The Republican-controlled Indiana House on Friday pushed through congressional redistricting championed by President Donald Trump.
The new map, drawn by a national Republican-aligned group, would create two more right-leaning congressional districts in the solidly red Midwestern state, where the GOP currently controls 7 of Indiana's 9 U.S. House seats.
The vote - coming less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court cleared the way for GOP-dominated Texas to use its newly redrawn map, which creates five more right-leaning House seats - marks the latest front in Trump's aggressive national campaign to reshape congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms, when Republicans will defend their razor-thin House majority.
The real drama in Indiana will come next week, when the GOP-dominated state Senate, which has resisted Trump's efforts to draw new congressional maps, meets to vote on the redistricting bill passed by the state House.
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The GOP supermajority in the Indiana House passed the redistricting bill 57-41, in a chamber where Republicans outnumber Democrats 70-30.
In debate ahead of the vote, state Rep. Matt Pierce, who is the Assistant Democratic Floor Leader, pointed to his Republican colleagues and argued "you really want to erase the Democratic Party when it comes to Congress."
And Pierce claimed that Trump, by pushing redistricting through red states across the country, is basically saying "I need to cheat to win."
Democratic Rep. Sue Errington also took aim at the redistricting bill, charging that the message from the measure is "voters don't matter."
At the sole public hearing on the bill, held earlier this week, the author of the measure acknowledged the new map was "politically gerrymandered" and drawn "purely for political performance" of Republicans.
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But GOP state Rep. Ben Smaltz defended the new map from accusations of racial gerrymandering. Partisan gerrymandering is not prohibited under federal law, but racial gerrymandering is illegal.
All but two of the 43 of the members of the public who testified at the hearing spoke out against the bill.
Smaltz, making a final pitch for his bill just ahead of the vote, emphasized that "nothing in the law prevents the legislature from revisiting maps when circumstances demand it. The Supreme Court could not be clearer - states may redraw districts whenever they deem appropriate, provided constitutional and statutory requirements are met."
The measure now moves to the legislature's upper chamber. Despite pressure from Trump and his political team, Indiana Senate Republican leader Rodric Bray has repeatedly said there wasn't enough support in the chamber to move forward with redistricting.
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Trump, in response, repeatedly threatened to back primary challenges against state Republican lawmakers who didn't support his congressional redistricting push.
"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," Trump warned in a recent social media post.
Bray, in announcing that the state Senate would reconvene to take action on redistricting, said "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 has been twisting elbows in his attempt to make Indiana the latest Republican-controlled state to change their congressional maps. The president has called state lawmakers and Vice President JD Vance visited the state twice earlier this autumn to discuss redistricting.
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Trump has also taken some jabs at Republican Gov. Mike Braun of Indiana, arguing that the governor "perhaps, is not working the way he should to get the necessary Votes."
While Trump has called Braun "a good man," he has warned he "must produce on this, or he will be the only Governor, Republican or Democrat, who didn't."
But Braun, pointing to the president, has touted that he is "committed to standing with him on the critical issue of passing fair maps in Indiana to ensure the MAGA agenda is successful in Congress."
Meanwhile, the Trump-aligned conservative outside group the Club for Growth Action, has dished out big bucks to run ads in Indiana supporting redistricting, and along with Turning Point Action, will target Republican state lawmakers opposed to the new map.
The push by the president in Indiana is part of a broad effort by Trump's political team and the GOP to pad the party's razor-thin House majority ahead of the midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.
"We must keep the Majority at all costs," the president wrote recently.
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 this week took the first steps towards passing a redistricting measure, and right-leaning Kansas is also mulling redrawing their 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 on Thursday 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.
Illinois and Maryland, two blue states, and Virginia, where Democrats control the legislature, are also taking steps or seriously considering redistricting.
And in a 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.
