President Donald Trump’s attempt to strong-arm Indiana Republicans into passing a redistricting bill failed miserably on Thursday when GOP rebels in the state Senate sank it.
Senators rejected the push to gerrymander the Hoosier State’s nine-seat map ahead of next year’s midterms – by effectively eliminating its two remaining Democratic districts – by 31 to 19, despite Republicans holding a 40-10 supermajority in the chamber, as 21 conservatives broke ranks to vote with Democrats.
The upset came despite the bill passing the Indiana House last week and despite the president engaging in an intense pressure campaign to try to force it through, threatening to support primary challenges to any Republicans who failed to fall in line and dispatching Vice President JD Vance to lobby on the issue in person.
Asked about the disappointment by reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump claimed to be nonplussed, saying, “It’s funny because I won Indiana all three times by a landslide. And I wasn’t working on it very hard. Would’ve been nice. I think we would’ve picked up two seats if we did that.”
He could not hide his fury at Senate President Pro Tempore Rod Bray, however, adding: “You had one gentleman, the head of the Senate, I guess, Bray, whatever his name is. I heard he was against it. He’ll probably lose his next primary, whenever that is. I hope he does, because he’s done a tremendous disservice.
“I’m sure that whenever his primary is, it’s I think in two years, but I sure he’ll go down. He’ll go down. I’ll certainly support anybody that wants to go against him.”
The president’s attempt to downplay the disaster was roundly mocked on social media, with many noting his intense messaging ahead of the Indiana vote and one journalist summing up Trump’s mood by likening him to a jilted teenage boy: “I didn’t want to go to prom with her anyway. Actually, she’s ugly really.”
The president lashed out at “RINO Senators” on Truth Social in November when their reluctance became clear, accusing them of “depriving” House Republicans on Capitol Hill of two more seats needed to preserve their slim majority.
That dispatch also included a rap on the knuckles for Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, whom Trump accused of “not working the way he should to get the necessary votes.”
Keen not to incur any further wrath, Braun was out quickly on Thursday to warn of “political consequences” for the “small group of misguided state senators” who thwarted the new map’s passage.
“I will be working with the president to challenge these people who do not represent the best interests of Hoosiers,” he added.
Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, a fellow Republican, responded to the vote by warning its outcome was likely to harm the state’s relationship with the White House.
“The Trump admin was VERY clear about this,” Beckwith said on X. “They told many lawmakers, cabinet members and the Gov and I that this would happen. The Indiana Senate made it clear to the Trump Admin today that they do not want to be partners with the WH. The WH made it clear to them that they’d oblige.”
That threat had also been made explicit earlier in the day by the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think-tank behind Trump’s Project 2025 agenda, which wrote on X: “President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders: if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state.
“Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.”
For MAGA commentator Erik Erickson, such aggression was precisely the reason Indiana Republicans were motivated to oppose the gerrymandering push.
“I can’t express enough how much the bullying hurt the redistricting chances in Indiana,” he said. “There was a point they would have done it. But the pressure campaign backfired, particularly in light of the November election.”
Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon spelled out the ramifications of the legislation’s failure when he commented on his War Room show yesterday: “We have a huge problem. 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.”
Efforts by Texas Republicans earlier this year to redraw their own electoral map to their party’s advantage by adding five more seats were swiftly counteracted by California Democrats doing likewise.
Red states such as Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio have similarly redrawn their maps to boost Republicans in Congress, with blue states such as Maryland and Virginia currently plotting their own countermeasures.
