As the year winds down and attention drifts to 2026, Donald Trump has been busy attempting to redraw the electoral maps of yet another US state. It’s all about shoring up Republicans at next year’s midterm election.
Trump is keen to avoid the electoral rout of 2018, where Republicans lost 40 seats and control of the House of Representatives. The best way to guard against that is with a big dose of good old-fashioned gerrymandering.
It’s a time-honoured tradition on both sides of US politics. But Trump has aggressively and openly leant into it this year, pushing redistricting plans that favour Republicans in Texas, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina – and now Indiana. Democrats, it should be noted, did the same thing in the blue state of California.
But in deep-red Indiana, the state Senate on Friday (AEDT) rejected a plan to redraw the congressional electoral map in a way that would benefit Republicans.
The vote wasn’t particularly close, going down 19-31. It even failed among Republicans, with 21 GOP members voting “no”, along with all 10 Democrats. Cheers were heard inside the chamber.
Trump adopted a nonplussed tone in the aftermath of the defeat, saying it would have been nice to pick up a couple of additional seats.
Protesters at the Statehouse in Indianapolis on Thursday.Credit: AP
But in the lead-up, he was threatening Republicans who opposed the proposal, and made no attempt to conceal his agenda.
“Every other State has done Redistricting willingly, openly and easily,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “There was never a question in their mind that contributing to a WIN in the Midterms for the Republicans was a great thing to do for our Party, and for America itself.”
Enemy number one was Rodric Bray, the Republican leader in the Indiana Senate. “He’s either a bad guy, or a very stupid one,” Trump seethed, vowing to support a primary campaign against him, and anyone who voted against the plan, next time they are up for election.
Not only did Indiana Republicans defy lobbying from Trump and the White House, but they ignored repeated visits by Vice President JD Vance and a barrage of calls from House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson.
State Senator Rodric Bray, a Republican, speaks to the media after the vote. Credit: Bloomberg
Indiana Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith announces the results of the vote.Credit: AP
They also thumbed their noses at the state’s governor, Mike Braun, who remained staunchly on Trump’s side.
“Ultimately, decisions like this carry political consequences,” he told the Republican refuseniks after Friday’s vote, promising to work with the president to oust those who had voted no.
The outcome in Indiana is just the latest example of Republicans beginning to disobey Trump’s orders despite the threats. Republicans also declined to nix the Senate filibuster to end the federal government shutdown in October, as Trump had demanded, and refused to take their name off a petition to compel the release of the Epstein files – which is due to occur in the next eight days.
President Donald Trump adopted a nonplussed tone in the aftermath of the defeat – a contrast to his comments in the lead-up.Credit: AP
They are also speaking out more, such as firebrand Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, having picked a fight with Trump and announced her resignation, is pitching herself as a new and more authentic torch carrier for the “America First” movement.
And lawmakers included a provision in a major defence budget bill that will withhold part of War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget until he hands over unedited video of the US military’s drone strikes on suspected drug boats off the coast of Venezuela.
Hegseth’s cowboy approach to the job, and the notion that US soldiers might have been forced to commit war crimes as part of the crusade, remain simmering issues making some Republicans uncomfortable.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, former transport secretary and possible Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg said the change in dynamic was “remarkable”, even though it was not yet widespread.
“You are seeing this with people I never thought you’d see this from,” he said, and the resistance in Indiana was “really telling”.
“In the same way that before taking over this country, [Trump] took over his party, I think the way that his power is starting to collapse will be first within his party and then more broadly in the country,” Buttigieg said.
It’s going to take more than a vote in one deep-red statehouse, or grumbling from a few disenchanted people, to signal the end of Republican deference to Trump – a defining feature of his second term.
But it shows the president’s stranglehold on his party is not guaranteed. And it raises a question about whether Trump – who hates losing – will back away from these kinds of interventions in the future if he isn’t confident he can win.
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