New Indiana Redistricting Push Puts Pressure on Democratic States, With Virginia Most Likely To Counter

Indiana state senators’ decision to take up a congressional redistricting plan pushed by President Trump is putting additional pressure on Democratic states to redraw their own maps. As it stands, the outcome of the gerrymandering war kicked off by Texas over the summer is in doubt. Mr. Trump began by demanding he be given five additional U.S. House seats by Texas state legislators, saying he was entitled to that midterm cushion because he won Texas in 2024. Shortly after, Democratic states began talking about retaliation, and Governor Gavin Newsom was the first to put pen to paper to redraw his own state’s maps so Democrats could take five GOP seats. Now, with a mere two-seat majority in the House, Mr. Trump has been looking elsewhere to pick up extra seats for his party. For months he has pushed Indiana Republicans, who have the opportunity to draw two House Democrats out of their seats. After pushing back on the president’s demands, the state senate president pro tempore, Rodric Bray, says he will bring his colleagues back in December, likely to hold an up-or-down vote on redistricting. “The issue of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps mid-cycle has received a lot of attention and is causing strife here in our state. To resolve this issue, the Senate intends to reconvene,” Mr. Bray said in a statement. Several of Indiana’s Republican state senators — both those who publicly oppose redistricting and those who have refused to make their positions known — have been subjected to political attacks and swatting attempts. Mr. Trump has taken to calling Mr. Bray a “RINO,” while another lawmaker, Senator Greg Goode, suffered a swatting attempt just hours after the president lambasted him by name in a post on Truth Social. With Texas’s congressional map facing a Supreme Court test in the coming days, there is a real chance that the GOP could fall behind in the gerrymandering war. If the Lone Star State is forced to use its 2024 congressional maps in 2026 and California’s new map is allowed to take effect, then Republicans will have picked up just three seats — one in Ohio, one in North Carolina, and one in Missouri. Democrats will have likely picked up five in California, meaning the opposition party will have already flipped two seats in the House in a midterm election they are already favored to win. Virginia Democrats are taking notice, in the hopes that they can aid in the gerrymandering fight. The Democratic president of the Virginia state senate, Louise Lucas, seems especially interested with a new Democratic governor set to be inaugurated next year. Democrats kicked off the process of redrawing Virginia’s House maps before the November election, but must vote again once the legislature reconvenes for its next session in January. After that, Virginia voters will go to the polls to vote on whether they want their state’s congressional map redrawn. The current breakdown of the House delegation has five Republicans and six Democrats. On Wednesday, one election forecaster shared an analysis of what Virginia’s new maps could look like if Ms. Lucas and other Democrats vote to eliminate three of the five Republican seats. In a response to that analysis on X, Ms. Lucas simply wrote, “FOUR,” implying that she is prepared to eliminate all but one of Virginia Republicans’ congressional seats.

New Indiana Redistricting Push Puts Pressure on Democratic States, With Virginia Most Likely To Counter

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