Indiana Republicans defy President Trump!
Had Democrats not voted at all, the gerrymandered map would have still failed, 21 "no" votes against 19 "yes" votes.
I was pleasantly surprised that Republicans showed true political courage in rejecting the demands by Donald Trump and national special interest groups to gerrymander Indiana’s Congressional districts. One thing we have seen since 2017 is that opposing Trump leads to political defeat more often than not in Republican primary elections. They will now be targeted for endless abuse by President Trump on Truth Social and will probably face primary challenges in 2026 and 2028. Whatever these Republicans might be, they are not “cowards.”
What is striking is how a majority of Republicans rejected gerrymandering. Republicans have a 40-10 majority in the Indiana State Senate. Had Democrats not voted at all, the gerrymandered map would have still failed, 21 “no” votes against 19 “yes” votes. The Democrats succeeded only in increasing the gerrymandering bill’s margin of defeat. Democrats needed to pull 16 of 40 Republican votes to stop the gerrymandering, but they got an outright majority.
Despite whining from Democrats, Republicans are not “cheating” with the current Congressional district maps or the maps drawn in 2011. The districts are compact and follow county lines. Democrats are clustered in Indianapolis in Central Indiana and East Chicago / Gary in Northwest Indiana. There’s no way you can get Democratic districts south of Indianapolis, or in the northern part of the state outside of the two counties in Northwest Indiana, without gerrymandering. This does not mean there are no Democrats outside of the First and Seventh districts. Obviously that would be an absurd contention. What it means is that the majority of Democrats in the state are in those two districts.
There was a time when Democrats held 5 of 9 Congressional seats in the state of Indiana, and that was only 15 years ago. Those districts were held by Donnelly, Hill, Ellsworth, Carson, and Visclosky. President Obama hollowed out the Indiana Democratic Party, especially in rural southern Indiana. After 2010, Republicans held a 6-3 majority on maps drawn by Democrats. That went to 7-2 after 2012 when Donnelly moved up to the U.S. Senate and Democrats could not hold his district with anyone else.
If anyone “cheated” with the maps drawn over the last 25 years, it was the Democrats who cheated in 2001 when they drew District 4 to put Bedford in the same district as Purdue, but not as IU. They used a tiny land bridge through Monroe County to keep heavily Republican Lawrence County away from John Hostettler’s Eighth District and to shore up Baron Hill’s position in the Ninth District.
The gerrymandering debate, unfortunately, demonstrates the worst trend in American politics. It is not possible for a Republican to disagree with other Republicans - or especially with Trump - on principle. They have Trump Derangement Syndrome, or they are traitors, or they are cowards, or they are cucks. Usually they are all of those. But after Indiana Republicans passed two consecutive maps that are models for the nation in drawing fair districts, perhaps they did not want to repudiate their own work.
No, Republicans did not “give” Democrats two seats. Democrats won those seats fairly. Republicans hold 7 of 9 seats in a state where, if the statewide popular vote decided Congressional representation, Democrats would hold at least one more seat.
Republicans need to be better than this. We need to recognize that it is possible to have a different opinion without being a bad person or a “traitor.” This does not mean we cannot vote for candidates in primaries that align more closely with our views, of course, but disagreement is not a moral failure. It is also not a “betrayal” of President Trump. Making that argument makes MAGA look like a cult of personality. We need to get back to being a party of principle, with a reasonably big tent.
Previously:
Indiana’s Congressional districts are not gerrymandered -- February 08, 2018
More on Indiana’s congressional district map -- March 1, 2018
Congressional districts are not gerrymandered -- November 27, 2018
Indiana should reject gerrymandering -- August 21, 2025
The Trumpian redistricting project -- September 12, 2025
Indiana should not re-draw its Congressional districts -- October 20, 2025
Reasonable and unreasonable arguments for redistricting -- December 1, 2025