December 12, 2025 11:31 AM UTC

Indiana Republicans Tell Trump to Get Bent on Redistricting Threats

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• by: Colorado Pols

While President Trump was pondering his “Turkey Pardon” of Tina Peters on Thursday, Indiana Republicans handed him a significant defeat that could well mark a turning point in Trump’s rapidly-declining second term.

Republicans in Indiana overwhelmingly opposed demands from the White House to ram through a Congressional redistricting plan in order to boost Republican chances of maintaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. What makes this refusal by Indiana Republicans so noteworthy isn’t what they rejected, but why they rejected it. 

As POLITICO explains:

Indiana Republicans withstood immense pressure from President Donald Trump, ignor

ing anonymous threats on their lives as they defeated his plan to redraw the state’s congressional map and dealt him one of his most significant political setbacks since his return to the White House.

The GOP-controlled state Senate on Thursday voted down 31 to 19 the map that would have gerrymandered two more safe red seats, imperiling the party’s chances at holding control of Congress next November.

The failed vote is the culmination of a brass-knuckled, four-month pressure campaign from the White House on recalcitrant Indiana Republicans that included private meetings and public shaming from Trump, multiple visits to the Hoosier State from Vice President JD Vance, whip calls from Speaker Mike Johnson and veiled threats of withheld federal funds. The hesitant local lawmakers held out in spite of pipe bomb threats, unsolicited pizza deliveries to their personal addresses and swattings of their homes.

Eric Bradner of CNN has more on the straw that broke the Hoosiers’ backs:

Jean Leising spoke at a breakfast this fall at her 8th grade grandson’s school. Hours later, when she was set to give him a ride home from basketball practice, he bashfully told her that his entire team had received text messages about her that day — “and they were all bad.”

Recounting the moment to CNN shortly after she joined 20 other Republican state senators in rejecting President Donald Trump’s redistricting push, Leising said she laughed the moment off with her grandson — but that it ultimately led to her opposing the president.

“Boy, when I got home that night, that’s when I decided,” said Leising, a 76-year-old grandmother of eight, first elected to the Senate in 1988. “I was angry.”…[Pols emphasis]

…It was clear on Thursday that a pressure campaign waged by the White House and its allies had backfired. A state that Trump won by nearly 20 points in 2024 gave him a massive political black eye, rejecting a push to create two more GOP-friendly US House seats that could have helped Republicans retain the House majority in next year’s midterms.

Several Republican senators noted on Thursday that constituents opposed a mid-decade redrawing of US House maps and that they questioned the wisdom or the precedent of joining the national redistricting battle. But a number of Republicans, including people who voted for the president three elections in a row, also gave deeply personal reasons over the last several weeks. [Pols emphasis]

It’s probably too much to hope that this could serve as a wake-up call — at least not yet — for the shameless sycophant Republicans serving in higher office. Trump responded to his rebuke in Indiana in predictable fashion, promising to support Republican candidates who are willing to challenge the incumbents in a Republican Primary. In an embarrassing response, Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun made it clear that he still supports Trump’s political bullying.

Nevertheless, Republicans should be very worried that the anti-Trump wave that carried Democrats to unprecedented victories in the 2025 election is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Voters showed in November that they are already tired of Republicans acting like assholes for no good reason. The extent to which the White House threatened Indiana Republicans — including personal attacks and more blatant talk of withholding federal funding for the state — will only reinforce the perception that the GOP is a band of bullies that deserves a stern political reckoning.

Republican voters backed Trump in 2024 in part because they enjoyed his vitriolic attacks against Democrats. Trump made right-wing Americans feel like he was saying the quiet part out loud for them. Now he’s saying it about them, too.

What should have been obvious in Trump’s first term — nevermind 2024 — has become impossible to ignore: Trump is only loyal to himself and to Diet Coke. Everyone else is just in his way.