Donald Trump is again backing primary challengers against Republicans who crossed him, this time targeting eight GOP state senators in Indiana after they rejected his push on redistricting. The move puts the former president back at the center of a state-level intraparty fight and gives May’s primary calendar three big tests of his influence over the party.
The Indiana senators voted against a redistricting measure that would have eliminated two safe Democratic seats, frustrating Trump’s effort to lock down a few more U.S. House seats in the state. Republicans already hold a 40-10 split in the Indiana state Senate, but Trump is still trying to reshape the chamber by knocking off lawmakers who refused to go along.
That strategy comes with a record attached. In 2022, Gov. Brian Kemp survived Trump’s opposition in Georgia. In Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski defeated a ranked-choice challenge from a fellow Republican and a Trump-backed contender. In South Carolina, Rep. Nancy Mace prevailed in a Trump-led primary. Ballotpedia said 93% of Trump’s candidates made it through the primary in 2022 and 83% won in November; two years later, those numbers rose to 96% and 89%.
Indiana has become the latest test because the split is not really about policy. It is about whether Trump can use the weight of his endorsement to punish Republicans who refused to turn their legislative majorities into a partisan map. Former Gov. Mike Pence is opposing Trump’s effort and said he would “simply defer to the state legislatures and the governors to determine what they think is appropriate … whether it be in Indiana, Texas, California or anywhere else,” a line that underscores how sharply the two men still diverge on state power and party loyalty.
Trump has also sent Vice President J.D. Vance to Indiana twice on the redistricting issue, a sign that he is treating the fight as more than a local squabble. The question now is whether his backing still frightens enough Republican voters to knock out incumbents in a state where the president’s preferred map never got the support he wanted, or whether Indiana joins the growing list of places where Trump’s pressure campaign runs into a wall.
For Trump, May is less a single primary month than a referendum on whether his name still moves Republican voters the way it once did. Indiana will show whether the voters who can be reached by his challenge strategy are still listening.