Indiana House Passes Trump Gerrymander, Sending Map to Uncertain Senate Vote

The Indiana House of Representatives voted 57-41 Friday to approve a gerrymandered congressional map that could eliminate the state’s two districts currently held by Democrats. The Republican-controlled legislature held the vote after facing months of intensifying pressure from President Donald Trump to redistrict and tilt the 2026 midterm elections in the GOP’s favor.

The map now heads to the Indiana Senate, which is expected to take up the bill when it convenes Monday. But Senate Majority Leader Rodric Bray (R) has repeatedly said the map does not have enough Republican support in the upper chamber to pass.

State Rep. Ben Smaltz (R), the redistricting bill’s author, said Friday that Indiana’s gerrymander likely won’t be the end of Trump’s national redistricting arms race.

“I think you’ve got to look at the nation as a whole,” Smaltz said. “And this may be the new normal of what the law allows us to do.”

Indiana is the fourth state to vote on a new congressional map solely at Trump’s insistence. But it is the first where the outcome is uncertain. 

The Indiana House held just one hearing on the map Tuesday, where members of the public

accused Republicans of introducing a racial gerrymander that divides Marion County — the state’s most populous county where the capital of Indianapolis is located — into four districts where minority voters won’t be able to elect a candidate of their choice. Since the last census, Marion County has been majority non-white.

Only two of the 43 members of the public who spoke at the hearing were in favor of the redistricting plan. The committee nonetheless voted 8-5 to advance the map. 

State Rep. Robin Shackleford (D) said her own Indianapolis congressional district will be broken into three districts, diluting the power of minority voters. 

“Most likely, our three Republican congressional members will not live, work or worship in our community,” Shackleford said Friday, speaking shortly before the vote.

When Trump began demanding Republican-controlled states engage in rare mid-decade redistricting, Texas, Missouri and North Carolina quickly caved. They have since passed new maps that, taken together, could eliminate a total of seven congressional seats held by Democrats – in each case, at the expense of minority voters. With Indiana’s proposed map, that number could climb to nine GOP pickups. 

Those gains may be offset by a voter-approved California map, drawn in response to Texas, that could result in five new Democratic seats and a Virginia plan that could deliver another four. 

Courts have allowed Texas and North Carolina to use their new maps in 2026. But the Missouri gerrymander’s fate is less clear. Voting rights advocates are trying to put the new map to a statewide referendum. Meanwhile, Republicans are fighting them on multiple fronts in court. 

National Republican operatives have been a major feature of multiple redistricting battles.

In Indiana, Smaltz confirmed the new map was drawn in coordination with the National Republican Redistricting Trust, run by leading GOP operative Adam Kincaid. He also drew the Texas map.

When pressed by Democratic lawmakers Friday, Smaltz insisted that he did not know how the mapmaker was paid and he wasn’t provided with any demographic information about the new districts. 

Earlier, Kincaid testified in a Texas federal court that he was hired by the Republican National Committee to draw the state’s new map. He also revealed that he communicated extensively with the White House about the Texas redistricting effort using messages on Signal that were set to automatically delete.

State Rep. Edward DeLaney implored his Republican colleagues to stand up to Trump, rather than be a “sad imitator of Texas.”

“We ain’t Texas,” DeLaney said. “We don’t want to be Texas – I hope. We could be proud of ourselves. But that option apparently is not of interest.”