Politics
Indiana Republicans threaten to thwart Trump’s redistricting onslaught
President Donald Trump’s maximalist, command-and-control approach to the GOP faces one of its most significant tests yet, as a band of stubborn Indiana state Senate Republicans threatens his mid-cycle redistricting scheme when it is expected to come to a vote this week.
The Hoosier Republicans will gavel in Monday to decide on a map, passed Friday by the Indiana House, that supporters say would all but guarantee a 9-0 Republican congressional delegation and would be in effect for next year’s pivotal midterm elections. Present maps give the GOP a 7-2 advantage.
Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, who — along with roughly half his 40-member Republican majority — has resisted a four-month White House pressure campaign to redraw the congressional lines. Indiana Conservation Voters, Club for Growth and Building a Better Economy are among the groups that have spent nearly half-a-million dollars in ads trying to sway public opinion — the first group against redistricting and the second two for — in recent weeks, according to AdImpact. Trump campaign veterans like Chris LaCivita have joined the dark money group Fair Maps Indiana to advance the cause, too.
Speaker Mike Johnson has been calling reluctant Republican state senators in recent days — reported here for the first time, based on accounts from two people granted anonymity to freely discuss sensitive private conversations. One Indiana Republican elected official briefed on the calls said Johnson’s “soft touch” with lawmakers may be moving the needle.
“Anybody who tells you they know how this is going to play out doesn’t know,” this person said.
A Johnson spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The matter is top of mind for the president, who brought up Indiana redistricting to visitors at a White House Christmas party Sunday attended by Gov. Mike Braun, according to a person present and granted anonymity to disclose the conversation. Trump asked Braun in front of other guests if redistricting would pass, and Braun responded it would.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Trump “thinks we should fight democrats every legal way we can to win the majority and keep accomplishing things for the people,” according to a Republican close to the White House granted anonymity to discuss the president’s motivations.
And on Friday, Turning Point Action announced that it was partnering with several Trump-aligned super PACs to target Indiana Republicans who are blocking the president’s redistricting effort, including threatening to spend millions of dollars to primary resistant members of the Indiana GOP.
Trump needs the backup: The state Senate’s reservations threaten to derail his plans to push new maps across the country to shore up his party’s slim House majority, which Democrats would seize by netting just three seats in an election that is expected to be a repudiation of the party in power.
“These guys and ladies are under intense, 24-hour-a-day pressure and I don’t know if they can withstand it, ultimately — we will see,” said Mike Murphy, a former Republican member of the Indiana House of Representatives. “I feel badly for them and their families, primarily. They came to be public servants, and instead they are pawns in really what I consider to be Trump’s strategy to avoid a third impeachment and potentially set himself up a third term.”
The Trump-backed pressure campaign in Indiana has included two visits from Vice President JD Vance to Indianapolis on Air Force Two, and repeated calls and invitations to Oval Office meetings — including with Trump, Bray and Speaker of the House Todd Huston in August.
Now, lawmakers will convene amid threats of violence following Trump’s series of social media posts ramping up pressure. At least a dozen elected Indiana Republicans have faced swattings — false reports of danger that bring an aggressive law enforcement response designed to intimidate the target — and pipe bomb threats. Few though have publicly reversed their positions against redistricting since they stalemated 19-19last month on a vote that was a close proxy for gerrymandering. That means Trump and the White House would need to flip at least half a dozen GOP senators to secure a simple majority to pass the new maps.
“How does (Trump) have the time to mess with a nobody like me with all of the important matters that are to take his attention as the leader of the executive branch in this nation?” Republican state Sen. Greg Walker told a local newspaper in November.
Three Indiana Republicans close to the process — and granted anonymity to appraise support — said they do not believe there are currently enough votes in the Senate for the map to pass.
Asked whether he felt pressured by the White House to redistrict, Huston would only say, “We had conversations. There was no secret.”
Trump posted twice on Truth Social this weekend about his demand for redistricting in Indiana, the barn-red state he once called “Importantville” and that helped him clinch the GOP nomination in its May 2016 primary, saying, “this new Map would give the incredible people of Indiana the opportunity to elect TWO additional Republicans in the 2026 Midterm Elections.” He also posted the names of nine senators who “need encouragement to make the right decision” as they have not yet declared their position on the new map.
Turning Point last week deployed members of their “strike force” to meet with and whip many of those same senators, but the results of that effort remain unclear. “It’s so hard to judge at this point, because it’s such a fluid situation,” said Brett Galaszewski, Turning Point Action’s national enterprise director.
Meanwhile the Supreme Court reinstated Texas’ newly drawn congressional map last week, staving off a major setback to Trump’s redistricting campaign. Now, the GOP has nine more favorable seats across four states — Texas, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina. Those will likely be offset by the five Democratic seats California Gov. Gavin Newsom scored in his counterpunch last month.
Redistricting battles are brewing around the country, with Democrat-led Virginia and Maryland headed in opposite directions of one another.
Virginia Democrats expanded their grip on power in the General Assembly by picking up 13 House seats while flipping three Republican-held statewide offices, including governor, in last month’s elections. Top Democrats in the state legislature appear unfazed by Indiana’s push to redraw its maps. The state’s top Democrat said it was “full steam ahead” – a reference to the state lawmakers clearing a procedural hurdle in October to put a constitutional amendment before voters to allow the Democratic-led legislature to redraw its maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“We have a plan and process in place that will facilitate delivery of our maps on time,” state Sen. L. Louise Lucas said via text Saturday. “Virginia is a good place to be.” Don Scott, the Virginia House speaker, opined that a new map could drastically change the delegation makeup in Virginia, which is near parity with six Democrats and five Republicans.
