Democrats haven't won a statewide race in GOP-dominated Texas since the 1990s. But a U.S. Senate race in the Lone Star State, according to polls, is highly competitive. Centrist Democrat James Talarico, polls say, has a good shot against the controversial Republican nominee, far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And according to Politico, angst among rural voters could give Democrats long-awaited statewide victories in a state Republicans have dominated for decades.

Opposition to data centers, according to Politico's Shelby Webb, is a major problem for Abbott — as they are drawing stern opposition from both Republicans and Democrats. But it isn't the only problem.

"Rural voters may not stop the spread of data centers," Webb explains, "but they could stop Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The Republican is bleeding support from small towns as he seeks a fourth term because of two late-emerging issues: power-hungry tech campuses and a planned $33 billion electric transmission build-out. Pushback against Abbott points to larger fears about losing rural identities, but also to everyday concerns about construction, pollution and tight supplies of water and electricity."

According to Webb, "Some longtime conservatives are now considering the unthinkable — voting in November for a Democrat to be Texas' next governor. And Abbott's August directive to pause Texas data center grid approvals hasn’t convinced all of them to vote for him."

Shawn Nanny, a Republican county commissioner in West Texas, describes data centers and power lines as the "straws that broke the camel's back" with Abbott and rural GOP voters.

Nanny told Politico, "They understand the repercussions of that, but you know what I'm hearing is, 'Yeah, we'll have a Democrat in there and grit our teeth and bear it, but hopefully, we'll come out of it the following election.' They're so upset; they just want (Abbott) out."

According to Jim Henson, executive director of the Texas Politics Project, told Politico, "Rural people feel like they are the ones seeing the brunt of this, and they don't like it. These issues are starting to bond together a lot of the people against data centers."

Polling from the Texas Politics Project shows Abbott's approval down to 48 percent, which according to Webb, is a major warning sign for Lone Star Republicans.

Webb reports, "Rural Americans are among the most opposed to data center development, the Politico Poll shows. Fifty-one percent of rural U.S. adults surveyed in mid-July said they are opposed to data centers, compared with 32 percent of urban residents. Those numbers reflect higher rates of rural opposition to infrastructure projects in general, including power plants, warehouses and airports, according to the poll. But the disdain for data centers is higher than those other types of buildings."

Ex-Republican pollster Sarah Longwell and election forecaster Charlie Cook on Monday both discussed a "red undertow" in the 2026 midterm election, where it's not just a blue wave, but also an undertow also pulling Republicans down.

Politico's Dash Burns cited more leaked audio from Ken Paxton's lobbyist fundraiser, saying Washington is running his campaign and that everything he does is to appease the president. Burns noted the irony, since Paxton attacked his opponent for being a Beltway hack.

Elliott Morris, co-founder of "FiftyPlusOne," thinks there's also something else afoot in the state races that are just as close as the Senate ones.

"I'm just reminded, you know, Texas is a competitive governor's race right now. Greg Abbott (R), who won by 12 points just four years ago, is now trailing in his New York Times poll of the race. I believe, up for 3 or 4 percentage points. And that is as much an indictment of red state government as you're going to get. And I'm from Texas. I'm from south Texas, where we're having a water crisis right now," said Morris.

He noted that his Republican family members are "exasperated" and desperately looking for officials who can help them. Currently, he said, they don't feel like Texas is stepping up.

"And that, sort of, red state governance, I think, breeds a lot of discontent over time, where people don't feel like they're really getting their needs met," Morris said. "And that just fosters this sense of sort of anti-incumbency, anti-status quo bias we see at the national level too. So, it's unsurprising to me that places like Texas are competitive in this current environment, where people just don't feel like their needs are being met by government."

It's also unfolding at a time when President Donald Trump, the least popular president during a midterm in the 21st century, decided that he would campaign in red states to try and help save some of his candidates.

USA Today reporter Bart Jansen called it a "double-edged sword."

"Trump, saddled with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, could actually have the unintended consequence of energizing Democrats if he traveled to more competitive states," political experts told Jansen. "His rallies aim to spur turnout beyond where he appears. And Republicans enjoy an enormous fundraising advantage to spend on television ads that can spread his message."

