Indiana
Republican primary voters sent dangerous message to America | Opinion
A handful of Indiana Republican state senators saw this abuse of power unfolding and said, ‘Not on our watch.’ And now they’ve been voted out by those who placed loyalty to Trump ahead of democracy.
Indiana state senate candidates endorsed by Trump prevail in primaries
In Indiana’s GOP primary, President Donald Trump demonstrated continued clout. Of seven GOP senators he opposed, at least 5 lost their nominations.
Donald Trump, even more so than other presidents, needs guardrails to keep his worst impulses in check.
But on May 5, Republican primary voters in Indiana further weakened the political and legislative guardrails around the president when they threw out of office at least five GOP state senators because they put the Constitution ahead of Trump’s partisan demands.
It wasn’t just those relatively obscure legislators in Indiana who lost. We all did.
That’s because the message delivered to GOP members of Congress, as well as to Republican lawmakers in other states, is that defying even Trump’s most outrageous demands is still the path to defeat within their own party.
The vote also helps accelerate both political parties’ obscene rush to gerrymander congressional maps beyond any reasonable facsimile of fairness.
Indiana primary sent message to Republicans who stood up to Trump
In 2025, the Indiana Senate, thoroughly dominated by conservative Republicans, said no to Trump’s partisan order to redraw the state’s congressional maps to favor GOP candidates even more heavily than the current districts already do. The senators’ thoughtful independence not only drew Trump’s wrath but also triggered his vow to punish the legislators in the next election cycle.
Now, five senators whom Trump targeted have lost their reelection bids, and one other race is too close to call. Only one Republican incumbent targeted by Trump managed to withstand the president’s onslaught.
Message sent and received.
Our constitutional system is, of course, designed to provide checks and balances, but the system works only if we follow it.
Trump helped kickstart the rush to prematurely redraw congressional boundaries ahead of November’s midterms elections in a desperate bid to salvage Republicans’ tenuous control of the U.S. House.
Congressional redistricting normally takes place every 10 years, following the national census, as prescribed in the Constitution. Trump, as is his wont, ignored historical standards to advance his own interests.
Redistricting push in Tennessee, South Carolina and others won’t help voters
So far, GOP lawmakers in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas have redrawn districts in ways that could enable Republican candidates to flip 13 Democratic-held seats in November.
Other Republican-dominated states, such as South Carolina and Tennessee, may push forward their own reconfigured maps.
In response, Democrats in California and Virginia adopted heavily gerrymandered maps that favor their party. Democrats could pick up nine seats in those two states, as well as one in Utah, from court-ordered redistricting.
None of this partisan manipulation helps ordinary Americans, and it certainly doesn’t strengthen the public’s trust in our democracy.
A handful of Republican state senators in Indiana saw this abuse of power unfolding and said, “Not on our watch.” They should have been rewarded for their political courage. Instead, they were bullied for months by our nation’s commander in chief and the mercurial leader of their own political party.
And now they’ve been turned out of office by voters who placed loyalty to Trump over allegiance to democratic values.
I scoffed at liberals who claimed before and after the 2024 election that Trump’s win would destroy our democracy. Their self-serving hysteria was over the top then and remains so now, even in light of the president’s heavy-handed redistricting push.
American democracy will be just fine, long after Trump has shuffled out of the Oval Office for the last time. But just as fences make good neighbors, guardrails make better presidents.
It’s our nation’s loss that the guardrails built by brave Republican leaders in Indiana didn’t hold.
Tim Swarens is a former deputy opinion editor of USA TODAY and opinion editor of The Indianapolis Star.