White House Gives Indiana GOP Another Chance to Bend the Knee On Redistricting

Date:2025-08-28 07:51:26 Category:US Views:1 Comment:0

The White House invited 50-plus Indiana state Republicans to Washington this week to again try to pressure those on the fence about President Trump’s mid-decade gerrymandering scheme to get in line with the plan.

The meeting was held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building Tuesday with lawmakers and White House officials under the guise of a sweeping discussion on how Indiana Republicans could support the Trump administration’s agenda, according to reporting from Politico and the Indy Star. Vice President JD Vance joined the meeting for 15 to 20 minutes toward the end of the day to lead a conversation on why everyone was there: to try to persuade Republicans in the Indiana state legislature to agree to redraw their congressional maps ahead of the midterms.

The Trump White House has been focused for weeks on forcing Indiana and other red state lawmakers to engage in mid-cycle gerrymandering in order to ensure that Republicans are able to keep the House next year — the prospects of which, according to some polls, are pretty up in the air, absent his egregious redistricting campaign. In Indiana specifically, that would mean forcing Republicans to redraw district lines in their state so that one of the two seats that are currently held by Democrats in the U.S. House will instead flip to Republicans.

In other words, this whole thing is over, at most, two seats. The pressure campaign in Texas made more sense. Republicans there, after some substantial protest from their Democratic counterparts, were able to pass redrawn maps that will likely flip five seats in the U.S. House for Republicans. Not two.

At least a dozen Indiana Republicans remain vocally opposed to the Trump White House’s push for them to redraw their maps. And their opposition to the matter hasn’t come without a price. As we noted last week, some of Trump’s allies are already threatening to back primary challengers for those who are expressing some difficulty stomaching the matter.

It’s not totally clear how successful the Indiana Republicans’ Washington pilgrimage was for the White House.

In its report on the meeting, Politico cited a “White House official familiar with the meeting” who expressed a high degree of optimism about how the private discussions/strong-arming went:

“You could see the room coming around to the idea hearing from the vice president,” the official told POLITICO. “Some real movement from it.”
The person said some of those lawmakers who have publicly registered their disapproval asked Vance questions, and eventually they committed to reconsider.

Trump also reportedly met privately in the Oval Office with both Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston and Senate President Rodric Bray, both of whom have publicly avoided stating their position on redistricting in recent weeks. Tuesday’s meeting didn’t change that for Bray.

“While redistricting did come up and members were able to ask questions, we spent the bulk of our afternoon discussing issues like energy, immigration and preventing waste and fraud in government,” Bray said in an official statement on the meeting with Vance.

Local reports on the discussion painted a similarly subdued tone from the Republicans who are still not entirely onboard with the plan to, essentially, eliminate Indiana Democratic voters’ representation in the House. One state Republican, Rep. Jim Lucas, has previously described the idea of mid-decade gerrymandering as a “highly unusual and politically optically horrible” idea.

“I’m not as opposed to it as I was,” Lucas told the Indy Star after he left the meeting with Vance.

It’s hardly a ringing endorsement.

That Settles It

Despite the fact that he just signed legislation into law that effectively guts Medicaid as we know it, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office earlier this week that the social safety net program was safe from cuts. Trump was responding to a reporter’s question about what programs he would try to protect if congressional Republicans attempted to pass another reconciliation package.

“One thing I said and I gave my word — we’re not going to hurt anybody on Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security,” Trump said.

Empty Alligator Alcatraz

Even as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Trump administration attempt to fight a judge’s recent order to shut down the immigrant detention facility by October, the DeSantis administration is also taking steps to comply with it — something that is certainly not a given at this hour of Trump’s second term. Per AP:

In a message sent to South Florida Rabbi Mario Rojzman on Aug. 22 related to providing chaplaincy services at the facility, Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie said “we are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.” Rojzman, and the executive assistant who sent the original email to Guthrie, both confirmed the veracity of the messages to the AP on Wednesday.