“Trump is a double-edged sword,” said Jessica Taylor, the Senate and governors editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Does he have the potential to rile up Democrats and be used as a motivator to get them to turn out? Yes. But Republicans at this point have to focus on turning out their own voters.”

President Donald Trump often dismisses his low approval ratings as "fake news," continuing to insist that Republicans are in a strong position as the midterms draw closer and closer. But according to HuffPost reporters Arthur Delaney and Kevin Robillard, more and more Republicans are sounding the alarm about the midterms — including Sen. Jim Justice (R-West Virginia).

"Just a few weeks out from Election Day," Delaney and Robillard report in HuffPost, "Republicans are pressing the panic button. Candidates in states and districts President Donald Trump easily won are starting to attempt dramatic reinventions. Super PACs are pouring huge sums into safely red territory. But post-Labor Day polling increasingly favors Democrats, and consultants are worrying the party's massive money advantage won't save their candidates. In short: The GOP is staring down a blue wave, with its control of both chambers of Congress at risk."

Justice is serving in the U.S. Senate via a state that Trump won by 41 percent in 2024: West Virginia, where he formerly served as governor. And he is warning fellow Republicans that the midterms, which are set for Tuesday, November 3, could go really well for Democrats.

Justice told HuffPost, "You've got real momentum on the Democrat side, and if we don't watch out, you know, everybody all of a sudden now is just awakened to the fact that we may lose in the midterm."

According to the former West Virginia governor, "You've got to be living in a cave to not see that Toby and Edith — I call the voters Toby and Edith — are out there, and they're hurting. They can't hold their nose and go vote for the Democrats, but they can stay home, and that will be the big challenge."

Justice isn't the only worried Republican quoted in Delaney and Robillard's article.

A GOP consultant, interviewed on condition of anonymity, noted that although incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is leading Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa in Texas' gubernatorial battle, the race is closer than it should be in light of how much Abbott is outspending her.

The consultant told HuffPost, "If money can't turn some of these races around, things are going to get ugly."

Delaney and Robillard observe, "Similarly, Democratic candidates for governor in both Ohio and Nevada have been badly outspent by their GOP opponents to little apparent effect: $40 million in Republican spending in Nevada has led to a toss-up race, while $70 million in spending from Ohio Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has led to a race where Democrat Amy Acton has a narrow lead."

Meanwhile, right-wing culture warriors the American Principles Project are warning, "Republicans must also make the case to families on what they plan to do to help improve their economic standing. The Republican sales pitch to voters on the economy is at best unclear."

An anxiety-ridden White House has dispatched Vice President JD Vance to cobble together President Donald Trump’s disintegrating coalition in South Texas on Wednesday, but analysts and New York Times reporters say the Republican tent has largely collapsed.

In a district that Trump and the Republican Texas legislature gerrymandered to be more favorable to them, Vance finds himself struggling to stump for candidates in a border region “where eroding support for President Trump has raised Democratic hopes of flipped seats in both the House and the Senate,” according to the Post.

Vance rallied for the Republican challenger to Representative Vicente Gonzalez in a race that remains tightly contested despite Trump and Republicans packing the district with what they thought was a loyal Hispanic contingent that once supported Trump.

“Hispanic voters in South Texas have soured on Mr. Trump, growing increasingly angry over the handling of the economy and immigration enforcement,” reported Times writer Patricia Mazzei. “At a White House event for Hispanic Heritage Month, Mr. Trump sought to defend his border policies, but his remarks focused only episodically on Hispanic voters.”

Times reporter and noted author Maggie Haberman pointed out that Trump’s support among Hispanic voters “has suffered in the last two years, in part over his administration’s immigration crackdown and efforts at mass deportations.”

But Trump only sporadically defended his immigration policies during a Hispanic Heritage Month event, where he “made fleeting mention of the criticism he has faced from members of his own party, including those running for office,” reported Erica Green.

“No matter what you do, it’s always tough,” said Trump. “But we have, we’ve been very strong.”

Meanwhile, the Times reports Senate Republican nominee Ken Paxton’s campaign announced that it would be spending $20 million on a new round of advertising in Texas, starting on Friday in the state’s biggest markets — Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio — and then expanding to all corners of the state.

