Indiana Republicans have withstood immense pressure from President Donald Trump — and ignored threats on their lives — to defeat his plan to redraw the state’s congressional map, dealing him one of his most significant political setbacks since his return to the White House.
The GOP-controlled state Senate on Thursday voted down the map that gerrymandered two more safe GOP seats, undercutting the party’s chances at holding control of Congress next November.
The failed vote is the culmination of a brass-knuckled four-month pressure campaign from the White House on recalcitrant Indiana Republicans that included private meetings and public shaming from Trump, multiple visits from Vice President JD Vance, whip calls from Speaker Mike Johnson and veiled threats of withheld federal funds.
The members held out in spite of pipe bomb threats, unsolicited pizza deliveries to their homes, and swattings of their homes.
It’s a major setback for the president as well and a blow to his party’s hopes of gerrymandering their way to a House majority in 2028 — and it set off alarm bells with top MAGA allies.
“We have a huge problem,” said former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who simulcasted The War Room show live from a suburban Indianapolis hotel to boost support for redistricting. “People have to realize that we only have a couple opportunities. We’ve got a net five to 10 seats. If we don’t get a net 10 pickup in the redistricting wars, it’s going to be enormously hard, if not impossible, to hold the House.”
The failed vote saves the seats of two sitting members, Democratic Reps. André Carson and Frank Mrvan, whose districts had been carved up to become heavily Republican under the proposed map.
“I wouldn’t call it a setback,” Speaker Mike Johnson, who reversed his stance on getting involved in redistricting by whipping votes with calls to individual Indiana lawmakers in recent days, told reporters earlier in the day before the state Senate voted. “I’ve got to deal with whatever matters are finally presented in each state, and we’re going to win. We’ve got a better record to run on.” Johnson predicted earlier this week the map would pass.
The monthlong debate about whether to redraw maps exposed deep fissures within the party between the MAGA base and the more traditionalist, pre-Trumpian wings of the party. It also gained more attention nationally in the wake of the death of Charlie Kirk, who threatened primaries for Hoosier Republican elected officials who opposed it in the final weeks of his life.
Turning Point Action, the organization founded by Kirk, has promised to work with other Trump-alignedsuper PACs to spend tens of millions of dollars to primary the resistant Republicans who voted no. But the group could only turn out a couple hundred protestors recently ahead of this week’s vote.
A number of states closely watched Indiana for signs of where the redistricting arms race would turn next, but none more so than neighboring Illinois. The state’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, said earlier this week that Illinois “won’t stand idly by” if Indiana votes to redraw its congressional boundaries.
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