President Trump renewed his rage at Rod Bray, the leader of the GOP-controlled Indiana State Senate, after the body rejected the gerrymandered congressional map he demanded the state concoct.
“Republicans in the Indiana State Senate, who voted against a Majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, should be ashamed of themselves,” wrote Trump, 79, at 12:52 a.m. Saturday on Truth Social. “Headed by a total loser named Rod Bray, every one of these people should be ‘primaried,’ and I will be there to help! Indiana, which I won big, is the only state in the Union to do this!”
On Thursday, Indiana’s overwhelmingly Republican State Senate voted 31-19 to reject a redistricting effort that would have erased Indiana’s two Democratic congressional districts and likely given all nine of the state’s seats to the GOP in the 2026 midterm elections.
Unlike Texas, Ohio, and other states that have juiced their congressional maps to help the GOP’s increasingly bleak chances of retaining the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026, Indiana was less eager to rig its map for Trump.
Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray said in November that the effort lacked the votes to pass the Indiana Senate, and asserted he wouldn’t call the Senate into a December session to vote on the measure. After Trump publicly raged at Bray on Truth Social and House Speaker Mike Johnson got involved, he flipped, and agreed to bring the issue to a vote.
Though the effort needed a simple 26-vote majority to pass, 21 Republicans, including Bray, joined Democrats in rejecting the plan, with several citing Trump’s bullying and bigotry as their reason for opposing the effort.
Some Indiana Senate Republicans who came out publicly against the effort were “swatted” and received bomb threats.
“I refuse to be intimidated. I made a choice,” said GOP State Senator Greg Walker when casting his nay vote. Walker was among the Indiana Republicans who were swatted for opposing the redistricting effort.
“I will not let Indiana or any state become subject to the threat of political violence in order to influence legislative product,” he added.
Though Trump has made Bray the target of multiple Truth Social rants, he has seemed less sure of who Bray is and what is happening in Indiana when pressed to discuss it in person.
On Thursday in the Oval Office, Trump, who had ranted about Bray on Truth Social the night before, had difficulty recalling Bray’s name.
A confused Trump said to reporters, “There’s a man named Bray, as a, I guess, head of the Senate. Was that Bray? Is that the name? Bray? And I mean, I’m sure that whenever his primary is, I think, in two years, but I’m sure he’ll go down. I’ll certainly support anybody that wants to go against him.”
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