Times reporter J. David Goodman reports that the new spending follows tens of millions already spent by groups supporting Paxton in recent weeks, as Paxton falls behind in his race against his more popular Democratic opponent.

Vance attempted to tie Paxton’s opponent to the national Democratic Party by framing the election as a choice between Paxton and opponent, James Talarico, “as an avatar for the broader Democratic Party,” reports the Times.

However, Paxton’s onerous unpopularity appears to be outshining state voters’ generations-long suspicion of Democrats. And recent gaffes from Paxton — who is already a flawed candidate with marriage infidelity issues and corruption complaints — have done nothing to help him.

President Donald Trump has been slowly losing the key coalition of voters he built for his 2024 success, including Latino voters, particularly in Texas. It comes at a difficult time, with Trump's hand-picked Senate candidate in a politically perilous position as the Nov. 3 election nears.

The Cook Political Report revealed that, in a new survey conducted in partnership with TelevisaUnivision, Democratic candidates in Texas are leading their Republican opponents by a 2-1 margin.

This comes after Trump pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional district lines to redistribute Republican voters from very safe districts to those that are closer and less secure. The problem is that Trump and the Texas GOP were going off of Trump voters in 2024. Now that those supporters are abandoning him in droves, there might be more Democratic pick-up opportunities in Texas.

Publisher Amy Walter explained in a post on X that the 2024 coalition is "in shambles. Almost 1 in 5 Trump ‘24 voters now disapprove of POTUS. Talarico leads Paxton by 33. In Rio Grande Valley, Democrats lead [the] generic [ballot] by 14." The generic ballot is when pollsters ask, regardless of the candidate, which party one supports.

The report also cautioned that Latino voters are well aware that they play a big role in the state's elections.

"Seven in ten said they think Hispanics in the state have a lot or some political influence, including 41 percent who said they have 'real political power' in Texas," the report said. "Moreover, two-thirds said they’d like candidates to conduct outreach in the Hispanic community in Spanish, and 69 percent said they believe candidates signal that they 'want to earn my vote' when they appear on Spanish-language media."

In 2024, Trump carried Latino voters by 10 percent and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) won them by 3 percent. This year, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is winning Hispanic voters with 63 percent of the vote. His GOP opponent only has about 30 percent of those voters. It also includes 73 percent of self-described independent voters who support Talarico.

The governor's race is only slightly better for long-time leader Greg Abbott. In 2022, he scored 40 percent with Hispanic voters. Now, his Democratic opponent Rep. Gina Hinojosa, leads with Hispanic voters, 60 percent to 33 percent.

The shift is coming as a result of Trump's mistakes in the first two years of his second term. He's lost 18 percent of his Hispanic base since 2024. While attention is focused on the Senate race, where 19 percent of Hispanic Trump voters support Talarico over Paxton, the congressional races are worse. According to the Cook numbers, 22 percent of Hispanic Trump voters don't support Republican House candidates when asked which party they'd vote for.

Just last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined a bipartisan chorus of governors in denouncing a Biden administration plan they said would strip states of powers guaranteed to them under federal law.

The plan would have transferred Air National Guard units from six states to the U.S. Space Force, the newly created military branch, stoking concerns about federal overreach and the erosion of governors’ control over their own guard forces. Texas wasn’t among the affected states, but Abbott made his opposition unmistakable in an open letter to the president.

He called the plan an “intolerable threat that would set a “dangerous precedent.”

“I strongly oppose any attempt to sideline governors when it comes to their respective National Guards,” he wrote.

A year later, Abbott helped Donald Trump do just that. He said that he “fully authorized” the president’s plan to send Texas National Guard members to Illinois and Oregon to protect federal law enforcement personnel who are executing immigration laws. Those states’ governors vigorously objected, saying such action was an unnecessary escalation that interfered with state sovereignty.

Abbott defended the deployment on Fox News. The president, he said, has the authority to mobilize guard members to preserve public safety.

“President Trump and I have a good, longstanding working relationship, and there is a substantive reason behind that,” Abbott said. He added that he and the president were “operating very closely aligned on ensuring that our country is going to be safe.”

