Tribune-Star Editorial: Hoosier GOP lawmakers should decline arm-twisting session at White House
It was lit by the Trump administration. The White House is trying to strongarm Republican-majority states into redrawing their congressional boundaries, years ahead of the constitutionally based post-census cycle.
Now, President Donald Trump has invited all 110 Republicans in the Indiana General Assembly to an Aug. 26 meeting in the White House, the Indianapolis Star reported Friday.
They should decline, politely if that softens the consequences for those lawmakers.
The coercion from the White House is a purely political ploy to win more Republican seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Not through better candidates, policies or campaigning, but by simply erasing the existing lines and redrawing them to ensure a GOP victory.
Trump's Republican Party holds a narrow 219-212 majority in the House, with four vacant seats. The party in control of the White House historically loses seats in midterm elections. If that holds true in the 2026 election, Democrats could regain the House majority, complicating Trump's plans.
So, the White House has unleashed a pressure campaign on governors and state lawmakers in Republican-leaning states to redraw congressional districts to win more House seats. It started with Texas, where Republicans hold 25 of the Lone Star State's 38 seats in the U.S. House, and has spread to others.
The U.S. Constitution provides for states to redistrict after the decennial census, which happens next in 2030. This is 2025.
The president's rationale for disrupting that cycle, specifically in Texas?
'We are entitled to five more seats,' Trump told CNBC on Aug. 5.
Soon, compliant Texas Republicans began working to conjure up new boundaries to deliver those five seats in 2026, setting off a wild clash with minority Democrats who left that state in a procedural move to stall the scheme. Then, Vice President J.D. Vance was sent to Indiana to twist the arms of Gov. Mike Braun, Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston and state Senate Pro Tem Rodric Bray to follow Texas's lead. The Hoosier leaders were basically noncommittal.
Numbers illustrate the reason why Indiana officials should not join the power grab. Republicans already hold seven of the state's nine seats in the U.S. House. That calculates to 78% of the seats. That is far more than the actual Republican-Democratic split in Indiana. Braun won the 2024 governor's race with 54% of the vote, while Democratic challenger Jennifer McCormick got 41%.
Trump wants 100% of Indiana's seats, and wants new lines drawn to guarantee that outcome.
Admirably, a surprising number of Republican Indiana state legislators have pushed back against the scheme.
Zionsville Rep. Becky Cash told WTHR in Indianapolis, 'I do not support redistricting and do not know of any reason why Indiana should redistrict.' Even staunch conservative Rep. Jim Lucas of Seymour gave the 'highly unusual and politically optically horrible' scheme a 'hard no' on social media, adding, 'If there are seats that need targeted, we should do it the old-fashioned way and campaign harder in those districts.'
Spencer Deery, the Republican state senator from Lafayette summoned a slice of the late Richard Lugar's statesmanship, saying, 'We are being asked to create a new culture in which it would be normal for a political party to select new voters, not once a decade, but any time it fears the consequences of an approaching election. That would clearly violate the concept of popular sovereignty by making it harder for the people to hold their elected officials accountable, and the country would be an uglier place for it.'
Deery is right; it would be.
There is no need for state legislators to travel to the White House to face intimidation. Indiana should study its legislative boundaries after the 2030 census, and no sooner.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 minutes ago
- Yahoo
In the news today: Flight attendant strike set to continue
Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed... Flight attendant strike set to continue It could be another chaotic day for travellers as a labour dispute continues between Air Canada and the union representing its flight attendants. Flight attendants with the Montreal-based airline represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees are expected to remain on the picket lines today as a battle against a federal return-to-work order continues. CUPE says it filed a challenge in Federal Court on Sunday against an order by the Canada Industrial Relations Board that said more than 10,000 flight attendants had to return to work as of 2 p.m. ET that afternoon. The dispute has garnered negative attention from labour groups across Canada who are criticizing the Liberal government's decision to order flight attendants back to work. A statement from the Canadian Labour Congress late Sunday evening said the "heads of Canada's unions" met in an emergency session to stand behind Air Canada's flight attendants. Here's what else we're watching... Voters to choose new MP in Alberta byelection Voters head to the polls today in a rural Alberta byelection that's getting an unusual level of national attention. Battle River—Crowfoot was left vacant when Conservative Damien Kurek stepped down shortly after the spring election to make way for his party's leader, Pierre Poilievre, to run for a seat. Poilievre lost in the April election