Indiana Republicans Defied Trump and Bomb Threats to Stop Pro-GOP Redistricting

Indiana Republicans defied bomb threats, swatting incidents, and a pressure campaign led by President Donald Trump when on Thursday they voted down a bill to make an all-GOP congressional delegation. In contrast to an easy approval in the state house, 21 Republicans joined ten Democrats in the state senate to sink the plan to wipe out two Democratic U.S. House districts.

The campaign lasted four months and included Trump and J.D. Vance, both of whom had repeated personal meetings with gerrymander-shy Republican lawmakers, along with House Speaker Mike Johnson, Governor Mike Braun, Indiana senator Jim Banks, and a host of national conservative groups. As Politico explained, Charlie Kirk even spent the last weeks of his life threatening primaries for Republicans who opposed the effort.

Now Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, is among many MAGA allies threatening vengeance in primaries for those who dared defy Trump’s orders to help rig the midterms. And Democrats nationally will be happy with the diverted GOP time, energy, and money devoted to Hoosier bloodletting, along with the continued presence in Congress of Indiana Democrats Andre Carson and Frank Mrvan.

Trump’s effort to make Republican-controlled states redraw their congressional maps to give the GOP enough seats to withstand a potential Democratic wave has been hit or miss. Last week, the Supreme Court gave Trump a big win by overruling lower-court judges and putting back into place a Texas congressional map designed to give Republicans as many as five new House seats. He experienced earlier setbacks in Kansas and Ohio, whose Republicans also declined to wipe out Democratic districts, while Democrats successfully retaliated with a ballot initiative in California that is likely to cancel out or exceed Texas’s GOP gains.

It’s getting late in the day for any further pre-midterm gerrymandering. Florida Republicans will give it a try despite constitutional barriers, and Virginia Democrats seem likely to counter. But overall, the GOP bid to insulate itself from the wrath of voters in November 2026 is losing momentum. Perhaps Republicans and their leader should focus a bit more on making themselves more popular than they have appeared to be in virtually every 2025 vote.