Politics

Kirk’s death reinvigorates Republicans’ redistricting race

Published

10 months ago

September 14, 2025

President Donald Trump’s already brass-knuckled push for red-state redistricting is taking on an increasingly apocalyptic valence among MAGA stalwarts following the killing of Charlie Kirk.

Inside an Embassy Suites ballroom in suburban Indianapolis this weekend, Sen. Jim Banks’ inaugural Hoosier Leadership for America Summit drew hundreds of attendees who came to hear from next-generation MAGA figures ranging from Alex Bruesewitz, a top Trump adviser and longtime friend of Kirk’s, to GOP strategist Alex DeGrasse.

The summit marked the first official MAGA gathering since Kirk’s death and served as both a Kirk memorial and redistricting rally, unfolding amid an increased security footprint and ubiquitous police presence throughout the conference center.

Between musical interludes featuring Jason Aldean’s “Fly over States” and “Try That In a Small Town,” MAGA leaders spoke of “demons” at work behind the shooting of Kirk and the stabbing of Iryna Zarutska and “the righteous versus the wicked.” An attendee who posed a question to Banks wondered whether Kirk’s killing “lifted the veil between good and evil.”

“This isn’t a political battle anymore,” said Bruesewitz, who spoke to the crowd with visible emotion about his friendship with Kirk dating back to their teens, and recalled their last dinner together in South Korea just days ago. “It’s a spiritual battle.”

All of it presaged a coming national political hardening on the right with Kirk’s killing as the raison d’etre. More than any other issue at the conference, Kirk’s death seeped into the rationale for mid-decade redistricting.

In the final weeks of his life, Kirk underscored the argument for that push in Indiana: He posted to X last month Turning Point would “support primary opponents for Republicans in the Indiana State Legislature who refuse to support the team and redraw the maps.”

Bruesewitz in an interview with Blue Light News on the sidelines of the summit said he initially considered asking Banks’ team to cancel the event in light of Kirk’s killing. But he decided to push ahead, recalling a message from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. “She said, ‘Do not let your words or your voice get softer, speak out now more than ever,’” Bruesewitz recalled.

Bruesewitz made the case to still-hesitant Hoosier lawmakers for a congressional map that delivers Republicans all nine Indiana districts, carving up Democratic-held areas in Indianapolis and Northwest Indiana.

“They need to recognize what time it is in our country,” Bruesewitz told Blue Light News. “We are up against a wicked ideology that cannot continue to have power in our country. And Indiana has a unique opportunity to take some of their power away, doing it through lawful means and doing it through legislative means, and they should listen to the president and get it done.”

Banks said in an interview that Trump is closely monitoring the redistricting effort — and similarly tied the importance of the push to Kirk’s death.

“They killed Charlie Kirk — the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine to zero map,” Banks said. “And I sense it in this crowd, in a big way. And I sense it from supporters all over the state; that now’s not the time to back off. Now’s not the time to be nice. Now’s the time to engage in a peaceful and political way.”

Missouri lawmakers passed Republican-drawn maps this week at Trump’s behest. Ohio is required to produce new maps soon, too. But in Indiana, Burkean conservatives have dragged their feet. Since an Oval Office meeting with Trump last month, legislative leaders have neither publicly addressed that meeting nor shown their cards.

Speaker Todd Huston and state Senate President Rodric Bray have been holding behind-closed-doors caucuses to take the temperature of their members. But people familiar and briefed on those proceedings say Huston hasn’t taken a vote on the matter and Bray’s Senate is said to have not made much headway.

Throughout Saturday morning, precinct officials, local GOP grandees and state lawmakers heard speakers turn up the pressure on the issue.

War Room host and keeper of the MAGA flame Steve Bannon joined the event via live stream, calling for a maximalist approach to redistricting. “We’re absolutely pushing for 9-0,” DeGrasse told Bannon from the stage. “That’s the whole ballgame.”

Kurt Schlichter, the Townhall columnist, said Indiana lawmakers needed to “get hard” and “have the stones” to succeed in their push. “You need to carve this state into nine Republican districts and drink their tears,” he told Republicans of Democrats.