Abbott, the leader of the largest state led by Republicans, has emerged as one of Trump’s most important allies as the president tests the limits of executive power. While governors often align with their parties’ presidents, Abbott’s support for Trump’s expansion of federal powers is a striking departure from his own historical and ardent defenses of state sovereignty.

That, constitutional experts say, sets a risky example that may be difficult to reverse.

“What he’s doing is short-term gain for his political positions, and Texas’ political positions, but not for Texas as a state moving forward,” said Georgetown University Law Center professor Victoria Nourse. “You might like this president, but you’re not necessarily going to like what happens to Texas with the next one.”

There are myriad examples of Abbott bending his views on state sovereignty to accede to the wishes of the new administration, including directing state agencies to assist the administration’s immigration enforcement — an action that constitutional law experts said essentially deputized the Texas government into federal service — as well as providing data on voters and redrawing legislative boundaries to net more GOP-friendly seats in the U.S. House.

Abbott’s arguments then and actions now are an example of what Jessica Bulman-Pozen, a constitutional law professor at Columbia University, calls partisan federalism, a term describing how state leaders’ fervor for defending their sovereignty increasingly depends on whether their party is in power in Washington. She said Abbott’s support of the guard deployments is particularly alarming because it diminishes the traditional power of governors to manage law enforcement in their states.

Abbott did not respond to interview requests or written questions from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. But Robert Henneke, general counsel for the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, and James Peinado, chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, which advocates for limited government, said they saw no contradiction between Abbott’s historic defense of states’ authority and his support of Trump’s actions. Trump is following the law, Henneke said, and “the states don’t have the power to block the lawful exercise of authority of the federal government.”

Abbott’s actions, however, have drawn rebuke from fellow governors, including at least one from his own party.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, told The New York Times that he was surprised Abbott sent Texas guard members to Illinois. “We believe in the federalist system — that’s states’ rights. Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration,” said Stitt, who did not respond to interview requests.

Ron Beal, a retired law professor at Baylor University, said Abbott’s actions not only violate the historic spirit of cooperation among states, but provide Trump cover to unlawfully interfere in state matters.

“Trump’s reason for sending troops is clearly a total fabrication of reality and I believe a constitutional violation,” Beal said. “It is simply outrageous that Abbott would participate and cooperate with such activity.”

Shifting View of Federal Power

Abbott’s devotion to state sovereignty has long been central to his political identity.

In January 2016, entering his second year as governor, he published a 92-page essay defending states’ rights and decrying what he called the Obama administration’s executive overreach. In a speech that month to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he accused President Barack Obama of bypassing Congress by enacting climate change and immigration policy through unilateral executive orders. Abbott also lambasted the Supreme Court for upholding the Affordable Care Act, arguing the justices invented a legal basis for it.

“State leaders were supposed to have the power and opportunity to check any attempt by federal officials to overstep their bounds,” Abbott wrote. “Indeed, the entire structure of the Constitution was premised on the idea that the states would be stronger than the national government.”

Abbott proposed the “Texas Plan,” a set of nine constitutional amendments that he said would restore the balance of authority between the federal government and states. Among them was one that would make clear that the president, Congress and judges have no powers beyond those expressly mentioned in the Constitution.

The essay offered a well-reasoned critique of growing federal power, said Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, who has assigned it as required reading for his students.

Levinson said Abbott’s recent actions mark a complete reversal.

“He condemned presidents for overreach, particularly in executive orders, and said we had to do something to rein that in. There’s much to be said for that, but that is certainly not his view in 2025,” Levinson said. “Most of what Trump does is through executive order.”

Trump has sought to use executive orders to force changes to elections and voting. He has also pressured state leaders to make changes on his behalf, and Abbott has obliged.

Over the summer, Abbott became the first governor to comply with Trump’s demand that Republican-led states break from the traditional 10-year cycle of redrawing congressional districts to create more GOP-friendly seats for the 2026 midterm election.

Initially sympathetic to incumbent Republican House members’ worries that the strategy could weaken solid GOP seats by spreading the party’s voters across too many districts, Abbott ultimately called a special session of the Texas Legislature to draft new congressional boundaries.

Texas lawmakers in 2003 similarly conducted a rare mid-decade redistricting, but that was not directed by then-President George W. Bush, said Karl Rove, one of Bush’s senior advisers. “The White House and RNC didn’t provoke or lead the effort,” Rove said in a text message.

