President Donald Trump is unleashing his anger at Indiana Senate Republicans for not backing the GOP redistricting effort, posting his displeasure three times to Truth Social in the last 24 hours and calling President Pro Tempore Rod Bray a “Total RINO.”
“In the entire United States of America, Republican or Democrat, only Indiana “Republican” State Senator Rod Bray, a Complete and Total RINO, is opposed to redistricting for purposes of gaining additional Seats in Congress,” posted Trump on Monday afternoon, who has seen Republican lawmakers in four states now reject his mid-cycle redistricting scheme. In another Monday post, Trump said competitors were lining up to primary Bray.
Bray is not the only Republican in Indiana who doesn’t back redistricting. On Monday, Indiana state Sen. Blake Doriot of Goshen issued a statement saying that he was a Trump supporter but that he opposed redistricting.
“I have long been a Trump supporter, and I want President Trump to continue to be successful with a Republican-led House so he can continue fixing our woke colleges, fighting illegal immigration and crime, and encouraging us to speak about our great nation and be proud of who we are as Americans – not apologize for it,” Doriot said in a statement.
The news comes as Trump is set to issue a retributive endorsement as early as Monday against one of a handful Indiana Senate Republicans who opposes the White House’s mid-cycle redistricting plan.
Among the holdouts targeted by the White House: Republican state Sen. Jim Buck of Kokomo, who is facing a primary from Tipton County Commissioner Tracey Powell. Trump could back Powell Monday, according to a person familiar with his thinking speaking exclusively with POLITICO, following through on MAGA’s and White House allies’ long-running threats to primary opponents of their mid-decade redistricting effort intended to protect their slim House majority in the midterms next year.
Trump posted on Truth Social Monday morning that he “will be strongly endorsing against any State Senator or House member from the Great State of Indiana that votes against the Republican Party, and our Nation, by not allowing for Redistricting for Congressional seats in the United States House of Representatives as every other State in our Nation is doing, Republican or Democrat.”
A spokesperson for Buck did not respond to a request for comment.
The White House is extending invitations to Indiana lawmakers for Oval Office visits. The latest invitation accepted is by State Sen. Scott Baldwin, who confirmed the invite in a phone interview.
Baldwin has already announced his support for redistricting.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s post came after Bray announced on Friday that the chamber will not convene in December to redraw maps, drawing Trump’s ire to and a threat to withdraw his support for Bray, State Sen. Greg Goode and Gov. Mike Braun. Goode was the victim of a swatting incident over the weekend.
Bray said his decision was influenced by the lack of votes supporting the measure, but Trump on Sunday argued that meant Braun was not doing enough to secure GOP support.
“Considering that Mike wouldn’t be Governor without me (Not even close!), is disappointing!” Trump said in a post to Truth Social. “Any Republican that votes against this important redistricting, potentially having an impact on America itself, should be PRIMARIED.”
Another member of the conservative Heritage Foundation has resigned following a video posted by the organization’s president defending Tucker Carlson’s interview with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
In a post to Facebook, board member Robert P. George said he can no longer remain part of the foundation without a “full retraction” of the video released last month by the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts.
“Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse,” George said.
Carlson’s interview with Fuentes — who has previously expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler — received widespread condemnation for antisemitism, and the aftermath has exposed fault lines among conservatives.
In his Oct. 30 video, Roberts denounced the “venomous coalition” criticizing both Fuentes and Carlson, adding that Carlson is a “close friend.” He said that though he disagrees with and even “abhors” things Fuentes said, he did not believe in “canceling” him or Carlson. On Sunday, President Donald Trump also defended Carlson, telling reporters “you can’t tell him who to interview.”
Fuentes, a well-known provocateur on the right, has previously said that “organized Jewry” is leading to the disappearance of white culture.
Roberts later said he “didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy,” and that his video script was written by an aide who has since resigned.
