By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
August 6, 2025
Gov. Mike Braun confirmed that Vice President J.D. Vance will visit Indianapolis on Thursday to meet with Braun and state legislative leaders – a private huddle that comes as the White House pressures deep-red states to redraw their congressional districts to add more Republican-leaning seats in time for next year’s midterm elections.
Braun did not rule out calling a special session for a rare mid-decade redistricting, but sought to downplay the possibility, telling reporters Tuesday that the discussion will cover a “broad array of subjects.”
“Whatever we discuss there, and if that topic comes up, it’s exploratory,” Braun said of redrawing Indiana’s congressional map. “So there’s been no commitments made other than I think (the Trump administration is) going to come to every state that’s got the possibility of that happening.”
An attempt by the Republican majority in the Texas legislature to reconfigure their state’s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 mid-term election has sparked a gerrymandering arms race across the country. President Donald Trump’s administration is also urging Florida, Missouri and other states where Republicans fully control the government to redraw their maps. Democratic governors in several states, including California, Illinois and New York, have threatened retaliation by saying they could eke out more seats that favor Democrats by redrawing their own maps.
At stake is control of the House, where Republicans face historical headwinds in holding onto their narrow three-seat majority. A Democratic House majority could halt Trump’s legislative agenda and launch investigations into the actions of his administration during his final two years in office
Typically, Statehouses redraw their congressional and state legislative district maps every 10 years using the most recent population data collected by the U.S. Census. Redistricting mid-decade is not unheard of but very unusual.
Indiana has nine congressional districts of which only the 1st, encompassing the northwest corner of the state, and the 7th, covering most of Indianapolis, are held by Democrats. Despite the Republican Party’s grip on the Hoosier state, Democratic lawmakers believe the Trump administration will pressure Braun and GOP leaders into redistricting to try to flip at least one of the blue seats to red.
State Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, asserted Trump is fearful voters will boot many Republican lawmakers from Capitol Hill next November, because his policies have cut health care and food support for working families while giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
“No wonder he wants to thwart the will of the people by rigging the next election,” Pierce said. “President Trump and Vice President Vance are so desperate they’re scraping for every seat they can get through gerrymandering. You have to be pretty desperate to decide having seven of the nine seats in Indiana held by Republicans is not enough.”
The two legislative leaders set to meet alongside Braun with Vance on Thursday, House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, and Senate President Pro Tem Rod Bray, R-Martinsville, did not issue any statements regarding the potential to redistrict.
Common Cause Indiana executive director Julia Vaughn, who led an organized opposition to the 2021 redistricting process, said redoing the maps mid-decade will further prevent Hoosiers from getting fair and equal representation by gerrymandering the congressional districts even more.
“Vice President Vance should spend his time in Indiana listening to the real problems Hoosiers face – broken promises on lowering prices, a shaky economy, and the effects of major federal and state budget cuts,” Julia Vaughn, Common Cause Indiana executive director, said in a statement. “That is what Hoosiers are focused on right now.”
Lawmakers would be under tight time constraints if they want new districts for the November 2026 election. Candidates must file for the primary by Feb. 6 of next year so the new maps would have to be drawn and passed by the legislature prior to the start of 2026. Also, local election officials would not have as much time to prepare once the new districts are in place as they have when the redistricting is completed every 10 years.
Although the Indiana Constitution mandates the state’s House and Senate maps be drawn the year after the decennial census, the document is silent about the congressional districts. Pierce said he is uncertain but he suspects the same prohibition does not extend to maps for the seats in congress. Also, he said Republicans could come for a special session and suspend the constitutional requirement that bills get three separate reading days and push the potential new maps through in one day.
“We’ll see if they have the arrogance to do that, but they have the power to do it,” Pierce said.
Secretary of State Diego Morales said in a statement that any decisions about redistricting should be made by the political leaders. Also, he expressed confidence that if the congressional maps are replaced, the 2026 election would not be disrupted.
“Indiana’s last congressional redistricting passed on Oct. 1, 2021. The county process of making sure the voters are in the correct district was able to be completed well in advance of the 2022 election cycle,” Morales said. “I have no doubt that Indiana’s election system and county election administrators would complete all necessary updates if congressional redistricting did occur.
In Texas, the redistricting process has stalled because the Democrats fled the state. Republicans in Austin cannot move the bill forward since they do not have a quorum without their colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle.
Democrats are a super minority in the Indiana Statehouse so they could not stop any redistricting by leaving, because the GOP can reach a quorum without them. Still Pierce said he believes if Hoosiers are made aware of what is happening, they will provide enough pushback to convince the Republicans to abandon their effort.
Indiana redrew its maps in 2021 and passed primarily along party lines by the legislature in October of that year. The process was scrutinized and criticized by the public with Hoosiers crowding into redistricting hearings held by House and Senate elections committees across the state and submitting maps they had drawn themselves.
Still, Braun blamed Democrats for gerrymandering the district maps. He pointed to the year 2000 when the Democratic majority drew maps which, he said, relied on sprawling and oddly-shaped districts to capture certain population centers while the maps the Republicans produced in 2010 contained symmetrical and compact districts that adhered to township boundaries.
“If you look at who’s taken it to the hilt,” Braun said of gerrymandering, “who’s done the most of it, it would be the side of the aisle complaining about it.”
Asked why Indiana would need to redistrict this year if its maps are fair, Braun said improvements could possibly be made.
“So here, it would have to be based upon the fact that maybe areas aren’t being represented well with the current configuration as the only logic behind it,” Braun said.
Pierce blasted Braun’s analysis. He said “political operatives” helped Republicans craft the recent maps, so despite the districts’ neat appearance, they are lopsided and drawn to maximize the GOP’s advantage. Moreover, he is concerned that with the advanced computer tools and artificial intelligence, the new maps could be even more gerrymandered into one party’s favor.
The currently situation of redistricting mid-decade to eke out one or two more seats, he said, could lead to Congress becoming illegitimate. People will wonder whether their votes matter if the districts are so manipulated that the outcomes of the elections reflect only what the politicians in power want.
“Once you lose legitimacy as a government, you don’t have a democracy anymore,” Pierce said. “So, this is not a small thing that’s happening here. This is basically a knife fight for democracy, and the Democrats better act like it.”
Indiana Senate minority leader Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, pointed out a 2016 special interim study committee on redistricting called for a bipartisan commission to draw the congressional and legislative maps and submit them to the General Assembly for enactment. The committee concluded the interests of Indiana voters would be best served by having a commission independent from the legislature do the redistricting.
However, Yoder said, Republican lawmakers did not follow the recommendation and are now seem poised to consider an “even more extreme partisan gerrymandering.”
“This should concern every Hoosier. Because when leaders prioritize short-term political gain over the long-term health of our democracy, we all lose,” Yoder said in a statement. “Indiana isn’t a prize to be won. It’s a state full of people who deserve a government that is fair to its people and earns its wins the right way – not by changing the rules.”
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