The keynote panel featured three Indiana GOP state lawmakers who have become vocal proponents of redistricting. Among them was state Rep. Andrew Ireland, who said in an interview that Kirk’s killing “crystallizes what a lot of people think, what the party believes,” emphasizing that the country has a “real issue” with political violence — which he claimed the left was particularly responsible for — and that Republicans have been complacent. “For too long, I think Republicans have tried to just rest on their laurels when it comes to things like redistricting.”

Not all of those gathered were nodding their heads. State Rep. Becky Cash, who represents more purple parts of the Indianapolis suburbs, told Blue Light News that even after hearing the case for redistricting afresh at Saturday morning’s event following her White House visit last month, she remained opposed. Since Kirk’s death, Cash said she has received messages saying she and her colleagues should “redraw it all.”

“I tell people, ‘I don’t think it’s gonna happen,’ and then they look at me and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re definitely going back in” for a special session, she said. “I’m like, ‘Well, do you know something that I don’t know?’ Like, I think it’s 50-50 at this point.”

Even if lawmakers do go back into a special session, Cash said based on her attendance at private caucuses she is not at all certain new maps would pass.

“I can tell you that the speaker did not take a count,” Cash said. “People are individually communicating with him. Obviously, we have three legislators who were on a panel today who are 100 percent yes. And I don’t know many who are ‘yes.’”

Spokespeople for Huston and Bray did not return requests for comment.

Banks painted the stakes of the effort in no uncertain terms, asking the audience of statewide officials, lawmakers and precinct officials and grassroots powerbrokers to imagine Republicans losing their House majority by one or two seats because the state failed to take up redistricting.

“Indiana could be ground zero for keeping the House of Representatives,” Banks said.

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Politics

Congressional Black Caucus blasts Slotkin over her calls for new leadership in the House

Published

31 minutes ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

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Politics

The weekend of Andy Burnham’s life

Published

36 minutes ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Andy Burnham is set to become Labour leader on Friday, July 17 and British Prime Minister on Monday, July 20. In between, on Sunday, July 19, England could win the World Cup (no, really).

For Burnham, a lifelong soccer fan, it would be quite the weekend.

Some commentators — including IPSOS pollster Keiran Pedley — have even suggested that, in such circumstances, Burnham should call a snap election to ride a wave of national euphoria and secure his own political mandate.

Given Labour’s commanding majority in Parliament, that is unlikely to happen. But the suggestion hints at soccer’s extraordinary power to shape the national mood — something politicians, and especially new prime ministers, ignore at their peril.

Coming up next week on POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast, host Patrick Baker asks how soccer shapes our politics, and examines what politicians should — and should not — do in order to use soccer to their advantage.

Sometimes it is about timing. Former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, buoyed by memories of watching England win in 1966, called an election four years later during the Mexico World Cup of 1970. He was banking on England’s dominance boosting the public mood and, in turn, his election chances. But England crashed out of the tournament to West Germany days before the poll and Wilson lost the election.

Other times it is about authenticity. While there’s never been any doubt that Keir Starmer is a genuine Arsenal fan or that Andy Burnham is a devoted Everton supporter, the enthusiasm of some politicians for their club teams has appeared less convincing. Aston Villa fan David Cameron famously said he supported West Ham in a speech during the 2015 election campaign, which he won despite the flub.

For politicians seeking to speak for the whole U.K., remembering Scotland (on the brink of crashing out of the World Cup), Wales and Northern Ireland (neither made it to the tournament) matters too.

And in a sport capable of both uniting and dividing, ministers and prime ministers alike have often discovered that criticizing players, managers or fans can carry political risks of its own.

Politics and soccer: How to play the game. Listen to Westminster Insider next Friday, July 3.

Politics

It’s getting real in a New Jersey parking lot

Published

2 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey — Before the World Cup began, New York and New Jersey unveiled competing transportation plans.

After several matches, $20 shuttle buses subsidized by New York keep selling out, but $98 New Jersey Transit train trips don’t.

