There is something surreal about the conflict currently playing out in Indiana, where the president of the United States has turned his tweet-borne fury on a group of Republican state senators. Their offense? Not wanting to change the state’s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms.
In 2024, about 40 percent of Hoosiers voted for a Democrat for both U.S. senator and governor. Given that partisan split, the current U.S. House delegation of seven Republicans and two Democrats might seem more than satisfactory for Republicans. And given that mid-decade redistricting is unusual (not to say unheard of), one might think that continuing to use the map drawn in 2021, after the last census, is entirely unremarkable.
And yet, in our strange moment of gerrymander-mania, the 20 or so Republican state legislators willing to stand up for standing pat are indeed quite extraordinary. Their willingness to resist Donald Trump, who bestrides their party like a colossus, requires not only gumption but also courage; having earned the president’s ire, at least 11 of these state legislators have been the targets of “swatting” or bomb threats. Less menacingly, they are also likely to draw primary challenges.
That one of the leading senators is named “Goode” makes it tempting to see the conflict in Manichaean terms. One may wish to salute these lawmakers for their fortitude—the Washington Post’s editorial page, for example, offered its devoutly centrist “kudos” to them.
But what are they actually standing up for? What are our gerrymandering wars all about?
The president and his Republican antagonists have two very different visions of representation in our political system.
Trump’s position flows straightforwardly from his view of politics as a sorting of people into two camps: those who are with him in taking on the corrupt establishment, and those who are against him. Trump is no political theorist, of course, but he has a consistent plebiscitary instinct in making sense of political conflict. The big question for voters, of course, is who they want to be president; once they have chosen, every ensuing decision is a kind of echo referendum on whether they will affirm their commitment or renege. Trump was quick to condemn Indiana’s “RINO senators” in his way; a decade ago, “Republicans In Name Only” was applied to ideological squishes, but in Trump’s time, it is simply a term of abuse for those Republicans who (on any given day) are unprepared to reaffirm their support for the president.
Trump’s partisan allies may wish to represent aspects of their constituencies that do not figure in this grand struggle, and even today’s with-me-or-against-me politics leave room for action on lesser issues, where the president is not actively engaging. Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa could push through a bill improving IRS-taxpayer communications without the president even bothering to comment; even Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona could move a bill requiring a study of cancer prevalence in the armed services.
But when ideas of local or interest-based representation leave legislators crosswise with the president, the conflict must be worked out quickly. Trump is not always imperious; sometimes he reverts to his deal-making, conciliatory sensibility. On the question of his tariff policies’ effects on U.S. farmers, Trump’s strategy is to use side payments to minimize objections, though it is unclear whether that will be enough to satisfy angry cattle ranchers this time around.
On pure questions of political advantage, though, it is difficult to find any middle ground. Are you for him, or against? If for, the thinking goes, then why not do everything possible (at least what is defensibly within the rules) to maximize our side’s scope for action? If our side is not willing to use its power to implement our mandate, what are we here for?
If the residents of Gary see fit to change direction, as they might well do, it should be on account of their own choice, not because the national GOP found a way to tactically outmaneuver Democrats.
Such logic has convinced Republican legislators in Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina to redraw their congressional districts this year with an eye to maximizing their advantage; Florida may well follow. Democrats in California framed their own redistricting, put to voters in a ballot initiative, as an explicit response to Republicans’ seat grabs; if they’ll do it, then surely we should too.
Framed in these terms, the makeup of the House of Representatives really is important, but only in one sense: whether the president’s party has enough seats to help him “fulfill his mandate” or, instead, whether the opposition party has enough seats to “stop his abuses.” Midterm elections, which tend to favor the party not holding the White House, can be regarded as a benign means of registering Americans’ thermostatic preferences. But, from the president’s point of view, they can alternatively be seen as a way for bad actors to nullify the “real” decision rendered by the American people in the presidential election.
