(AFP) – The conservative US state of Indiana on Thursday overwhelmingly rejected a congressional map championed by President Donald Trump that would have wiped out two Democratic-held districts, denting Republican hopes for a nine-seat sweep in next year’s midterm elections. Democrats need to flip only three seats to reclaim the US House of Representatives in 2026, and the vote in the Hoosier State’s senate was supposed to be the latest step in Trump’s push for an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting drive aimed at cementing Republican control.
Breaking with long-standing political custom, Trump has urged Republican-run states to redraw their maps years before the next census, hoping to capitalize on Republican dominance in state legislatures and map-making bodies. The president had spent significant political capital on the Indiana push, but the ruling state Senate Republicans delivered him a humiliating defeat as more than half voted against the new map, bristling at pressure from the White House.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson had told reporters he had been personally calling state lawmakers to shore up support, while Trump mounted his own characteristically forceful intervention, blasting out a social-media tirade demanding a Republican gerrymander. The president had threatened primary challenges against dissenting lawmakers, and after they bucked Trump Thursday, he lambasted the state Senate’s top Republican, Rodric Bray, and said he hopes he loses his next election.
“I’m sure he’ll go down,” Trump said at the White House, speaking of Bray after being asked about the failed Indiana redistricting effort. “I’ll certainly support anybody that wants to go against him.” Bray, after earlier Trump criticism, had countered that Washington Republicans were misreading the situation, insisting his caucus simply did not have the votes to pass the map. More than a dozen Republican senators had publicly broken with the effort ahead of the vote.
Several Indiana Republicans — including lawmakers Trump had singled out — reported being targeted by swatting incidents or pipe-bomb threats after speaking out against the redistricting plan. The Trump defeat in Indiana comes with Democrats pursuing their own mid-cycle gains. California voters last month approved a Democratic-drawn map projected to add as many as five House seats — a move seen as offsetting Texas’s mid-decade redistricting, which the Supreme Court allowed to proceed despite legal challenges.
There are also efforts afoot in Virginia, while Maryland and Illinois are mulling similar action. Beyond their five-seat gain in Texas, Republicans have secured small redistricting wins in North Carolina and Missouri, while Florida Republicans have signaled they may move to revise their map.
© 2024 AFP
