By Casey Smith
Indiana Capital Chronicle
September 16, 2025
Gov. Mike Braun suggested Monday that Indiana lawmakers could return for a special session in November to redraw congressional boundaries — his clearest signal yet in support of mid-cycle redistricting.
Speaking on Fort Wayne’s WOWO radio, Braun said the state is “in the process where we will evolve in that direction,” and continued to emphasize — as he has in recent weeks — that he wants Hoosier legislative leaders to take the lead on the issue.
“I want it to be where it wasn’t forced upon our legislature, have our leaders talk to their own caucus members,” Braun said. “Some have already changed their point of view when they look at what good comes from it.
“You’re going to find that, probably, the legislators will come around to it,” he continued. “I’m going to give them time. I think eventually we’ll get there.”
He pointed to Ohio and Florida as examples. Ohio is already preparing for a map redraw, while Florida’s Supreme Court recently upheld a GOP-favored congressional map. Texas and Missouri have already redrawn their congressional boundaries.
Braun also tied Indiana’s timeline to national GOP politics.
“If we try to drag our feet as a state on it, probably, we’ll have consequences of not working with the Trump administration as tightly as we should,” Braun said.
Common Cause Indiana Executive Director Julia Vaughn pushed back.
“I guess we shouldn’t be shocked that Washington outsiders will do pretty much anything to get Hoosiers to do their political dirty work, but making threats that could hurt Hoosiers who already are hurting? That’s a new low,” she said in a Tuesday statement. “If we’re being bullied, Hoosiers deserve to know who’s making the threats and what’s on the line because multiple polls have shown that a majority of Hoosiers oppose this partisan power grab.”
You’re going to find that, probably, the legislators will come around to it.
Vice President JD Vance visited the Indiana Statehouse in early August to meet with GOP leaders about redistricting, and later that month, a group of Republican lawmakers traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Vance and other federal officials about the same issue.
Some Hoosier legislators said those conversations played a role in their decision to change their stance.
Trump is pushing GOP-led states like Indiana to redraw maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections to ensure a Republican majority in the U.S. House for the rest of his second term. Redistricting is typically only done after the decennial census.
The Republican governor raised the possibility of lawmakers returning before the end of the year.
“We’ll have to do that either at the very beginning of the next (legislative) session we have in ‘26, or probably more ideally sometime in November,” he said in the radio interview. The next regularly scheduled legislative session, for 2026, begins in January.
Indiana Republicans go to Washington D.C., critics rebuff redistricting push
Waiting until 2026 would be complicated by the filing period for congressional primaries starting in January.
Braun also told reporters Tuesday, “There’ll be other issues we talk about,” floating the possibility of additional special session topics. Once called into a special session, legislators aren’t confined to just one topic.
The governor is the only one empowered to call a special session. A two-week special session in Indiana in 2022 cost about $240,000.
On Tuesday morning at the Statehouse, Braun reiterated that momentum is building.
“It’s moving,” he told reporters. “You clearly saw certain legislators that had absolutely not [been] interested, to where they’re publicly out there changing their mind. This is something that’s evolving across the country, just not Indiana. … I think the inevitability of it, you can put two and two together there.”
Asked when exactly a special session might happen, the governor said he preferred “anytime from early November through the very earliest part” 2026 session — “earlier, rather than later.” “All I’m telling you is that we’re going to look at (the current maps), we’re going to poll our legislators, and if it’s there, we’re going to do it,” he continued. “My feeling is it probably will happen.”
Braun’s comments come amid ongoing deliberations among Indiana’s Republican supermajorities. GOP senators held a closed-door caucus last week to discuss redistricting, but did not comment publicly afterward. House Republicans also caucused virtually on Friday and have met previously in person.
Legislative leadership has largely remained silent on the issue.
Still, some rank-and-file lawmakers have started to shift. Among them, Seymour Rep. Jim Lucas recently flipped from opposing to supporting a map redraw, saying he went from a “hard no to a hell yes.”
Others — like Sen. Spencer Deery, of West Lafayette — said as recently as last week that they remain against making changes before the next census.
Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, called such holdouts “reasonable Republicans,” telling reporters Tuesday morning that Braun needed to add other session topics “… because he can’t get the support to have everybody come in just for that one issue.”
Others seemed to float the idea that Democrats didn’t deserve any congressional seats in Indiana, DeLaney said, though the party regularly gets more than 40% of the vote in statewide elections. Currently, Democrats hold two of Indiana’s nine seats.
“Now, as some people are saying, ‘It’s because Democrats are violent, so we’ve got to get rid of the Democrats,” DeLaney added. “I’ve heard repeatedly that we should have no seats because we didn’t win any statewide elections. Where’s that law? They just make these theories up.”
At least one Republican has tied Charlie Kirk’s assassination to redistricting in Indiana. Kirk, a prominent conservative activist, was killed at a college speaking event in Utah last week.
“They killed Charlie Kirk — the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine-to-zero map,” U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, told Politico’s Playbook.
Outside the Statehouse, opposition is also mounting. A coalition of advocacy groups delivered nearly 9,000 signatures last week urging lawmakers not to pursue early redistricting.
Braun on Monday specifically dismissed Democratic criticisms of the idea, pointing to the state’s maps from two decades ago.
“I think more and more legislators are understanding that the real gerrymandering — you ought to look at the map that the Dems did from the year 2000, where they were in charge of the new jurisdictions,” he said. “That looked like the tentacles of an octopus, would be the best way to describe it. So you’re going to find, I think, that … (Democrats) are raising most of the chorus against it — because they cannot gerrymander any further.”
Democrats controlled the House and Governor’s Office that year but Republicans controlled the Senate, making the map bipartisan.
This story was updated with reaction.
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