President Donald Trump issued a lengthy late-night plea to Indiana lawmakers on the eve of their critical Dec. 11 redistricting vote, seemingly betraying a lack of confidence in a favorable outcome.

“Rod Bray and his friends won’t be in Politics for long, and I will do everything within my power to make sure that they will not hurt the Republican Party, and our Country, again,” Trump concluded the Truth Social post. “One of my favorite States, Indiana, will be the only State in the Union to turn the Republican Party down!”

This afternoon, the Indiana Senate will decide the fate of Trump’s desire to redraw the state’s congressional map to give Republicans two more favorable districts. But this fate has been very uncertain: Republican senators are split on the issue, with a number of them having remained silent. The vote count is expected to be tight.

Trump’s post last night is leaving many with the impression that it’s too close for comfort.

More: Live updates: Indiana Senate prepares for a final vote on redistricting

He repeated some familiar refrains noted in other posts over the last few weeks: lambasting the leadership of Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, promising to support primary challengers against those who vote down mid-decade redistricting, emphasizing the importance of holding the Republican majority in Congress to beat back the “Radical Left Democrats.”

But in length and in detail, this post delved deeper. He lumped Bray in with the likes of former Gov. Mitch Daniels, who Trump called a “failed Senate candidate,” though Daniels never formally entered the race against U.S. Sen. Jim Banks in 2024. Trump made statements about the Republican “suckers” Bray found to vote against redistricting with him, as though the vote had already occurred.

Those conclusion sentences alone ― promising that Bray and others will not hurt the country “again” ― seems to foretell an outcome.

That outcome will ultimately come to light in the mid to late afternoon when senators take a final vote on House Bill 1032, the redistricting bill.

It had passed the Indiana House by a 57-41 vote last week.

The proposed map gives Republicans the advantage in all nine of Indiana’s congressional districts, chiefly by carving up Indianapolis voters into four new districts. The current congressional map has seven seats held by Republicans and two by Democrats.

Contact IndyStar Statehouse reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on X @kayla_dwyer17.

Indiana state senators are expected to take a final, high-stakes vote on redistricting Thursday after months of pressure from President Donald Trump, and the outcome is still uncertain.

Even in the face of one-on-one pressure from the White House and violent threats against state lawmakers, many Indiana Republicans have been reluctant to back a new congressional map that would favor their party’s candidates in the 2026 elections.

Trump is asking Republican-led states to redistrict in the middle of the decade, an uncommon practice, in order to make more winnable seats for the GOP ahead of next year’s elections. Midterms tend to favor the party opposite the one in power, and Democrats are increasingly liking their odds at flipping control of the U.S. House after the results of recent high-profile elections.

In Indiana, Trump supports passage of a new map drawn up by the National Republican Redistricting Trust designed to deliver all nine of the state’s congressional districts to the GOP. Republicans currently hold seven of the nine seats.

On Wednesday night, he sharply criticized party members who didn’t want to go along with the plan, and he repeated his threat to back primary challenges for anyone who voted against it.

“If Republicans will not do what is necessary to save our Country, they will eventually lose everything to the Democrats,” Trump wrote on social media.

The new map would split the city of Indianapolis into four districts, each included with large portions of rural Indiana — three of which would stretch from the central city to the borders of nearby states. Indianapolis now makes up one congressional district long held by Democratic U.S. Rep. André Carson.

The proposed map is also designed to eliminate the district of U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan, who represents an urban district near Chicago.

A dozen lawmakers of the 50-member state Senate have not publicly declared a stance on the new maps.

If at least four of that group side with the chamber’s 10 Democrats and 12 other Republicans who are expected to vote no, the vote would fail in a remarkable rebuke to Trump’s demand.

Supporters of the proposed map need at least 25 yes votes; a tie would be broken with Republican Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith’s vote, who is in favor of redistricting.

In a Senate committee Monday, the redistricting legislation took its first step toward passage in a 6-3 vote, with one Republican joining the committee’s two Democrats in voting against it. However, a few of the Republican senators indicated they may vote against the bill in a final vote.

The Republican supermajority in the state House passed the proposed map last week. Twelve Republicans voted with the chamber’s 30 Democrats against the bill.

Nationally, mid-cycle redistricting so far has resulted in nine more congressional seats that Republicans believe they can win and six more congressional seats that Democrats think they can win. However, redistricting is being litigated in several states.

Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina quickly enacted new GOP-favorable maps. California voters recently approved a new map in response to Texas’ that would favor Democratic candidates, and a judge in Utah imposed new districts that could allow Democrats to win a seat, after ruling that Republican lawmakers circumvented voter-approved anti-gerrymandering standards.

Multiple Republican groups are threatening to support primary opponents of Indiana state senators who vote against redistricting. Turning Point Action pledged “congressional level spending” in state Legislature races if the redistricting measure does not pass. Trump has also vowed to endorse primary challengers of members who vote against the new map.

Caught red (pepper) handed.

A DoorDash driver has been banned from the app after being accused of dousing an order with pepper spray and causing an unsuspecting customer to fall ill after eating the tainted food.

The sick act was caught on a doorbell camera outside an Evansville, Indiana, home just after midnight on Sunday.

The driver, who hasn’t been charged with any crime, was dropping off an Arby’s delivery to Mark Cardin and his wife, Mandy, when she snapped a confirmation photo before suddenly producing an object from her pocket and spraying the order.

The blue-haired worker placed the spray back into her jacket pocket before walking away, all in front of the camera.

The couple brought the order inside, unaware that something was wrong with it and began chowing down.

Moments later, Mandy began struggling to breathe.

“I noticed my wife had starting eating and she started choking and gasping, and after she had a couple bites of her food she actually threw up,” he told WFIE.

The horrified customer began investigating the cause of his wife’s sudden illness when he examined the order.

“I had a look at the bag and seen that there was some kind of spray or something,” Cardin said. “The bag had been tampered with. So I pulled up my doorbell camera and seen that the lady who dropped the food off had actually tampered with it on purpose for some reason.”

Cardin shared the photos and videos of the driver to Facebook asking for help in identifying the driver.

He attempted to contact her but found she already blocked him on the app.

Cardin reported the food runner’s stunt to DoorDash and the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office is looking to get the driver fired and charged.

“I definitely want to see her prosecuted,” Cardin told WFIE, adding that they had never met her before and had left a tip before the incident.

The driver has been banned from the app after footage surfaced of the late-night delivery.

“We have zero tolerance for this type of appalling behavior. The Dasher in question has been permanently removed from the platform, and our team is standing by to support law enforcement with any investigation,” a DoorDash spokesperson told The Post.

Cardin doesn’t know exactly what was sprayed on the food, fearing it could’ve been worse than it was.

“It’s horrific,” Cardin said. “We assume it’s pepper spray, that’s more than likely what it is, but now in this day and age it could’ve been anything. It could’ve been rat poison, it could’ve been fentanyl. I mean, my wife could’ve been dead.”

The Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office has opened an investigation into the driver and could charge her with consumer product tampering, a level 6 felony, according to WFIE.

If the foreign spray resulted in harm the charge could be increased to a level 5 felony.

“We live in a terrible world right now,” Mark said. “Horrific. People are mean for no reason. There was no reason to do what she done,” Cardin said, encouraging other food delivery app users to be cautious with their future orders.

“I would say to anybody, if you order food on any kind of delivery service, make sure you have a doorbell,” Mark said.

“This is making me second guess ever ordering food from anywhere ever again,” he said.