If this seems like a rather thin idea of representation, flattening out nearly all the differences between citizens from different parts of the country, its very simplicity makes it quite potent, especially when the president pursues it with the many carrots and sticks at his disposal. Gov. Mike Braun’s summation of the situation gets right to the point: “If [the Senate is] dragging its feet, and keeping Indiana from doing things that we could, especially with the relationship we have with the administration, who knows what happens with that good relationship. We can’t have a Senate that’s constantly a wet blanket.” In this view (which Braun hardly rushed to embrace), the legislator’s first and foremost duty is to stay onside with the party’s top leader.
What is the contrasting vision driving the opponents of redistricting?
First, many of the objectors are making straightforward tactical and prudential arguments that do not rise to the level of philosophical disagreements. They believe attempts to redistrict will face legal resistance that will render them useless or even counterproductive. (Notably, the Maryland Senate’s top Democrat has opposed redistricting efforts in the Old Line State for this reason, and has been harshly criticized by Democrats for not being more willing to pursue complete dominance in the blue state.) Texas Republicans’ current legal difficulties (now before the U.S. Supreme Court) suggest the merits of such concerns, however they are ultimately resolved. An aggressive Indiana redistricting would probably face a civil rights challenge (which the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus has indicated it would bring).
A more fundamental objection to redistricting, cited by many of the GOP objectors, is simply that Hoosiers do not support redrawing their lines. When the aforementioned state senator, Greg Goode, held a listening session with his constituents, not one stood up to argue for the propriety of the mid-decade redistricting, and only six of 200 who attended noted their support on a sign-in sheet. More generally, opinion polling shows that most Hoosiers are skeptical of the move. Legislators apparently feel obliged to represent the stated opinions of their constituents fairly, even when that conflicts with directives from their party’s leadership. The Indiana Senate’s president pro tempore, Rodric Bray, argues that if they are seen by their constituents as constantly manipulating the rules of the game, they will lack the trust needed to make difficult decisions stick.
Indiana Republicans also profess faith in their ability to add a GOP seat through old-fashioned contestation, without changing any boundaries. Indiana’s 1st Congressional District, centered on the city of Gary in the northwest corner of the state, has sent a Democrat to the House every cycle since 1930, but it is a genuinely competitive district today; Kamala Harris carried it with just 49.4 percent of the vote, and incumbent Rep. Frank J. Mrvan won just 53.4 percent. Republicans say they think a strong effort there could plausibly flip the district in their very red state.
Implicit in this argument is a normative defense of the continuity of representation, and it ought to be made explicit. There is a positive good being served by Indiana’s congressional districts remaining more or less steady, which gives voters a genuine sense of political self-determination. The 1st District has covered the state’s northwest corner for many decades, allowing its residents a sense that their region has a real voice in Washington. The current Mrvan’s father, Frank E. Mrvan Jr., was a state senator for decades. If the residents of Gary see fit to change direction, as they might well do, it should be on account of their own choice, not because the national GOP found a way to tactically outmaneuver Democrats.
On the national stage, the person who has best articulated this position is Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican who is likely to lose his seat after his state’s redistricting and has offered a bill to prohibit mid-decade redistricting. Kiley has trotted out the familiar anti-gerrymandering slogan, “voters should choose their representatives, representatives shouldn’t choose their voters.” More generally, he has called out the partisan opportunism that has spread throughout our system and created a sense of political disempowerment. A situation of “rolling redistricting, where the ground beneath our feet is constantly shifting—and, by the way, creating a huge distraction for the entire country at a time when we have so many more important things to worry about,” ultimately leaves our republic weaker, Kiley convincingly argues.
The vision of representation shared by Kiley and the Indiana objectors is one in which voters and their representatives have a meaningful relationship that goes well beyond partisan affiliation. That vision holds to our founding ideal of self-government in a way that the plebiscitary vision does not, and it still holds real appeal for the American people, even as the us-and-them dynamic dominates media coverage of our political moment and holds sway with our most influential partisan leaders. It will be fascinating to see whether the ideal of local representation can hold its ground—and Indiana’s district boundaries—in the months ahead.
