Indiana state House Republicans passed a new state congressional map Friday at the behest of President Donald Trump, advancing the legislation to the state Senate, where it is unclear if enough lawmakers will support its final passage.
Lawmakers in the Republican-majority House voted 57-41 in favor of the map, which splits the city of Indianapolis into four districts to help the GOP potentially win all nine Indiana congressional seats. While Trump and many other Republicans are celebrating the passage, the map faces its true test in the Senate, where many GOP lawmakers have opposed mid-decade redistricting.
Democrats in the House minority decried the new map, with many criticizing the swift timeline of the past week. The map was introduced on Monday. By contrast, when the current congressional district map was passed in 2021, lawmakers held multiple public hearings around the state over several months beforehand.
Democratic state Rep. Greg Porter, who represents Indianapolis, railed against the proposal on the House floor, saying it would dilute the power of Black Hoosiers. U.S. Rep. André Carson, who has represented Indianapolis for the past 17 years and stands to lose his seat, is the state’s only Black member of Congress.
“What we’re doing today with this proposed legislation is taking away the rights of Black and brown people in Indiana,” Porter said. “It cracks Marion County!”
The Republican author of the legislation, state Rep. Ben Smaltz, said on the floor Wednesday that the map and bill language were provided by the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the GOP’s primary redistricting entity that was also involved in drawing Texas’ new map this year. Smaltz said the trust gave Indiana Republicans one option for the statewide map.
Republicans currently hold seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats. Indiana lawmakers have been under increasing pressure from the White House to follow the lead of Republicans in Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina, which have all passed new maps in recent months ahead of next year’s midterms. To offset the GOP gains, Democrats in California and Virginia have moved to do the same.
Smaltz said Friday the tit-for-tat mid-decade redistricting between Democratic and Republican states may continue for the next several cycles and “may be the new normal.”
The Indiana House vote ups the pressure on Senate Republicans to approve the new map for final passage.
While redistricting is typically done at the beginning of a new decade with the census, Trump has pushed Republican-led states to redistrict this year to give the GOP an easier path to maintaining its majority in the U.S. House. Democrats only need to flip a handful of seats next November to overcome the GOP’s current margin, and midterm elections typically favor the party opposite the one in power.
Republican Todd Huston, Indiana's House speaker, took to the floor Friday to defend the redistricting proposal in light of the partisan power balance across the country, saying “we don’t operate in a vacuum.”
Gov. Mike Braun, a first term Republican and ally of Trump, praised the House vote Friday.
“I urge the Senate to move quickly next week and adopt this map so Indiana can move forward with confidence,” he said.
Previously, the top Republican of the state Senate, Rodric Bray, said there were not enough votes to support redistricting. In the 50-member Senate, Republicans need at least 25 votes to pass the legislation. A 26th tiebreaking vote could come from Republican Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith.
The immediate next hurdle for the new map will come in a Senate committee, where it could face a smaller number of opposed senators.
The issue has sharply divided Republicans in the Hoosier state. Senators on both sides of the issue have been subject to threats and swatting attempts in recent weeks.
Trump has said he will back primary opponents against any GOP senator who opposes redistricting. But half the chamber, including Bray, is not up for reelection until 2028.
The map approved by House Republicans splits the Democratic city of Indianapolis — which currently makes up the entirety of the 7th Congressional District — into four quadrants divided among four rural districts. The new map also groups the cities of East Chicago and Gary with several Republican counties in northern Indiana, potentially ousting Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan, who represents the current district in the state’s northwest corner near Chicago.
In the ballooning redistricting battle, the U.S. Supreme Court handed a win to Texas Republicans Thursday by allowing the state to conduct next year’s elections under the new congressional map that favors the GOP and could give the party five more seats.
FILE - Legislators meet at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis, Feb. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Arleigh Rodgers, file)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Smithsonian museum exhibit about the maritime journey that millions of Africans were forced to take across the Atlantic to slavery in the Americas will change later this month, when a remnant from one of the first sunken slave ships ever recovered is taken off display in Washington.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture says a timber piece of the slave ship, the São José-Paquete de Africa, on display in its “Slavery and Freedom” exhibit, will soon be prepared for a trip back to its home museum in South Africa.
The 33-pound (15-kilogram) timber piece has been prominently displayed — seemingly suspended over a dark void, a ballast at its side — as part of a loan agreement to the museum since it opened in 2016. The agreement, examined by The Associated Press, was initially five years and then was extended another five in 2021, ending July 1.