George on Monday said that Roberts is a “good man” who acknowledged a “serious mistake.”
“What divided us was a difference of opinion about what was required to rectify the mistake,” George added.
A spokesman for the Heritage Foundation confirmed George’s resignation in a statement to POLITICO, thanking him for his service and calling him a “good man” before defending Roberts.
“Under the leadership of Dr. Roberts, Heritage remains resolute in building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish. We are strong, growing, and more determined than ever to fight for our Republic,” the spokesman said.
George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, had been a Heritage trustee since 2019, according to the foundation’s website.
His resignation is one of several in light of Roberts’ video, including at least five members of the foundation’s antisemitism task force, according to CBS News.
“I pray that Heritage’s research and advocacy will be guided by the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is “created equal” and “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,” George said.
An Indiana Senate Republican who President Donald Trump called out in a Truth Social post Sunday for not backing the White House’s plan to draw new congressional maps was later targeted by a swatting, according to local authorities.
Greg Goode, who Trump posted was a “RINO” he was “Very disappointed in” Sunday was targeted hours later by what Vigo County Sheriff Derek Fell called a “swatting” in a statement.
Despite Trump’s social media post insinuating otherwise, Goode has not publicly announced his position on redistricting.
Fell said that around 5 p.m. Sunday “an email was sent to the Terre Haute Police Department advising harm had been done to persons inside a home, located in southeastern Vigo County,” Fell said. “This information was immediately relayed to the Sheriffs Office, at which point deputies responded to the home, which was the home of Senator Greg Goode. Attempts were initially unsuccessful to raise anyone at the residence, but ultimately contact was made with persons inside the home.”
Fell added that Goode and others “were secure, safe, and unharmed. Investigation showed that this was a prank or false email (also known as ‘swatting’).”
In a statement, Goode said he and his family were “victims,” and thanked Fell and Terre Haute Police Chief Kevin Barrett for their “professionalism.”
The news comes as efforts to redistrict have ground to a halt in Indiana on Friday, after Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray refused to reconvene the chamber to redraw congressional maps in favor of Republicans.
The president threatened earlier Sunday that a list of Senate Republicans resistant to gerrymandering the state would be “released to the public later this afternoon,” which so far seems to have not materialized by this evening.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
Earlier this month, Goode held a town hall in Terre Haute on redistricting, and 71 people spoke out against it and nobody spoke for it.
On Tuesday, Indiana lawmakers are expected to convene at the Indiana Statehouse for organization day, a largely ceremonial and administrative event kicking off next year’s session. Already, pro-redistricting advocates have announced a statehouse rally calling for redistricting.
Critics, from President Donald Trump to establishment Democrats, condemned his platform as radical and unrealistic. And The New York Times warns that Mamdani risks becoming the latest “big-city civic leader promising bold, progressive change” to “mostly deliver disappointment.” Among past offenders, it lists former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
But the comparison to de Blasio reveals a paradox.
As candidate for mayor in 2013, after the Occupy Wall Street movement against economic inequality, de Blasio campaigned on the core progressive tenet of tackling inequality through social welfare and the redistribution of wealth.
Over two terms, de Blasio alienated many New Yorkers and became a pariah among Democratic politicians. A committed progressive, he is perceived to have lost touch with the movements and communities that he hoped to lead.
Maybe the question is not whether Mamdani’s policies are realistic, but what it actually takes to win over citizens with a progressive vision. De Blasio himself cautions that it takes more than policy. He recently said that he “often mistook good policy for good politics, a classic progressive error.”
As a scholar of public policy, I think that policy achievements are neither self-evident nor self-sustaining. In my research on urban governance, I have found that it takes continuous political work to maintain local belief in urban progress and its leaders.
Based on an analysis of de Blasio’s two terms, I have identified three key respects in which his politics fell short.
