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An Indiana Republican delivered a shocking claim Thursday as he pleaded with his GOP colleagues to go along with a scheme backed by President Donald Trump to conduct a mid-decade redistricting.

Republican state Sen. Mike Gaskill of Pendleton made particularly stark declarations while lawmakers debated.

CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny was stunned on Thursday after anchor Jake Tapper broke news that Indiana Republicans had rejected attempts to change the state's election map ahead of the 2026 midterm.

Zeleny joined Tapper on Thursday's broadcast of "The Lead" to discuss a pressure campaign President Donald Trump and Republicans were waging to redraw the maps. The efforts happened at a time when other Republican-controlled legislatures, like Missouri and Texas, have redrawn their maps through a process called mid-cycle redistricting.

Donald Trump lashed out on Truth Social Thursday, demanding Senate Majority Leader John Thune end the blue slip process that he claims is blocking his judicial and U.S. attorney nominees. Trump called the practice a scam and accused Democrats — and compliant Republicans — of preventing the confirmation of qualified conservatives, framing it as both unfair and unconstitutional.

The Blue Slip process is a Senate tradition used in the confirmation of federal judges which sees a form sent by the Senate Judiciary Committee to the two home-state senators of a federal judicial nominee, asking for their approval before the nomination proceeds.

The Republican-controlled Senate in Indiana's state legislature rejected a partisan effort to redraw the state's electoral map ahead of the 2026 midterm election, something President Donald Trump and his cronies have been pressuring state legislatures across the country to do.

On Thursday, the Indiana Senate voted 31-19 to reject a new map even though Republicans hold a 40-10 advantage in the Upper Chamber. The proposed map would have made Indiana's two Democratic-held Congressional seats lean Republican during the midterm, which could help Trump keep a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Seven out of the nine Congressional representatives from Indiana are currently Republicans.

The Department of Defense appeared to threaten a journalist with Mother Jones after they began asking questions about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and that threat may have been coordinated with a MAGA influencer, according to a new report.

Dan Friedman, a senior reporter with Mother Jones' D.C. bureau, wrote in a new report that he has been asking the Defense Department questions about Eric Geressy, Hegseth's senior Pentagon adviser, who served a tour in Iraq with the Secretary in the 2000s. Friedman said he linked an email address for Geressy to a Goodreads list of lewd books about "Asian wife sharing," two books by Hegseth, and some military history titles. He also asked the Defense Department about a domestic violence charge against Geressy and whether the agency reviewed it as part of his security clearance process.

In a massive blow to President Donald Trump's redistricting ambitions, Indiana Republicans have rejected a mid-decade gerrymander that would have erased the two Democratic-favoring districts in the state and given them to the GOP.

According to NBC News, 31 lawmakers in the state Senate voted to reject the redraw, with just 19 in favor — meaning even a majority of the 40-member Senate Republican caucus itself was opposed.

Indiana Senate Majority Leader Chris Garten (R) yelled at his Republican colleagues for opposing President Donald Trump's effort to redistrict the state before the midterms.

"Some will say these maps are political. Let me be clear. You're damn right they are!" Garten shouted in a fiery floor speech on Thursday. "Political policy is political. Safe streets are political. Look at Indianapolis. Affordable electricity is political. A drug-free Indiana is political. Peace in the Middle East is political."

A new poll shows US voters’ approval of President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy has hit an all-time low, even as the president and his officials insist the economy is the best in the world.

The latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Thursday found that only 31% of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, the lowest figure in that survey throughout either of his two terms in office. Overall, 68% of voters said that the current state of the economy was “poor.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) delivered a dire warning for his party in conversation with CNN's Manu Raju on Thursday: if they can't do anything to fix the impending health care cliff, they're going to get slaughtered in the midterms.

Bacon, a relatively moderate GOP member who is retiring from his Democratic-leaning Omaha district, gave this warning as the Senate failed to advance both the Democratic and Republican health care proposals, all but guaranteeing millions of people will see their health insurance premiums spike when the Affordable Care Act expanded subsidies expire at the end of the year.