I'm Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 13 minutes.

Our latest Suspension of the Rules.

This week, Isaac, Ari, and Kmele discuss today’s newsletter topic: party primaries, Indiana, and gerrymandering. Things also get heady as they discuss whether billionaires should exist and unpack a ChatGPT criticism of last Friday’s edition on corruption in the Trump administration (which you’ll read more about tomorrow). To go deep on today’s story, preview tomorrow’s or just hear a debate over the wealth disparity, check out the latest Suspension of the Rules!

Quick hits.

1. The United States and Iran are reportedly nearing an agreement to end the war between the countries and set a framework for future discussions over Iran’s nuclear program. The agreement reportedly includes a moratorium on Iran’s nuclear enrichment, an end to U.S. sanctions, and unrestricted transit through the Strait of Hormuz. (The report)
2. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents searched the office of Virginia state Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas (D) pursuant to a public corruption investigation. Another search warrant was executed at a cannabis store that Lucas co-owns. Lucas, who has not been arrested or charged, said the search was in retaliation for her recent support of a new congressional map in Virginia designed to boost Democratic representation in the U.S. House. (The search)
3. Republican state lawmakers in Tennessee proposed a new congressional map designed to flip the state’s sole Democratic seat in the U.S. House. (The map)
4. A federal judge rejected a request by Fulton County, Georgia, to order the Justice Department to return ballots and digital ballot copies related to the 2020 election that were seized in January. The judge found that the county did not show the federal government lacked probable cause or conducted the search illegally. (The ruling)
5. A suicide note allegedly written by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was released on the order of a judge. (The note)

Today’s topic.

Indiana’s primary results. On Tuesday, Indiana held primary elections for the 2026 midterms. The state Senate primaries were closely watched after President Donald Trump supported challenges against incumbent Republican state senators in response to their opposition to a mid-decade redistricting plan last December. Six Trump-backed candidates defeated incumbent lawmakers, while another won an open-seat primary. Only one incumbent opposed by the president, Greg Goode of Terre Haute, has won their election. 

Back up: In December 2025, following similar efforts in other states, President Trump publicly pushed Indiana Republicans to adopt a new congressional map designed to net the GOP additional seats in the U.S. House. The state Senate, which has a 40–10 Republican majority, rejected the plan. Afterward, President Trump said he would support primary challenges to anti-redistricting state senators, and outside groups such as Club for Growth Action and Turning Point Action invested significant resources in recruiting and supporting challengers. 

On Tuesday, President Trump affirmed his support for the primary challengers, writing on Truth Social, “Good luck to those Great Indiana Senate Candidates who are running against people who couldn’t care less about our Country, or about keeping the Majority in Congress. There are eight Great Patriots running against long seated RINOS.” 

State Sen. Travis Holdman (R), the highest-ranking Republican that opposed the redistricting effort, was among the incumbents defeated by a Trump-backed challenger. Furthermore, the results could imperil state Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray’s (R) leadership position, as the challengers are expected to vote to oust him if they win their general election races. Indiana has a large Republican voting majority, and most (if not all) of the Republican candidates are expected to win in November.

President Trump’s allies in Indiana touted the outcome as a signal to the party about the president’s enduring popularity. “Everyone in Indiana politics should have learned an important lesson today: President Trump is the single most popular Republican among Hoosier voters,” Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) said. “Indiana is a conservative state, and we deserve conservatives in our State Senate who have a pulse on Republican voters.”

State Sen. Bray, an opponent of redistricting, noted the significant outside spending on the primaries, saying, “The amount of money that was spent in Indiana is material, it matters, and that was very, very difficult to overcome… We worked really hard. Our candidates worked really hard to get their message out, but the voters spoke.” State Sen. Holdman told The Indianapolis Star, “Revenge and retribution is not a Christian value, and that’s what this was all about.”

Today, we’ll share commentary on the results from the right, left, and Indiana writers. Then, Executive Editor Isaac Saul gives his take.

What the right is saying.

• Some on the right say the result hammers home what GOP voters really want from their representatives.
• Others suggest it could be a short-lived victory for Trump and the party. 