A governor allowing a president to influence when a state redistricts cedes the historical power of states to run their own elections, said Mimi Marziani, who teaches election law at the University of Texas.

She said Trump’s request for more GOP-friendly seats “has everything to do with national party interests and nothing to do with state interests.” And she warned that if governors give in, they will be vulnerable to future presidential meddling.

Earlier this month, Trump endorsed Abbott for reelection, citing redistricting as one of the governor’s key accomplishments. A week later, a panel of three federal judges blocked the state’s newly drawn congressional map from taking effect, finding that it discriminated against voters based on race. On Tuesday, Abbott said Texas would “swiftly appeal” to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Abbott’s cooperation has extended to sharing voter registration data with Washington.

Texas joined more than a dozen states in turning over voter roll information to the Justice Department, despite long-standing resistance to federal oversight of state elections.

The Constitution allows states to run elections, subject to oversight by Congress. But Trump sought greater control over the process, issuing an executive order in March that prioritized enforcing the federal laws that bar noncitizens from voting.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that noncitizens are voting en masse to sway U.S. elections in favor of Democrats, while research has shown this not to be true.

A recent voter roll audit by the Texas secretary of state, using a federal citizenship database, flagged 2,724 voters — or 0.015% — as potential noncitizens. Preliminary investigations by county voter registrars, however, found that some of those voters are citizens.

Acting on Trump’s order, the Justice Department requested from states their entire voter rolls, including dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, according to a letter sent to Texas and obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune under public records laws.

Records show that Texas provided voter roll information to the Justice Department in October.

Texas secretary of state spokesperson Alicia Pierce told ProPublica and the Tribune that the secretary of state provided only the publicly available version of its voter roll, which redacts information such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers.

The Justice Department is suing eight states, six of which had provided or offered publicly available versions of their voter rolls because they did not include all the information the federal government sought. One such state is Pennsylvania.

“This request, and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans, represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process,” Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, wrote to the Justice Department in August.

Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre declined to comment on why the federal government had not included Texas among the states it was suing for failing to share all the information the government sought.

But the same month that Texas quietly handed over the limited voter roll, Secretary of State Jane Nelson, an Abbott appointee, announced her office had finished running the full roll, along with Social Security numbers, through a federal database to check voters’ citizenship status.

The Department of Homeland Security stores voter data uploaded by state officials, DHS records obtained by ProPublica found.

Nelson’s office did not answer questions about whether doing so essentially provided the federal government with even more data on Texas voters than it had initially sought.

In Limbo

Abbott embraced Trump’s deployment of Texas National Guard troops under a novel interpretation of a federal law that authorizes the mobilization of troops to quell a rebellion or threat of rebellion, or if “regular forces” are unable to enforce federal law. No modern president has invoked the law to assist in carrying out immigration policy.

Despite Abbott’s support, the 400 Texas National Guard troops mobilized by Trump are still not on the streets of Illinois or Oregon.

Federal judges temporarily halted the deployments after Oregon and Illinois sued the Trump administration, arguing that its actions violate the 10th Amendment, which gives the states all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government by the Constitution.

The states’ arguments echo those Abbott made in his 2016 essay, in which he warned that Washington too often ignored that amendment to impose its will on states. He proposed making it easier for states to sue the federal government over alleged abuses of power.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is handling the Illinois case, had a similar take. In an Oct. 16 ruling, the court said the Texas troop mobilization was “an incursion on Illinois’s sovereignty” and likely a violation of the 10th Amendment.

The litigation kept Texas Guard members who were deployed to the Chicago area more than a month ago in limbo, unable to carry out what Trump wanted them to but unable to leave. A U.S. Defense Department spokesperson said the 200 guard members who were training at a base in Illinois returned to Texas last week. The rest, bound for Oregon, remain at Fort Bliss in El Paso.

The U.S. Supreme Court has placed the Illinois case on its emergency docket and is considering the parties’ written arguments. The court’s pending ruling would likely apply to the Oregon case as well.

Despite the uncertainty regarding the deployment’s legality, Trump suggested in an October speech to U.S. military members that he was prepared to send troops, including active-duty units, into more cities.

