Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: GOP-Controlled Indiana REJECTS Trump's New Map (w/ Adam Wren)

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Sam, Sonny, and Politico’s Adam Wren break down how Indiana Republicans defied Trump, rejecting his push for redistricting 31-19. It comes after weeks of threats and pressure from the White House. Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES. Promo Code BULWARKTAKES

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Yeah. Basically, after weeks of pressure campaign from the Trump White House, including fairly overt threats and continued till this day, The Indiana Senate Republicans looked at it and said, no, we don't want to do this. Adam, just paint the scene of how the day went. Senators convened at 1.30 p.m. and engaged in about three and a half hours of debate. They caucus beforehand. Right up into the last minute, President Donald Trump was calling individual senators here in the state and trying to get them to flip.

Senator Greg Good, who represents portions of Terre Haute, Vigo County, was a Republican swing vote, and when he got up today to speak and sort of made an impassioned case for small sea conservatism, federalism, spoke out against misinformation and the bullying tactics. When he spoke, even though he didn't give his voting indication, it was pretty clear that this was not going to go well for the White House. He was a key holdout, hadn't announced his position before today. And so this is a significant rebuke of President Donald Trump, of J.D. Vance of Speaker Mike Johnson. All of them spent a significant amount of time and resources here trying to get a result that would give them two additional congressional seats in 2026 a year

when Democrats just need three seats to gain the majority. I was kind of blown away by how nasty it got prior to the vote. I mean, there was no persuasion or carrots, it seemed like. It was all sticks. You've been talking to these lawmakers. Can you just give us a sense of how much intimidation they face, how scared they actually were? Sam, they were significantly scared. You know, on Tuesday night, the senators kind of spoke in committee in a more intimate way than they did today during the remarks. But they spoke of receiving unsolicited orders from Domino's pizza, which is a way that MAGA kind of signals to opponents that they know where you live. They spoke about, you know, pipe bomb threats. You know, many of them were fearing for

for their lives. The ones that I talked to felt that it was important for them to weigh into this by ignoring those threats. They felt that those threats were compelling them in a direction that was not good, a president politically where they would consider this bill for maps under duress. And they thought that was bad for democracy and said that they sort of set those aside when they voted today. This is pretty dark stuff.

And, you know, unfortunately, in some ways, I think today is just the beginning of continued threats. Many of them say that. They don't think that the pressure campaign will stop. President pro temporei, Roderick Bray, who has had one-on-one calls with Trump that have been very frank and very heated, have said that there's no way they can bring this back up in 2026. So the White House and Republicans like Turning Point Action, they're going to go all in on retribute. mode. And their credibility, to be frank, is on the line. Charlie Kirk, before he was murdered, essentially said that he would spend much of turning points political capital on primaring these Republican senators. And so there's a real test of their ability as an organization here.

Are they going to make good on threats that they're going to spend tens of millions of dollars? They've said eight figures they will spend against Senate Republicans who voted against us today. So their credibility is on the line here, and it's a real test of that. One thing that jumped out at me today, which I don't think I've ever seen before, was Heritage Action tweeted something like, the president is going to pull all funding from Indiana. There's going to be, you know, no. How credible did they think that that threat is?

Because, you know, the threats against the people's homes is obviously insane and bizarre, and, you know, nobody wants to see that. It feels like the financial levers are potentially more viable, but at the same time, I've, again, And I've never seen a president threaten his own party like that before. That quote from Heritage Action got a lot of attention prior to session beginning today. And it's really just saying the quiet part allowed for weeks, Sonny, there have been quietly veiled threats that Indiana's federal funding, its Medicaid expansion voucher, all of this, its application was going to get denied, that highway funding was at risk.

you know, the White House never said these things explicitly. When Vice President J.D. Vance came and visited Indiana the last time he did in October, they had Senator Jim Banks, the Maga Republican, read through all of the federal funding and grants that Indiana was set to receive to senators as a briefing. And he didn't say that would go away explicitly, but he read this to them. And that was part of the conversation here. nice little state you got here yeah it's like in the godfather showing up with the brother right at the court that's like not saying anything's going to happen to the guy but here's your brother by the way

so why do you think they why do you think they said no i mean obviously don't i know you're a hoosier and you're going to be like well it's just you know the indiana way and we you know we're we're good people but like for real why did they say no well uh you've been my editor sam so you know i'm not a good person. No, there were a number of ideological reasons that they didn't like this. I mean, one of them was more real politic than idealistic. And that's was they thought that there was a scenario here were splitting Marion County, the Democratic beating blue heart of the state into four districts would make their lives very complicated politically. They thought that this gerrymander would result into a six three map.

