If Trump's redistricting war comes to Indiana, Indiana Democrats will have few weapons
In their most recent fundraising email, Indiana House Democrats evoked their 2011 walkout over right-to-work legislation opposed by labor unions. Texas Democrats are using the same tactic to block the adoption of a new congressional map sought by President Donald Trump to help Republicans keep control of the U.S. House in the 2026 election.
"In 2011, our Hoosier Democratic legislators walked out of the General Assembly to fight for workers' rights. We were willing to put it all on the line to protect our state from extreme government overreach," the email says. "We know the fight our fellow Democrats are going through down south, and we know it may be only a matter of time before Indiana is next."
The fundraising pitch, however, omits a key fact: Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers of the Indiana General Assembly, meaning they have enough members for a quorum even without a single Democrat present.
The omission highlights a bleak truth for Indiana Democrats. Unlike their colleagues in Texas, they would be virtually powerless to stop a vote on new congressional maps.
"They don't have options," said Tip Kew, a former chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party. "They can't break quorum. All they can do is use rhetoric and protest."
Indiana will be in the spotlight when Vice President J.D. Vance flies to Indianapolis on Aug. 7 to meet with Gov. Mike Braun and Republican legislative leaders about the possibility of redrawing the state's congressional maps. Republicans already control seven of Indiana's nine congressional districts, but they believe they could flip at least one of the other seats if they redraw district boundaries.
Making such changes mid-decade is highly unusual. Typically, state lawmakers only redraw maps for Congress and the General Assembly to account for population shifts after the decennial census. The process is notoriously political.
Trump is pushing red states to make changes now to give Republicans a boost in the mid-term elections, which tend to favor the party outside of the White House. The redistricting process is already underway in Republican-led Texas where new congressional maps would give the GOP in that state five additional U.S. House seats. Texas Democrats fled to Illinois on Aug. 3 to disrupt legislative procedures.
Leaders of Democratic-controlled states have threatened to redraw, setting the stage for a redistricting arms race.
In Indiana, Republican Gov. Mike Braun has not ruled out the possibility of calling a special session to draw new maps. Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, and Indiana Senate majority leader Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, are expected to meet with Vance as well.
The top Democrat in the Indiana House, Rep. Phil GiaQuinta of Fort Wayne, acknowledged his caucus's limitations in a statement to IndyStar.
"Unfortunately, with the breakdown of the Indiana House of Representatives as it currently stands, a walkout from our caucus would not hinder Indiana Republicans from meeting quorum and distorting Indiana's congressional maps to silence the voices of the people," he said.
Instead, Democrats will focus on advocating for fair maps, and encouraging constituents to call their elected officials and "participate in civil demonstrations to share their thoughts and concerns."
"Republicans are trying to rig the game at halftime because they know they're down," he said. "Hoosiers always lose when their elected officials abuse their power in a pathetic attempt to maintain it."
Democrats have attributed their weakened state in part to previous Republican-controlled redistricting. Democrats won 40% to 41% percent of the vote last year in Indiana's races for governor and president, but they have less than 27% of seats in the General Assembly and 22% of Indiana's congressional seats.
"They can take more power," Tew said, "because they have so much power."
The diminished strength of Democrats leaves them with few options. Even a legal challenge seems like a questionable tactic after a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision that partisan gerrymandering claims are "beyond the reach of the federal courts," said Indiana Democratic Party Chair Karen Tallian.
With no other strategies at their disposal, Democrats are hoping that what they see as a power grab by Trump and his allies at the Statehouse will stoke a massive response from voters, even if the topic of redistricting has failed to garner much passion from Hoosiers in the past.
"Public opinion is a big factor here," Tallian said. "If you get enough people mad, you can break a 60% Republican district."
