encouragement to make the right decision.” The President added, “The Indiana Senate must now pass this Map AS IS and get it to Governor Mike Braun’s desk ASAP to deliver a monumental Victory for Republicans in the “Hoosier State” and across the Nation.”
Trump also took some lashings at Braun, arguing that the governor “maybe wasn’t working as hard as he should have been to get the necessary votes.”
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Trump recently called Braun a “good guy” while warning that he “has to do something about this or he’ll be the only Governor, Republican or Democrat, who hasn’t done it.”
But Braun pointed to the president, praising his “commitment to standing with him on the critical issue of passing fair maps in Indiana to ensure the MAGA agenda is successful in Congress.”
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, seen speaking at a news conference on Oct. 30, 2025, supports President Donald Trump’s congressional push for redistricting. (Post-Tribune/Tribune News Service via Michael Gard/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, pro-Trump conservative outside political group Club for Growth Action and other groups have spent big money to run ads supporting redistricting in Indiana and, along with Turning Point Action, will target Republican state lawmakers who oppose the new map.
Club for Growth President David McIntosh sent a “FINAL WARNING” to Bray, warning that “failure to do so will mean you and the rest of the opposition will be defeated and removed from office at the next election.”
And Turning Point Action held a rally at the state capitol on Friday where Braun spoke and pressured Indiana Senate Republicans to support redistricting.
The president’s push in Indiana is part of a broad effort by Trump’s political team and the GOP to fill the party’s razor-thin majority in the House ahead of midterm elections in which the ruling party traditionally loses seats.
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“We must protect the Majority at all costs,” the President recently wrote.
By advocating a rare but unheard-of redistricting method in the middle of the decade, Trump aims to avoid what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats retook the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections.
Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio drew new maps as part of the president’s move. State lawmakers in GOP-dominated Florida took the first steps toward passing a redistricting measure this week, and right-leaning Kansas is also considering redrawing its map.
Last month, two federal judges in Texas dealt a blow to Trump and Republicans by ruling that the state could not use the newly drawn map in next year’s election. But on Thursday, the Supreme Court gave its resounding approval to the Lone Star State’s new congressional map.
Democrats are resisting.
A month ago, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that would temporarily derail the left-leaning state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated legislature.
This is expected to result in the creation of five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California; This would oppose the passage of a new map earlier this year that sought to create up to five right-leaning House seats in Texas.
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at an election night press conference at the California Democratic Party office in Sacramento, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. (Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo)
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is considered a Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, has led his state’s redistricting efforts.
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Illinois and Maryland, two blue states, and Virginia, where Democrats control the legislature, are also taking steps or seriously considering redistricting.
And in a blow to Republicans, a Utah district judge last month rejected a congressional district map drawn up by the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternative that would create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