The ship remnant will be among several items sent back to the Iziko Museums of South Africa later this year. Because of its delicate nature, a special crate has to be built for its transport.
Other items from the ship, including the ballasts that served as counterweights for the human cargo, are remaining on display and will be returned to South Africa in two years. A manifesto of the cargo on the ship will replace the timber piece.
The last day for museum visitors to see the timber piece on display is March 22.
The São José, a Portuguese vessel bound for Brazil with more than 400 captives from Mozambique, struck a rock and sank in December 1794 off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. Half of the people aboard perished. Survivors were resold into slavery in the Western Cape, according to the Smithsonian.
Recovered in 2015, the ship was identified and studied through the Slave Wrecks Project, an international network of institutions that confirmed it was associated with the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The ship is among the first known wreckage of such a ship that was recovered, in which enslaved Africans died.
The São José piece is in the lowest public level of the museum and is part of the larger “Slavery and Freedom” exhibit, which focuses on the slave trade, including the ships and conditions of transport, as well as artifacts, such as shackles.
The exhibit addresses the Middle Passage, an especially fraught part of the Atlantic Ocean crossing where many of the captives died. While there is no exact count, the number of people who perished during the journey is in the millions, according to Paul Gardullo, the assistant director of history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The alteration of the slavery exhibit comes at a time when any changes related to history and the American story at federal parks, museums or other public spaces are being scrutinized. President Donald Trump's administration has focused on putting the U.S. in a good light as the country prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The displays, exhibits and programming of several Smithsonian museums are under review as part of an executive order signed in March 2025 by the Republican president, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The National Museum of African American History and Culture is one of the institutions named in the order.
Michelle Commander, the museum's deputy director, told the AP the exhibit change is entirely related to the loan agreement but understood the timing might raise questions.
“That’s why we’re being transparent in this moment, because we are aware that there are those kinds of questions,” Commander said. “But, as we’ve said, this is really about the conservation needs of that item.”
As part of the loan, Gardullo said, the South African government has a robust cultural patrimony law that dictates how its artifacts and historical materials are treated and how long they can be loaned out.
“The wooden materials are more fragile, and they need a little more close care,” he said.
Recent visitors to the National Museum of African American History and Culture spoke of the power of the display with the slave ship timber, unaware that it would be altered shortly.
Lines wait to enter the darkened gallery, entitled the Middle Passage, where there is a solemnity as people study the dark space where the timber sits next to a ship's ballast. The tangible nature of the exhibit takes it out of textbooks and into reality, said Krystina Hernandez, who was there chaperoning her 7-year-old son’s schoolmates.
Anehtra Reynolds, from northern Virginia, was emotional as she exited the area. She said the presentation, including the artifacts and the darkness of the gallery, gave her a “piece of what they felt in terms of their misery.”
“I think there was a sign in there that mentioned there were some slaves who starved themselves to death in hopes that they would, when they died, they would be returned to their land,” Reynolds said.
Jim Carnes, who was in Washington visiting family from Birmingham, Alabama, said he was familiar with much of the information because he has worked in civil rights education in Birmingham and Montgomery, two places central to the nation's civil rights history.
“The artifacts are extraordinarily powerful,” he said, adding that he's left feeling sadness and anger, not just at the conditions of the enslaved people but at the current push by the federal government to “deny this ever happened.”
Jorge Carvajal, who is originally from Colombia but lives with his wife in south Florida, said seeing the exhibit silenced the stereotypes, especially that Black people are unreasonably angry.
“Empathy is what I’m trying to say. This will help people empathize a lot more. I mean, at least you would hope,” he said.
Commander said the staff at the museum will work to make sure that the exhibit continues to have the same impact with the remaining artifacts and displays.
“The story does not leave the museum because this timber is going to be returned to its owners,” she said.
School children visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture's Middle Passage exhibit, including a wooden timber, the artifact at back left, from the slave ship, the São José-Paquete de Africa, Friday, March 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Jim Cairnes of Birmingham, Ala., speaks to a reporter while visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Friday, March 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Anehtra Richmond of Woodbridge, Va., speaks to a reporter while visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Friday, March 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
People visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture's Middle Passage exhibit, including a wooden timber, the artifact at left, from the slave ship, the São José-Paquete de Africa, Friday, March 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
School children visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture's Middle Passage exhibit, behind a wooden timber, the artifact at right, from the slave ship, the São José-Paquete de Africa, Friday, March 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
