The Trump administration is waging a redistricting war that would slash Democratic House seats in several states. It started in Texas, where a new map was passed in August, and now President Donald Trump is setting his sights on Indiana.
The Indiana House passed a new congressional map last week, but now it goes to the state Senate, where Republicans are split on how to vote. Trump and US House Speaker Mike Johnson are calling the state senators individually and trying to convince them to vote yes, to help Republicans secure a majority in next year’s midterm elections. However, there is a growing sentiment in Indiana that DC lawmakers should stay out of local politics. And that maybe the MAGA maximalist approach isn’t filtering down to the state level.
Does this mean Trump’s influence is waning? Today, Explained co-host Astead Herndon put that question and others about the redistricting efforts to Adam Wren, Politico’s national politics correspondent.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
So the new map will go to the state Senate next where there seems to be some drama. Is this a certainty that this new map passes? And if not, what’s the holdup?
Not at all. A few weeks ago, the Indiana Senate took a test vote on this, and the state senate is 50 people, 40 Republicans, and they deadlocked 19 to 19 on whether or not to pass this. They were seven votes short of a majority. Senate Republicans in Indiana are a much more traditional kind of Republican, a pre-Trump Republican Party. They’re influenced more by former Vice President Mike Pence and former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. And so while Indiana is a Trump state, it’s not really a MAGA state. We’re seeing divisions in the Trump party that really could kind of foreshadow where things are headed in 2028.
Who are some of the key players who matter most in determining whether the Senate Republicans will pass the new map?
The person who matters most is Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray. He’s a Republican who’s been in office almost a decade, and he’s a third-generation Republican lawmaker. He has a really institutional-minded approach, and he thinks the credibility of the Indiana Senate is on the line, and to redistrict mid-cycle to him is an anathema.
Then Governor Mike Braun. He is a MAGA Republican who owes his political career entirely to Trump. Braun was in a 2018 three-way Senate Republican primary to go up against former Senator Joe Donnelly. Trump endorsed him in that primary and elevated him, and he won. Then Braun found himself in another Republican gubernatorial primary last year, and Trump endorsed him again, and he won. Trump has essentially posted the Truth Social that Mike Braun owes him one on this. He and Trump are threatening to primary [opponents of the bill]. Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point, they just announced last Friday: They’re going to spend eight figures to primary any Indiana Senate Republican who votes against this this week.
When you mentioned the Senate Republicans that are holding firm, can you take me through their logic?
The argument from Trump and the White House is Joe Biden’s census — it wasn’t his census, by the way; it was run by President Donald Trump — [that] Joe Biden’s census got it wrong. [They say] it overcounted people and it yielded unfair maps.
“There’s a sense of fairness that pervades Indiana politics among Republicans and Democrats alike, and they think that this is an unfair move.”
And what these Senate Republicans are saying is, wait a second: If the 2020 census was unfair, how is it that we only need to change the congressional maps and not our own Senate maps that are smaller than those congressional districts? It sort of gives up the argument here, and it tells the truth that this is really about protecting the Republican majority in Congress alone.
How has Trump reacted to this resistance from state Republican lawmakers?
He posted on Truth Social over the weekend: How would any real Republican oppose these maps? The question embedded in that is interesting because for the last decade in American politics, Trump has said that he’s the one who defines what MAGA is. But what we’re seeing here are sort of ideological cleavages that suggest that the MAGA brand hasn’t really filtered down to the state legislative level yet, even after 10 years, in a way that could point to a Trump-free future where the Republican Party does change and does morph and does evolve beyond its current brand nationally.
How do we think the vote is going to go this week?
It’s a knife’s edge here. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen. The White House is watching closely. There are a group of about 10 Republican senators who have not publicly announced where they’re at. Only one Republican elected official who’s voting on these new maps has held an actual town hall with voters in their own district. None of the others have gone public yet. And that Republican, Greg Goode, has been on the receiving end of a swatting attempt. About a dozen Senate Republicans have been either swatted or faced with threats of pipe bombs after President Donald Trump posted their names on Truth Social.
It’s an incredible precedent that’s going to be set in American politics this week, because if there’s only one or two votes that it passes by, one of the takeaways could be that threats of violence work to shape our politics going forward.
Is there any sense of where the Republican voters are?
Public poll after public poll commissioned in Indiana show that this is remarkably unpopular, even among Trump’s own voters. There’s a sense of fairness that pervades Indiana politics among Republicans and Democrats alike, and they think that this is an unfair move — to have this power in Washington, DC coming to Indiana and trying to inject something on these small towns that a lot of voters just don’t want.
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