Abbott’s cooperation thus far will make it harder for other states to resist Trump in future deployments, said James Gardner, a constitutional law professor at the University at Buffalo. The framers of the Constitution intended for states to stand with one another to ensure officials in Washington never accumulated too much power, Gardner said.

He said that while Abbott, who is seeking a record fourth term next year, would likely rediscover his passion for states’ rights if a Democrat were elected president, the governor may struggle to regain power he helped take away from the states.

“By altering the Constitution’s contemplated balance of power, it makes it easier for the central government to crush dissenting states,” Gardner said.

A new commercial is airing that features a former Texas Republican lawmaker who made it clear he would "never" vote for Attorney General Ken Paxton.

CNN reported Wednesday that former state Rep. Glenn Rogers says in a new 30-second ad from James Talarico's U.S. Senate campaign super PAC, “I’ll never trust Ken Paxton, I’ll never support Ken Paxton and the last place he should be is the United States Senate."

Rogers is far from a left-leaning Republican. He's a rancher and veterinarian from outside of Fort Worth and has long been a critic of the direction the Republican Party has taken in his state. Gov. Greg Abbott ran against Rogers in the 2024 GOP primary after Rogers refused to support school vouchers.

"The ad will run statewide on digital and streaming platforms as part of the group’s eight-figure effort in the general election," CNN reported, citing a spokesperson for the political action committee. "It comes as Democrats confront a spike in outside GOP spending in recent days, suddenly giving Paxton’s side a huge advertising advantage in the closing weeks of the tight race."

New polling numbers from Texas put the race at a tie, but Fox7 in Austin said there appears to be a growing problem for Paxton. The new survey from Texas Southern's Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center shows, "more than a quarter of those who identified themselves as moderate republicans said they plan to 'break ranks; and vote for the Democrat."

It comes as Talarico continues to draw more support from independents.

Republicans appear to be panicking, dumping buckets of cash into the Paxton race after the AG appeared to be lacking in fundraising. His former GOP opponent, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned that Paxton is too "lazy" to fund raise.

The Texas Tribune reported Tuesday that GOP-aligned groups have put in more than $140 million for the struggling Paxton. That total includes about $100 million from the Senate Leadership Fund’s Texas PAC, more than $19 million from Lone Star Liberty PAC and more than $16 million from MAGA Inc.

CNN noted that Talarico has invested heavily in having Republicans who know Paxton well explaining why the outgoing attorney general isn't fit to serve in higher office. The campaign rolled out "Republicans for Talarico" with endorsements from "Dan Cogdell, a Paxton lawyer in the impeachment trial, and David Maxwell, a former top Paxton staffer who testified in his impeachment trial."

Meanwhile, Republicans appear to be cutting their losses in states like North Carolina and Georgia, Politico reported Tuesday.

The generic congressional ballot is brutal, an NPR/PBS/Marist poll taken last week shows. Democrats are at 53 percent, and Republicans stand at 41 percent.

Today I’m going to ask you to make a difficult decision: name the worst elected official in America today, other than Trump.

The point of this exercise is not for you to become any more discouraged with American politics but to highlight that Trump is hardly the only horrendously awful elected official in America. A second purpose is to name (and shame) elected officials who deserve to be better known for the horrible things they’ve said and done. Finally, it’s to stimulate a candid discussion about why voters have chosen these loathsome people (and why eligible voters who wouldn’t have chosen them don’t vote).

It’s been difficult to pare the list down. I’ve had to eliminate Ted Cruz because two other finalists are from Texas, and I didn’t want to make this solely about the Lone Star State. I’ve also eliminated members of the House Freedom Caucus because there’s no meaningful way to differentiate their bigotry and fanaticism from one another. I’ve included Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s technically no longer a public official — she resigned from Congress on January 5 — because her influence continues, and she’s now talking about forming a third party.

So here are the finalists for the worst elected official in America today, other than Trump:

1. Vice President JD Vance

Vance has as few principles as his boss, which is to say none. In 2016, he was an outspoken critic of Trump (whom he privately likened to “America’s Hitler”) and is now his most loyal defender.

