Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg summed up the importance of the Indiana legislature’s rejection of Donald Trump’s pressure to get the state to gerrymander away two Democratic House seats in a video posted to social media in just three words: “We’re not powerless.”

“This is a demonstration that political pressure works,” he said in the video.

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“Even in a year like this, where many states like Indiana didn’t have an election going on, we mobilized, we got out there, we made it clear to these legislators that the people did not want what the White House was pushing, and they decided to listen to the people instead of the president.”

“This shows how power can still work democratically in this country. We’ve gotta keep it up.”

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Donald Trump has been pressuring red states to redraw their Congressional maps this year to give Republicans better chances of maintaining control of the House in 2026.

Currently, there are two Democratic members of Congress from Indiana and seven Republicans. 38% of voters voted for a Democratic House candidate in 2024, which would mean that if Indiana’s congressional delegation reflected the state’s population, then three or four of the state’s House members would be Democrats.

Trump wanted the state to pass a new map that would have likely eliminated those two Democratic districts. He went so far as to threaten to pull federal funding from the state if Republican lawmakers didn’t adopt his preferred congressional map.

But the Republican-controlled Indiana Senate voted on Thursday to reject Trump’s new map, 31-19, with 21 Republicans and all 10 Democrats voting against the measure. Indiana became the first state to reject Trump’s attempts at mid-decade redistricting.

Speaking on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show All In, Buttigieg – who grew up in Indiana and was the mayor of South Bend for two terms – expanded on his points.

“People are wondering if they have any power at all,” he told Hayes. “A good part of how Trumpism works is to make you feel totally disempowered, to make him feel inevitable. And yet the clear takeaway from this is ‘he is not unstoppable, and you are not without power.'”

“A whole bunch of people stood up, rallied in the state house, made those phone calls, the exact kind of old-fashioned political organizing things that some of us asked, ‘Does this still matter? Does this still work?’ It clearly had an effect, stiffening the spines of these Indiana Senate Republicans who in the end had this vote, and it wasn’t even close.”

There have been signs that Indiana Republicans would reject the gerrymandering bid. Last month, Indiana state Sen. Mike Bohacek (R) said that he would vote against it because the president used the word “ret**d” to refer to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).

“Those of you that don’t know me or my family might not know that my daughter has Down Syndrome,” Bohacek posted to social media. “This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choice of words will have consequences.”

“I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority.”

Policito reporter Adam Wren pointed to a post from the far-right Heritage Foundation that threatened Indiana leaders if they rejected the gerrymandering bid. Their post said: “Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.”

“It’s hard to overstate how much this post was unhelpful to the president’s cause among Indiana Republicans in the final hours when some were still persuadable,” Wren wrote.

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