where Democrats would actually gain a seat, either in northwest Indiana, up by Chicago, which is currently held by Democrat Frank Mervan, or in the center of the state that thought they could lose. You know, it's not just idealism here or the Hoosier way. It is, you know, they thought this was getting too cute by half. The other thing that you'll hear a lot of people talk about is the pressure campaign. These are a small-sea conservative people. They believe in a divide between federal and state government, and they don't want, an incursion from Washington, whether the White House is held by a Democrat or whether it's

held by a Republican. They believe in a division of government here. And so they didn't like the Washington mandate. They also didn't like some of the tactics. There was an aggressive texting campaign. You know, nearly a million dollars was poured into the state by outside groups threatening to primary them. It was all sticks and no carrots. And so I think it failed just as a pure lobbying exercise. The potential map going the other way is an interesting one because you hear some of that here in Texas. I live in Dallas. There are some folks who say, well, this new map that is being drawn up is actually not that great. There's going to be, you know, it relies on a lot of demographic ideas that aren't

necessarily going to hold. So that's really interesting to hear. But also, I mean, I'm just curious from your, from your sense there in the state house, does it feel like the Trump administration is in kind of lame duck mode? I cannot think of another time when the administration wanted something this badly and failed this catastrophically to get it from Republicans. Yeah, honestly, as the results were pouring in from New Jersey and Virginia, you know, I was texting with Indiana Republicans, and they really, you know, described a feeling of letting, of the air going out of the balloon here of the White House and Trump losing all their juice to redistrict and gerrymander, Indiana.

That feels very much like this. And the fact is, is that, you know, these Indiana Republicans went through. with this vote today. I mean, they delivered a decisive defeat for the White House. And so even if they are kind of the rare case, other Republicans, whether in the U.S. Senate or Congress, are going to look at this intense lobbying campaign, you know, that Trump invested himself in personally, that the vice president invested in himself individually, and that also Speaker Mike Johnson, you know, twisted arms here in the final weeks that, you know, Politico has reported. And so they're going to all look at those people kind of losing political capital here, and they're going to have a lot more

reason to say no in the coming weeks and months. Adam, I know you got to go. Thank you so much for this. Really appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon. Bullwark takes is sponsored by ORAFrames. I've got a bit of a holiday gift-giving pattern. I tell myself this year it's going to be different, and then I will panic at the last minute because I forgot to get the more thoughtful gift, and I'll just buy a gift card. Well, this year, I skipped the panic, and I gave an O'Rframe. They are an absolute hit among people at the Bullwork and I am jealous of Sarah Longwell every time I go into her office because I see that frame right there. It looks so good. You can upload unlimited free photos in video. Just download the ORA app and connect to Wi-Fi. You can preload photos before chips. Keep adding from anywhere

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at the checkout. So that was Adam Wren. Old buddy of mine used to be his editor. He's got Indiana down. He's smart. He knows what's going on. He's been following this. I don't want to reveal too much, but I might as well reveal it. He thought it would be a lot closer, I think, than the vote was. It was 3119. A majority of Senate Republicans voted against the new maps, which is remarkable. I was stuck on the exact thing you were stuck on. I guess it's because you tweeted it prior to talking about it. But like, these are like state lawmakers. These aren't members of Congress.

This isn't even a governor. These just random state lawmakers in Indiana. It's like it's an incredibly conservative state. This isn't even Georgia or, you know, Wisconsin. I don't know. Yeah. It was a little bit surprising how little juice Trump had with these folks. In a way, yes, because again, these are, you think, well, these are, they're going to

be wowed by talking to the president, you know, he's got all the power. Isn't that the whole point? I do, I do wonder if he just had. He just has so much less direct juice in Indiana. Like, he can threaten House members with, you know, you don't get to come to White House things at the, like, on the very basest level, right? You don't, you don't get to come to White House things. We're not going to, we're not going to pass your legislation. Like, there's so much legislation being passed right now anyway.

