Trump congressional redistricting push wins in Indiana House vote

The Republican-controlled Indiana House on Friday pushed for congressional redistricting with the support of the president Donald Trump.

The new map, drawn by a national group allied with Republicans, would create two additional right-leaning congressional districts in the solidly red Midwestern state, where the GOP currently controls 7 of Indiana’s 9 U.S. House seats.

Voting – coming in less than 24 hours supreme court It cleared the way for GOP-dominated Texas to use its newly redrawn map, which creates five more right-leaning House seats — representing the latest front in Trump’s aggressive national campaign to reshape congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, when Republicans will defend their razor-thin House majority.

The real drama in Indiana will come next week, when the GOP-dominated state Senate, which has resisted Trump’s efforts to draw new congressional maps, meets to vote on a redistricting bill passed by the state House.

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The GOP-controlled Indiana House, meeting at the Statehouse — seen in a 2017 archive photo — on Friday passed along party lines a congressional redistricting plan pushed by President Donald Trump. (Michael Conroy/AP Photo)

The Republican Party’s vast majority Indiana House The redistricting bill was approved by a vote of 57 to 41, in a chamber where Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 70 to 30.

In the discussion leading up to the vote, state Rep. Matt Pearce, an assistant Democratic leader, pointed to his Republican colleagues and said “You really want to wipe out the Democratic Party when it comes to Congress.”

Pierce claimed that Trump, by pushing redistricting across red states across the country, is essentially saying “I need to cheat in order to win.”

Democratic Rep. Sue Errington also criticized the redistricting bill, saying the message from the measure is that “voters don’t matter.”

At the only public hearing on the bill, held earlier this week, the measure’s author acknowledged that the new map was “politically manipulated” and drawn “solely for the political performance” of Republicans.

A deep-pocketed conservative group is “willing” to help Trump with redistricting

But Republican Party Representative Ben Smaltz defended the new map in the face of accusations of racial gerrymandering. Federal law does not prohibit partisan gerrymandering, but racial gerrymandering is illegal.

All but two of the 43 members of the public who testified at the hearing opposed the bill.

Delivering his final presentation of his bill just before the vote, Smaltz emphasized, “There is nothing in the law that prevents the Legislature from reviewing maps when circumstances require it. The Supreme Court could not be clearer – states may redraw districts whenever they see fit, provided that the constitutional and legal requirements are met.”

The action now moves to the upper chamber of the legislature. Despite pressure from Trump and his political team, Indiana Senate Republican Leader Roderick Bray has repeatedly said there is not enough support in the chamber to move forward with redistricting.

President Donald Trump, seen making the gesture while boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on September 11, 2025, takes aim at Republican lawmakers in Indiana who do not support the president’s congressional redistricting campaign. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

A deep-pocketed conservative group is “willing” to help Trump with redistricting

In response, Trump repeatedly threatened to support primary challenges against Republican state lawmakers who did not support his congressional redistricting efforts.

In a recent social media post, Trump warned, “Reno Senator Roderick Bray, who doesn’t care about maintaining his majority in the House of Representatives in DC, is the main problem. Soon, he will have a basic problem, like every other politician who supports him in this stupidity.”

“The issue of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps mid-session has received a lot of attention and is causing conflict here in our state,” Bray said, in announcing that the state Senate would reconvene to take action on redistricting.

Trump has been reeling in his attempt to make Indiana the latest Republican-controlled state to change congressional maps. The President has invited state legislators and the Vice President J.D. Vance He visited the state twice earlier this fall to discuss redistricting.

Trump targets red state Republican lawmakers in push for congressional redistricting

Trump also took some jabs at Republican Gov. Mike Brown of Indiana, arguing that the governor “may not be working the way he should to get the votes needed.”

While Trump described Brown as a “good man,” he warned that “he has to get this thing done, otherwise he will be the only governor, whether Republican or Democrat, who has not done this.”

Indiana Governor Mike Brown, seen speaking during a news conference on October 30, 2025, supports President Donald Trump’s push for congressional redistricting. (Michael Gard/Post Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

But Brown, referring to the president, noted that he is “committed to standing with him on the critical issue of passing fair maps in Indiana to ensure the success of the MAGA agenda in Congress.”

Meanwhile, the Trump-aligned conservative outside group Action Club for Growth has allocated significant funds to run ads in Indiana supporting redistricting and, along with Turning Point Action, will target Republican state lawmakers opposed to the new map.

The president’s campaign in Indiana is part of a broad effort by Trump’s political team and the GOP to shore up the party’s slim majority in the House ahead of midterm elections, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.

“We must maintain the majority at all costs,” the president recently wrote.

By defending the rare but unprecedented mid-decade redistricting process, Trump aims to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats regained the majority in the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections.

Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio drew new maps as part of the president’s campaign. Lawmakers in GOP-dominated Florida this week took the first steps toward passing a redistricting measure, and right-leaning Kansas is also considering redrawing its map.

Last month, two federal judges in Texas dealt a blow to Trump and Republicans when they ruled that the state could not use the newly drawn map in next year’s elections. But the Supreme Court on Thursday gave a big thumbs up to the Lone Star State’s new congressional map.

Democrats are fighting back.

California voters a month ago overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that would temporarily disperse the state’s left-leaning nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated Legislature.

California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks during an election night news conference at the California Democratic Party office on Tuesday, November 4, 2025, in Sacramento, California. (Godofredo A. Vasquez/AP Photo)

That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which would counter the passage of a new map earlier this year in Texas aimed at creating up to five right-leaning House seats.

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Illinois and Maryland, blue states, and Virginia, where Democrats control the Legislature, are also taking steps or seriously considering redistricting.

In a blow to Republicans, a Utah County judge last month rejected a congressional district map drawn up by the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature, instead approving an alternative that would create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.