Why Indiana Matters
Midwest Decency Rejects the Mob Boss.
Last week, after an intense brass-knuckled pressure campaign from President Trump, Vice President Vance and the White House, the Republican-controlled Indiana state Senate rejected the president’s mid-decade redistricting proposal 31-19. In a rare rebuke of Trump by members of his party, 21 Republicans joined all 10 Democrats to shoot down the measure which potentially would have added two additional Republican seats in Congress. The vote was a major blow to Trump’s gerrymandering push.
The Indiana vote is significant beyond the national redistricting battle led by Texas and California. Traditional Indiana Republicans, some of whom agree with Trump’s policies, stood firm against the president. They did not appreciate Trump’s bully tactics, were appalled by the threats of violence unleashed on their families, and found the courage to just say no.
As Politico reporter Adam Wren recounted on All In With Chris Hayes, Republican Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray told the president in a heated exchange over Thanksgiving that Indiana did not need to change the state’s congressional map. Instead, Bray told the president that Republicans would try to win the two seats now held by Democrats the old-fashioned way – by running quality candidates and letting the voters decide.
In a speech on the state senate floor, Republican State Senator Greg Goode said:
“The forces that define vitriolic political affairs in places outside of Indiana have been gradually, and now very blatantly, infiltrating the political affairs in Indiana. Misinformation, cruel social media posts, over the top pressure from within the state house and outside, threats of primaries, threats of violence, acts of violence. Friends, we’re better than this.”
Trump’s mob-style pressure campaign with its neo-fascist threats of violence backfired.
It all started with Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massey standing out (On Tyranny, Lesson No. 8) and standing up in defense of the Epstein victims. His courage then inspired MAGA stalwart Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to join. When Greene said she was stepping down from Congress after social media attacks by Trump and death threats against her children, it sent a message to MAGA supporters that loyalty to Trump only goes one way. This is a political leader who wants not allies, but the fealty demanded by a medieval prince of his vassals.
As Americans are learning, tyranny fills the void when citizens are passive and disengaged. “A people, in order to preserve its liberty, must keep it firmly in its hands” is my favorite line from Niccolò Machiavelli, the Italian diplomat and senior government official in the Republic of Florence who lost his position when the Medici family returned to power.
Machiavelli penned The Prince (1513), a realistic account of how a ruler might hold onto power in a harsh world. His most famous bit of wisdom is usually quoted as “it is better to be feared than loved.” That’s not quite right.
Rulers should be both loved and feared, Machiavelli said, but if it came down to a choice, being feared was the better choice. In Chapter 17 of The Prince, Machiavelli wrote, “[I]t is much safer to be feared than loved because ... love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
President Trump’s political career is based on fear – fear of “them,” the brown criminal horde populating our cities, and fear of “him,” keeping Republicans from uttering criticism against him or, God forbid, voting against his wishes.
People who crossed either President Lyndon Johnson or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew they would pay a price. Politicians do not get to the White House, or any level of real political power for that matter, without being practiced at hardball politics.
A New Yorker who relishes playing the mob boss, instead of being a hard-nosed politician, Donald Trump takes intimidation to a different level. Winning isn’t enough, he must dominate and humiliate his supplicants. Sure, he wants to be loved by the MAGA base, but his calling card to the elected Republicans in Congress is fear.
With President Trump, the fear of losing one’s political career is combined with visceral threat. Primaries and intra-party struggles decide what values political parties espouse and what policies they champion. On the one hand, when President Trump says he will “primary” a Republican who has broken with him this is completely within the bounds of hardball democratic politics.
But Trump and his most fanatic, committed supporters combine this with far-right, neo-fascist politics antithetical to democracy. Akin to the Mafia boss and the street-brawling fascists of the 1930s, they add threats of physical violence against the politician and the politician’s family to the equation.
In 2025, online thuggery modernizes the tactics perfected by Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts. While most rightwing online threats are meant to intimidate the target, President Trump’s frequent—sometimes veiled, sometimes explicit—endorsements of violence against his political opponents makes members of Congress and federal judges, possibly even Supreme Court justices, rightly fearful for their personal safety and that of their family members.
In 2024, Wisconsin Republican U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher, 40, at the time a rising star, resigned from his seat because of death threats targeting his family after he refused to vote to impeach Biden Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “I signed up for the death threats … but they did not,” said Gallagher, referring to his wife and two young daughters.
Before last week’s vote, one Indiana State Senator, Republican Andy Zay, spoke of the bomb threat against his business and ultimately voted for the Trump map. Of resisting Trump, he asked: “Is it worth it?”
But as Trump’s political position weakens, more and more Republicans across the country have decided to stand up for decency and normal democracy. In Indiana, they told President Trump to take a hike.
The so-called establishment wing of the Republican Party once led by the Bushes might be finding new life. Former Indiana Republican Governor Mitch Daniels, a Never Trumper, helped to lead the effort to reject redistricting in the state. Daniels told Politico the vote demonstrated “a strong commitment in our state to character, a commitment to fair play, and a rejection of being bullied.”
Fear often works, but not always. Eventually people grow tired of being stepped on and disrespected. They find a backbone.
Republicans discovering courage at this moment is profoundly important. Taken together, the cracks in Trump’s coalition mean that Trump, Stephen Miller and Gregory Bovino can no longer count on unquestioning support from Republicans no matter what actions they take. Some Republicans are drawing a line.
In 2026, if Trump and Miller double down on anti-American, fascist tactics – such as cracking down on critics and rounding up opposition leaders – they may encounter strong opposition from die-hard conservatives of the Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Rodric Bray ilk who deeply believe in decency, the rule of law, and the Constitution.