Donald Trump has strong-arming Congress down to a science. Now his redistricting gambit is putting his methods through a stress test.
It’s a strategy of intensifying levels of private coercion and public threats of consequence, driven by Trump and amplified by aides and allies behind closed doors and through the online MAGA echo chamber: White House visits, calls from the president, online insults and even primary threats.
The more-stick-than-carrot approach has delivered Trump major wins in Washington by helping him barrel through initial GOP resistance to controversial Cabinet picks and a politically perilous policy package in a stunningly short turnaround.
That machine is whirring into gear again as the White House pushes Texas, Missouri and Indiana to gerrymander their congressional districts to protect Republicans’ House majority in the midterms. Vice President JD Vance and top aides have been dispatched to Illinois and staffers have phoned into Missouri. Trump is summoning Hoosier Republicans to the White House next week. Both his political operation and right-wing influencers have begun floating primary challenges.
“These folks are not sitting around thinking about redistricting. But in an instant, Trump can prioritize that issue for them and subsequently he can mobilize them on his behalf,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who has worked for House GOP leadership and on presidential campaigns. “I think he recognizes that formidable power and he’s willing to apply it far and wide.”
Now that redistricting pressure campaign is providing a significant test of whether the approach Trump has near-perfected within his governing trifecta in D.C. can translate beyond the beltway.
Every president has the power of the bully pulpit, wielding the heft of the Oval Office and inside-the-beltway pressure tactics to advance his agenda. But Trump also retains a uniquely powerful hold over the most enthusiastic voters in the GOP, and is able to leverage the grassroots support of his MAGA movement and Truth Social platform to compound pressure on any resistant Republicans to accede to his demands.
Marrying the two, Trump has a singular strategy that he’s employed to great effect so far this term to compel Republican lawmakers into supporting his appointees and legislative agenda.
There are very few exceptions, in part because Trump has made clear the consequences for dissent. Trump and his team have repeatedly threatened primary challenges for GOP lawmakers who do not bend to his will, going as far as standing up a super PAC that’s raising millions of dollars to target Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) for voting against the “big, beautiful bill.” And the White House is vetting potential primary challengers to Massie, including Kentucky state Sen. Aaron Reed, who traveled to Washington for a meeting last month, two people familiar with the trip confirmed to POLITICO.
“Incumbent presidents have broad sway over their party…The only real difference is that Trump will operate with language and threats we haven’t seen from other presidents,” said Doug Heye, a GOP strategist who has worked for House Republican leadership. “He’s more YOLO than lame duck.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Now Trump and his team are trying their playbook on GOP governors and state lawmakers as they push as many red states as possible into mid-decade redistricting. They are on the cusp of success in Texas, where the Republican-controlled Legislature is imposing a new map designed to net the party five seats.
Missouri Republicans are widely expected to follow suit when they return to Jefferson City in September for their annual veto session — despite still smarting from a knock-down, drag-out redistricting fight just two years ago in which they ultimately rejected drawing an additional GOP district.
While Republicans in the state Legislature are reluctant to revisit the difficult inter-party politics at play, the Trump administration is working to force them to submit anyway, calling up Gov. Mike Kehoe and local lawmakers who have expressed skepticism about the effort.
There’s also a less direct form of pressure at play — one that has guided GOP decision-making throughout Trump’s time as the party’s standard-bearer.
“No one wants to be seen as anti-administration or anti-Trump,” said a Missouri GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly about private deliberations. “That does not do anyone any good when they go back to their district.”
But the potential limits of Trump’s pressure-campaign playbook are showing in Indiana, where Republicans are so far resisting a more intensive — and public — push. That includes several GOP state lawmakers who have publicly panned the effort, with one hard-right representative slamming it as “politically optically horrible.”
The White House dispatched Vance and top administration aides to Indiana to pitch the governor and GOP legislative leaders on gerrymandering the map. White House Intergovernmental Affairs Director Alex Meyer, in his personal capacity, hascalled several lawmakers to press them to redistrict. A group called Forward America flooded voters’ phones with robocalls and text messages urging them to call their lawmakers to back the effort. Trump’s political operation is considering primarying lawmakers who refuse to fall in line — a threat amplified by MAGA influencer and Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk.
As the pressure mounted, all seven of Indiana’s Republican representatives in Congress issued a series of rapid-fire statements over six hours on Monday supporting Trump’s redistricting push — a clearly coordinated piling-on of pressure as state House Republicans huddled behind closed doors. The state’s two Republican senators backed the effort the following morning.
But progress remains elusive: Gov. Mike Braun is still undecided on whether to call a special session to advance a new map, and GOP resistance is still flaring from within the state house.
Trump and his team show no signs of letting up, bullish about Republicans’ advantages in the redistricting arms race that has exploded between red and blue states. The administration is planning to court more than four dozen Indiana Republicans — including the state House speaker and Senate president — at the White House next week.
And Trump’s allies believe his ability to get his party to fall in line on his agenda is nearly infinite.
“As Trump has said before: The party is what I say it is,” said David Urban, a Trump 2016 campaign adviser and longtime ally. “And that is largely true.”
Adam Wren contributed to this report.