Now New Jersey Transit is poised to lose millions during the tournament, blaming the revenue shortfall on lower-than-expected demand caused in part by the cheaper options. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has suggested maybe that is because of the sticker shock fans face to get on New Jersey trains and buses — an observation sure to rub salt in Jersey’s wounds.

The tensions are just the latest manifestation of a dysfunctional relationship between the two jurisdictions that comprise what FIFA calls “New York New Jersey,” where England and Panama will face off today in their final group-stage match.

After the tournament’s first game New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium — between Brazil and Morocco on June 13 — lines swelled in the parking lot for New York-run buses back to Manhattan. Worried about a crowd stuck at MetLife, the New Jersey State Police asked New Jersey’s state-run transit agency to carry some of the waiting fans instead.

New Jersey Transit had room for 40,000 people but only about 22,000 customers that night. It had spent months on a plan that was moving people quickly and did not want to suddenly upend it with an unexpected surge in passengers on its trains and buses. The agency fears a repeat of the 2014 Super Bowl, in which overcrowding left fans in the same stadium’s parking lot for hours and stained the agency’s reputation for years.

Kris Kolluri, the head of New Jersey Transit, said the bistate host committee, the New Jersey governor’s office and the State Police all decided that the transit agency would move thousands of people after 90 minutes, if needed. By then, however, the lines had calmed on their own.

The asphalt standoff stemmed in part from the cross-Hudson divide over pricing.

The border states separated by the Hudson River are symbiotic — New York companies depend on workers commuting from New Jersey suburbs — and also apt to squabble over everything from how to deal with the mob and fight wildfires to what state Ellis Island is in.

Perhaps over no issue do they bicker more than transportation. Unlike other regions that have a unified transit system, the New York City metropolitan area has three public transit agencies. The states have fought over tolls (a New Jersey governor once threatened a “nuclear option” when New York created new ones), how to split the check for big infrastructure projects and how to staff their bistate Port Authority.

“Transportation is too important for any mayor or governor to give up power to any other mayor or governor,” said Mitchell Moss, a longtime New York City urban planning adviser who is also a professor at New York University.

Things went more smoothly at MetLife following a French win over Senegal and despite a deluge before and after another Senegal loss at MetLife to Norway. After the Norway win, the first New Jersey Transit train got to Penn Station in 35 minutes. The average shuttle bus back to Manhattan took 45 minutes or less.

But there continued to be a behind-the-scenes back and forth over whether New Jersey Transit should lower its prices to get more people aboard.

For fans from the world who don’t immediately come to the region and begin following local politicians, transit planners or local gadflies on X, much of the back and forth is invisible. Yet consequences of two states that don’t see eye to eye are affecting how they come and go from the eight matches, including the July 19 final.

As soon as New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration in April unveiled plans to charge fans $150 for a roundtrip ticket to the World Cup, Hochul worried it would throw “cold water” on the tournament and helped create a competing $20 shuttle bus.

Sherrill cut the price to $98, but that’s still higher than any other public transit system, and now New Jersey Transit trains are only two-thirds full. Her administration quietly blames the low-cost shuttle buses for siphoning away customers.

Allies of both governors have framed the opposite approaches as affordability-minded: Hochul wants a low price to signal that New York is welcoming the world. Sherrill wants the high price to cover the cost of providing a special service, and to prevent her voters from subsidizing trips for out-of-town fans to an event few locals can afford to attend.

In the real world, the cheaper bus tickets are selling out, while New York officials remain concerned New Jersey Transit’s high prices mean it isn’t carrying its load. New Jersey Transit, on the other hand, is proud of a smooth-running operation, which Sherrill has described as “the best option” for getting to matches.

Bistate tensions over transportation planning predate Sherrill and Hochul, but aren’t inevitable. Both Democrats only a few months ago worked together to restart construction on a new train tunnel between the states that President Donald Trump cut off funding for. But ongoing fighting could represent challenges for other bistate ventures, like a long-awaited overhaul of New York’s Penn Station on which the states will be asked to cooperate.