Republicans Shouldn't Celebrate Trump's Indiana Wins Quite Yet

Trump proved he still has juice with the GOP base, but at what cost?

Screenshot from CNN

Last summer, Donald Trump set off the 2025-2026 redistricting wars when he demanded that Texas Governor Greg Abbott call a special session to redraw Texas’s congressional lines. As Trump told reporters openly at the time, “We are entitled to five more seats.”

But he was not content to stop there. Trump also called on other red states to do the same, and North Carolina and Missouri quickly followed.

There was one outlier state that was aggressively targeted by Trump, however, that ultimately refused to comply: Indiana.

With Republican supermajorities in both chambers of Indiana’s state legislature and with two Democratic congressional seats out of nine total, this seemed like an easy double pickup for the GOP. But a slight majority of Indiana state senate Republicans bucked Trump and joined Democrats to vote down the redrawn maps. And this week, Trump got his revenge.

Of the eight Indiana Republican state senators running for reelection this year who had opposed the maps, Trump targeted seven with primary challengers. Of those seven, five went down to defeat. So far.

Now Trump and his MAGA supporters are claiming newfound momentum for the president, whose influence—even among his Republican base—many felt was waning. And they might have a point. This latest victory for Trump comes on the tail end of a series of wins for Republicans in the redistricting wars. So, what are the implications of Tuesday’s result in Indiana now that Republicans are newly emboldened to redistrict their way into a House majority this November?

The Indiana Pressure Campaign

Trump began his red state redistricting pressure campaign last July, urging not just Texas to redraw its maps but “a couple other states” as well. Once Trump demanded they jump, Missouri and North Carolina followed Texas in asking “how high?”

In Indiana, on the other hand, some Republican leaders were skittish. According to The Washington Post, one Indiana State Rep. even suggested that there was peril for Republicans in such a scheme, suggesting new maps could “[put] many good state elected officials at risk because of a political redistricting stunt.” He would be proven correct, of course, though not for the reason he thought.

By early August, Vice President JD Vance was in Indiana to urge Republican Governor Mike Braun and state leaders to push through a new map in order to secure one or two new Republican seats in Congress. That was followed up by meetings later that month with Trump and Vance at the White House, during which, per The Washington Post:

Trump privately pushed Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston and Senate President Rodric Bray on redistricting in a meeting in the Oval Office, according to a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed meeting. Vance separately met with Indiana state lawmakers and spoke about redistricting in the last 30 minutes of the meeting, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

By that point, the national stakes had risen. Governor Gavin Newsom announced his intention to counter Texas’s redistricting with new California maps designed to net Democrats up to five seats in the state. That development prompted Charlie Kirk to post that Turning Point USA would support primary challenges against Republicans who opposed Trump on his redistricting push.

Conservative group Club for Growth even launched an ad campaign urging Indiana Republicans to call their state representatives to urge them to support new maps.

The pressure campaign was working. Indiana Governor Jim Braun, who in August had been noncommittal on Trump’s demand for him to call a special session of the state legislature to redraw the maps, by September had floated a November special session of the General Assembly. On October 27, he officially called the special session for November 3.

But even then it was clear that new maps did not have the votes to pass the Indiana State Senate. Indiana leaders pushed Braun’s special session to December 1, which the State Senate rejected with a vote of adjournment until early January, the first sign that Republicans were willing to buck Trump and Braun.

Despite clear opposition in the other legislative chamber, the Indiana State House went forward with the scheme as scheduled, as State and Fed put it plainly.

The Indiana House will convene Monday, December 1 due to pressure from the White House to consider congressional redistricting.

On December 5, the Indiana House voted to approve the new 9R-0D map, sending the matter to the state senate. But then, on December 11, the Indiana State Senate rejected the maps by a vote of 31-19, with 21 of the chamber’s 40 Republicans joining all Democrats to vote the maps down.

After the vote, Donald Trump vowed revenge. So did Indiana’s Governor, saying

This past Tuesday, they got their revenge.

