Twenty-one Republicans in the Indiana state Senate rejected President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign for new congressional maps that would have eliminated the state’s two House seats held by Democrats on Thursday.
The humiliating rejection for Trump came after he put the full weight of the White House and Republican Party apparatus to bear on the state Senate. Trump sent a dozen social media posts threatening GOP Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray and others for opposing redistricting with primary challenges. Vice President JD Vance made multiple trips to cajole lawmakers. White House deputy chief of staff James Blair and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called individual state senators to push them to change their votes.
The pressure campaign peaked on Thursday shortly before the vote when Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, declared in a social media post on Thursday that Trump had threatened to cut off all funding to the state if the state Senate did not support redistricting. Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, a Republican and staunch supporter of the redistricting effort, confirmed this in a since-deleted post on X.
This all-out push predictably led to acts of intimidation and threats and acts of violence targeting GOP state senators who opposed the effort. But the pressure campaign and the threats of violence backfired. A majority of the 41 GOP state senators voted no.
