BREAKING: They Tried to Erase Two Blue Seats. Indiana Said Nah.

Trump wanted a mid-decade map that would lock in 9 Republican House seats. Indiana Republicans joined Democrats and killed it, proof the “power grab” playbook is getting pushback.

What Happened

On Thursday, December 11, 2025, just after 4:30 p.m. local time in Indianapolis, Indiana’s Republican-led state Senate surprised the country by voting down a new congressional map that was strongly pushed by President Donald Trump. The proposed map would have given Republicans control of all 9 of Indiana’s U.S. House seats, up from the 7 seats they hold now, by breaking up Democratic-leaning Indianapolis and attaching pieces of the city to more conservative rural areas. It also targeted the two seats currently held by Democrats, including the district of Rep. André Carson in Indianapolis and Rep. Frank Mrvan in northwest Indiana.

The vote happened on Indiana’s 209th birthday, during a special session that drew big crowds of protesters to the Statehouse. Outside and in the Senate gallery, people held signs saying “Fair Maps,” “Losers Cheat,” and “Vote No,” and chanted for lawmakers to reject what they saw as a power grab. Redistricting normally happens only once every ten years after the census, so many Hoosiers were angry that leaders were trying an unusual mid-decade redraw just to help one party.

In the end, the bill failed in a 31–19 vote. Twenty-one Republicans from the Senate’s supermajority joined all 10 Democrats to defeat the plan. The Indiana House had passed the same map a week earlier, but even there 12 Republicans voted “no” and sided with Democrats. The defeat is a major setback for Trump’s national push to reopen maps in red states before the 2026 midterms, and Indiana is now the first Republican-led legislature to openly defy that campaign on a final vote.

Who Voted Against It

Several Republican lawmakers were key to stopping the plan. State Sens. Spencer Deery, Vaneta Becker, Kyle Walker, Greg Goode and others had already signaled discomfort with mid-decade redistricting, saying it felt wrong to change the rules again just four years after the last maps were drawn. Deery warned that another hard-edged gerrymander could damage public trust in elections, while Becker said her voters didn’t support a move that looked like bullying from national leaders.

During Thursday’s debate, Republican Sen. Greg Goode said some of his own constituents hated seeing their county sliced apart or glued to distant parts of Indianapolis just to help one party. He said he has “love” for Trump but called the pressure coming from Washington and from activists “over-the-top.” Other Republicans argued that, even if they dislike Democrats’ maps in places like New York or Illinois, copying those tactics would still be wrong for Indiana.

Republicans who opposed the map have also faced real danger. In the House, Rep. Ed Clere was one of 12 Republicans who voted against the bill. Soon after, police responded to a written bomb threat at his home. Clere linked the threat to Trump’s heated rhetoric and the “winner-take-all mentality” around redistricting, saying simply, “Words have consequences.” In the Senate, several Republicans, including Greg Goode and Spencer Deery, were targeted by “swatting” incidents after Trump publicly attacked them as “RINOs” for resisting his plan.

Why It Matters

This vote is a big test of Trump’s power inside his own party. For months, Trump and his team pushed hard for Indiana to redraw its maps in the middle of the decade, arguing that Republicans needed every possible seat to keep control of the U.S. House in 2026. He blasted holdout senators as “RINOs,” vowed to back primary challengers against them, and worked with Vice President JD Vance and White House staff to lobby Indiana Republicans one by one. The fact that 21 GOP senators still voted “no” shows that some Republicans are now willing to say “enough” when they feel Trump’s demands cross a line.

It also reveals a deep split inside the GOP over how far to go to win. Supporters of the map, like Sen. Mike Gaskill and Sen. Michael Young, said Democrats are only a few seats away from flipping the U.S. House and argued Republicans must fight fire with fire, especially after Democratic-led states passed maps that favor their side. Opponents, including Deery, Becker, Walker and Goode, talked more about fairness, local voices, and trust in elections. The clash is not just about lines on a map; it is about whether the party’s main goal is maximum power or credible rules that both sides can live with.

This matters for national politics because control of the U.S. House is very close. Democrats need to flip only a few seats to retake the majority. Trump’s plan for Indiana would likely have turned two competitive Democratic seats into safe Republican ones, by breaking up Indianapolis and eliminating the Mrvan district in the northwest corner of the state. If it had passed, Republicans might have had a much easier path to keep the House in 2026 without necessarily winning more voters over on ideas.

Why It Matters for Black People

There is also a clear racial angle here. The rejected map was designed to weaken the political power of voters in and around Marion County, where many of Indiana’s Black residents live and where Democratic Rep. André Carson, the state’s only Black member of Congress, has long held a safe seat. By slicing the city into several districts and stretching them far into mostly white rural areas, the plan would have diluted Black voting strength and made it much harder for Black communities to elect a candidate of their choice. That is exactly the kind of move the Voting Rights Act was supposed to guard against, even though recent court decisions have weakened those protections.

For Black Hoosiers, this fight was not abstract. It touched basics like who listens when your neighborhood asks for clean water, good schools, or police reform, and whether a representative comes from a community that looks like yours and understands your daily life. When maps are drawn to pack or crack Black voters, it sends a message that Black voices are optional and can be rearranged at will. By turning back this map, Indiana lawmakers, many of them white Republicans, kept Black communities from losing a rare seat at the table, at least for now.

This matters beyond Indiana, too. Across the country, Black voters are often the first to be sliced apart when parties look for “surgical” ways to protect power. Indiana’s decision shows that there are limits some conservatives will not cross, especially when the cost is openly gutting Black representation in a way that would be hard to defend in public. It hints at the possibility of cross-racial, cross-party coalitions around basic democratic rules: that maps should not be tools to erase a community’s voice, and that winning should not always outweigh fairness.

Reactions have been intense on both sides. Trump and his allies have called the vote a “disaster,” accusing Indiana Republicans of helping Democrats and threatening to punish them in future primaries. Meanwhile, Democrats and voting-rights advocates are celebrating the result as proof that even in a deep-red state, grassroots pressure, public protests, and a handful of principled lawmakers can slow down an aggressive gerrymander. For Black communities especially, the message is simple: when you organize, watch the process, and refuse to be silent, you can sometimes keep the mapmakers from erasing you.

And this is exactly why XVOA exists because if we don’t watch the mapmakers, the map will watch us.

I don’t have billionaire sugar daddies. I don’t have a dark-money pipeline. I don’t have a PR team on standby to spin the story. Meanwhile, right wing grifters have no qualms about taking in millions to lie and lie loud, shameless, and on schedule because they know confusion is profitable. If you want a newsroom that reads the fine print, follows the votes, and tells the truth in plain English, this is the moment to back it.

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Sources:

1. https://apnews.com/article/80e3e546fc7acec4a7bd7cd110787375

2. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-push-new-indiana-congressional-map-faces-uncertain-vote-state-senate-2025-12-11/

3. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/indiana-republicans-advance-trump-backed-congressional-map-fate-senate-unclear-2025-12-05/

4. https://www.axios.com/local/indianapolis/2025/12/11/indiana-senate-rejects-trump-redistricting

5. https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2025/12/08/as-indiana-senate-begins-redistricting-turn-republicans-keep-mum/

6. https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2025/12/05/indiana-house-approves-redistricting-bill-sending-issue-to-state-senate/

7. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/11/indiana-republicans-redistricting

8. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/indiana-trump-congressional-redistricting-map-b2883011.html