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Republican Governor Tries to Force Party to Gerrymander for Trump

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yesterday

Indiana Governor Mike Braun is pushing President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme forward in the Hoosier State—but Republicans still aren’t getting on the bandwagon.

Braun announced Monday that he was calling a special legislative session to vote on new congressional districts, ensuring Republicans maintain control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

“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,” he wrote in a statement.

But Molly Sigart, spokesperson for Rodric Bray, the Indiana Senate’s president pro tempore, told The New Republic Monday that the votes “still aren’t there for redistricting.” The 50-member Senate has only 10 Democrat members, meaning that more than a dozen of the remaining members also opposed the plan.

Last week, Bray’s office said that the Republican plan lacked the necessary support, raising red flags for Braun’s redistricting efforts. Meanwhile, Braun’s spokesperson claimed the governor was “confident” that he could secure a majority of state Senate Republicans’ support.

Braun initially floated the idea last month of calling legislators back and warned that there would be “consequences” for not keeping pace with the White House’s requests for redistricting, which have already been passed in Texas, Missouri, and most recently, North Carolina. The special session Braun called Monday, which will occur before lawmakers are set to return in January, will likely cost taxpayers a pretty penny.

In Indiana, things have gotten heated. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have personally connected with state Republicans about supporting a new congressional map. Last month, Indiana state Senator Jim Banks suggested that podcaster Charlie Kirk’s death was reason enough to do it. “They killed Charlie Kirk—the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine to zero map,” Banks said.

Indiana state Senator Liz Brown, an assistant majority floor leader, published a statement supporting the move Monday.

“Redistricting isn’t a technical exercise. It’s power drawn on a map. And Democrats have been wielding it for decades,” wrote Brown on X. “Conservative voices have been thwarted for far too long by liberal states like Massachusetts who refuse to create competitive congressional districts.”

“Gov. Braun’s decision to call our legislature into session to address redistricting is welcome news,” she wrote.

Exxon is trying to claim that California’s climate laws infringe on its freedom of speech.

The oil company filed a lawsuit against the state Friday over two laws, passed in 2023, that require companies doing business in California to disclose carbon emissions and climate-related financial risks, with penalties if they don’t comply. Exxon claims that the laws, known as the California Climate Accountability Package, would force the company to “serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees.”

A spokesperson for California Governor Gavin Newsom, Tara Gallegos, told The New York Times, seemingly tongue in cheek, that it was “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”

The laws, which will be enforced beginning next year, “have already been upheld in court and we continue to have confidence in them,” Gallegos added.

Exxon said in the lawsuit that it already reports its carbon emissions and climate risks voluntarily but that the state laws would force it to change its framework to one it finds “misleading and counterproductive.”

Right now, Exxon uses a methodology to calculate its emissions developed by an oil and gas industry group, but would have to change to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, developed by the research group World Resources Institute and business network World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

The company claims this framework would send “the counterproductive message that large companies are uniquely responsible for climate change no matter how efficiently they satisfy societal demand for energy, goods, and services.” Exxon additionally argues that the legal requirement to report its global emissions should only be focused on the company’s emissions in the state.

Exxon is also fighting against a provision in one law that requires companies to disclose how climate change threatens their business operations and what they plan to do about it. Exxon claims the law requires speculation “about unknowable future developments” and conflicts with securities laws.

There is another pending lawsuit against the laws from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the California Chamber of Commerce, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, with a trial expected next year.

The oil company is trying to dodge transparency about its operations, perhaps concerned about how bad these disclosures would make it look. It may also be hoping for the law to be struck down by conservative judges, or even the Supreme Court. President Trump is loudly dismissive of climate change and the threats it poses, and may take further action against California on his own.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford thinks that the Ronald Reagan anti-tariff commercial that set President Trump off was “the best ad I ever ran.” 

The TV ad featured an edited 1987 radio address from President Reagan, in which he stated that tariffs only serve to “hurt every American.” Trump was so bothered by the ad using someone he likes to compare himself to against him that he started another trade war with Canada, announcing an additional 10 percent tariff on its products over the weekend.

“Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs,” Trump posted to Truth........

© New Republic