after being elected in the Ottawa-area riding of Carleton seven straight times. The byelection is for one of the safest Conservative seats in the country, and the Tory leader is widely expected to win by a large margin. More than 200 people are running against Poilievre, most of whom are part of a protest movement called the Longest Ballot Committee. As a result of the record number of people in the running, Elections Canada says voters will need to write in the name of their preferred candidate by hand on a modified ballot. Carney, Ford meeting in Ottawa today Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford are meeting in Ottawa today. A federal government official says there likely won't be an announcement coming out of the meeting between the two leaders. Carney and Ford are expected to discuss affordability, housing and crime, the official says. The official says the meeting is meant to be "casual" but offers a good opportunity for the two to touch base ahead of the fall sittings of the House of Commons and the provincial legislature. The premier is in Ottawa today for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference, which runs until Wednesday. Landmines won't protect Europe from Russia: expert An expert who has disposed of bombs in some of the world's most dangerous places says European governments pinning their security hopes on landmines are turning to an ineffective tool that will only spread misery and hunger. "It's an outdated technology that can quite quickly be rendered useless," said Gary Toombs, a senior explosive disposal technician with the charity Humanity and Inclusion. Anti-landmine advocates are urging Canada to step up efforts to convince European countries to remain in the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which Canada brokered to end the use of anti-personnel landmines around the world. The treaty led most of the world's countries to ban the use of such weapons and mobilized funding to clear unexploded landmines from former war zones in places like Vietnam. This spring, six countries bordering Russia announced plans to leave the Ottawa Treaty. Ukraine, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have argued that the threat posed by Russia justifies the possible use of landmines to thwart or slow ground incursions. Alberta to power some jails with solar energy Alberta's government is looking to power some of its jails with solar energy. The province says it's planning to build solar installations at five of its 10 correctional facilities, with early energy cost savings estimated at $1 million per year. "The solar installations are expected to offset approximately 80 per cent of the energy used at each site," Michael Kwas, press secretary for Infrastructure Minister Martin Long, said in an email. A procurement document published by the province, which lists future projects with approved construction funding, says the government's budget for the solar proposal is anywhere from $10 million to $50 million. Like the savings, the budget figure is also preliminary, Kwas said. A more exact estimate would be determined later as planning progresses. While the ministry didn't say which jails have been chosen, Kwas said two are in the Edmonton area and three are around Calgary. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 18, 2025. The Canadian Press
Yahoo
3 minutes ago
- Yahoo
What time is Trump meeting Zelensky at the White House?
The US president and Ukrainian leader are set for crunch talks on Monday to discuss how to end Russia's war. Volodymyr Zelensky returns to the White House on Monday for crunch talks with Donald Trump about ending the war between Ukraine and Russia. Six months after his last bruising encounter at the Oval Office, in which the US president and vice-president JD Vance accused Ukraine's leader of not being thankful for their help in an unforgettable encounter, Zelensky is back in Washington DC - but this time bolstered by the back-up of a host of European leaders. Monday's crucial discussions follow Trump's summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, which failed to produce a significant breakthrough. What time are the talks? The timings for Monday's series of talks in Washington have been released by the White House. Trump will greet Zelensky the White House at 1pm local time (6pm BST) and the pair will then have a bilateral meeting beginning at 1.15pm (6.15pm). Following this, Trump will take part in a meeting with European leaders who have travelled to Washington to back Zelensky - this meeting is scheduled for 3pm local time (8pm BST). Recap: Watch the fiery clash between Trump and Zelensky in February 2025 Which European leaders will be there? Zelensky will be accompanied in Washington by a host of European leaders, who make up the "coalition of the willing", determined to avoid a repeat of the embarrassing standoff between the Ukrainian leader and Trump in February. Among them is British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, who hosted Zelensky at Downing Street before Trump met Putin in Alaska. Other key European figures will also be at the meeting with the aim of protecting Ukraine from submitting to Russian land grabs as a price for peace. They include France's Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Friedrich Merz, Italy's Giorgia Meloni and Alexander Stubb, president of Finland. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Nato chief Mark Rutte are also attending.
