Indiana Senate Republicans Kill GOP Redistricting Map, Block Path to ’26 GOP House Majority – A Lesson in Why Primaries Matter

President Trump blasted Indiana Republican senators who blocked a House-approved redistricting plan, calling their defiance a betrayal and vowing to personally primary the holdouts—led, he said, by Senate President Rodric Bray.

The rejection marked one of the most significant political setbacks of Trump’s second term, undercutting his push to redraw congressional maps ahead of the midterms to counter Democratic gerrymandering elsewhere. Despite months of intense White House lobbying—including meetings with Vice President JD Vance—21 GOP senators voted no, prompting fury from Trump allies and state Republicans. While the White House denied claims of threats to cut federal aid, Trump made clear the consequences would be political, not financial: those who blocked the map, he warned, would pay at the ballot box.

Indiana’s Redistricting Surrender Illustrates Why Primaries Matter

By: Shawn Fleetwood, The Federalist, December 12, 2025:

The phrase, “I voted Republican and all I got was this dumb t-shirt,” is a good summation of the disappointment that comes with supporting the feckless Grand Old Party. But in the case of Indiana, we didn’t even get the t-shirt.

On Thursday, the Hoosier State’s Republican-controlled Senate shot down efforts to pass a new congressional map seeking to boost their party’s share of seats heading into the 2026 midterms. According to Fox News, the new map “would have created two more right-leaning congressional districts in the solidly red Midwestern state, where the GOP controls seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats.”

Despite holding a supermajority in the upper chamber, 21 of the Senate’s 40 Republican senators joined Democrats in defeating the proposed map (31-19). The measure had previously cleared the state House (57-41) last week.

The contrast between this embarrassment and redistricting efforts by Democrat-led states could not be starker. While Democrats with razor-thin margins in blue states like Virginia are willing to seemingly violate the law to pass gerrymandered maps in their party’s favor, fake red states like Indiana can’t even be bothered to legally use their supermajorities to do the same.

It’s clear there’s only one political force playing to win this game, and it’s not the Republican Party.

But more to the point, Indiana’s bungled redistricting gambit underscores an important feature of the electoral system that many GOP voters have long ignored: the primary process.

The entire reason feckless Republicans believe they can continue to get away with the type of betrayal exemplified in the Hoosier State is that they don’t fear electoral accountability from the GOP base. All too often, conservative voters either vote to reelect the same weak-kneed incumbents or sit out the primaries altogether, thus allowing the establishment class to maintain its hold on power.

This dilemma isn’t exclusive to Indiana, either. It’s a nationwide problem witnessed at every level of government, in which gutless RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) routinely stab their base in the back but face no repercussions at the ballot box. And it’s one that must change.

While leeway should be given to Republicans representing blue jurisdictions (ex., Sen. Susan Collins of Maine), there’s zero rationale for re-nominating the same failed GOP officials in the reddest localities and states across the country. In essence, our red states and their elected officials should be as conservative as California is leftist.

The only way this can happen is if Republican voters rediscover what it means to be a self-governing people. That doesn’t just mean vetting candidates in any given primary, but staying engaged with these officials once they get elected and ensuring they’re following through on what they promised voters on the campaign trail.

Being a voter and a citizen are two different things. And until enough conservatives become the latter instead of solely the former, the Republican Party will continue to be the useless husk that we all know it to be.