You might have thought Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was stretching it last week when she spoke about her fears for herself and her family. You might even have thought she had some of that coming. Take a look, then, at Indiana.
Last week, Terre Haute police rushed to the home of State Sen. Greg Goode on a false report of violence there, hours after President Donald Trump called him a RINO on Truth Social for standing in the way of his redistricting plans for the state.
This form of harassment is known as “swatting.” It has become the weapon of choice, along with bomb threats, in the guerrilla war simmering at the rightward edge of American politics.
Over the following days, it became clear this was no isolated incident, but part of what State Sen. Andy Zay called “the recent troubling pattern against lawmakers in Indiana” after his car rental business in Huntington received a bomb threat. By the end of the week, eight Indiana legislators reported being swatted or threatened, and
Gov. Mike Braun, who has opposed them on the redistricting issue, said he and his family have also been threatened.
Threats against public officials and bushwhackers who use tactics like swatting are nothing new, but the organizing speed of social media, and all too soon, the clever deceptions of AI, bring new challenges.
It’s concerning how routine this “troubling pattern” is becoming. State Sen. Rodric Bray, who is president pro tempore, told Politico he talked with his local sheriff and made special arrangements to keep tabs on his family before a vote in which the Senate declined to schedule a special redistricting session in December as both the president and their governor had pressed them to do.
Republicans hold a 7-2 congressional majority in Indiana. Trump wants them to redraw the congressional map to create a 9-0 majority, in line with his drive to hold the Republican majority in the midterm elections next year. “Because of these two politically correct type ‘gentlemen,’ and a few others,” the House majority may be lost, he wrote.
Despite a hard press from the White House, Bray remains unconvinced that a new map would do what the line drawers think it would.
“In fact, I mean, if you really got too cute, you could find yourself at 6-3,” Bray said.
To that, a chorus of Georgia Democrats who tried to get cute with Newt Gingrich’s district would heartily agree. There are no guarantees that voters won’t move — physically or politically— no matter what lines you draw around them.
As if to underscore what could go wrong with the midterm redistricting plan, on the day after the vote in Indiana, a federal court panel in Texas barred that state from using its redrawn map next year, ruling the map discriminates by race. The Supreme Court stayed the lower court ruling Friday night, and could very well change how voting rights cases are handled with a ruling in the near future. But for a brief time, the California map tilted towards Democrats was in, and the Texas map tilted towards Republicans was out — exactly the opposite of what this drive to redraw the political map in a hurry was supposed to do.
Trump called him a RINO also, but in fact, Bray is the son of a Republican state legislator and the grandson of a Republican congressman. Maybe that’s where Trump’s ‘gentlemen’ in quotes swipe comes from.
If someone with that kind of political pedigree, the president of a red-state senate with a 40-10 Republican majority, feels the need to consult with the local sheriff before a vote to ensure his family’s safety, what have we come to? If state legislators get awakened by the flashing lights of police cars in their driveways over a single vote, what kind of heat has Greene been under during her very public split with the president?
From her resignation video, however, you wouldn’t get the impression the very troubling threats she has endured have completely tamped down her political ambitions. She made it clear she’d had it with Washington and dismissed the idea of running for president. Way back in July, she passed on either the U.S. Senate or Georgia governor’s race. But as the last few weeks have taught us, things can change.
Important work, Thanks Tom Baxter
Really love your approach