Republican state senators in Indiana defied the will of President Donald Trump on Thursday, voting down reworked congressional maps that would have added Republican seats to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms.
The Hoosier State is one of several deep-red states that Trump has pressured to redraw their congressional maps ahead of the midterms. Fearing a blue wave amid generally negative polling, Trump has pushed his allies to tilt the maps in the Republican Party‘s favor. Indiana’s proposed maps would have tilted all 9 of the states House districts toward the GOP. Conservatives in the state’s upper chamber rejected the prospective maps by a vote of 19-31.
The 31 state senators who voted down the map did so while facing enormous pressure from national party leaders. Beyond the president, House Speaker Mike Johnson launched a campaign to push state legislators toward approval. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called the vote “a huge problem.”
“People have to realize that we only have a couple opportunities. We’ve got a net five to 10 seats. If we don’t get a net 10 pickup in the redistricting wars, it’s going to be enormously hard, if not impossible, to hold the House,” Bannon said on his show “The War Room.”
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Nay voters defended their position, saying their belief in American values wouldn’t allow them to engage in dirty pool.
“Make no mistake, I, like many of those who will join me in voting no today, are constitutional fiscal and religious conservatives. What that means to me is that I believe in conserving the values, the culture and the institutions that created American exceptionalism,” Indiana state Sen. Spencer Deery said. “My opposition to mid-cycle gerrymandering is not in contrast with my conservative principles. My opposition is driven by them.”
