The Republican who’s leading Indiana’s resistance to President Donald Trump’s redistricting scheme has been the focus of an unusually direct pressure campaign from the White House, but those who know him say he won’t back down.
Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray announced last week there weren’t enough votes to pass a measure creating more Republican-leaning districts in Indiana, which set off angry Truth Social posts from Trump and violent threats against GOP legislators, but Politico reported there’s no sign that he’ll cave.
“There’s no moving Bray,” said a Republican close to the White House. “He’s going to die on this hill. He thinks he’s morally superior. Bray’s clear opinion is, ‘F— you.’”
Trump got a second call from Trump on the topic on Nov. 14, and Bray told Politico the tone was much more pointed than his previous meeting with the president at the Oval Office in August or two visits from Vice President JD Vance.
“All of those were extremely amicable,” Bray said. “The last one was more pointed. There was a disappointment in the president that we hadn’t been able to move forward with what he wanted us to do.”
Bray was asked whether the president raised his voice, but he demurred.
“I could tell he was not happy,” Bray said.
The Senate leader is holding out despite the pressure because he believes the changes will ultimately hurt Indiana, and he doesn’t believe redistricting will boost Republicans as much as Trump seems to think.
“It’s absolutely imperative that we’re able to do hard things here, and in order to do that, to do hard things that maybe not everybody agrees with and maybe even some people get really angry about,” Bray said of the Senate. “They have to have trust in the institution.”
Bray said he tried to explain his concerns to the president.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President,” Bray recalled telling Trump. “We think there is another path forward to get you what you need, and that is by finding a good candidate instead in congressional district No. 1 and getting behind a person there and funding that person and organizing that campaign.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) also called him to discuss redistricting, which he had argued was an issue left to individual states, and while Bray declined to discuss the specifics of their discussion, which he called “productive,” but Indiana Republicans say the MAGA revenge campaign won’t budge him.
“The person with the biggest cojones in all of this is Bray,” said one Indiana county GOP chairman, “and he knows what’s at stake.”
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