In The Daily Caller, Mary Rooke said “voters taught GOP leadership [a] valuable lesson.”

“Indiana has nine House districts. As a deep-red state, allowing two Democratic Party–controlled districts didn’t align with the state’s actual voters. Voters wanted the Indiana state legislature to redistrict the state from a 7–2 Republican advantage to a 9–0 GOP sweep,” Rooke wrote. “There were eight state Senators, part of a larger group of 21 Republicans, who voted against the redistricting bill and were up for re-election on Tuesday… Millions were reportedly spent on these races to unseat the defectors. Ultimately, six of the eight lost their races.”

“[Defeated incumbents are] not wrong to claim that his and the other’s losses were about ‘revenge and retribution.’ That’s exactly what happened here, and the broader GOP should take heed. Either use the power the voters gave you to enact their will and mandate, or sit back and watch the voters take you out one election at a time,” Rooke said. “The era for so-called ‘principled conservatism’ is over. Voters want elected officials to be fighting tooth and nail to get their wishes across the line.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about “Trump’s hollow Indiana victory.”

“The media scorekeepers have declared that President Trump remains the king of the Republican Party… The more important question is whether his kingdom will shrink after November,” the board said. “The MAGA machine went all-in… And for what? Indiana’s current U.S. House districts are split 7–2, giving 78% of the seats to the GOP. Mr. Trump carried only 59% of the state’s vote in 2024. The map proposed last year aimed to turn Indiana into a 9–0 state, but that wouldn’t reflect Indiana, and a gain of two seats might get swamped by a blue wave.”

“When the state Senate rejected redistricting, 19–31, more Republicans voted against than in favor. ‘I was contacted by many, many, many constituents,’ Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray later said. ‘I would say 10 were against it to every one that was for it.’ He also raised doubts about trying to stretch the GOP’s finite voters to win all nine seats,” the board wrote. “‘We’re after you Bray,’ Mr. Trump wrote online in January, ‘like no one has ever come after you before!’ Mr. Bray isn’t up for re-election until 2028, but why is this GOP infighting a useful focus six months before November?”

What the left is saying.

• The left frames the results as evidence of the GOP’s subservience to Trump.
• Others say Trump reasserting his power could hurt the GOP in the midterms.

In MS NOW, Paul Waldman said the primary highlighted “the rot within the GOP.”

“While Trump largely ‘won’ these contests, did replacing conservative Republicans with other conservative Republicans really help him or the GOP? How these elections played out was evidence of the rot within the party — and the lengths it will go to in satisfying every one of Trump’s whims, no matter how self-destructive,” Waldman wrote. “All of those targeted were, to be clear, Republicans who support a conservative agenda. But Trump wanted their heads, so his will had to be done, whatever the cost.”

“One might argue that investing millions of dollars in taking vengeance on the Indiana Republicans will have a deterrent effect. Like a mob boss, perhaps Trump wanted to punish those who stepped out of line so no one in his party would get any ideas about showing independence,” Waldman said. “The problem, though, is that Trump will only be president for 2 1/2 more years. He is almost certain to lose the House this November, and perhaps the Senate as well, for the remainder of his presidency. Furthermore, the redistricting wars may be petering out: There are only so many seats even the most nakedly partisan state legislature can squeeze out of their maps.”

In The New Republic, Perry Bacon explored the “silver lining” in the results.

“The good news is that the results of Indiana show that the Republican Party is really a cult of Trump — so Republican candidates will be reluctant to distance themselves from an increasingly unpopular president and therefore might lose winnable races this November and in two years,” Bacon wrote. “The bad news, though, is that the results in Indiana show that the Republican Party is a cult of Trump — so Supreme Court justices, governors, state legislatures, congresspeople, and even rank-and-file GOP voters will keep falling in line with the whims of our wannabe dictator.”

