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Hi friends. We’ve got an upbeat intro section from co-founder Leah
Greenberg this week, and we’re glad for that after the horrors of the
weekend.

But before we dive into the newsletter, we want to acknowledge those
events, and send love and solidarity to everyone impacted, directly or
indirectly, by the tragedies in Rhode Island and Australia.

We went to sleep Saturday night to news of a mass shooting at Brown
University, the 389th of the year. We woke up on Sunday to news of an
antisemitic massacre at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. As many of us
were lighting our menorahs last night, we were receiving alerts that the
death toll had risen. 

In Sydney, a Holocaust survivor was murdered in an attack targeting
Jews. Among the survivors at Brown, there were multiple students who’d
already lived through another school shooting.

Those truths are enough to make anyone feel numb, like the problems with
this world are too great to overcome. We wish we had something more
profound to offer you in this moment, but what we have is this: Our
thanks. We can’t tell you how grateful we are for this movement of
incredible people who refuse to give up, who rise each day and take
action to combat hatred, make our communities safer, our society more
just, and keep the faith that we can build a world where all can learn,
worship, vote, organize, and live authentically and without fear. 

Within the devastation there is also hope, kindness, courage. As
Hanukkah reminds us, there is always light in the darkness. An unarmed
Muslim man, Ahmed al Ahmed, risked his own life to disarm one of the
Sydney shooters. Wherever we see horrors like campus shootings, we see
students helping each other.

Every day, we choose this fight, because we believe not just in its
urgency, but in each other. 

Yours in the fight for a better world, 
Indivisible Team

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Indivisibles,

Leah here, stepping in for Ezra, who’s out this week.

I want to talk about a win that might have flown under your radar last
week: the failure of Trump’s gerrymandering push in Indiana.

The backstory

Donald Trump knows that in 2026 he’s going to face an electoral wipeout.
So he’s spent the last six months doing everything he can to rig the
rules. He leaned on Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Missouri Republicans
to initiate mid-decade redistricting designed to maximize Republican seats
-- in other words, to dramatically gerrymander them -- and in each of
those cases, the Republican legislators did his bidding.

For the last few months, he’s been putting the same heat on Indiana. He
sweet-talked legislators. He promised rewards. He sent JD Vance to visit
and lobby in person. He (reportedly) threatened to cut all funding from
the state if they didn’t fulfill his demand.

[1]A tweet from the Heritage foundation that reads: President Trump has
made it clear to Indiana leaders: if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the
map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state.

And it was all to no avail. On Wednesday, the Indiana Senate said no, by a
vote of 31-19, including the majority of the Senate Republican Caucus. The
gerrymandering plan is dead.

Trump threw everything he had at Indiana -- and he failed.

Why this is enormous

Sure, every seat matters in 2026, and this outcome leaves us in a slightly
better position than if Trump had successfully bullied the state. But the
significance goes way beyond one state’s congressional map.

Authoritarian politics runs on a simple logic: If you can convince enough
people that you’re going to consolidate power -- and use it ruthlessly to
reward allies and punish enemies -- they start falling in line
preemptively. That’s anticipatory obedience. And this year, it worked
frighteningly well. Across politics, business, academia, and the media,
powerful people bowed their heads and complied.

The opposite is just as important, though: If you overreach, if you start
to flail, if people begin to see that you’re losing ground and heading
toward lame-duck irrelevance? They stop obeying. And that’s exactly what a
whole bunch of Republican state legislators in Indiana just did.

Credit where it’s due

Many individual legislators showed real courage, and they deserve
recognition.

But none of this would have happened without Indiana’s civil rights
leaders and grassroots organizers. They ran a pedal-to-the-metal campaign
that drove massive popular outrage -- flooding legislators with calls,
filling the statehouse, and refusing to be ignored. And that’s after
building grassroots power for years under some of the toughest conditions
out there. Indiana Indivisibles: TAKE A BOW.

[ [link removed] ]A Bluesky post from Indivisible Northeast Indiana that reads: BREAKING:
WE DID IT! After days of intense pressure from D.C., the Indiana Senate
REJECTED the mid-decade gerrymandered map! This victory belongs to every
Indivisible member, every activist, and every Hoosier who called, emailed,
and showed up

Why it happened now

Let's be clear: This sweeping repudiation of Trump by his own party didn’t
come out of nowhere.

