Indiana Republicans Reject Trump Redistricting Push

Last Thursday, MAGA world was on the edge of its seat. The president’s allies had spent months lobbying Indiana state legislators to support a new congressional map eliminating every Democratic seat in the state as part of the administration’s nationwide mid-decade redistricting push ahead of the 2026 midterms. Indiana’s Republican Governor Mike Braun pressured state legislators to get in line. Vice President JD Vance had made multiple trips to the state to make the administration’s case in person. Even House Speaker Mike Johnson got involved.

In the end, more Republicans opposed the effort than supported it. Twenty-one Republicans joined all ten state legislative Democrats in voting against the new map, leaving the final tally at 31 opposed and only 19 Republicans in favor. The final margin was a stunning rebuke to the second-term president, who has grown accustomed to bending the GOP to his will over the past decade and who dreads the political consequences that will emerge under a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives during his final two years in office.

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Audrey Fahlberg

Audrey Fahlberg was a politics reporter for National Review.

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Last Thursday, MAGA world was on the edge of its seat. The president’s allies had spent months lobbying Indiana state legislators to support a new congressional map eliminating every Democratic seat in the state as part of the administration’s nationwide mid-decade redistricting push ahead of the 2026 midterms. Indiana’s Republican Governor Mike Braun pressured state legislators to get in line. Vice President JD Vance had made multiple trips to the state to make the administration’s case in person. Even House Speaker Mike Johnson got involved.

In the end, more Republicans opposed the effort than supported it. Twenty-one Republicans joined all ten state legislative Democrats in voting against the new map, leaving the final tally at 31 opposed and only 19 Republicans in favor. The final margin was a stunning rebuke to the second-term president, who has grown accustomed to bending the GOP to his will over the past decade and who dreads the political consequences that will emerge under a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives during his final two years in office.