I do wonder if he just has nothing. He has nothing. He has no power over them. He has nothing to offer them. That's not true. We just thought, I mean, he could withhold federal funds. He could not do the Medicaid, you know, waivers. He could, you know, there's a bunch of.

federal stuff he could do. He could primary them, right? But then you might have hinted at something else. I don't know if this is true. This might be so hokey. But like, you know, it is, that is Mike Pence's state. That's Mitch Daniels state. Maybe there is something in the Republican DNA there that's different. But I just, it's, I don't know. I can't, I can't fathom another administration not being able to get its way with state lawmakers of their own party. Yeah, but I, this gets to, well, this gets to a broader point, right? Sam, which is I, I couldn't imagine like the George W. Bush administration going down to Indiana and being like gerrymand to your state so we get an extra seat so I don't lose the house and get impeached.

You know, like I couldn't, I just couldn't imagine that happening. I do think, look, I, you know, I don't want to get, I don't want to get sentimental or anything. But I do think there is something to be said for Pence and Daniels and that, that sort. And Pence kind of sort of came out of, he didn't, he didn't. Yeah, he made it pretty clear. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess the question is, you know, what does, what do you imagine Trump does off of this? I can't, I can only see it going in one direction, right? It's like, it's going to lose his mind. Well, he either, he either loses his mind or he loses interest, right? I could see him just being like, well, okay, what's the next thing? You know, I got a ballroom to build over here. We've got some, we got some, we got some,

we got some, that's the case for the ballroom. That's the case for the ballroom. As you keep distracted on this pretty, like, it's not that important thing. We got some redecorated. to do you know it's fine uh no i but i mean i but you know who won't forget is jd vance jd vance is going to make sure that the that that people in indiana are miserable because of this that that republicans in indiana are miserable because of this uh and you know he's the vice president so he's got nothing but time he doesn't have anything else to do yeah and i think this is kind of weirdly it's become a little bit of a case study for him because he did go there he did talk to them he's been pretty you know it's in his portfolio put it that way and i you

can see a scenario where Trump's like, how could you fuck this up, JD? And then J.D. has to clean it up. No, you could honestly see that. I don't, I'm with Adam. I don't think this is the end of it. I think they try to make a real example of these people. And then it comes down to what do these state senators? What do the lawmakers want to do? What do the voters want to do about that? Like, you know, it's one thing to inflict these types of political pains on Democratic states. It's terribly wrong. It's immoral. It's, it's, you know, but you're not risking you're starting from like a place where you're probably not risking much politically because they're vote for Democrats generally. It's another thing to do it to your own people. And we haven't

seen that yet. You have not seen it that often. I will be curious to see how many retirements there are. That's going to be the real benchmark, right? Like how many state senators are just like, I don't need this. I'm a state senator. This is not, isn't not worth it. I don't know what the, I will be honest. I'm not an expert on Indiana state. I'm not either. Get out and back on here. But I would bet I bet I bet good money. that there's a higher than usual number of incumbent retirements headed into the next next election. All right. Last question for you, because I was thinking about this. If you're the Democrats, you're like J.B. Pritzker, right? You could, in theory, continue to float that you would redistrict Illinois.

You get one extra seat potentially out of it. But Indiana just did this. Would the smart thing not be to say, okay, redistricting is off our table now. The Indiana Senate Republican did the right thing. We're going to do the right thing to you. I'm not saying every Democrat. state has to do this because you have other Republican states out there. But to me, that seems like a no-brainer. It's like you have to reward good behavior. You have to show them that there are good outcomes, even if it's not from within their own party. Pritzko should probably go out there and say tonight, I appreciate what they did. And we're going to rule us out. Sure. That's, it's not Pollyanna. It's a little Aaron Sorkinish. Yeah. No, I mean, I agree with you.

The problem is that there's no universe in which that is reciprocated. It's not like, it's Not like the unilateral disarmament will say, the Republicans will say, ah, okay, I guess we'll stop doing this everywhere else. I mean, I, you know, I don't know how many more states there are left to do it in, but it does, it would be, it would be nice if everyone just stopped. That would be real great. Wouldn't that be great? Oh, my God.

It would be bad for content, but great for the country. Yeah, I live in an Aaron Sarkin novel or a movie. I'm sorry. I still have West Wing in my head. All right, Sonny, thanks so much for jumping on and doing this. I appreciate it, bud. Absolutely. all right take care everyone hey thank you for watching this folks this is a bulwark takes

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