Keep up the ground game
Many accounts of de Blasio’s unpopularity emphasize his personal flaws. Open and humorous in person, he was described by critics – and even some supporters – as stubborn, didactic and self-righteous. His designs on higher offices – first governor, then president – repeatedly backfired.
But for someone elected with the support of progressives, de Blasio’s bigger problem was losing touch with local progressive politics. He missed the rise of the anti-corporate left in Queens in 2018, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – so much so that his team miscalculated and agreed to place an Amazon headquarters near her district.
Many New Yorkers remember former Mayor Bill de Blasio for his unpopularity. AP Photo/Seth Wenig
The contours of progressive politics can shift under one’s feet. But as a veteran of street-level politics, Mamdani has the skills to respond to, and keep shaping, the city’s progressive movement. A dynamic “ground game” – on the model of his walk of the length of Manhattan – will likely remain as important in governing as it was in campaigning.
Early in de Blasio’s first term, while seeking state funding for universal pre-K, de Blasio angered Cuomo by insisting on funding it through a tax on the city’s wealthy. Lacking necessary state approval, de Blasio eventually accepted a different state funding source. Universal pre-K became de Blasio’s cornerstone achievement, but the lasting feud with Cuomo remained a problem, even compromising the city’s plans to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
Critics also thought de Blasio could have been tougher on Big Tech. Letting a Google-backed consortium run the city’s free Wi-Fi program without meaningful oversight left the city with a privacy scandal and serious financial deficits.
In trying to attract Amazon’s headquarters, de Blasio’s administration offended New Yorkers’ sensibilities by allowing the company to bypass local development review processes. Though famously byzantine, these processes were created to ensure local control over development decisions. One could not simply bulldoze them aside.
Though some progressives wish mayors ruled the world, U.S. cities have traditionally depended on states, the federal government and private companies for capital and resources. As I and others have shown, and de Blasio’s experiences attest, these outside players can undermine the progressive ideal of a city that seeks to redistribute economic benefit.
Mayoral powers are limited, but Mamdani can use his popularity to protect New York City’s capacity for self-government from outside interference, while cooperating strategically with the state when necessary. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s endorsement of Mamdani, driven by a shared interest in universal child care, was a start. United, they stand a better chance of defending local – city and state – autonomy against threats from President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, there is little evidence that it pays for cities to court private businesses with expensive incentives – a common but contested city practice. Instead, following mayors elsewhere, Mamdani might pressure tech companies to end union-busting practices and thereby ensure local workers’ right to organize.
Supporters for Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani watch returns during election night, Nov. 4, 2025, in New York. AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura
Lead with the social compact
Though de Blasio delivered many progressive policies, he was unable to keep alive his campaign promise to end New York’s “tale of two cities” – the stark divide between extreme wealth and poverty.
Such inconsistencies loomed large in the public discussion. Over time, de Blasio’s administration could no longer convince the public that its energies were being channeled toward a coherent vision of progress.
I believe that urban governance is about clarifying the rights and responsibilities that urban residents can expect to have, what I think of as the social compact between the city and its subjects. De Blasio’s growing unpopularity weakened his ability to show that his policy achievements amounted to upholding a tacit progressive promise to guarantee basic economic rights for all.
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, father of losing mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, often said: “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” While campaigning, Mamdani offered a poetic vision for a new social compact in New York.
“City government’s job,” he has said, “is to make sure each New Yorker has a dignified life, not determine which New Yorkers are worthy of that dignity.”
Many commentators insist that Mamdani must now abandon poetry and deliver the policy. But that is only partly right.
New Yorkers will disagree about the details, but the election results suggest that they want to believe in the promise of a dignified life for all. Mamdani’s ability to lead New York City – and a wider post-Trump progressive movement – will be a matter of setting an example in rearticulating and reaffirming what that promise means, to him and to his city.
Nicole West Bassoff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
INDIANAPOLIS — President Donald Trump’s effort to force mid-decade redistricting suffered a major setback Friday, after Indiana’s GOP state Senate leader declared the chamber will not convene in December to redraw maps.