Scott said “10-1 is not out of the realm to be able to draw the maps in a succinct and community-based way,” at a public forum last week.
And in Maryland, Gov. Wes Moore continues to pressure his state lawmakers to take up new maps, but has run into opposition from state Senate President Bill Ferguson, who has refused to entertain bringing up a vote on the matter.
Maryland’s lower chamber appears poised to take up the issue, but House Speaker Adrienne Jones, who earlier this year publicly supported the governor’s redistricting push, stunned many in Annapolis by announcing Thursday she was immediately stepping down.It’s unclear what impact this will have on negotiations to redraw the state’s lines.
Moore’s Redistricting Advisory Commission, set up last month to solicit residents’ feedback on whether to craft new maps, is slated to hold its final public meeting Friday before it issues recommendations to the governor and Maryland General Assembly.
Trump set the latest redistricting arms race in motion when he leaned on Texas to redraw its maps earlier this summer.
“We don’t operate in a vacuum and states are doing this all across the country, red and blue states,” Huston told reporters Friday. “We felt like it was important for us to be a part of that, and to make sure that we used every tool we could to support a strong Republican majority.”
Asked whether he felt “proud” of the maps, Huston, who said in 2021 that he would “defend these maps all day long, six days to Sunday,” did not use that word, saying he felt “very blessed to lead the Indiana House of Representative.”
“I support this, and I support what we’re doing,” he said.
The state Senate committee on elections will meet in the Senate chamber to hear the congressional map Monday afternoon, with a final vote from the whole chamber expected Thursday.
Trump’s demands on Indiana lawmakers though have exposed some of the limits of his power.
“The MAGA movement hasn’t permeated down to the state legislative level,” said an Indiana Republican allied with Trump’s redistricting cause.
But this person, granted anonymity to discuss the tense debate, referenced primaries of resistant Indiana Republicans, saying, “we’re either going to get new maps, or we’re going to get a new Senate.”
“Some people think Trumpworld is bluffing or doesn’t have any juice left and this will just go away if the state Senate rejects the maps,” this person said. “The reality is that will only be the start of a long and brutal campaign to purge the state of anyone who opposed Trump on this issue. And there will likely be collateral damage that hurts even those who supported Trump.”
The president told a band of GOP hard-liners to lift their blockade of House floor business, but some are doubling down in new ways…
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LOS ANGELES — Despite months of controversy beforehand, Friday’s encounter in Seattle did not turn out to be much of a “Pride Match” at all. Expressions of sexual and gender identity were sparse in the crowd, perhaps due to the random lottery pairing of Iran and Egypt, which have two of the world’s least hospitable societies and most repressive governments towards LGBT people.
Chance has produced a political pairing today that has a much stronger political claim to a “Pride Match” designation: the opening round-of-32 fixture in Los Angeles this afternoon. Canada and South Africa will meet because of the tournament’s bracket architecture, but they are parallel pioneers in gay and lesbian rights — the first two non-European countries to legalize same-sex marriage.
Canada got there first. Courts in its most populous provinces began to rule in 2003 that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, making it possible for gay men and lesbians to marry in much of the country. In 2005, the Liberal Party government led by Prime Minister Paul Martin introduced the Civil Marriage Act, creating a single legal standard for all provinces and territories. It passed a parliamentary vote on July 19, 2005, and became law the next day — placing Canada alongside the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain as the only countries that allowed same-sex marriage nationwide.
South Africa joined them the following year. In December 2005, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the common-law definition of marriage violated the equal-protection promises of the country’s post-apartheid constitution, which specifically protect people from discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” After the court essentially ordered Parliament to rewrite the law, lawmakers drafted the Civil Union Act, which passed and became law on November 30, 2006.
Now more than three dozen countries allow same-sex unions, including the World Cup’s three North American co-hosts and all of the tournament favorites including Argentina, France, Brazil, Germany, Portugal and England (which along with Wales legalized them in 2014). South Africa, however, remains the only country in Africa.
Canada and South Africa have different constitutional regimes and cultural traditions, but one person links their shared arc as pioneers in LGBTQ+ rights: Montreal human-rights attorney Irwin Cotler, who served on Nelson Mandela’s legal team before becoming Canada’s justice minister. In that role, he was the driving force with Martin’s government to codify same-sex unions through the Civil Marriage Act.
LOS ANGELES — President Donald Trump has stayed away from the World Cup after making himself the main character of the months leading up to it. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum prominently gave away her tickets to Mexico’s matches in what was seen as a populist rebuke to FIFA.
But one North American leader is reveling in the fact that his country is hosting the world’s top sporting event, and that its national team is doing well.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attended two of Canada’s group-stage matches, a visible
and gave a locker-room talk to the team after its defeat of Qatar that spread widely on social media. Carney has been such an omnipresent component of his team’s group-stage run that its one defeat, against Switzerland, has been blamed on the “Carney Curse” because the prime minister briefly stepped away from his seat when a crucial goal was scored.
Carney has not said whether he is traveling to Los Angeles for today’s knockout fixture against South Africa, but he did use the match-up as an occasion to call President Cyril Ramaphosa, where the two men discussed “growing cooperation in agriculture and agrifood,” according to a readout provided by the prime minister’s office.
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