“Trump just ended the careers of five politicians he probably hadn’t heard of a year ago. I don’t like the idea of party bosses. But what makes me really discouraged is being on the side of a party that doesn’t have effective bosses against one that does,” Bacon said. “There is a silver lining though. Trump will be emboldened by the results in Indiana. He will keep making Republicans defend whatever he does, such as stuffing funding for the White House ballroom into a budget bill moving through Congress this week. And Trump’s approval rating continues to sink, potentially plunging to post-Katrina lows of George W. Bush at the end of his second term.”

What Indiana writers are saying.

• Some Indiana writers expect both new state Senate leadership and a new congressional map.
• Others bemoan the outcome but acknowledge Trump’s electoral sway.

In The Indianapolis Star, Jacob Stewart said “Trump’s Senate wins mean redistricting is back in, Bray is out.”

“While it’s difficult to guess which senators would support Bray in a caucus, the 19 votes in favor of redistricting in December can serve as a decent proxy,” Stewart wrote. “If senators vote to oust Bray from his leadership position, they will likely replace him with Sen. Chris Garten… Garten, unlike his colleague Sen. Liz Brown, did not publicly criticize his colleagues for their votes against redistricting and has remained mostly behind the scenes during the primary campaign season. As a result, he maintained his leadership position and stands to gain support from both pro-redistricting and anti-redistricting senators.”

“U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman suggested the General Assembly would likely revisit the issue of redistricting at some point after the primaries were over. This would likely have to come after Bray is ousted, as Bray has significant control over what bills even get a hearing,” Stewart said. “If senators vote the same way as they did in December, with the extra votes in favor, redistricting would just barely pass. If the vote is tied, Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith could still cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of redistricting.”

Also in The Indianapolis Star, James Briggs wrote “sometimes you gotta hand it to Trump.”

“Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in history. Every gas station sign you pass attests to the wreckage of his second term. But sometimes you gotta hand it to him: Trump is very, very good at politics,” Briggs said. “Indiana's primaries were a referendum on Trumpism. Trumpism prevailed. Simple as that. Even if you want to discount the results by attributing them to the unfathomable $13.5 million ad blitz that hit state Senate primaries, you have to acknowledge Trump is a singular figure who can make it rain on obscure state legislative elections because they happen to be important to him personally.

“Trump's endorsement in Indiana GOP primaries once again carried tremendous weight, backed by millions in outside spending from political action committees tied to allies, including Banks,” Briggs wrote. “On top of that, Indiana Republicans might wind up redistricting Democrats into oblivion sooner or later. The U.S. Supreme Court's weakening of the Voting Rights Act is sparking another round of race-to-the-bottom gerrymandering that will compel red and blue states to extend their partisan advantages further than ever.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where we give ourselves space to share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• This primary result isn’t actually about Trump’s dominance over the GOP; it’s about spending and messaging.
• Still, it’s incredibly stark that ‘opposing gerrymandering’ garners such intense primary opposition.
• I believe an anti-gerrymandering backlash is coming, sooner or later.

Executive Editor Isaac Saul: The lesson the right seems to have learned this week is that Trump understands what voters want; the Indiana GOP didn’t, and so they paid the price. 

In Hot Air, Ed Morrissey said the incumbents lost because “they didn’t bother to ask voters what they want.” In PJ Media, Matt Margolis said, “There was nothing subtle about the message from MAGA voters. They want strong Republicans who will fight the Democrats, not be weak, useful idiots for the left.” Mary Rooke, in the Daily Caller (under “What the right is saying”), threatened the GOP: “Either use the power the voters gave you to enact their will and mandate, or sit back and watch the voters take you out one election at a time.”

There is plenty more where that came from, and each writer seems to be insisting that Indiana’s GOP leaders were ousted because they wouldn’t be “team players” and redraw the state’s map to help Trump win the national gerrymandering war he started in Texas.

This theory has one problem, though: That isn’t what the Trump-backed candidates actually ran on. 

The MAGA-aligned state legislators who just won their elections weren’t running ads about how voters should elect them so they can redraw districts to maximize as many Republican seats as possible. Shocking, I know. Instead, the campaigns focused more on a broader set of conservative principles, like opposing gas taxes and transgender participation in sports. 