In response, Trump’s team has begun summoning Indiana lawmakers to meet with the president in the Oval Office as early as next week, according to two sources familiar with the request, including one who had fielded an invite over the phone Friday.
“Over the last several months, Senate Republicans have given very serious and thoughtful consideration to the concept of redrawing our state’s congressional maps,” Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray said in a statement, after conducting a private test vote on Friday afternoon with his caucus. “Today, I’m announcing there are not enough votes to move that idea forward, and the Senate will not reconvene in December.”
It’s a massive blow to the White House’s efforts to shore up a Republican House majority next year via redistricting, and comes from a state Trump easily won last November. It marks the fourth state where efforts have stalled despite pressure from Trump and his political team.
Bray’s announcement on Friday immediately incensed those in Trump’s orbit.
“Our party can no longer afford to harbor these gutless, self-serving traitors who stab us in the back while accomplishing absolutely nothing,” Trump ally Alex Bruesewitz said on X. “The entire MAGA movement will be mobilizing to Indiana to PRIMARY and OUST every last RINO blocking these essential reforms to RESCUE our nation, this will include the totally clueless and weak State Senate President.”
Vice President JD Vance traveled to Indiana several times and expended political capital on the Hoosier state effort, flying twice on Air Force Two here to court lawmakers, and he had welcomed Indiana lawmakers to the White House. Trump himself entertained Bray and state House Speaker Todd Huston in the Oval Office to discuss the matter in August.
Vance’s office did not immediately comment on the development.
And while Republican-backed efforts continue to stall across the country, Democrats are beginning to ramp up their efforts. After four GOP states redrew nine red-leaning seats — starting with Texas — California voters approved a ballot measure that could net Democrats five seats of their own. Virginia is poised to follow suit with two potential seats, and the party is ramping up its pressure on Maryland and Illinois.
It’s no sure thing yet — as some states are expected to move forward with redistricting in January — but the battle is looking increasingly likely to end in a draw.
GOP Gov. Mike Braun, who had called for a special session but cannot force a vote on the issue, called on the state’s Senate to “do the right thing and show up to vote for fair maps.”
“Hoosiers deserve to know where their elected officials stand on important issues,” Braun said in a statement.
One person close to the redistricting process, granted anonymity to discuss conversations that are not yet public, said that Bray’s description of the vote tally is not accurate.
“The House has the votes and the Senate is very close to having the votes,” the person said, adding that Bray “claims to be protecting his members, but the reality is that he’s hurting his members and the voters who elect them by betraying Republicans and lying to the public.”
Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) — whose seat was likely to be redrawn — hailed the decision on Friday.
“Prayer, people, and partnerships power change,” Carson said. “Hoosiers do things differently. We’re about collaboration, not division. We’re about independent thinking — not taking orders from Washington. I want to thank Senator Bray and all the Republican and Democratic members of the Indiana Statehouse who held firm on Hoosier values. This is a win for all of us.”
Outside of Indiana, other GOP efforts are also struggling. In Kansas, Republican state House Speaker Dan Hawkins said earlier this month that his chamber does not have the two-thirds vote required to call a special session over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Hawkins responded to the disagreement in his caucus by stripping leadership posts from holdouts and has vowed to take the issue up during the January regular session.
President Donald Trump has broken with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch long-time ally and prominent MAGA figure who has been at sharp odds with the White House on economic issues, foreign affairs and the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump called Greene a “ranting lunatic” and said he was withdrawing his support for her in a social media post late Friday.
“All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.
The president continued to share several posts lambasting Taylor Greene on Truth Social into Friday night — including reposting comments that called the representative “a cheap political football,” a “sellout” and another that said her “political future just ended,” all in the span of a couple minutes.
The outburst marked a notable fissure in the MAGA coalition that vaulted Trump to office and has helped him carry out his agenda but has fractured in recent months, particularly over files related to Epstein.