During Vance’s recent visit to the Nixon Library, he defended Nixon for the Watergate scandal that ended his presidency. “I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance — but I think deservedly so,” Vance said of Nixon. “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. Like, the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.” It was the “deep state that took down Richard Nixon” — not Nixon’s serious crimes.

In his new autobiography, Vance writes that it was “boneheaded” of him to call Kamala Harris and several other prominent Democrats “childless cat ladies.” But when his remark resurfaced during his early days as Trump’s running mate, he refused to apologize or express regret for it and charged that the Democratic Party is “anti-family and anti-child.”

He is also a virulent nativist. He insisted during the 2024 campaign that the pets of Americans residing in Springfield, Ohio, were being “abducted and eaten” by Haitian immigrants “who shouldn’t be in this country.” When confronted with irrefutable evidence to the contrary, Vance said, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

2. Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General

Paxton is now running for the U.S. Senate. Few politicians have had as checkered a career. In 2015, Paxton was indicted on state securities fraud charges relating to activities before taking office; he pleaded not guilty. The charges were dismissed a decade later, after Paxton fulfilled a pretrial agreement for restitution to the victims, ethics training, and community service.

In 2021, Paxton aided Trump in his efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, filing an unsuccessful case in the Supreme Court and speaking at the rally Trump held on January 6, 2021, that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol. During the Biden presidency, Paxton pursued legal action against the administration 106 times. Paxton supports a total ban on access to abortion.

In May 2023, Paxton was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives by a vote of 121–23, leading to his suspension. The articles of impeachment included allegations that Paxton gave preferential treatment to a political donor who bribed him, misapplied public resources, made false statements against whistleblowers, obstructed justice in the securities fraud trial against him, and made false statements regarding his financial interests. After the vote, he was suspended from office. In September 2023, the Texas Senate voted 16–14 to acquit Paxton, ending his suspension.

3. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene

Greene represented Georgia’s 14th Congressional District from 2021 until her resignation in January 2026; she says she is now laying the groundwork for a third political party.

Greene has promoted Islamophobic, antisemitic, and white supremacist views, including the white genocide conspiracy theory that claims Democrats and Jews have plotted to bring immigrants to America to vote against white Christian candidates. She has also promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, claiming that a secret cabal of Satan-worshiping elites operates a global child sex-trafficking ring. She has also promoted “Pizzagate,” a debunked theory that top Democrats ran a similar ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria.

She has amplified other conspiracy theories that allege government involvement in mass shootings in the U.S., that implicate the Clinton family in murder, and that suggest the 9/11 attacks on the United States were a hoax.

Before running for Congress, Greene supported calls to execute prominent Democratic Party politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. As a congresswoman, she has equated the Democratic Party with Nazis and compared Covid safety measures to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust (later apologizing for this comparison). During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Greene promoted Russian propaganda and praised Vladimir Putin. She identifies herself as a Christian nationalist.

A vocal advocate of Trump during his first presidency, Greene promoted his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, aided and supported his attempts to overturn it, and called for the results of the 2020 election in Georgia to be decertified. In response to her endorsements of political violence, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove Greene from all committees (she was appointed to new committee roles in January 2023). She broke with Trump over the Justice Department’s handling of files tied to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s decision to attack Iran, and the longest-ever government shutdown.

4. Texas Governor Greg Abbott

Of all America’s governors, Abbott stands out for his white Christian nativism. As attorney general, Abbott successfully advocated in the Supreme Court for the Texas State Capitol to display the Ten Commandments and unsuccessfully defended Texas’s ban on same-sex marriage. He was also involved in numerous lawsuits against the Obama administration, seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act and reverse the administration’s environmental regulations. As governor, Abbott has maintained Texas’s total ban on abortions, sought more lenient gun laws, and supported additional funding for police and law enforcement.

During the Covid pandemic, Abbott opposed face mask and vaccine mandates and blocked local governments, businesses, and other organizations from implementing their own. He signed into law a ban on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices at Texas’s public colleges and universities. Abbott concedes that the climate is changing but doesn’t believe human activity is the major cause.

He has also prioritized fighting illegal immigration, making Texas the first state to decline refugee resettlement. He directed his administration to transport undocumented immigrants from Texas to Washington, D.C. On September 15, 2022, Abbott sent two buses with mostly Venezuelan immigrants to the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, D.C. In November 2025, Abbott declared the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations to be “foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations.”

