Amid growing signs that even some Republicans are starting to view Donald Trump as something of a lame duck, the president and his allies have apparently chosen Indiana to reassert his dominance of the party.
They’ve picked a fight over redistricting in the Hoosier State as the battleground to prove that Trump can still bend GOP politicians to his will. They want to force those lawmakers to pass a map that they’ve previously opposed that would give Republicans more winnable US House seats.
It’s a risky bet for Trump and a hugely symbolic clash.
And it’s a thoroughly dangerous situation – both literally and for our democracy.
For months, the White House has been applying pressure on states to redraw their congressional maps to include more GOP-leaning districts. But in some states, this has led to resistance even from Republicans.
Perhaps nowhere has that been more striking than in Indiana’s state Senate. Despite Republicans having a 40-10 supermajority in the chamber, it has repeatedly rejected Trump’s calls – including by voting to adjourn two weeks ago. Around the same time that was happening in mid-November, Trump world began upping the pressure.
And there has now been an apparent deluge of threats against GOP state senators who have declined to sign onto the effort.
CNN reported before Thanksgiving that at least eight GOP state senators and Republican Gov. Mike Braun had all faced threats. In recent days, GOP state Sens. Jean Leising and Mike Bohacek cited bomb threats. That means roughly 1 in 4 Indiana GOP state senators has now faced such a threat.
There is no evidence tracing these threats directly to posts or comments by Trump or anyone else. But what’s abundantly clear is that the Trump administration hasn’t done much of anything to tamp them down. It’s gone right along applying pressure. Trump certainly hasn’t publicly rebuked the threats like Braun has or like the bipartisan leaders of the state legislature have.
At one point two weeks ago, Trump posted on social media on a Sunday attacking two lawmakers. One of them was the victim just hours later of a swatting attack, in which someone calls in a fake emergency report at a target’s address to induce the SWAT team response (which can be extremely dangerous).
Despite this, Trump the very next day again lashed out at the other lawmaker he had cited, state Senate President Rodric Bray. He also said he would endorse against anyone who ran afoul of him on this issue.
To this point, the pressure campaign appears to have had at least something of an impact. Despite having voted to adjourn until January, Bray last week reversed course and agreed to hold a vote next week.
That vote will follow the state House, which has been more supportive of the new map and is expected to approve it this week. (The map, which was released Monday, would give the GOP an advantage in all nine districts in the state by splitting up two blue districts based in Gary and Indianapolis.)
That doesn’t mean the state Senate will approve the map, and there are actually signs that opponents are digging in. Both Leising and Bohacek have been defiant, with Bohacek citing how Trump had recently called Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz “seriously retarded.” (Bohacek, who has a daughter with Down Syndrome, said “words have consequences.” He’s since been relentlessly attacked on social media by Trump allies.)
But it seems at least possible that Trump’s pressure campaign — as well as the threats from others — could ultimately sway lawmakers to do something they clearly didn’t want to do.
And that would be a remarkable moment in our democracy.
While it’s a difficult issue to pin down, there has long been evidence that threats of physical violence can play a significant role in Trump’s domination of the party. While there is no established connection between these specific threats and Trump, he has often spoken suggestively about justified violence from his supporters. And many of them did rise up in violence on his behalf on January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol.
Several Republicans who have found themselves on Trump’s bad side have pointed to the impact these kinds of threats can have in preventing lawmakers from voting in ways he doesn’t like.
“They felt that that vote would put their families in danger,” now-former GOP Rep. Peter Meijer of Michigan has said of Trump’s pressure on members not to certify the 2020 election.
Former Sen. Mitt Romney said in a 2023 book by The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins that a GOP congressman had confided that he voted against impeaching Trump because of fears for his family’s safety.
But with Indiana, rarely will it have been so easy to trace lawmakers changing their positions so directly to intimidation and threats of physical violence. And the lesson that some might take away is that threats are a great way to get what you want.
It was just two weeks ago, after all, that nearly half of the state Senate Republicans voted to recess rather than do what Trump wanted.
But that also points to the political risk for the president here, given the real doubt about whether these lawmakers will now actually do what Trump is demanding.
Because Republicans have such a huge majority, about 16 of them would need to vote with Democrats against the map. As of Monday, the Indianapolis Star counted 10 who were openly against the map and 14 who had said they were for it. That left 26 Republicans who were seemingly free agents, and Trump needs to win over the vast majority of them.
Imagine a situation in which the state Senate ultimately rejects what Trump wants – despite all the Truth Social posts, the repeated interventions from Vice President JD Vance and the recent efforts of House Speaker Mike Johnson.
If Republicans can’t push through Trump’s much-desired outcome in a 40-10 GOP chamber after all that, that will have been a stunning rebuke – and at one of the worst possible times for Trump, given the emerging lame-duck narrative about his presidency.
And it will have been all for a potential two-seat gain that might not even determine who controls the US House after the 2026 election.
But this is the battle Trump has chosen. Now he – and the country – will deal with the fallout.
