“Panic mode”: Democrats say Trump’s Indiana map push shows he’s on his heels
Plus: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s disapproval resolution survives House Democratic leadership’s takedown effort, top Democrats demand a halt to the student loan sale plan, and more.
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FIRST THINGS FIRST
President Donald Trump continued his weekend pressure campaign against Indiana Republicans today after Hoosier State lawmakers rejected his latest call to redraw one or both Democratic congressional seats ahead of the 2026 midterms, in an unprecedented attempt to hold on to a slim Republican majority for the final two years of his second term.
The president intensified his crusade this morning by threatening to endorse any primary challenger to an incumbent state House or Senate Republican who opposes the redistricting push. One state senator who described himself as a Trump supporter said after the president’s latest threat that the best way to advance Trump’s agenda would be to focus on flipping Indiana’s 1st congressional district, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan. (Harris won the district by fourth-tenths of a percent in 2024.)
Democrats view Trump’s extended crash-out as part of his realization that holding the House majority has slipped beyond the GOP’s reach.
“We’ve made clear from the very beginning that as Democrats, we are not going to let Donald Trump and Republicans gerrymander congressional maps all across the country as part of their effort to rig the midterm elections,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me this afternoon. “The reason why Donald Trump is in full panic mode is because he knows the majority in the House of Representatives is gone. And he’s doing everything he can to try to cheat his way to an artificial victory.”
Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) said the Republican state legislators’ resistance to mid-decade redistricting isn’t in defiance of Trump as much as it is a response to the desires of their constituents.
“There were movements on the ground which we were part of, and, quite frankly, movements on both sides of the aisle said, ‘We don’t want this. This isn’t what our state represents,” Carson told me tonight. “I think that Trump has historically bullied people. And then he came to the Indiana lunch counter thinking he could take our lunch money, and Hoosiers said, ‘No.”
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene (Wash.) said her candidates and incumbents would continue to focus on the affordability and health care crises—the issues she believes voters will base their electoral decisions on next year, regardless of the maps.
“They don’t care what the American people think. They know they’re losing with the American people. So now they’ve decided to rig the system,” DelBene said of Trump-aligned Republicans. “We know the voices of the American people want representatives who are going to stand up for them—not let politicians pick their voters, which is what Donald Trump and Republicans are trying to do.”