Greene had been an unusually pointed critic of Trump, saying he should spend less time on overseas travel and foreign affairs and more addressing domestic issues such as the looming expiration of Obamacare subsidies that will cause health insurance for many to soar.
But Epstein appears to be the main factor in the breach. Greene and MAGA figures have long called for the government to release files from the investigation, something Trump had also appeared to support until he returned to office.
“It’s astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out that he actually goes to this level,” she said. “But really most Americans wish he would fight this hard to help the forgotten men and women of America who are fed up with foreign wars and foreign causes, are going broke trying to feed their families, and are losing hope of ever achieving the American dream.”
She added: “I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.”
Trump’s criticism of Greene comes at a politically fraught moment for Republicans, who are feeling squeamish after a crushing off-season election cycle in which Democrats swept all major races in part by messaging on the shutdown and affordability. Democrats are hoping this momentum will carry them into the midterms, when they hope to regain control of the House.
The president said that a viable Republican who runs against Greene — who he now sees as “Far Left” — in a primary election next year would receive his endorsement.
“I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day. I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics,” he said. “If the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support.”
Trump has used Truth Social to level similarly harsh attacks against Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) who, like Greene, has skewered Trump and other Republican leaders by calling for the full release of the Epstein files and pushing to cut back presidential war powers. Last month, Trump encouraged Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy Seal, to run against Massie during the primary elections next year, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) later said he would help Massie clinch a victory.
“Did Thomas Massie, sometimes referred to as Rand Paul Jr., because of the fact that he always votes against the Republican Party, get married already???” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Boy, that was quick! No wonder the Polls have him at less than an 8% chance of winning the Election. Anyway, have a great life Thomas and (?). His wife will soon find out that she’s stuck with a LOSER!”
Graham Platner, left, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, chats with his neighbor, Denis Nault, on Nov. 3, 2025, in Sullivan, Maine. AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
Every few years, Democrats try to convince themselves they’ve found the one – a candidate who can finally speak fluent rural, who looks and sounds like the voters they’ve lost.
In 2024, that hope was pinned on Tim Walz, the flannel-wearing, “Midwestern nice” governor whose small-town roots were supposed to unlock the rural Midwest for a Harris–Walz victory.
Now those expectations have migrated to New England, onto Graham Platner – the tattooed veteran and oyster farmer from Maine who swears from the stump, wears sweatshirts instead of suits, and, some believe, could be the party’s blue-collar savior against Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent running her sixth campaign for U.S. Senate.
I study rural politics and live in rural Maine. I’m skeptical whether Platner can reach the independents and rural moderates Democrats need. But I also see why people think he might: He’s speaking to grievances that are real, measurable and decades in the making.
Platner represents Democrats’ anxieties about class and geography – a projection of the authenticity they hope might reconcile their national brand with rural America. On paper, he’s the kind of figure they imagine can bridge the divide: a plainspoken Mainer.
Yet Platner’s immediate hurdle isn’t rural Maine at all. It is the Democratic primary, and those voters do not live where his campaign imagery is set.
Crowd members at a town hall meeting in the southern Maine town of Ogunquit listen to U.S. senatorial candidate Graham Platner on Oct. 22, 2025. Sophie Park/Getty Images
Opportunity zone
In 2024, nearly 6 in 10 registered Democrats in Maine lived south of the state capital Augusta. That part of the state would not constitute an urban metropolis anywhere else in the U.S., but it is a drastically different world than the one Platner is fighting for.
The party’s gravitational center sits in Cumberland and York counties: Greater Portland and the southern coastal strip. That electorate is more educated, affluent and urban than the state as a whole, clustered in Portland’s walkable neighborhoods, college towns such as Brunswick and artsy coastal communities that swell with summer tourists.