Of the 21 Republican State Senators who bucked Trump on redistricting, just 10 were up for reelection in 2026. Of those, eight sought reelection, and Trump targeted seven of them with primary challenges. Of those, five of Trump’s challengers have been declared the winners with one still outstanding.

MAGA hailed the result as a defeat of the RINOs.

And as a sign of strength for an otherwise flagging Trump.

As Decision Desk put it, “GOP politicians cross Boss Trump at their own peril.”

Trump’s Revenge Campaign

So how did Trump manage to do this? When Indiana’s state senate rejected the redistricting plan in December, it occurred against the backdrop of two important developments in the redistricting wars happening in blue states.

On October 31, Virginia’s General Assembly gave their mid-decade redistricting ballot measure, which was designed to add four new Democratic seats in Congress, its first vote of approval. And then on November 4, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50, which authorized California’s legislature to redraw maps for the 2026 elections to add up to five new Democratic seats to Congress. These successes fueled a narrative that the Democrats had gained the redistricting momentum, making Trump’s initial gerrymander push a major potential self-own.

No wonder Trump, in his immediate reaction to the news of Indiana’s vote back in December, claimed, “I wasn’t working on it very hard” and “I wasn’t very much involved.” But of course, he was. And he was about to be much more so as his team, along with an array of right-wing groups, targeted seven anti-redistricting Republicans in an all-out primary push.

As The National Review reported,

Former senior Trump White House official and Republican operative Alex Pfeiffer previously told NR, “The president drew a line, and people crossed it. He’s going to enforce that line.”

The president did so with help from GOP groups — including Turning Point Action, the Club for Growth, and spending groups affiliated with the state’s junior U.S. Senator Jim Banks and Governor Mike Braun — that have poured millions of dollars into efforts to oust as many anti-redistricting state legislators as possible through attack ads, primary challengers, and grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts.

What is usually a sleepy primary election in May turned into an intense months-long election fight in which, as Decision Desk described it,

A deluge of campaign advertising followed, to the tune of around $13.5 million in ads, according to AdImpact, a majority from pro-redistricting forces.

AdImpact noted that the ad spending for primaries this cycle was a 4,736% increase over last cycle.

This result also came on the heels of a string of victories for Republicans on the redistricting front, completely upending the narrative of who held the upper hand in the redistricting wars:

• On April 28, the Virginia Supreme Court refused to stay a lower court’s ruling nullifying the results of the state’s redistricting ballot measure, putting Virginia’s four additional Democratic districts in legal limbo;

• On April 29, the Supreme Court announced its Louisiana v. Callais decision, which opened the door for Southern states to eliminate their majority Black congressional districts.

• On May 4, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed into law the Republican legislature’s new congressional maps, which could net Republicans as many as 4 seats.

Louisiana has already postponed its primaries, even though voting was already underway, in order to redraw its maps in time for the 2026 midterms to eliminate one Black majority Democratic district. And Tennessee just passed its own proposed new map eliminating its one remaining Democratic seat in Congress.

So where do the redistricting wars stand now? CNN puts it this way in their headline,

Republicans are ahead and gaining

As CNN counts it:

So far, Republicans have enacted new congressional maps in five states, targeting 13 US House seats currently held by Democrats. New maps in California, Utah and Virginia could flip as many as 10 seats for Democrats.

That means that Republicans have drawn themselves a net of three new GOP-friendly seats so far, but more are now expected. Each state’s situation is different, but new maps in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina could push that total up to seven or eight. Mississippi has already held its primary, but there are calls for it, too, to redraw its map.

The GOP advantage could grow beyond 10 if the Virginia Supreme Court agrees with Republican lawmakers and invalidates on procedural grounds a voter initiative that passed last month.

But the question remains: At what cost?

As Indiana State Senator Spencer Deery—who voted against Trump’s maps and, as of Tuesday night, was just 3 votes ahead of his Trump-backed challenger—portrayed the push to challenge “rogue” Republicans in Indiana to The National Review:

“It is completely irrational if the goal is to maintain a congressional majority, because these funds are a direct distraction from that goal. Not only is it the millions that they’re diverting from that goal, it’s also the money that I and my colleagues are raising to compete with that that also then drains funds that are available for a congressional majority.”