Democrats are hoping to rally supporters during Vance's visit with a sit-in at the Statehouse on Aug. 7 beginning at 8 a.m. The two members of Congress likely to be targeted in any redistricting effort — Democratic U.S. Reps. Frank Mrvan and André Carson — are scheduled to speak at 12:30 p.m.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
41 minutes ago
- USA Today
Midterms are more than a year away, but Trump is already challenging them
Trump's DOJ and Republicans are building the machine now to meddle in the 2026 midterm elections 15 months from now. The 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act came and went on Aug. 6 amid a massive mission shift within the U.S. Department of Justice. That agency spent six decades using the Civil Rights Movement law to protect the ability of all Americans to cast ballots in elections. Now, the people President Donald Trump put in charge at the DOJ have shifted that mission entirely to protecting him from election results he dislikes. The DOJ is out of the civil rights business. Now its officials making demands, with not-so-veiled threats, for data from state election administrators while regurgitating Trump's oldest lie about elections – that hoards of noncitizens cast ballots, changing who wins and loses. They're building the machine now to meddle in the 2026 midterm elections 15 months from now. And those machinations are built on two lessons learned from 2020: Attack the election with everything you have before it happens, and stock the Trump administration only with officials who will do exactly what he says on elections, no matter what the law says. Election denial and mistrust are baked into the Trump administration Trump's team of election deniers, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, represent both of these lessons. The first they learned in 2020, when they failed while trying to help Trump overturn a free and fair election. It was all so careless and chaotic back then, a dizzying series of unsubstantiated claims and discombobulated news conferences punctuated by judge after judge tossing out Trump's challenges as meritless. I was reminded recently of a news conference I attended at Philadelphia's airport on the day after the 2020 election. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, then working as Trump's lawyer doing work that eventually got him disbarred, was the ringmaster for the election deniers that day. And Bondi was right by his side. I watched on Nov. 4, 2020, as Bondi started and ended her remarks by insisting twice that Trump had already won Pennsylvania … while everyone knew that the state's election officials were still counting the votes. Trump lost Pennsylvania in 2020 when the race there was called three days later. The Trump team's takeaway from all that: Set up the infrastructure to destabilize the administration of elections at the state level well before Election Day, not just after the polls close. The second lesson was to purge the team of lawyers and officials who will follow the law, even if that means an election result that infuriates Trump. He had top aides who held the line during his first term, acknowledging his loss in 2020. They're all gone now, leaving only Trump's unquestioning sycophants in the second term. And that's exactly who has been bombarding state election administrators with letters for months, demanding copies of the voter rolls for those states, along with records from previous elections when Trump was on the ballot. This is the plodding setup that will eventually lead to Trump and his team making new – and still unsubstantiated – claims that they're trying to protect the 2026 midterm elections from looming fraud. Expect Trump to bully Republicans into interfering with elections Trump has already made clear he'll use any political power he has to influence who wins control of Congress in 2026, even if that means taking actions he has no legal authority to take as president. Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at The Brennan Center for Justice, told me that Trump and his team appear to be building a "pretext" on the false claim of rampant election fraud as justification for their potential meddling in the elections. They're systematically removing "the brakes" that protect democracy during the voting process, she said. "They're taking aim at all of the brakes that applied before. And they're starting earlier," Weiser said. "That just shows you he's laser-focused on interfering in elections here by any means necessary. Bend the rules. Throw out the playbook." David Becker, a former Department of Justice lawyer who founded The Center for Election Innovation and Research, has been hosting monthly webinar meetings with hundreds of state election officials since March. Those officials – Republicans and Democrats – have plenty of questions and concerns about the "unprecedented level of federal interference in state election processes," he told me. "They're not sure where all this is leading," Becker said. "They hear the rhetoric coming out of the White House. They hear the continued false statements about past elections and election security in the United States." It's worth noting here, as Weiser told me, that presidents have no role in running or overseeing elections in America, except for enforcing voting laws passed by Congress. And Becker noted that Congress, now controlled by Trump's Republican allies, has not authorized the DOJ intrusions into state election systems. "This is not so much about election policy as it is about a completely radical rebalancing of the balance of power between the White House and the states," Becker said. "And the Constitution has said, with regards to elections in particular, that the balance of power is tilted toward the states." As with so many Trump scams in his second term, Democrats in the minority in Congress will howl but have no real power now to stop him. And Republicans in Congress have surrendered any real authority as a coequal branch of government. They just do what Trump tells them now. So it falls to election officials in the states, appointed or elected, Republican or Democrat, to engage with Trump's DOJ election deniers while insisting that everyone follows the law. These officials have faced an extraordinary increase of repulsive abuse from Trump's supporters that he egged on. That was Trump's objective, then and now, to intimidate them into submission. We can only hope they hold the line, like the Trump officials in his first term who refused to endorse his lies about the election. Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
End the gerrymandering wars by enlarging the US House
