The Indiana Senate on Thursday voted down a plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts to produce two more GOP-friendly seats, rejecting President Donald Trump’s months-long campaign to pressure the Republican supermajority in the deep-red state to bend to his will.
The 31-19 vote saw 21 Republicans join 10 Democrats in voting down the proposed map that would have positioned the GOP, which currently holds seven of Indiana’s nine US House seats, for a sweep of all nine seats in next year’s midterm elections.
The vote comes with significant ramifications for the 2026 midterm elections as some Democratic- and Republican-led states aim to redraw their US House maps beforehand. Not gaining two seats limits the gains Republicans are seeking to make in the redistricting arms race that Trump launched.
Indiana’s rejection also revealed the limits of Trump’s political might. The Trump administration dispatched Vice President JD Vance to Indiana for two visits and invited state lawmakers to the White House as part of their lobbying effort. Trump, Vance, and Republican allies threatened to run primary challengers against senators who voted no.
Republican Sen. Greg Goode criticized “over-the-top pressure from inside the Statehouse and outside,” as well as “threats of violence, acts of violence.” Goode was one of several lawmakers who faced swatting attempts last month hours after Trump posted on social media calling him a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only.”
“Whether we realize it or not, whether we accept it or not, the forces that define this vitriolic political affairs in places outside of Indiana have been gradually and now very blatantly infiltrated the political affairs in Indiana,” Goode said Thursday before voting no.
Goode said that the “overwhelming feedback” from constituents in his Terre Haute-based district was to oppose the redistricting effort. He also raised the possibility that the new maps could “politically backfire” against Republicans by weakening their support in some districts.
Read the rest at CNN.
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