CNN
5 minutes ago
- CNN
What would happen if America started faking its economic data? Here's what happened when other countries did it
Donald Trump South America InvestingFacebookTweetLink Follow Lying to your lenders is a bad enough idea when you're an individual. It's even worse when you're a country. That's the specter critics of President Donald Trump have raised after he fired the head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics this month after disappointing jobs data. While there's no indication the data has been rigged (assertions from the White House aside) – or will be rigged in the future – the White House's nomination of a partisan to lead the government's economic data agency was enough to worry global economic and financial circles. There's historical precedent for that fear. Countries like Greece and Argentina have been both been punished by investors for putting out manufactured numbers in the past. 'President Trump has just taken one very negative stop along a slippery slope,' Alan Blinder, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve, told CNN. 'The next worry is going to be manipulation' of data. At stake is the health of an economy relied upon by nearly every person on earth, directly or indirectly. The US economy affects everyone from Americans in glitzy Manhattan skyscrapers to, quite literally, garbage pickers living in developing nation slums. But while Greece famously faked its way into the European Union and Argentina to this day remains embroiled in legal fights over its own sham numbers, there key differences here: The US economy is the world's biggest, buoyed by its global dominance and its years of strength. The Trump administration says firing Erika McEntarfer wasn't about politics but was instead about making BLS data more rigorous and accurate. 'Historically abnormal revisions in BLS data over the past few years since COVID have called into question the BLS's accuracy, reliability, and confidence. President Trump believes that businesses, households, and policymakers deserve accurate data to inform their decision-making, and he will restore America's trust in the BLS,' said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers in a statement to CNN. Still, economists warn, the United States is at something of a crossroads now, waiting to see what happens to data series that economists have praised as the gold standard, even if many agree that model updating and modernization could make major improvements to the data's accuracy. 'There's no substitute for credible government data,' said Michael Heydt, the lead sovereign analyst at rating agency Morningstar DBRS. In 2004, Greece confessed it had faked numbers on its national deficit and debt to qualify for entry into the eurozone in 2001. But the number-fudging didn't end there. Appointed to Greece's statistical agency in 2010, economist Andreas Georgiou made a bold decision: He worked to publish deficit numbers that aligned with reality. After years of untrustworthy numbers that made the idea of official Greek data a global punchline, his efforts were downright startling. What followed were years of legal fights, and he was prosecuted for allegedly inflating the country's deficit figures. Even the EU itself condemned Greece for the false data. The fakery made the effects of the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 significantly worse in Greece. Lenders, skittish of what Greece's actual public finances might be, shied away, demanding increasingly higher rates to hold Greek bonds. Austerity measures demanded by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to bail out Greece angered everyday citizens. Pictures of Greeks rioting in the streets, burning cars and expressing their rage, underscored the dangers. In Argentina, accusations of untrustworthy inflation and economic growth data have dogged Latin America's third-largest economy for decades, scaring off investors despite a wealth of natural resources. Then-President Nestor Kirchner demoted the person in charge of preparing inflation data because she (correctly) reported surging prices in 2007. Everyone from ordinary citizens to global investors treated official inflation data as suspect for years after. That contributed to the country's credit ratings staying in junk territory for years – one of the factors investors typically cite to charge a country more to loan it money. (In Argentina's case, previous sovereign defaults were also a major factor. The unreliable inflation data, after all, did not happen in a vacuum.) That matters to ordinary people because short- and long-term debt, whether from a federal government down to tiny cities and towns, can help fund everything from new schools to roads to essential services. When lenders turn off the money spigot – or charge dearly for access – that means regular people ultimately pay the price. But the United States is far from replicating either scenario, said Robert Shapiro, the chairman of economic advisory firm Sonecon and a former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs under President Bill Clinton. When the data was revealed to be fake in both Greece and Argentina, those economies were already in terrible shape, Shapiro pointed out. 'So the impact of the markets no longer being able to rely on the data was a little less because the markets were already backing away from investment and employment.' The US economy is growing, hitting a relatively robust annualized rate of 3% in the second quarter. And at over $30 trillion, the US economy has a heft that both Greece and Argentina lack. 'We're the largest economy in the world. We are by far the greatest financial center in the world,' Shapiro said. Trump fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shortly after the August 1 jobs report showed sharply slower jobs growth than expected for July – and significant downward revisions to data from June and May. Trump accused McEntarfer, without evidence, of manipulating the reports for 'political purposes.' Analysts begged to differ. The US is 'a world leader in providing high-quality data,' Heydt said. 'The BLS in particular is kind of a world class institution… The US for a long time has been kind of the gold standard for data.' William Beach, a former Trump BLS commissioner, told CNN previously that 'there's no way' for McEntarfer or others to rig the data. 'By the time the commissioner sees the number, they're all prepared, they're locked into the computer system,' he said. 'There's no hands-on at all for the commissioner.' But large revisions in the bureau's data have raised eyebrows, not just this month, but in the past as well. A preliminary annual revision in August 2024, for example, showed the US economy had added 818,000 fewer jobs over the past year than previously reported. Those kinds of large revisions might suggest deeper issues, like how the BLS gets their data and constructs their economic models, said Kathryn Rooney Vera, the chief market strategist and chief economist at financial services company StoneX. 'Several economists and research teams I personally engage with have flagged these as structural issues with the data long before Trump's involvement or the firing of the BLS chief,' Rooney Vera told CNN. And Shapiro noted another wrinkle: budget cuts. Already the BLS has said it will cut back on collecting some data because it has fewer people. That, in turn, means it can take longer to get to final numbers for data releases. In the case of the jobs report, big companies usually respond with information first. Smaller companies tend to trail. 'And so you get a lot of responses that come in after the date when the initial estimate is put out,' he said, leading to revisions. Still, the US has other sources of data, both public and private, to round out a fuller picture of the economy. Shapiro pointed to the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. 'These institutions are made up virtually 100% by statisticians and economists,' Shapiro said. 'They're utterly nonpolitical in their jobs.'
