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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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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.
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.
The Republican Party, and not least the right-wing christofascists on the Supreme Court, often kowtow to Trump’s demands. But increasingly party actors like Indiana legislators are balking. When they do — whether motivated by principle, self-interest, or spite — it’s not (just) Democrats who benefit. It’s the entire country and the Constitution.
That’s it for today
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