The Real Political Fallout From Tuesday’s Results

At a time when Trump’s approval ratings are at an all-time low, when elected Republicans are increasingly emboldened to call him out publicly, and when Trump is widely considered to be at the weakest point of his political career, on Tuesday night he proved that he’s still relevant.

For the mob boss in chief, Tuesday’s results were decisive proof that there are very real consequences for any elected Republican who crosses him.

As Harry Enten put it on CNN:

But Trump’s popularity within the GOP does not translate into winning numbers for the entire electorate. Indeed, as Enten noted just this week,

“Trump has reached the lowest net approval rating ever for a President of the US.”

And

“Trump is absolutely collapsing with GOP-leaning independents per WaPo & Pew polls.”

As Jessica Tarlov put it on The Five yesterday,

Even the results out of Indiana on Tuesday had mixed signals for Republicans.

As David Bernstein of Good Politics/Bad Politics notes, the Tuesday results in Indiana might say more about the mood of the Republican primary electorate than about the strength of Donald Trump. In looking at results in Indiana congressional primaries,

Two in particular caught my eye. Victoria Spartz — who, to be sure, has had trouble with the conservative base before — staggered to a 60%-40% primary win, despite Trump’s endorsement and a virtually non-existent opponent. Scott A. King, a political newcomer who lists his occupation as “pursuing a political career,” had no campaign web page, failed to submit a campaign finance report, and, to the extent he ran at all, ran on such priorities as ending U.S. participation in GeoEngineering and World Government, and investigating the Clear Skies Initiative of 2003. On Election Day, King posted to Facebook about the danger of “voice to skull technology.” He received 40 percent of the GOP primary vote for Congress.

Even closer was the challenge to Jefferson Shreve, also endorsed by Trump. A whopping 47 percent of Tuesday’s vote went to Sarah Janisse Brown, a MAHA movement figure who touts herself as “mother of 15, author of 360+ educational books.” Brown had raised just $16,000 in contributions as of April 15, and very nearly ousted Shreve.

As Bernstein points out,

I wonder if we might be seeing a rise in disaffection among the Republican faithful — a mood where relatively moderate Republicans stay grumpily home, while discouraged mainstream Republicans combine with the far-right base to send a message to incumbents who aren’t accomplishing what they are, respectively, hoping for.

What Trump tapped into in Indiana was anti-establishment sentiment among the GOP base. Ironically, that does not bode well for Republicans seeking reelection in November.

The same could be said of Republican redistricting throughout the country, as the GOP dilutes its own strength in order to draw more red-leaning districts. In an environment where the Democratic generic ballot advantage is 10 points, that could put a whole lot of Republican incumbents in danger.

For example, in Texas, it’s been evident for months that the turn away from Trump among Hispanic voters could make the state’s aggressive new map a backfire for the ages.

And as Bloomberg’s Mary Ellen Klas notes, the same is likely true in Florida.

Trump carried Florida by 13 percentage points in 2024, and his maximalist approach to redistricting assumes his party’s gains with Hispanic voters are locked in. But recent elections across the state suggest the opposite has happened. His 2024 coalition, which included both Hispanic and younger voters, is crumbling, leaving Republicans less certain about their margins.

The 12 special elections in Florida since Trump returned to the White House tell the story. In nine of them, the results showed a double-digit swing toward Democrats.

From Klas:

The swings were primarily due to independent voters breaking heavily for Democrats while a significant number of Hispanic voters — and a likely chunk of moderate Republicans — are leaving the GOP, said Christian Ulvert, a Miami-based Democratic political consultant. A recent poll his firm conducted of likely Florida voters found those shifts happening across the state.

And these huge swings could make Trump’s entire redistricting project a self-defeating exercise in the end.

“The governor’s playing the greatest gamble of roulette with redistricting,” Ulvert told me. “Because there’s enough data that shows that past performance and behavior will not predict how voters vote in this election cycle.”