{"id":427728,"date":"2025-12-06T01:42:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T01:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/427728\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T01:42:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T01:42:11","slug":"indiana-house-passes-new-congressional-map-backed-by-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/427728\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana House passes new congressional map backed by Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indiana state House Republicans passed a new state congressional map<\/a> Friday at the behest of President Donald Trump<\/a>, advancing the legislation to the state Senate, where it is unclear if enough lawmakers will support its final passage. <\/p>\n

Lawmakers in the Republican-majority House voted 57-41 in favor of the map, which splits the city of Indianapolis into four districts to help the GOP potentially win all nine Indiana congressional seats. While Trump and many other Republicans are celebrating the passage, the map faces its true test in the Senate, where many GOP lawmakers have opposed mid-decade redistricting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Democrats in the House minority decried the new map, with many criticizing the swift timeline of the past week. The map was introduced on Monday. By contrast, when the current congressional district map was passed in 2021, lawmakers held multiple public hearings around the state over several months beforehand.<\/p>\n

Democratic state Rep. Greg Porter, who represents Indianapolis, railed against the proposal on the House floor, saying it would dilute the power of Black Hoosiers. U.S. Rep. Andr\u00e9 Carson<\/a>, who has represented Indianapolis for the past 17 years and stands to lose his seat, is the state\u2019s only Black member of Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing today with this proposed legislation is taking away the rights of Black and brown people in Indiana,\u201d Porter said. \u201cIt cracks Marion County!\u201d<\/p>\n

State under pressure from White House<\/p>\n

While redistricting<\/a> is typically done at the beginning of a new decade with the census, Trump has pushed Republican-led states to redistrict this year to give the GOP an easier path to maintaining its majority in the U.S. House. Democrats only need to flip a handful of seats next November to overcome the GOP\u2019s current margin, and midterm elections typically favor the party opposite the one in power.<\/p>\n

Indiana lawmakers have been under increasing pressure from the White House<\/a> to follow the lead of Republicans in Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina, which have all passed new maps in recent months ahead of next year\u2019s midterms. To offset the GOP gains, Democrats in California and Virginia have moved to do the same.<\/p>\n

Republicans currently hold seven of Indiana\u2019s nine U.S. House seats.<\/p>\n

The author of Indiana\u2019s legislation, Republican state Rep. Ben Smaltz, said on the floor Wednesday that the map and bill language were provided by the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the GOP\u2019s primary redistricting entity that was also involved in drawing Texas\u2019 new map this year. Smaltz said the trust gave Indiana Republicans one option for the statewide map.<\/p>\n

Smaltz said Friday the tit-for-tat mid-decade redistricting between Democratic and Republican states may continue for the next several cycles and \u201cmay be the new normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican Todd Huston, Indiana\u2019s House speaker, took to the floor Friday to defend the redistricting proposal in light of the partisan power balance across the country, saying \u201cwe don\u2019t operate in a vacuum.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Indiana House vote ups the pressure on Senate Republicans to approve the new map for final passage. <\/p>\n

Gov. Mike Braun, a first-term Republican and ally of Trump, praised the House vote Friday. <\/p>\n

\u201cI urge the Senate to move quickly next week and adopt this map so Indiana can move forward with confidence,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Trump pushed senators to pass the proposal \u201cAS IS,\u201d in a social media post Friday evening. He also named nine individual senators he described as needing \u201cencouragement to make the right decision.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cLet your voice be heard loud and clear in support of these Senators doing the right thing,\u201d Trump wrote. <\/p>\n

Map advances to state Senate<\/p>\n

The immediate next hurdle for the new map will come in a Senate committee, which is scheduled to meet Monday afternoon. <\/p>\n

The top Republican of the state Senate, Rodric Bray, has previously said there were not enough votes to support redistricting, but it is unknown where the vote count stands now. In the 50-member Senate, Republicans need at least 25 votes to pass the legislation. A 26th tiebreaking vote could come from Republican Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith.<\/p>\n

The issue has sharply divided Republicans in the Hoosier state. Senators on both sides of the issue have been subject to threats and swatting attempts<\/a> in recent weeks. <\/p>\n

Trump has also said he will back primary opponents against any GOP senator who opposes redistricting. But half the chamber, including Bray, is not up for reelection until 2028.<\/p>\n

The map approved by House Republicans splits the Democratic city of Indianapolis \u2014 which currently makes up the entirety of the 7th Congressional District \u2014 into four quadrants divided among four rural districts. The new map also groups the cities of East Chicago and Gary with several Republican counties in northern Indiana, potentially ousting Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan, who represents the current district in the state\u2019s northwest corner near Chicago. <\/p>\n

In the ballooning redistricting battle, the U.S. Supreme Court<\/a> handed a win to Texas Republicans on Thursday by allowing the state to conduct next year\u2019s elections under the new congressional map that favors the GOP and could give the party five more seats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indiana state House Republicans passed a new state congressional map Friday at the behest of President Donald Trump,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":427729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[199007,199005,69,90,166496,57,199006,6323,2862,20579,2934,181121,166494,50,80,22204,166497,199008,61,322,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-427728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-andr-carson","10":"tag-ben-smaltz","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-frank-mrvan","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-greg-porter","16":"tag-in-state-wire","17":"tag-indiana","18":"tag-indianapolis","19":"tag-legislation","20":"tag-local-news-for-apple","21":"tag-mike-braun","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-politics","24":"tag-redistricting","25":"tag-rodric-bray","26":"tag-todd-huston","27":"tag-u-s-news","28":"tag-u-s-republican-party","29":"tag-united-states","30":"tag-unitedstates","31":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115670086065357093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}