It wouldn’t have happened back in February or June, when Trump’s approval
ratings were still hovering in the 40s. It wouldn’t have happened before
the massive No Kings rallies, including in Indiana. It wouldn’t have
happened before the MAGA coalition cracked over Epstein, before the
shutdown cratered Trump’s approval numbers, or before the 2025 off-year
elections and TN-07 scared the crap out of Republican legislators
everywhere. Nationwide defiance laid the foundation for last Wednesday in
Indiana.

This is what it looks like when a would-be dictator tries to bully his way
into power -- and fails. It’s a sign that rule-by-fear is breaking down.
It’s a flashing warning light that the wheels are coming off the fascism
bus.

What comes next

We should also be clear that a wounded authoritarian is incredibly
dangerous. We know more harm and more horror are coming. No one can afford
to ease up.

But wins don’t come often these days, and we have to celebrate them.
Because these moments prove that what we’re doing matters.

We started this year understanding that Trump, Stephen Miller, and the
MAGA machine would sprint to consolidate power -- over their party, the
courts, business, civil society, and the media. And that our job was to
hold them off, drive down their popularity, and build a pro-democracy
coalition strong enough to make consolidation impossible.

We’re nowhere near finished.

But damn, last week was a big step forward.

In solidarity,
Leah Greenberg
Co-Executive Director, Indivisible

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Your weekly to-dos

 1. [ [link removed] ]Tell Congress to block Trump’s march to war with Venezuela. Donald
Trump, winner of the FIFA Peace Prize, continues amassing warships in
the Caribbean while bombing small vessels without any legal
justification and threatening a full on invasion of Venezuela. We
expect a vote in the House this week, and the Senate soon after, on
legislation to block the regime from committing US forces to an
illegal Venezuelan war. Use our email tool to urge your Members of
Congress to vote YES. 
 2. [ [link removed] ]Email your Members of Congress to demand investigations into
Hegseth’s murderous strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific. It appears
increasingly likely that Pete Hegseth oversaw war crimes in the
regime’s illegal bombings of small boats in the Caribbean. Congress
has a duty to launch investigations into these strikes, which have
killed over 87 people thus far. Email your Members of Congress and
demand they haul Pete Hegseth into public hearings on these ongoing
extrajudicial murders. 
 3. [ [link removed] ]We’re stronger when we organize together. Join a local Indivisible
group today. It’s resolution season, and if one of your goals for the
new year is becoming more engaged in your community and doing more to
save democracy, it might be time to connect with an Indivisible group
near you. 
 4. [ [link removed] ]Please consider supporting your local food pantry this holiday
season. This is the busiest time of the year for food pantries, and
the combination of federal funding cuts and rising prices are making
it difficult for many pantries to meet rising needs. We’re dropping
our usual fundraising ask this week and encouraging everyone to
support these lifelines in your community. Food donations are
appreciated, but to offer meals at scale in addition to other
services, donations are preferred. Use the link above or just google
‘food pantries near me’ to find your closest site and make a
donation. 

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What’s the Plan with Leah and Ezra: New year, new link

Our weekly What’s the Plan (WTP) virtual chats with Indivisible
co-founders and co-executive directors Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin were
a 2025 innovation and we've found that the regular, live Q&A with
supporters has been a great way to share our thinking about news of the
day and honestly assess our strategies and tactics going forward. 

Our final chat of the year is this Thursday at 3pm ET/ 12pm PT, and then,
good news: We’re going to keep these going in 2026. [ [link removed] ]But if you want to
keep joining us (or join us for the first time) in the new year, you’ll
need to use this new link. 

Just to repeat that -- the link people have used for all this year’s Zooms
(including this Thursday’s) will not sign you up or ensure reminders for
next year’s Zooms. [ [link removed] ]Please use this new WTP link to join the weekly
chats in 2026. 

And if you aren’t signed up for this Thursday’s chat, [ [link removed] ]you can do that
here. 

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IndivisiWIN of the week

[ [link removed] ]A group of Indivisibles stands on a street corner in the snow with
signs and big smiles

Every Saturday [ [link removed] ](including last Saturday, when temps were well below
frigid), members of Indivisible Central Michigan rally on a corner in the
town of Mt. Pleasant. Many drive some distance to be there, most come with
signs, and everyone shows up with a fire in their belly. Focused on
strengthening local political engagement, these Indivisibles are doing the
work to ensure that their communities know not just what the regime is
doing, but that their neighbors are fighting back.

Indivisible groups everywhere are making sure their communities are
informed, organized, and ready to fight; it's this kind of commitment that
led to the success we saw against Trump in Indiana this week. Want to be
part of this work? [ [link removed] ]The best way in is to join your local Indivisible
group!

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