The Dictatorship
Indiana Republicans refused to be put in a gerrymandered box
The Indiana Senate’s Republican supermajority had a choice Thursday. They could acquiesce to the White House’s demands that they approve a new congressional mapand potentially turn the state’s entire House delegation red. Or they could listen to their constituents and consciences. As their sweeping 31-19 rejection of the new map showed, they chose well.
This outcome was in no way a foregone conclusion. President Donald Trump had promised to back a primary challenger against any Indiana Republican lawmaker who vote against redistricting. Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Indiana Gov. Dan Braun were all recruited to work the phones, meet with lawmakers and threaten dire consequences for any Republican who defied Trump’s wishes. Outside groups spammed everyday Hoosiers hoping to persuade them to pressure their representatives to support a new map. And still a majority of the state senate’s Republican caucus voted no.
The proposed gerrymandered map wasn’t even produced by state lawmakers or their staff.
Trump has been lobbying GOP state lawmakers hard this year to gerrymander their congressional districts to shore up the fragile Republican majority in next year’s midterms. Republicans hold seven of Indiana’s nine seats in the U.S. House. The new map would have doomed the two Democratic-held seats by carving up Indianapolis among four districts and splitting another blue stronghold near Lake Michigan over two districts.
The Indiana House voted last week 57-41 to support that aggressive gerrymander, but Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray had long made it clear to the White House that the votes weren’t there in the Indiana Senate. And Bray gave no indication he was willing to strongarm his members to do Trump’s bidding. But Trump kept pushing until the legislature agreed to Braun’s request to hold a special session after Thanksgiving to consider the issue.
Importantly, as Indianapolis’ WFYI reportedthe proposed gerrymandered map wasn’t even produced by state lawmakers or their staff. The National Republican Redistricting Trust provided the proposed borders to the bill’s main author, who said during a hearing last week: “I got it handed to me on paper.” NRRT executive director Adam Kincaid also helped draw up the gerrymandered map Texas lawmakers approved in August, designed to add five new Republican seats. That kicked off the ongoing tit-for-tat redistricting rush across the country.
But it turns out Hoosiers don’t look kindly on being told what to do. As CNN reportedspeaking with voters across Indiana “underscored two political realities: Rank-and-file Republicans in this deep-red state generally haven’t soured on Trump. But they aren’t rushing into battle for him, either — and they don’t think this issue will be top of mind when they cast their votes in a state Senate primary.” Bray in particular received plenty of support from the Indiana voters BLN spoke with and has shrugged off the idea that he would be vulnerable to a challenger.
Many of Bray’s members showed that same stubborn indignation at the idea they’d listen to Washington’s aggressive tactics over their constituents. The Atlantic’s Russel Berman reported ahead of Thursday’s vote, that many Indianians he spoke to, Democrats and Republicans, “said that the push for mid-decade redistricting simply ran afoul of the small-c conservatism on which many Indiana Republican legislators still pride themselves.” There wasn’t only ideology at play though, as Berman noted, but a very pragmatic political reality at work:
Only half of the senators will be on the ballot next year, and a number of Republicans in the chamber have already announced their retirement. GOP senators also have reason to doubt that either Trump or his allies will follow through on promised spending in the coming years, particularly for those whose next election isn’t until 2028. “The idea that Trump would be spending political capital not just four months from now, but two and a half years from now, individually targeting Indiana senators who defied them on one vote? Just crazy,” [Indianapolis city council member Nick Roberts] said. By 2028, “they will have bigger fish to fry.”
Still, there was no guarantee that Indiana state senators would take that chance. There were multiple threats of political violence against state lawmakers who spoke against the redistricting plan before the vote. But as state Sen. Sue Glick said after she voted against the proposed map: “You have to know Hoosiers. We can’t be bullied, we don’t like it.”
In effect, gerrymandering envisions a world where elections are decided without a single vote being cast.
Gerrymandering is undemocratic at its core; it’s an attempt to pre-sort voters into supposedly safe and unsafe districts, effectively homogenizing the electorate. In effect, gerrymandering envisions a world where elections are decided without a single vote being cast.
Gerrymandered lines drawn up by lawmakers are bad enough, but having them drawn up, in this case, by people disconnected from the state, means that not even the concerns of Indiana’s Republicans were driving the process: only the national party’s concerns.
In the end, the Indiana State Senate rejected a map drawn up by a national group to further national Republican goals. A majority of the GOP caucus voted with every Democrat in standing firm against the proposal. In voting that Trump-backed map down, the Republicans voting no demonstrated that not all Republicans are the same and that even in a MAGA dominant era and that voters don’t appreciate being told that their vote won’t matter. Even if what happened in Indiana will be harder to replicate elsewhere, these lawmakers’ refusal to be shoved into a misshapen box is encouraging.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW Daily.
The Dictatorship
Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.
Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.
* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.
* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.
* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.
* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.
* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.
* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”
Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.
The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.
“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.
Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.
Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.
In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.
But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.
An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.
The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.
“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.
“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.
Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.
“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.
“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.
In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”
In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”
After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.
“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”
Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”
“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.
On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.
But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”
In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:
In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.
As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”
He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.
“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”
Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.
In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
- Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
- Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
- Fears of an ‘economic catastrophe’ helped push Trump toward an Iran deal
- In back-to-back reversals, the Trump administration folds under pressure
- Vance touts ‘successful’ first round of U.S.-Iran talks after Trump threatens new attacks
- Turek leads Hinson in Iowa Senate poll of likely general election voters
- Capitol agenda: House GOP races to make Recon 3.0 real
- A rising populist tide is threatening New York’s powerful incumbents
- Poll: Americans draw a new line in the betting bonanza sweeping over Wall Street — politics.
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