IN Governor Calls Special Session To Redraw Congressional Maps

On Monday, Gov. Mike Braun called for a special session to redistrict Indiana’s nine congressional seats, two of which are held by Democrats in the Republican-supermajority state. His call is part of a nationwide effort to rebalance Congress after decades of heavily partisan redistricting everywhere Democrats hold state majorities, as well as congressional apportionment increasingly distorted by Democrat-encouraged mass illegal immigration.

“I am calling a special legislative session to protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair,” Braun said in a statement. “I am also asking the legislature to conform Indiana’s tax code with new federal tax provisions to ensure stability and certainty for taxpayers and tax preparers for 2026 filings.”

Indiana currently has seven Republican-held congressional seats and two Democrat-held seats in a state where 59 percent of voters chose Donald Trump for president in 2024. As state Sen. Liz Brown pointed out in these pages, Indiana currently has a “balance of voters” similar to that of Massachusetts, where none of the state’s nine congressional seats is held by a Republican.

As The Federalist’s Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway said on Fox News, “Democrats have … pretty much squeezed all of the juice out of the fruit that they can get from it. Any time they control a state, they just get all of the congressional districts that they can, whereas Republicans have been very late to play this game.”

For years, Democrats have gerrymandered states they control to protect their officeholders from facing competitive elections. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Democrat strongholds such as Massachusetts, Illinois, and Connecticut.

In Massachusetts and Connecticut, not a single Republican holds one congressional or Senate seat, although approximately 40 percent of voters in both states voted for Trump in 2024. Illinois is one of the most gerrymandered states in the union, with Nathaniel Rakich and Tony Chow writing in 2022 in FiveThirtyEight that the state’s congressional map “seems hell-bent on making Republican congressman from Illinois an endangered species.” That’s despite more than 43 percent of Illinois voters choosing the Republican presidential candidate in 2024.

California is also gearing up to redraw its already gerrymandered maps. After Texas Republicans announced plans to adopt a new congressional map that could add five Republican seats, California Gov. Gavin Newsom moved to bypass his state’s redistricting commission and gerrymander the state even further.

Proposition 50, a measure appearing on the November ballot, would allow the legislature to adopt a new map between 2026 and 2030 to offset potential Republican pickups from Texas’ new map. Notably, Texas is seeking to adopt new maps after the Department of Justice raised “serious concerns” that four Texas districts were unlawfully gerrymandered on racial grounds. 

“We can no longer ignore what is happening nationally. We need to acknowledge the decades of data that is being presented to us, whether it is about flaws with the last census or the fact that states like Massachusetts have eliminated Republican representation for decades,” Brown told The Federalist in a statement. “Now we have every indication that California’s upcoming vote will further disenfranchise Republican voices, not only in that state but more importantly in Washington. Their actions could allow up to half a dozen Republican seats to flip Democrat, thus further hurting our conservative representation in Washington. Here in the Hoosier state, we don’t want to see two straight years of impeachment hearings and efforts to make amnesty, trans ideology, and abortion on demand the law of the land.”

State Rep. Matt Commons, R-Williamsport, told The Federalist that redistricting is necessary, in part, because of “sanctuary cities and states like California, Los Angeles County”: “You know, they’re going to pack in illegal immigrants into those districts, and they’re going to rob congressional seats and congressional apportionment from not only the United States as a whole and other states, but also from the rural parts of their state.”

Census counts that include illegal migrants determine how many seats in the House of Representatives (and, thus, how many Electoral College votes) are allotted to each state. This means sanctuary states and cities fraudulently increase the number of Democrat votes for president and the House.

Republican U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman told The Federalist that it is “vitally important that Indiana redraw the house maps because we are at a disadvantage in Washington, D.C., because we are not a sanctuary state.” Stutzman, a farmer, supported a bill to give illegal aliens amnesty earlier this year.

“I kind of compare it to the British military during the Revolutionary War. The British military was the strongest, most powerful military in the world, and they followed their own rules of war. You know, they all stayed in the line. They marched in the line. Well, the Patriots and the colonists, they couldn’t compete with that. And so they had to fight differently. And so I’m telling the Republican leadership, let’s not be the British. We’re going to have to fight to win,” Stutzman said, explaining that Democrats aren’t breaking any laws by redistricting, but they are systematically advantaging their party in ways Republicans can’t afford to ignore.

“If we don’t redistrict in Indiana, we’re going to be in the minority, then we can’t affect the real policy that affects the country,” he added.

The White House has also reportedly been encouraging Indiana to redraw its congressional maps as well. Politico’s Adam Wren reported that the spokeswoman for Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray said, “The votes still aren’t there for redistricting.”

Commons told The Federalist he was “disappointed” the Republican-majority Senate is wavering on the issue. Like the U.S. Senate, the Indiana state Senate is known for often supporting special interests above the interests of Republican voters, and for its opposition to Donald Trump-style policies that have expanded and energized the Republican Party, including immigration enforcement and the courage to utterly reject Democrat policies.

“It’s not a fight that we asked for, but it’s [a] fight that’s been taking place, and we’ve been — the Republicans — have been losing nationally for over 20 years, and this is a way to rebalance things,” Commons said. “And you know, I encourage my Senate colleagues that are still on the fence to join the fight, and let’s get this done for not just Indiana Republicans and Hoosiers as a whole, but also national Republicans and Republicans in California and Illinois that have been disenfranchised by their state Democrats for decades.”

Brown told The Federalist she hopes Senate leadership can “facilitate these conversations at a caucus-level” and that she believes the votes are there to redistrict. “If Indiana doesn’t act like it wants to win, it shouldn’t be surprised when it loses,” Brown continued.

During a recent interview, Bray’s team reportedly requested that an answer about redistricting be removed from the final production. In-state reporter Jim Shella reported that he interviewed Bray while co-hosting a podcast with former GOP operative Robert Vane. Vane and Bray’s team had agreed to “avoid the topic of redistricting,” Shella said.

Shella said “journalistic ethics would not allow” him to agree to not ask a public official about an issue of public interest. So Shella said he asked Bray about redistricting twice, and Bray responded that he is “considering it.” Shella said that portion of the interview was then removed from the final publication of the podcast.

Bray’s spokeswoman did not respond to a Federalist request for comment Monday.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2