As 2025 got underway and Republicans began to worry about losing their narrow majority in the U.S. House in next year’s midterm elections, Donald Trump and his White House team launched a radical operation: The president started to direct GOP-led state legislatures to launch mid-decade redistricting schemes, abandoning the usual process.
The goal, of course, was to gerrymander district maps so Republicans could win elections before voters started casting ballots in 2026.
The gambit was an immediate success: GOP policymakers in Texas redrew their map to give Republicans five additional seats; Missouri Republicans rigged their map to deliver one additional seat to the party; and GOP legislators in North Carolina delivered another seat to Republicans soon afterward.
Indiana, however, is proving to be a bit more complicated.
Republicans already control seven of the Hoosier State’s nine U.S. House seats, but under a proposed map, Democrats would go from two seats to none. That map cleared the GOP-led state House late last week.
The GOP-led state Senate, which will begin consideration of the party’s proposed gerrymandering gambit, is another matter entirely. Politico reported:
President Donald Trump’s maximalist, command-and-control approach to the GOP faces one of its most significant tests yet, as a band of stubborn Indiana state Senate Republicans threatens his mid-cycle redistricting scheme when it is expected to come to a vote this week.
If the story sounds familiar, that’s because the fight in Indianapolis is not altogether new. On the contrary, it’s been ongoing for four months, culminating in an announcement in mid-November that the matter was dead in the state Senate because it lacked the support.
Two weeks after that, party officials reversed course and set the stage for a vote — not because the internal tallies had changed, but because GOP leaders believed this would create an opportunity for one last round of threats, primary campaign launches, media advertising, arm-twisting from Republicans in Washington, D.C., and constituent complaints.
Politico’s report added that GOP insiders in Indiana “do not believe there are currently enough votes in the Senate for the map to pass.” Other local reports, including a piece in the Indiana Capital Chronicle, pointed in the same direction.
One of the key questions, however, is whether the intensity of the lobbying campaign, which has included threats of violence of late, will push members to change their minds. At least 11 Indiana Republicans have been targeted with threats or swatting attacks after Trump started calling out individual state lawmakers. One legislator told The Atlantic that he’s not especially worried about the president’s wrath so much as he fears radicalized activists. “I’d rather my house not get firebombed,” the state lawmaker said. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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