INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana state senators will decide the fate of a Republican-drawn congressional map Thursday, settling a divisive, monthslong clash between GOP lawmakers who have resisted the redistricting push and President Donald Trump, who has urged them to forge ahead.
The proposed map, which the state House passed last week, would dismantle Indiana’s two Democratic-held districts, the latest front in Trump’s national campaign to shore up the GOP’s slim House majority in next year’s midterm elections.
Republicans in Texas, North Carolina and Missouri have answered Trump’s call, passing new maps designed to net the party additional seats, but Indiana lawmakers were hesitant to join the unusual mid-decade redistricting fight for months. Republican leaders in the state Senate have said repeatedly there aren’t enough votes in the chamber to pass the legislation, despite public and private entreaties from the White House.
Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other national Republicans have been pressuring lawmakers in the state through phone calls, in-person visits in Indiana and Washington and social media posts, threatening to back primary challengers to those who oppose the map.
Trump specifically called out Rodric Bray, the Republican leader of the state Senate, Wednesday night on Truth Social.
“Anybody that votes against Redistricting, and the SUCCESS of the Republican Party in D.C., will be, I am sure, met with a MAGA Primary in the Spring,” Trump wrote. “Rod Bray and his friends won’t be in Politics for long, and I will do everything within my power to make sure that they will not hurt the Republican Party, and our Country, again.”
It has become an “all hands on deck” effort among Republicans in Washington to get Indiana lawmakers on board, according to a senior GOP leadership source familiar with the matter.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and members of his leadership team have been calling state lawmakers to urge them to support the new map.
Top Republicans in Washington believe the vote is going to be close, but they think they are within striking distance, saying they have at least 20 solid “yes” votes as they continue to work other holdouts, the source said. Republicans will need the support of at least 25 members of the 50-person state Senate for the map to pass. Republican Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith has the ability to break a tie.
Johnson told reporters Wednesday that he’s had some “great conversations” with Indiana lawmakers.
“I want everybody to make the decision that, you know, comports with their conscience, that they feel good about,” he said. “So I believe they’ll do the right thing.”
The saga took an alarming turn in recent weeks, with at least 11 elected Republicans in Indiana facing violent threats and swatting attempts, which are when someone makes a false police report in an attempt to instigate a frightening police response.
“They’re kind of like ‘I’m going to firebomb your house in the middle of the night and kill you and anyone else in there as you come running out.’ There’s a number of those; I got three in one day,” said Sen. Michael Crider, the Republican majority whip, who has said he will vote against the bill and has faced such threats.
Crider, who worked in law enforcement, said he taught his colleagues how to alert their local police to try to head off swatting attempts.
“This is my 14th year, and I’ve not seen this kind of tactics,” he said.
Sen. Dan Dernulc, another Republican who has come out against the legislation, said he has received the same pipe bomb threat as Crider, which particularly alarmed his wife. He was swatted twice, and pizzas have repeatedly been sent to his home, another intimidation tactic. He said police have stationed a squad car outside his home to ensure his and his family’s safety.
“It doesn’t affect the way I’m going to vote,” he told NBC News. “But it’s still unnerving. I don’t want to be killed.”
Demonstrators at a rally against redistricting at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis.Kaiti Sullivan / Bloomberg via Getty Images file
State Sen. Greg Goode, a Republican who has been singled out by Trump on social media but has not said how he will vote, was also the victim of a swatting attempt. Someone claiming to be Goode told police he’d murdered his wife and child, prompting an alarming police response.
“My front door was kicked in. I had weapons pointed directly at me. I am so grateful that I was home. My wife and son were in the basement getting Christmas decorations,” he said.
Goode said that he has a “pretty good idea” of how he’ll vote but that he intends to keep listening to debate until the final vote.
“I believe that I owe it to my colleagues to keep an open mind,” he said.
The bill passed out of the Senate Elections Committee on Monday after hours of debate and public testimony, much of it in opposition to the new map.
Sen. Mike Gaskill, the Republican who sponsored the bill in the chamber, acknowledged to his colleagues that the fight has been unsavory.
“Political gerrymandering isn’t comfortable, I understand that, but it’s the environment that we’re in,” he said. “This is a very small part that we can play in rebalancing the scales on a national basis.”
In conversations across the Statehouse, lawmakers seemed weary and rattled by the monthslong political fight and its consequences.
Many thought Bray’s announcement last month that there wasn’t enough support to pass the map would be the end of it. Now, they hope Thursday’s vote will settle the issue.
“I think that’s the point,” said Megan Robertson, who leads an environmental group, Indiana Conservation Voters, that has been spending and mobilizing against the redistricting bill. “They just feel like they have to vote on it on the floor, because otherwise it’s never going to end.”