Southern Maine – closer in feel to Boston’s suburbs than to the paper mills and potato fields up north – is where Democrats are already strong. Collins’ vulnerability lies instead among independents in small cities and towns, in deindustrialized and rural counties drifting rightward for two decades.
Collins outperformed Donald Trump in every county. She built commanding margins in rural Maine, offsetting Democratic gains in Portland and the southern coast. Her real breakthrough came in the kinds of small towns where Trump lost and she won or closed the margin: Ellsworth, Brewer, Machias, Gardiner and Winterport.
Those former mill towns and service hubs once anchored the Maine Democratic Party. They’re home to exactly the kinds of voters who, in principle, might give someone like Platner a hearing: not deeply ideological, modestly skeptical of both parties and wary of national polarization.
But they are also the voters least represented in the Democratic primary electorate or the donor class fueling Platner’s campaign.
Platner’s in-state share is higher and more geographically diffuse than Gideon’s 2020 campaign. Then, in what became Maine’s most expensive Senate race, just 4% of Gideon’s war chest was homegrown. Most of that Maine money was heavily concentrated in Portland and the southern coastal corridor.
While 64% of Gideon’s Maine total fundraising amount came from the three southernmost counties, 88% of Platner’s current in-state funding is from outside the urban-suburban core of southern Maine.
That divergence matters. It suggests that while Platner’s campaign is still fueled by national money, its local base – however small – extends beyond the usual Portland orbit.
And there is a reason Platner’s message has not been dead on arrival.
The economic populism he’s advancing speaks directly to the material frustrations many rural residents express – frustration with corporate consolidation, rising costs and the feeling that prosperity never reaches their communities.
The 2024 Cooperative Election Study shows that rural independents and moderates often share progressive instincts on precisely these issues: Large majorities of rural, moderate/independent New Englanders support higher taxes on the wealthy and expanded health coverage. Platner is emphasizing those issues – corporate power, health costs, infrastructure, wages – where the urban–rural divide is narrowest.
Platner may be closing that gap. In an October 2025 survey, 58% of likely Democratic primary voters named him as their first choice for the 2026 Senate nomination. While that support has likely changed in the aftermath of two controversies – his chest tattoo that resembled a Nazi icon and recent posts on Reddit, including one in which he says rural people “actually are” “stupid” and “racist” – that poll’s most notable finding is the consistency of support across income and education levels.
Still, while his message may bridge income and education, the biggest obstacle facing Platner is the simplest one: He’s trying to do all of this as a Democrat.
Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins speaks on Nov. 4, 2020, in Bangor, Maine, after Democratic challenger Sara Gideon called her to concede. AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
Hearing, not speaking
Being anchored in metropolitan and professional networks far removed from rural life shapes not only what Democrats stand for but how they speak, focusing on moral and cultural commitments that resonate nationally but feel abstract in smaller, locally based communities.
That’s why even an economically resonant message struggles once it meets the national brand.
Rural independents and moderates often agree with Democrats on taxes, health care and wages. Those alignments fade when policy is framed through the institutions and moral language of a party many no longer see as compatible with rural ways of living.
It’s not clear yet how Platner will respond on issues that don’t poll well in rural Maine – environmental regulation, gun control or immigration – where loyalty to the national agenda has undone many would-be reformers before him.
And that schism is not because rural voters misunderstand their “self-interest” or because racial dog whistles have led them astray. It is hostility toward a party that, with rare exception, sees the future as something rural America must adapt to, not something it should help define.
That is the danger of treating biography as the solution to a decades-long realignment. Platner might be as close as Democrats have come in years to a candidate who can talk credibly to rural voters about power, place and policy. But he still has to do it while wearing the “scarlet D” – the weight of a party brand built over generations.
Whether he wins or loses, his campaign already points to a deeper question: Can Democrats do more than rent rural authenticity? Put more bluntly, the real test is not whether Platner can speak to rural Maine, it is whether his party can finally learn to hear it.
Nicholas Jacobs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