Let me put it in plain terms: Trump wanted Indiana Republicans to further gerrymander the state. State Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray understood this was bad, and — early on in these gerrymander wars — he refused, hoping some other states would follow him. Unfortunately, few did. Trump and his allies were infuriated by the perceived betrayal, so they dumped millions into otherwise small races to crush Bray’s allies and oust him from his leadership role. $13.5 million was spent on Indiana Senate primaries overall, a roughly 5,000% increase in spending from 2024, when a total of $250,000 was spent.

In state Sen. Jim Buck’s race alone, $1.3 million was spent on ads opposing him, while his own campaign spent just $150,000. How did they attack Buck? Did they go after him for not gerrymandering? Not quite. In just one example, the ads framed Buck as “Old. Pathetic. Liberal.” Across the board, Trump’s allies used the money to boost candidates’ opposition to trans participation in sports or taxes on gas. They won. And now Trump’s supporters are celebrating as if this is proof voters want more ferocious partisan loyalty, even more gerrymandering.

Sorry, but I’m not buying it. 

Does this show Trump still has influence in the Republican Party? Of course. I never really doubted he did. Does it mean the national GOP could increase spending in tiny state races by 5,000% and get the results it wants by attacking its own party members? Yes, it probably does. But did Indiana voters have some organic desire to oust their representatives for not backing Trump on his gerrymandering push? No. 

The worst effect of this outcome goes well beyond Indiana. Several states, including Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina, have upcoming primaries and are still considering gerrymanders. The message was sent to those state-level legislators: Do as we say, or face the consequences. And down the road, what’s to stop Democratic leadership from trying this model out themselves? Infighting in the party is already common, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a future Democratic president or House leader adopts this strategy to keep state-level representatives in line or force more gerrymandering in their favor. 

So what do we get for the attention and millions of dollars spent on this race? According to political analyst Ryan Girdusky, as few as 22 House seats in the entire country could be competitive when this wave of redistricting is over. According to Girdusky, if we take the numbers from 2024 as a starting point, that would mean about 7.6 million voters out of 149.5 million ballots cast are going to decide the composition of Congress — just five percent of all American voters.

This is the world decades of bipartisan gerrymandering have wrought, and it’s the one President Trump is making worse right now. Voters no longer choose their politicians; politicians choose their voters. 

I only maintain a few hopes for how to get out of this mess. One is that some charismatic, honorable, politically savvy leaders from both parties come together and mount a national campaign to treat the nationwide fever of gerrymandering. That seems, sadly, unlikely. Another is that a wave of grassroots, bipartisan organizations start campaigning heavily against gerrymandering, standing up voter referendums for independent commissions, and tee us up for a sea change in 2030. This is possible, but would require putting partisan point-scoring aside.

The third, and perhaps most likely hope, is that enough members of Congress watch as their seats get dissolved into these nationwide battles, then everyone realizes this is a horrible way to run a country and a piss-poor example of a functioning democracy. Basically: The self-interested and self-preserving strategy among politicians becomes not to gerrymander, and we go back to a world where reasonable, natural districts encompass a diverse set of voters whom Republicans and Democrats have to actually campaign to win over.

I am, obviously, dispirited by all these developments. But I’m not hopeless. Our country has gone through all manner of political movements, and the future is often less predictable than we think. Just because we’re headed this way now doesn’t mean it’s the only path forward, and the lesson from Indiana isn’t that gerrymandering is inevitable. What it does mean is that we are reaching an inflection point; and what we can learn from the Indiana primaries is that enough people need to keep repeating the same points until it gets through to the population at large. 

And here is that point: We are no longer choosing our politicians, they are choosing us. Until we make that an unacceptable arrangement, they’ll keep choosing us in perpetuity.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: With the news that the U.S. is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany, I’m curious: Why do we have 5,000 troops in Germany to begin with? How many troops are in allied countries, and why? And how much does this contribute to our military budget?

