Texas toast is extra-thick sliced white bread, usually cut about twice the normal thickness that’s buttered (often with garlic) and griddled or toasted until golden outside and soft inside. Who doesn’t love a slice of Texas toast? It’s commonly served alongside barbecue, chicken-fried steak, or fried chicken (Raising Cane’s made it famous), and the extra thickness makes it great for French toast or hearty sandwiches. Most food historians trace it to Texas diners and drive-ins in the 1940s, where cooks started cutting bread thicker than usual. In moderation it’s not too bad, but it’s basically white bread plus fat and salt, with little nutritional upside. But did I mention how good it tastes?
I’m on my way to Dallas today and one of my dietary goals for this two days of depositions is to avoid eating any Texas toast. It’s got me thinking about Texas and it’s tole in national life. There is a lot written about people moving from California to Texas. That’s usually driven by some combination of taxes and general political outlook since California is the symbol of liberal political life and Texas is the symbol of traditional conservative political life. Why is that and is that changing now or not?
Texas has one of the strongest identities of any state, built on a mix of myth and modern reality. The classic image is cowboys, cattle ranches, oil wells, pickup trucks, boots and Stetsons, barbecue, and Friday night football. Underneath it is a self-image of independence and swagger, rooted in having been its own republic. “Everything’s bigger in Texas,” “Don’t Mess with Texas” (originally an anti-littering slogan), and the Lone Star flag flying as often as the U.S. flag all reinforce it. Texans tend to identify strongly with the state itself, sometimes more than with the country. But the modern image is more complicated. Texas is now associated with booming cities, tech growth in Austin, corporate relocations from California, no state income tax, and cheap land and housing, which has made it a magnet for people and companies. Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the country, and Tejano and Mexican culture is deeply woven into Texas life, from food to music. How others see it often splits along political lines. Admirers see a pro-business, low-regulation success story with personal freedom and opportunity. Critics point to its strict abortion laws, gun culture, border policy, and the 2021 power grid failure as signs of a state that underinvests in public services. Either way, Texas sees itself, and is seen by others, as a place that does things its own way.
Texas is the biggest prize in Republican politics, and its weight comes from a few things. First, there’s the electoral math. With 40 electoral votes, Texas is second only to California’s 54. It’s the GOP’s largest “safe state”, so Republicans can’t realistically win the presidency without it. If Texas ever became competitive, Republicans would have to spend heavily there (oh, say, like the $500 million they’ve pumped into Ken Paxton’s senatorial campaign), pulling money and attention from swing states, and if it flipped, the national map would effectively break for them. Texas is also projected to gain more House seats and electoral votes after the 2030 census because of its rapid population growth. In Congress, Texas sends 38 members to the House, the second-largest delegation, so its redistricting fights can affect which party controls the chamber, as the mid-decade redraw before 2026 showed. This year its Senate seat is also central: Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win the Senate, and a Texas pickup would be one of their few paths through states Trump carried.
Texas often acts as a conservative policy lab and legal battleground. Its attorneys general (like Ken Paxton) have led multistate lawsuits against Democratic administrations, and its laws on abortion, border enforcement, and guns have frequently reached the Supreme Court or been copied by other red states. Its economy, the second largest of any state, also gives it heft in energy policy, and its long border with Mexico makes it the front line of immigration politics. Texas has produced presidents (LBJ and both Bushes) and is a major source of Republican campaign donations, especially from energy and business interests.
