The Indiana GOP's defiance shows how Trump is losing juice
His
unpopularity is increasing and his threats are starting to ring hollow.
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Trump in the Oval Office on Friday. (Jim Watson/AFP via
Getty)
Donald
Trump believes he should rule like a king; he thinks that any vote cast for
anyone other than him and his sycophants is illegitimate. This was clear before
his attempted coup in 2020, and it’s been even clearer since then.
The
president has openly plotted to steal the 2026 House elections. He’s urged
Republican legislators in red states to rush through unprecedented mid-decade
gerrymanders, disenfranchising Black and brown voters in an effort to lock in a
permanent Republican majority. The Texas state legislature rushed to give Trump
the extra five GOP seats he wanted, and after a setback in the lower courts,
the thuggish right-wing hacks on the Supreme Court jumped in to do Trump’s bidding. Missouri Republicans have
also been dutifully playing their part by trying to gerrymander
away a Democratic seat.
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Elsewhere,
though, Republicans have been surprisingly hesitant about redistricting. Most
notably, last week the Indiana Senate struck down a map that would have given
the GOP two more seats in the House. All 10 Democrats voted against the
measure, as did 21 Republicans. Only 19 Republicans voted against it, which
means that a majority of Republican senators defied Trump.
This
was a remarkable setback for Trump, who orchestrated a barrage of physical and
political threats against Republican lawmakers in the state. His defeat
underlines his weakening influence — and vividly demonstrates that his losses
are not simply partisan losses.
Rather,
every time Trump loses, democracy wins.
Trump turns on his party
Trump
demands absolute loyalty and offers zero loyalty in return. As a result, he
often treats supposed allies and co-partisans with the same callous disdain as
he treats enemies. During the 2020 coup attempt, for instance, he
infamously supported calls for the mob to hang
his vice president, Mike Pence.
Pence
is a former governor of Indiana, and his fate foreshadowed that of his fellow
Hoosiers. In the months running up to last week’s redistricting vote, Trump
denounced and demonized Republicans in the state who wouldn’t immediately
follow his orders.
“It’s
weak ‘Republicans’ that cause our Country such problems — It’s why we have
crazy Policies and Ideas that are so bad for America,” he declared in one Truth Social rant.
In another he called Indiana Senate President
Rod Bray a “Total RINO.” He also posted that he would “be
strongly endorsing against any State Senator or House member from the Great
State of Indiana that votes against the Republican Party, and our Nation, by
not allowing for Redistricting.”
When
Trump singles someone out, it doesn’t just have electoral consequences. He has
an army of fascist goons at his disposal eager to target anyone he mentions for
stochastic terrorism. And sure enough, Republican holdouts in Indiana
have faced a terrifying barrage of
threats. State Sen. Greg Goode said he was targeted for a
swatting attack the same day Trump mentioned him by name in a post. At least 11
other senators were targeted for swatting or for bomb threats. So was Gov. Mike Braun, who Trump said had not done
enough to support redistricting.
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And
that wasn’t all. Shortly before the final vote, the Nazi-apologist right-wing think tank
Heritage Foundation tweeted that if Indiana
Republicans did not vote to redistrict, the Trump administration would
(unconstitutionally) withhold government funds from the state.
“Roads
will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are
the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame,” Heritage blustered. In other
words, Trump would do to Indiana what he’s been doing to many blue states.
After
the vote, Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith confirmed that these threats came
directly from the White House.
“The
Trump admin was VERY clear about this,” Beckwith tweeted. “They told many lawmakers,
cabinet members and the Gov and I that this would happen. The Indiana Senate
made it clear to the Trump Admin today that they do not want to be partners
with the WH. The WH made it clear to them that they’d oblige.” (Beckwith
quickly deleted the tweet.)
The emperor has no polls
Despite
— or perhaps because of — all of his threats, the Indiana Senate rejected
Trump’s maps. Trump responded by deflating like some particularly greasy orange
balloon animal.
Asked
his for reaction to the defeat, he told reporters, “I wasn’t working on it very
hard” and “I wasn’t very much involved” before babbling about how he’d won
Indiana three times and again expressing the wish that Sen. Bray would lose a
primary.
Acyn @acyn.bsky.social
Reporter: The senate in Indiana voted against the
redistricting effort. Trump: I wasn't working on it very hard. I wasn't very
much involved
Thu, 11 Dec 2025 23:22:46 GMT
Trump
is gracelessly retreating because there isn’t really anything else he can do.
Even his bloviating about primary challenges rings hollow.
Eric
Bradner of CNN reported that there’s little
enthusiasm for redistricting among even Trump-supporting Indiana voters. A
Republican city council member in Martinsville who supports Trump on tariffs
told Bradner “there’s no need to redo the maps right now” and said he thought
Bray was “doing a great job up there.” A rally before the Indiana House vote
intended to put pressure on senators could muster only about 100 attendees.
In
contrast, Democratic demonstrations against redistricting in Indiana drew
massive crowds. Similarly, a Missouri petition against Republican
redistricting garnered 300,000 signatures. And
the anti-Trump gerrymander referendum in California, sponsored by Gov. Gavin
Newsom in retaliation for Texas’s new map, won by a landslide.
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It’s
clear that Republican voters are not especially inspired by Trump’s efforts to
steal the midterms, while Democrats are strongly motivated to oppose them. This
is consistent with polls showing Trump’s numbers plummeting. An AP poll last week had him at a
terrible 36 percent approval, and an especially grim 31 percent on his handling
of the economy.
Election
results are perhaps an even stronger indication of Democratic passion and
Republican lack of it. Last week, Democrats won the Miami mayor’s race for the
first time in 28 years. In Georgia, Democrat Eric Gisler flipped a Trump +12 state House
seat, breaking a GOP gerrymander.
The
Downballot’s David Nir argues that some Republicans are
balking at redistricting in part because of Democratic overperformances like
these. Gerrymanders create more red seats by making each of the rest of the
seats in the state a bit less red. That works fine in a normal year. But, as
Nir says, “if Dems are consistently doing 13 points better than the
presidential toplines, and if they can throw a scare into Republicans in much
redder seats, a Trump +15 or even Trump +20 district won’t cut it for
Republicans next year.”
In
addition, Trump’s low approval has made Republicans in general more willing to
oppose him. Swing seat House Republicans are trying to push through a
discharge petition to force a vote on ACA subsidies, in defiance of Speaker
Mike Johnson. The Senate GOP has defied Trump’s call to end blue slips, which give senators (including Democratic ones) the ability to
block presidential nominees to some posts in their states.
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Much
of the mainstream press frames the fight against Trump as a partisan battle;
when Trump wins, Republicans win and Democrats lose. But the inadequacy of this
horse race frame is increasingly apparent as Trump tries, with mixed success,
to get congressional and state Republicans to hand him more and more power.