Out former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg noted that Indiana Republicans have shown reluctance to follow the president’s demands to gerrymander their state’s congressional map to increase Republican representation in the U.S. Congress by the 2026 midterm elections.

Buttigieg said state Republicans’ reluctance shows that they are “ashamed” and that “political pressure is working.” But Republican legislators in other red states — like Texas and Florida — are bowing to the president’s demands.

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“For months now, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have been pressuring Indiana to redraw its maps to give them a further unfair advantage in the midterm elections for control of Congress, but so far, even in deep-red Indiana, even where there is a Republican supermajority in the Legislature, they haven’t done it,” Buttigieg said Friday in a social media video.

“I think the reason they haven’t done it is that they are ashamed of what Donald Trump and JD Vance are asking them to do,” he continued. “This has clearly become such a problem for Indiana Republicans and for the White House that JD Vance has to personally go there to try to get them to do something that they know deep down is wrong.”

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“This tells us the political pressure is working, that it’s making a difference,” he continued. “That’s why the vice president has to personally get involved, and that’s why we need to stay involved too. It is not too late to stop this extreme plan from taking effect. We need to continue raising our voices and demanding that elected officials do better by the people they represent.”

JD Vance is back in Indiana today, personally pressuring GOP lawmakers to ignore their conscience and enact an extreme gerrymandering plan.

The fact that they have to send in the VP tells us something important and encouraging: our political pressure against this plan is… pic.twitter.com/Fw5WSoRPRZ

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) October 10, 2025

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