Indiana lawmakers rejected an attempt by President Trump to redraw congressional maps to favor Republicans. The vote is a significant rebuke to Trump.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
President Trump continues to pressure Republicans to redraw congressional and state maps across the country. But in Indiana, Republican lawmakers voted against a plan to do just that. Our friends at the NPR POLITICS PODCAST explained what it all means. Here are Political Editor and Chief Correspondent Domenico Montanaro, Chief White House Correspondent Tamara Keith and Political Correspondent Sarah McCammon.
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DOMENICO MONTANARO: I mean, it’s probably the biggest pushback he’s received within his party in the time he’s really been on the political scene, I would say, in many ways. There were many Indiana Republicans who were willing to go along with this plan to try to take two more seats from Indiana and try to help the Republicans retain control of the House. That’s really what this was all about. But the state’s voters simply didn’t want it. They had seen a significant setback. Many of these parliamentarians also received threats from the right and still rejected what was proposed.
TAMARA KEITH: People were deceived. People had pizza at home. They had blows. There were large protests organized by allies of President Trump at the state Capitol. They were under intense pressure and they didn’t like it. State Senator Spencer Deere is among those who voted against it.
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SPENCER DEERY: And as long as I have breath, I will use my voice to resist a federal government that attempts to intimidate, direct and control this state or any state. Giving more power to the federal government is not conservative.
KEITH: And that’s a federalism argument, right? He’s saying we’re the state of Indiana. We should be able to decide what we want to do. And the president, the speaker of the House, the vice president and all the people who are pushing for this should not be telling us what to do.
SARAH MCCAMMON: President Trump is in a vulnerable place. His poll numbers have dropped. He wants more Republicans in Congress for the rest of his term. And yet, there was a group of Republicans who were willing to vote against it.
MONTANARO: I think it’s interesting on a national level, considering the pushback Trump has received, and maybe he wouldn’t get that kind of pushback if he were more popular. The fact is that Trump is closer to his popularity in the second term. According to many surveys, he is around 30 years old. A recent AP-NORC poll, for example, gave him a 36% approval rating, which was even lower than our poll last month – the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll – and not by much, and he only had a 31% approval rating when it came to handling the economy. So in some respects, people are looking beyond Trump, and I wonder what this will mean more broadly when we see Trump off the national stage and something like, you know, a big chunk of the dam, the big brick of the dam, is removed.
KEITH: President Trump used the best influence he has had throughout his political career, which is, if you upset me, if you don’t do what I want you to do, then I will run you in the primary; I will support someone else to run against you in the Republican primary, and I am so all-powerful that you will lose your job. And 21 Republicans in the Indiana State Senate said, “Okay, you can try it.” It has worked in the past. The question is whether that power, that ability to instill fear in members of his own party, is waning because, by definition, he is an outgoing duck.
MCCAMMON: President Trump likes to win. This was a great loss for him. What are you saying about it?
KEITH: Oh, he’s saying what he says when he loses, which is, oh, you know, I didn’t really care that much.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, we won every other state. That’s the only state… it’s funny because I won Indiana all three times by a landslide and I didn’t work very hard at it. It would have been good. I think we would have gotten two seats if we had done that.
KEITH: Oh no, I was working really hard on it. The Speaker of the House was working very hard on it. The vice president was working very hard on it. And President Trump has said, in no uncertain terms, that he believes the fate of his presidency, the fate of the country, is at stake because if the Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives, which seems entirely possible, then he will have a miserable last two years in office.
MONTANARO: Republicans have a very, very narrow majority in the House, just a few more seats than Democrats. So every seat here is going to matter. So to speak, I wasn’t that focused on these two seats, but that’s not the case.
I mean, they want every seat they can get to have the advantage of creating some cushion because, right now, the Democrats have a significant advantage. The wind is completely in their favor. And they’re also redistricting, doing this mid-decade reshuffling, in places like California, potentially Virginia, which could counter a lot of these Republican-driven changes.
States like Louisiana and Florida, controlled by Republicans, will try to gain more seats on their own. But again, Virginia could compensate them, while California compensates Texas, and we’re talking about all this work, millions of dollars spent, for nothing really.
MCCAMMON: For a wash, potentially.
MONTANARO: Correct.
KEITH: And let me add the other factor here, which is that when you take a seat that’s really super safe and you draw it to make two seats, neither of them are as super safe as before.
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