President Donald Trump promised political payback last year after Republican state senators voted down his plan to redraw the state’s congressional map to help their party. On Tuesday, he got much of what he wanted.
At least five of the seven anti-redistricting Republicans facing Trump-backed challengers, including Sens. Travis Holdman of Markle and Granger’s Linda Rogers, lost their primaries. The results reflected the president’s continuing sway over his party and his ability to enforce political consequences for GOP officeholders who defy him.
They also laid bare the mistrust that permeates politics. The White House doesn’t trust that Republicans will retake the U.S. House in this fall’s elections, so it bullied GOP-led states to gerrymander more Republican-leaning districts. Gov. Mike Braun didn’t trust Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray’s assessment that redistricting wouldn’t pass the Senate and was embarrassed when Bray was proven right. And Hoosier Republican voters apparently don’t trust GOP officials who ignore the president’s wishes.
Trust in U.S. politics is at historically low levels and continues to decline, according to the Pew Research Center. Just 17% of Americans in late 2025 reported they trust the federal government to do what is right “most of the time,” down from more than 70% in the 1950s. This erosion contributes to deep polarization, undermines democratic processes and makes solving the problems Americans face more difficult.
Indeed, Holdman said “truthfulness in advertising was an issue” in his primary race. Advertising that endorsed Holdman’s challenger, Bluffton City Councilman Blake Fiechter, accused the senator of allowing Chinese entities to purchase Indiana farmland.
“There was never any legislation that I ever voted on that allowed China to buy Indiana farmground or any land in Indiana,” Holdman told The Journal Gazette.
State legislative primaries are usually low-drama affairs, but Trump’s involvement brought atypical levels of attention and outside spending. The president issued social media endorsements of the seven challengers and hosted some of them at the White House, while outside groups aligned with Trump poured money into the races.
Rather than a contest between moderates and conservatives, the primaries became a test of how much deference Republicans owe the president and how much control Trump holds over rank-and-file voters. But Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, doesn’t believe the ouster of five recalcitrant Republican senators was only about presidential revenge.
“Legislative races often hinge on local issues, and I think that was reinforced in some of the negative ads that mentioned not just redistricting and defying Trump,” Vaughn told The Journal Gazette.
The races also split political leaders in Indiana, where Republicans have amassed power over the past 20 years, but where there are longstanding fissures between the party establishment and an ascendant movement that hews closely to Trump.
“Any Republican that votes against this important redistricting, potentially having an impact on America itself, should be PRIMARIED,” the president wrote in a November social media post that referred to two senators as Republicans in name only.
He soon followed through on that promise, endorsing challengers to seven of the eight anti-redistricting Republicans who ran for reelection this year. And Trump might not be done with Indiana.
“I’m very fearful that we will have to revisit redistricting next year,” Vaughn said. “It will be tough to stop, but we’re already putting together a strategy to have a chance to stop any efforts to further gerrymander our districts and silence millions of Hoosier voters.”
Do you trust Trump and Braun to do the right thing by voters when it comes to gerrymandering? We didn’t think so.