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President Donald Trump suffered a major political setback on Thursday in his push to pass congressional redistricting in red states.
After months of arm-twisting by the president, top allies and aligned groups, the Indiana Senate voted down a new map championed by Trump that would have created two more right-leaning congressional districts in the solidly red Midwestern state, where the GOP currently controls seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats. The districts of Democratic Reps. Frank Mrvan and Andre Carson would have been eliminated.
The showdown in Indiana came a week after the Supreme Court cleared the way for Republican-dominated Texas to use its newly redrawn map, which creates five more right-leaning House seats.
Indiana was the latest battleground in Trump’s aggressive national campaign to reshape congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms, when Republicans, as the party in power, will likely face traditional political headwinds as they defend their razor-thin House majority.
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And for Trump, who recently emphasized “we must keep the majority at all costs,” the vote was viewed as a key test of his immense clout over the GOP.
The redistricting bill passed the Indiana House 57-41, with a dozen GOP lawmakers voting against the measure. But the stakes were much higher in the state Senate, where the GOP also holds a super majority, as Republican leaders in the chamber had resisted Trump’s efforts to draw new congressional maps.
Indiana Senate Republican leader Rodric Bray had repeatedly said there wasn’t enough support in the chamber to move forward with redistricting. The state Senate split 19-19 last month in a proxy vote.
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Trump repeatedly blasted Bray, warning in a recent social media post, “A RINO State Senator, Rodric Bray, who doesn’t care about keeping the Majority in the House in D.C., is the primary problem. Soon, he will have a Primary Problem, as will any other politician who supports him in this stupidity.”
Changing course, Bray announced last week that the state Senate would reconvene to vote on redistricting, adding “the issue of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps mid-cycle has received a lot of attention and is causing strife here in our state.”
Trump kept up the pressure on Bray and others on the fence, highlighting in a social media post this past weekend the nine state Senate Republicans who have yet to announce their position on the new map, saying they “need encouragement to make the right decision.”
And on the eve of the vote in the state Senate, the president, in a lengthy post, once again blasted Bray as “either a bad guy, or a very stupid one!” He also vowed to “do everything within my power” to oust Bray and others who vote against the redistricting bill in GOP primaries next year.
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The latest attacks were part of a months-long effort by Trump to twist elbows in his attempt to make Indiana the latest Republican-controlled state to change their congressional maps. The president called state lawmakers and Vice President JD Vance visited the state twice earlier this autumn to discuss redistricting.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a top Trump ally, also called Indiana lawmakers as part of the full court press.
Meanwhile, the Trump-aligned conservative outside political organization the Club for Growth Action and other groups dished out big bucks to run ads in Indiana supporting redistricting, and along with Turning Point Action, pledged to target Republican state lawmakers opposed to the new map.
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Trump, by championing rare but not unheard of mid-decade redistricting, is aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections.
Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have drawn new maps as part of the president’s push. State lawmakers in GOP-dominated Florida recently took the first steps towards passing a redistricting measure, and right-leaning Kansas is also mulling redrawing its map.
Two federal judges in Texas last month delivered a blow to Trump and Republicans, by ruling that the state couldn’t use the newly drawn map in next year’s elections. But the Supreme Court last week gave a big thumbs up to the Lone Star State’s new congressional map.
Democrats are fighting back.
California voters a month ago overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative which will temporarily sidetrack the left-leaning state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democrat-dominated legislature.
That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which would counter the passage earlier this year in Texas of a new map that aims to create up to five right-leaning House seats.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is considered a likely 2028 Democratic presidential contender, steered his state’s push for redistricting.
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Illinois and Maryland, two blue states, and Virginia, where Democrats control the legislature, are also taking steps or seriously considering redistricting.
Meanwhile, opponents of redistricting in Missouri submitted thousands of petition signatures calling for a statewide referendum vote on the new maps.
And in another blow to Republicans, a Utah district judge last month rejected a congressional district map drawn up by the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
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