A Republican state legislator in Indiana said he would oppose President Donald Trump’s overtures to redraw the state’s congressional district lines after the president used a slur often made against people with disabilities.
For the past few months, the president and his allies in Congress have sought to have states with Republican governors and state legislatures redraw their congressional lines in the hope of winning more seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
Texas and Missouri both redrew their maps. A lower court judge ruled against the effort in Texas, but the Supreme Court temporarily blocked that order.
But so far Republicans in Indiana have not taken up the initiative and do not have the votes. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump went on a tirade where he called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “seriously r*****ed.”
That proved to be too much for state senator Mike Bohacek who announced his opposition to the redistricting effort based on Trump’s words.
“Many of you have asked my position on redistricting,” he said. “I have been an unapologetic advocate for people with intellectual disabilities since the birth of my second daughter. Those of you that don’t know me or my family might not know that my daughter has Down Syndrome. This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choices of words have consequences.”
Trump has in the past mocked people with disabilities or used ableist language calling his political rivals “low I.Q.” Most famously, he mocked Serge Kovaleski, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with a disability, in 2015.
Bohacek said that that Trump needed to be worthy of having a Republican majority.
“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.”
The slur has had increasing purchase on many corners of the American right despite a push to remove the word from vocabulary throughout much of the 2000s.
Trump has aggressively pushed for redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Polling shows that the president is increasingly unpopular and the president’s party typically loses control of the White House during the midterm election. In July said Republicans were “entitled” to additional seats thanks to Trump’s success in Texas.
This came despite the fact that historically, redistricting only happens every decade after the Census takes place.
But the effort also backfired massively. California, which had nonpartisan redistricting, voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 50 – which could give the state an extra five Democratic seats – after Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed for it to be on the ballot, saying that Democrats needed to “meet fire with fire.”
Despite the success, the Department of Justice sued California after Proposition 50 passed.