After Trump’s failed attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Abbott made it more difficult for Texans to vote — eliminating 24-hour polling and drive-thru voting, banning the sending of applications for mail-in ballots, and allowing partisan poll watchers to move more freely at polling places.

So, today’s difficult Office Hours question: Who’s the worst elected official in America? Please choose from the list, or add your own nominee in the comments.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly drawn on the Civil War to bolster his presidency, whether it’s supporting Confederate statues or using statutes from that era to prosecute protesters. Now the author of an upcoming novel about the U.S. ceasing to exist, “The Breakup,” is arguing that a literal Civil War could be in the offing, and that the country is currently stuck in "a bitter, loveless marriage."

“Days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, then-Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene reiterated her push for legally splitting up the country: ‘I want a peaceful national divorce. Our country is too far gone and too far divided, and it’s no longer safe for any of us,’” argued author Kurt Andersen for The New York Times on Sunday. “Polls since 2021 by universities, YouGov and others have consistently found that a third or more of Americans said they expected a civil war during the next decade or so.”

Andersen wrote, “A national divorce — let alone a civil war — is, for now, the stuff of fiction. But while loose talk from rabble-rousers has distracted us, the nation has sunk, almost unnoticed, into an unspectacular yet profoundly strange new arrangement. It’s not yet a divorce; it’s more like a bitter, loveless marriage in which the parties stay technically but less and less enthusiastically united because splitting up is too complicated or dreadful or expensive.”

Describing the status quo as “uncooperative federalism” and “soft secession,” Andersen pointed out that “during the past two Democratic presidencies, many red states and counties declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, prohibiting their police forces from enforcing some federal gun regulations. (The term was a trollish play on Democratic sanctuary cities, which did the same for federal immigration policies.)”

He added, “Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas took it upon himself to override federal immigration policy, deploying the National Guard to string the banks of the Rio Grande with coils of razor wire and ordering his troops to prevent federal border agents from helping migrants who got tangled in them. More than two dozen Republican governors endorsed the show of anti-federal strength.”

Andersen also pointed out that Democratic-led states and cities are similarly soft seceding in the Trump era, such as “local police departments aren’t cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many states passed laws to shield residents from prosecution if they are charged elsewhere with facilitating abortions, and several have stockpiled abortifacients in case federal law or regulations make them hard to get.”

He continued, “Various combinations of blue states have banded together to perform functions the federal government has abandoned or degraded: forming a climate alliance that participates in international forums the Trump administration won’t attend, creating de facto regulatory agencies for cap-and-trade carbon markets, issuing medically legitimate childhood vaccination recommendations. A coalition of a couple dozen attorneys general has sued the administration over birthright citizenship, tariffs and denial of federal funds to Democratic-controlled states.”

Ultimately, Andersen characterized this status quo as unsustainable.

“We can’t keep going this way,” Andersen wrote. “Escaping federal dysfunction and avoiding real hostilities over the long term will require some kind of radical shift. Perhaps states and regions could become much more independent. Like the regional autonomous communities in Spain, some of which collect nearly all the taxes their inhabitants pay and then forward a negotiated share to the national government. Or Switzerland, where cantons can divide or reconfigure and each one decides whether newcomers become Swiss citizens.”

He concluded, “Even that might not be enough. Someday down the line we may decide we have no choice but to call it quits. If so, I hope we could follow the lead of post-Soviet Czechoslovakia, whose 1993 breakup into two nations was so calm, it was called the Velvet Divorce, a kind of conscious national uncoupling. For our huge, heterogeneous country, it would be extremely difficult and painful. But in the long run, it might still be better for the kids.”

In July, renowned historian Timothy Snyder similarly argued that America may soon come to an end, in his case pointing to Trump’s authoritarian presidency.

“The fact that the U.S. exists and is celebrating 250 years doesn't mean that it'll exist in 5 years or 10 years or 15 years — states have a beginning and they have an end,” Snyder said. “I think that the Trump people are much more likely to wreck the U.S. as an entity than they are to succeed in generating some kind of homogeneous tyranny from the Pacific to the Atlantic.”