Meanwhile, national Democratic Party leaders are Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up There are no saints or villains in this saga. Republicans and Democrats are engaging in a bare-knuckled fight for power, and what each side condemns is Advertisement The cause of all this drama is not inherent Republican or Democratic perfidy. It is an institutional flaw: With only 435 seats, the US House is far too small — which means each congressional district is far too large. The average district now encompasses nearly 760,000 people. That is a constituency vastly greater than any member of Congress can effectively or fairly represent. And because congressional districts are so large, each one is a political prize well worth gerrymandering. When each district must corral so many people, a single line on the map has an outsize political impact. Under such circumstances, partisan cartography becomes irresistible — and bitter, recurring fights like the one in Texas are inevitable. Happily, there is a structural remedy that would dramatically curtail the constant court fights, political retaliation, and vicious maneuvering surrounding redistricting. Congress ought to expand the size of the House from the current 435 members to 1,500. No constitutional amendment would be needed — it would require only a simple statute to restore each House district to a more manageable size, and thereby make gerrymandering far less tempting. That would be a return to what the framers of the Constitution intended. The House of Representatives was conceived as Advertisement And there it froze. Congress didn't expand the House following the 1920 census, because of a political standoff. Many members resented the A House of 435 might have been workable during the Hoover administration. It makes no sense now. If the House were expanded to 1,500 members, the average congressional district would have about 225,000 people — still larger than its counterparts in many other modern democracies, but far more manageable than today's bloated mega-districts. Granted, that would require more chairs in the House chamber and perhaps smaller offices and staffs for each member. But the payoff would be enormous: Not only would the House be more representative, it would also be less susceptible to gerrymandering. Here's why: When each congressional district contains three-quarters of a million seats, a carefully crafted border can determine the balance of thousands of votes — enough to flip a seat. That makes each boundary line a powerful political weapon. But when districts are a third or a quarter of that size, no single line carries as much weight. Shifting a few neighborhoods or towns from one district to another would affect far fewer voters, making it harder for mapmakers to engineer outcomes with surgical precision. Smaller districts mean smaller levers — reducing the scope for mischief. Advertisement And the more districts there are, the less potent those engineering tactics become. Gerrymandering works best when the map has fewer, larger pieces — which makes it easier to 'pack' opposition voters into a handful of districts, and to 'crack' the rest among multiple other districts, thinning out their numbers to ensure that they lose everywhere else. But multiply the number of districts, and that strategy loses force. The cartographer's advantage fades as the map gets more granular. When each puzzle piece covers a smaller slice of territory, the lines become less predictable and harder to weaponize. Last but definitely not least, in a 1,500-member House, voters would be likelier to know their elected representative — and to be known in return. In districts limited to 225,000 constituents, there would be room for more local voices, more diversity of all kinds, more candidates who reflect the communities they serve. Much smaller districts means much less expensive campaigns — and lower barriers to entry for challengers. It also encourages lawmakers to stay grounded in the concerns of their neighbors rather than the noise of national partisanship. Congress blundered badly when it froze the House at 435 seats. The chaos emanating from Texas is only the latest consequence of that blunder. Advertisement It doesn't have to be this way. Enlarging the House to 1,500 members would end the gerrymandering wars. Better still, it would revive the ideal of a legislature that truly speaks for the people — restoring the people's House to its constitutional roots. Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
UPI
2 hours ago
- UPI
On This Day, Aug. 10: Founding Fathers propose 'E pluribus unum' as U.S. motto
1 of 6 | On August 10, 1776, a committee of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson suggested the United States adopt "E pluribus unum" -- "Out of many, one" -- as the motto for its Great Seal. File Photo by Chris Kleponis/UPI | License Photo Aug. 10 (UPI) -- On this date in history: In 1776, a committee of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson suggested the United States adopt "E pluribus unum" -- "Out of many, one" -- as the motto for its Great Seal. In 1920, Francisco "Pancho" Villa surrendered to Mexican authorities -- and drowned his sorrows in a bottle of cognac. In 1962, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and three other civil rights leaders were found guilty of disorderly conduct charges in Albany, Ga. Judge Adie Durden fined each $200 and sentenced them to 60 days in jail, but immediately suspended the sentences and placed King and his associates on probation. UPI File Photo In 1977, 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz was arrested and charged with being the "Son of Sam," the serial killer who terrorized New York City for more than a year, killing six young people and wounding seven others. Berkowitz was sentenced to life in prison. In 1980, Hurricane Allen made landfall along the Texas coast, killing 24 people there and in Louisiana. The storm killed a 269 people through the Caribbean, Mexico and United States. In 1991, China agreed in principle to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as the U.S. Supreme Court's 107th justice. In 1993, three ships collided with one another in Tampa Bay, Fla., spilling 336,000 gallons of fuel oil into the water. No one was killed. The incident marked the first time officials used a computerized trajectory model to track the location of an oil spill. In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole selected former congressman, Cabinet secretary and NFL quarterback Jack Kemp as his running mate. File Photo by Ezio Petersen/UPI In 2003, more than 80 inmates tunneled their way out of Brazil's Joao Pessoa prison, one of the nation's top security facilities. In 2017, President Donald Trump said opioid addiction "is a serious problem the likes of which we have never had" and declared a national emergency over the crisis. In 2021, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation in the wake of a damning attorney general's report that found he'd sexually harassed nearly a dozen women in recent years. In 2023, a non-profit rescue team recovered 17 bodies while 33 remained missing after a boat carrying Rohingya Muslims capsized near Myanmar while sailing to Malaysia.
