* Background is here if you need it. Always look at local reporters and commentators when the national news media swoops in on a big story. Jacob Stewart at the Indianapolis Star predicted what would happen in his state’s Senate a couple of days ago…

“Washington, D.C.-funded organizations in favor of redistricting are using extremely negative texts, videos and phone calls to try to win support for their cause,” State Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, said in a statement. “These groups do not have the best interest of my rural area or the state of Indiana at heart, and their methods are completely unacceptable.”

After this statement, a redistricting lobbyist made a misleading post suggesting Leising had no clue how mass text campaigns worked. Others piled on and suggested she was old and stupid.
It seems too unbelievable to them that she cares more about what her district has to say than about Turning Point USA, a group that referred to Hoosiers as “Indianans” in a now-deleted post on X.

The Senate is the prouder chamber of the Indiana General Assembly. Senators tend to hate being treated like non-equals by lobbyists, the unofficial fourth branch of government. The only thing they hate even more is being treated like non-equals by the governor. […]

“Where we screwed up with property taxes is we had tens of thousands of people behind us, but not enough targeted in each district. We couldn’t overcome the power of the local city officials or school districts,” [Rob Kendall, a conservative radio host] told me. “The redistricting people are making the same mistake. Except a lot of their most vocal supporters don’t even live in the state.” […]

“I mean, I just think that if those maps pass, there’s a good possibility that three or four millionaires from Indianapolis will represent a third of the state, so I don’t know that that serves us well,” State Sen. Mike Crider, R-Greenfield, told the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

Over-the-top lobbying (we’ve seen that backfire at our own Statehouse with lefty Chicago “activists”), an “upper-chamber” superiority complex (”Fix it in the Senate”), failure to learn from past mistakes, and the ever-present urban vs. rural rivalry.

And this sort of thing is now happening in the Chicago budget fight. From February…

A nonprofit advocating for Gov. Mike Braun’s legislative agenda is taking lawmakers to task — and praising them, too — with a mid-six figure social media campaign.

Pretty easy to understand in that context.

* Crazy…

Jean Leising spoke at a breakfast this fall at her 8th grade grandson’s school. Hours later, when she was set to give him a ride home from basketball practice, he bashfully told her that his entire team had received text messages about her that day — “and they were all bad.”

Recounting the moment to CNN shortly after she joined 20 other Republican state senators in rejecting President Donald Trump’s redistricting push, Leising said she laughed the moment off with her grandson — but that it ultimately led to her opposing the president.

“Boy, when I got home that night, that’s when I decided,” said Leising, a 76-year-old grandmother of eight, first elected to the Senate in 1988. “I was angry. So the next day, I said, ‘I’ve got to talk about this.’ Because this is over the top. This shouldn’t be the way it was.”

“But that was the beginning,” she added. “It only got worse from there.”

* Oy…

Spencer Deery’s son was getting ready for school when someone tried to provoke police into swarming his home by reporting a fake emergency.

Linda Rogers said there were threats at her home and the golf course that her family has run for generations.

Jean Leising faced a pipe bomb scare that was emailed to local law enforcement.

The three are among roughly a dozen Republicans in the Indiana Senate who have seen their lives turned upside down while President Donald Trump pushes to redraw the state’s congressional map to expand the party’s power in the 2026 midterm elections.

* More from The Atlantic…

Over the past few days, I’ve asked both Republicans and Democrats here to explain why Indiana has become the new hotbed of GOP resistance to Trump. It is not the only state to rebuff the president’s redistricting demands; Kansas Republicans also have been unable to muster the votes for gerrymandering, and success in Florida is not assured. But no state has faced the White House–directed onslaught that Indiana has.

I received several answers. Most, however, 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. “Midwesterners being midwestern,” one anti-redistricting advocate replied with a shrug outside the senate chamber. Republicans told me that state Senate opponents of redrawing the maps tended to be more institutionalist than MAGA, echoing a divide that still crops up among the party’s lawmakers in Washington. […]

Threats of primary challenges are more potent in Indiana state House races, where lawmakers are up for reelection every two years and will face a filing deadline early next year. 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,” Roberts said. By 2028, “they will have bigger fish to fry.” […]

A vote expected to be close turned into something of a rout, as a majority of Republicans in the senate banded together to reject a bill that Trump had aggressively pushed. “You don’t change minds by being mean, and they were mean-spirited from the get-go,” Senator Jean Leising, a Republican who voted no, told reporters afterward. With the matter settled, she said that she wasn’t worried much about threats of retaliation: “I’m sure that the president and the governor will get over it.” Another senate Republican who voted no, Eric Bassler, had higher aspirations for the message that Indiana sent today: “I hope that this is the beginning of the country stepping back from the brink.”

* Oof…

Wow, Lt .Gov. said the Trump admin *did* threaten federal funding. https://t.co/zkiNA0Npjz

— Adam Wren (@adamwren) December 12, 2025

* And of course this is his argument…

The Democrat party has been engaged in a vast far-reaching scheme to displace and disenfranchise Republican voters and their families through mass voter importation. And yet there are Republican lawmakers who eagerly facilitate the disinheritance of their own children. https://t.co/1RA5jchtTY

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) December 11, 2025

* More from Isabel…

* Sun-Times | Indiana Republicans reject Trump-backed redistricting, easing pressure on Illinois Dems for remap: Pritzker, a vocal Trump opponent and potential 2028 presidential contender, suggested Illinois’ threat to retaliate helped defeat the measure across the border — and he didn’t rule out an effort to expand his state’s 14-3 Democratic edge. “Our neighbors in Indiana have stood up to Trump’s threats and political pressure, instead choosing to do what’s right for their constituents and our democracy,” Pritzker said in a statement. “Illinois will remain vigilant against his map rigging — our efforts to respond and stop his campaign are being heard.”

* Tribune | Illinois Democrats applaud as GOP-led Indiana Senate rebuffs President Trump’s push for new redistricting map: Democratic Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch described Indiana Republicans who voted against the remap as “courageous” and said they “rightly stood up to Donald Trump’s gerrymandering schemes.” “To protect and preserve our Republic, we need more Republicans across the country to stand up and fight back against Trump and MAGA’s tyranny,” Welch said in a statement. “In Illinois, we remain vigilant and committed to protecting our democracy.”