What did Donald Trump do today?

He got a Republican state legislator in Indiana swatted for not doing as he was told.

Trump's party got an absolute drubbing in the elections held a few weeks ago, with Republicans losing everything from Georgia public utility commissions to Pennsylvania state Supreme Court seats to Mississippi state house races, to say nothing of key statewide races in Virginia and New Jersey. Despite Trump's protestations that they only lost because he wasn't on the ballot, it was clear that voters were making their extreme displeasure with his second term felt before it was even nine months old. 

That is why the government of Indiana, which is entirely controlled by Republicans, decided not to follow in the footsteps of Texas and a few other states who redrew their Congressional district maps in a deliberately unfair—but probably technically legal—way to try to avoid a Republican wipeout in 2026. Trump has been demanding this for months, as he is extremely unpopular and the incumbent president's party almost always loses many seats in midterm elections. Democrats only need to win three seats nationwide to regain control of the House of Representatives.

Right now, Indiana has 7 Republicans in Congress and 2 Democrats. It would be possible to redraw the maps to make an 8-1 margin likely, which is what Trump is demanding the state legislature do. But there's a catch: gerrymanders work by diluting the votes for the party in control in the districts they want to win. This can be done with a fair amount of precision, but when voters turn strongly against one party, those weaker districts become much more vulnerable, and the majority party can actually lose seats instead.

In other words, Indiana's Republican state legislators no longer trust that Trump won't drag them down with him, even though the most vulnerable Indiana Republican currently in Congress is in a seat his party normally wins by 8 percent. 

Trump responded today with a furious rant on his private microblogging website, calling out a Republican state senator by name.

 

Within an hour, someone had "swatted" Sen. Greg Goode. "Swatting" means to call in a false report of violence in an attempt to convince police to force entry into a person's home. It is extremely dangerous and has led to deaths of both targets and police.

Drawing attention to people in this way, in the knowledge that someone among perhaps millions of followers will try to threaten or hurt them, is called stochastic terrorism. Trump has a great deal of experience with it, and while he hasn't always used it against Republicans, there have been exceptions.
 

Why does this matter?

• Trying to make elections meaningless before they even happen is what dictators do. 

• Americans are supposed to choose their leaders, not the other way around.