— Kelly from Park Ridge, IL

Tangle: In total, roughly 170,000 active-duty United States military personnel are stationed on military bases in allied countries across the world — from Germany to South Korea to Australia to Peru. These bases serve an array of functions through their distance from the U.S. mainland. For instance, the U.S. Space Force says Pituffik Space Force Base in Greenland “supports Missile Warning, Missile Defense and Space Surveillance missions from the solid-state phased-array radar.” In Germany, U.S. bases provide operational support for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.

Somewhat ironically, considering the history, Germany is second only to Japan in hosting U.S. troops and military bases. Germany is a NATO ally, located in the middle of Europe with accessibility to much of the continent — as well as an aerial reach to Northern Africa and Eastern Asia — and waterways that can reach the North, Baltic, and Black Seas. Originally, the United States set up bases in West Germany after World War II to help with postwar reconstruction and observe and check the Soviet Union’s operations. Today, the U.S. maintains 58 bases across the now-unified country. 

All told, these bases host approximately 36,000 American troops (not including their families and civilian support) and include some of the largest and most important foreign bases the military operates. Stuttgart hosts over 20,000 Americans in total (troops, families, and support) and has been the headquarters of the U.S. European Command since 1967; Ramstein Air Base, which is home to 54,000 Americans, is the Air Force’s base of operations for all of Europe and Africa. 

Estimates for the cost of foreign bases vary. According to the Cato Institute, a single U.S. military base costs $50 to $200 million a year to operate — or around $60–120 billion in total. David Vine, a professor at American University and one of the most vocal critics of these bases, estimates they cost more than $150 billion to operate annually.

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The road not taken.

The option that continued to fall off the board for us this week was the war in Iran. Over the weekend, we strongly considered running an edition focused on the U.S. policy of assuring passage for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, but opted for the Spirit Airlines closure because we believed it had interesting nuances to unpack. On Tuesday, the status of the war was in flux amid reports of renewed peace talks, so we chose to cover the end of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. The lack of developments in negotiations by Wednesday left the mail-order mifepristone pause as our next option. For today, we were between peace talks in Iran (and a larger update on the war) and the Indiana state Senate primaries. We went with the latter for the electoral impact.

We can sometimes be slow to larger, important stories as we give them time to develop. For the Iran war, we also wanted to make sure we did not overly focus on one narrative, as we covered the story four separate times in April. Now that plenty of threads have developed in the war, we are expecting that it will receive a full newsletter edition early next week.

Numbers.

• $490,000, $530,000, and $280,000. The approximate amount of advertisement spending on Indiana state Senate primaries in 2019–20, 2021–22 and 2023–24, respectively, according to AdImpact.
• $13.5 million. The approximate amount of advertisement spending on Indiana state Senate primaries in 2025–26.
• $5.2 million and $3.8 million. The approximate amount of ad spending on Indiana state Senate primaries by Hoosier Leadership for America and American Leadership PAC, respectively, which supported challenges to anti-redistricting Republicans. 
• $3.5 million. The approximate amount spent in support of incumbent Republican state senators by Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray (R).

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered Trump’s proposed film tariffs.
• The most clicked link in our last regular newsletter was the video of the rescue of an Australian border collie.
• Nothing to do with politics: A passenger flight that’s as long as some runways.
• Our last survey: 2,431 readers responded to our survey on the Supreme Court’s consideration of mifepristone with 69% saying the Court should affirm the federal rule allowing remote prescription. “If it is made illegal or difficult to obtain, we will be creating a black market for all the wrong people,” one respondent said. “One can be pro-life and against government involvement beyond health and safety as defined by FDA approval,” said another.

Have a nice day.

Amid growing concerns over water insecurity in the American West, a productive development from the San Diego County Water Authority could be providing a roadmap for the future: the Carlsbad Desalination Plant. The plant is North America’s largest desalination facility, and its output has been so successful that San Diego County dropped its reliance on outside water imports from 95% to just 10%. That drop in demand allowed Arizona and Nevada to meet their own needs, purchasing the county’s Colorado River allocation in exchange for funds to help maintain the facility. “This agreement could be a gamechanger for San Diego County and the entire Southwest because it creates the possibility of a new, collaborative path for moving water where it’s needed most,” Water Authority Board Chair Nick Serrano said. Good News Network has the story.