HOOZIER MAMMA?: When you wield a hammer for a living, everything — it is said — looks like a nail. But if you wield a typewriter, everything tends to look like a metaphor looking for a bigger, more important meaning. No cigar can be allowed to be merely a cigar. That’s how I came to realize, when watching the Ohio State-Indiana football game a couple of weeks back, that Indiana’s underdog victory marked a tectonic tear in the natural order of things. Just as Ohio never loses, Indiana never wins. Until now.
Naturally, I conflated what was happening on the field with something even more astonishing: the heroic political standoff then taking place in the Indiana statehouse between Trump World supporters and the leadership of Indiana’s Republican establishment.
For four months, Trump had been haranguing Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional district maps to carve out two new safe Republican seats. Right now, Indiana is overwhelmingly Republican. Seven of the state’s nine congressional districts are solidly red. But Republicans control Congress as a whole by a mere three votes. Given how dramatically Republican measures and candidates under-performed this year, Trump has reason to worry in the 2026 midterms.
When every vote matters, two votes matter twice as much.
Here’s the story. Indiana Republicans split over Trump’s redistricting fatwah. But more opposed it. Why? They didn’t think it was seemly. That’s not how one plays the game; you don’t rig the rules. Someone said something about human decency. Even the Constitution. That’s just not how they roll in Hoosier state.
The more Trump huffed and puffed, the more the Republican resistors dug in. Trump sicced JD Vance on them — twice. And in person. Trump called them losers and RINOs. Trump himself held multiple phone conferences with the Republican holdouts. At some point, 12 Republican state legislatures reported serious threats. Domino’s pizzas that no one had ordered were delivered to their homes. Then there were the SWAT teams showing up in high adrenalized response mode.
And then there were the pipe bomb threats.
While no actual bombs were found, you’d be crazy not to take such threats seriously. Especially at this time in world history. Especially in this country. And especially on this planet.
Indiana’s Lt. Governor — yes, another card-carrying Republican — tweeted he knew all this frat-boy hazing stuff originated in the White House. Later, he took that tweet down. People from an offshoot of the Heritage Foundation — these are the same people who wrote Trump’s Project 2025 — put the Indiana insurgents on notice: Play ball or else. The “or else” entailed a loss of all federal funding. “Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will be closed. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.”
Naturally, I worried for Indiana’s star quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, who was since named this year’s Heisman Trophy Award winner. Yes, he’s plenty white, but his name sounds suspiciously Spanish. Yes, he’s from Miami, where his grandparents landed fleeing Castro’s Cuba. It’s entirely possible that Mendoza tilts reliably right. Still, there’s that Spanish-sounding name.
Countless American-born citizens — even those who served in the military — have been picked up in ICE raids and deported. The probable cause was that they are brown-skinned and congregated near a car wash.
Who’s to say Mendoza won’t be dragged off the field by ICE agents during the Rose Bowl. That would show those Republicans. After all, Mendoza — gifted with a truly astonishing arm, not to mention field intelligence — represents Indiana now. But with Trump, it’s never been so much the number of congressional seats; it’s that that he was defied, that he was defied openly, and that he was openly defied and beaten by members of his own party in one of the most reliably red states in America.
Maybe Trump will seize another oil tanker from Venezuela to shift the focus. And I hear Sable Offshore here in Santa Barbara might be interested. Maybe Trump will defile the dead some more, explaining how Rob Reiner and his wife got killed because Reiner — afflicted with a terminal case of the nonexistent Trump Derangement Syndrome — talked incessant smack about Trump.
Trump still has time; he can dispatch the National Guard to the streets of Indianapolis. Whether Indiana wins or loses in the Rose Bowl, people can get a little frisky. Better call out the National Guard in advance.
On the subject of Indiana, it’s worth noting that the famed World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestler Mick Foley was born there. Foley just severed all diplomatic, professional, and economic relations with the WWE because of its founders’ close and intimate ties to Trump. What Trump said about Rob Reiner bringing his murder upon himself was the “last straw” for Foley. “I no longer wish to represent a company that coddles a man so seemingly devoid of compassion as he marches our country toward autocracy,” Foley said. Clearly, he’s been hit over the head by too many chairs.
It’s also worth mentioning here is that it was former Vice President Mike Pence — a former Indiana governor and card-carrying Hoosier — who heroically stood up to Trump and refused to capitulate to his schemes to steal the 2020 election. In Indiana, they still have manners. That sort of thing is just not done.
Or as Mick Foley put it, in the words of Popeye the Sailor Man, “I stands all I can stand and I can’t stand no more.”
Ordinarily, one might think that would be the final nail in Trump’s coffin. But Trump is infinitely indestructible. But maybe not. Or not anymore. “Go, Hoosiers!”
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