The history of Texas plays a role in all of this. Before Europeans arrived, Texas was home to many Native peoples, including the Caddo, Comanche, Apache, and Karankawa. Spain claimed the region in the 1500s and built missions in the 1700s, including the Alamo in San Antonio. After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, Texas became part of Mexico, which invited American settlers led by Stephen F. Austin. Tensions over self-rule, immigration, and slavery led to the Texas Revolution in 1835–36. The Alamo fell in March 1836, but Sam Houston’s army won at San Jacinto that April, and Texas became an independent republic for nearly ten years. The U.S. annexed it in 1845 as the 28th state, which helped trigger the Mexican-American War. Texas seceded and joined the Confederacy in 1861. Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, when Union troops in Galveston announced emancipation. After Reconstruction the economy ran on cattle and cotton until the Spindletop oil gusher near Beaumont in 1901 made Texas an oil powerhouse. In the 20th century it grew into an industrial, aerospace (NASA in Houston), and tech center, and today it is the second-largest state by both area and population.
For about a century after Reconstruction, Texas was a one-party Democratic state. The state produced national figures: Sam Rayburn served as Speaker of the House longer than anyone else, Lyndon B. Johnson rose from the Senate to the presidency, and John Nance Garner was FDR’s first vice president. The realignment to the Republican Party started in the 1950s and 60s. Texans voted for Eisenhower, John Tower won a U.S. Senate seat in 1961 as the first Republican statewide winner since Reconstruction, and Bill Clements became the first Republican governor in over a century in 1978. Conservative voters moved toward the GOP after the civil rights era and the Reagan years. Democrat Ann Richards won the governorship in 1990, but George W. Bush beat her in 1994, and by the late 1990s Republicans held every statewide office. No Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994. The Bush family gave the state two presidents, with George H.W. Bush’s political base also in Texas. Texas has been a reliably Republican state ever since, known for low taxes, limited regulation, and conservative social policy. Its big cities, Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, lean Democratic, and its growing Hispanic population has made it a long-running “is Texas turning purple?” debate. Margins tightened in 2018 and 2020, but Republicans gained ground with Hispanic voters in South Texas in 2022 and 2024.
Democrats have been trying to turn it blue for roughly two decades, and 2026 is the most competitive attempt yet. Past efforts have always rested on demographics: a fast-growing Hispanic population and booming, diverse metro areas. Battleground Texas, launched in 2013 by former Obama campaign staff, aimed to register and turn out those voters, but Wendy Davis lost the 2014 governor’s race badly. Beto O’Rourke came closest, losing to Ted Cruz by about 2.6 points in 2018. The 2020 presidential race was billed as a breakthrough, but Trump won Texas by about 5.6 points, and in 2022 and 2024 Republicans actually gained among Hispanic voters in South Texas. In 2024, Colin Allred lost to Cruz while Trump carried the state by nearly 14 points. Republican strategists have long mocked these campaigns, with one saying Democrats have been chasing a mirage since at least 2006 and mostly enriching consultants. This year looks different. Texas Democrats are fielding a candidate in every state and federal race on the ballot, a first in modern state history for either party, betting that showing up in deep-red rural districts raises overall turnout. State Rep. James Talarico beat Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic Senate primary, and Attorney General Ken Paxton won the Republican nomination after a bruising fight with Sen. John Cornyn. Polls are tight: a Fox News poll had Talarico ahead 51% to 49%, while a YouGov poll had him up 50% to 44%. Kalshi traders recently priced the race as a coin flip. The Republican view is that Texas remains structurally red, and that any Democratic edge reflects Paxton’s personal baggage rather than a real shift. Polls showing Democrats ahead in Texas have also overstated them before.
The biggest issue seems to be that Hispanic voters have swung back toward Democrats sharply since 2024, nationally and in Texas. Nationally. Trump won about 46% of Hispanic voters in 2024, up from 32% in 2020. Now a New York Times average of high-quality polls has Democrats leading among Hispanic likely voters 64% to 29% on the generic congressional ballot. In final 2024 surveys from the same pollsters, Harris led by only about seven points. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this month found just 24% of Hispanic Americans approve of Trump’s performance, his lowest in either term. A Cook Political Report/Univision poll now shows Texas Hispanics favoring Democratic statewide candidates by about 2-to-1, with a double-digit Democratic lead in the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas. Senate polls vary widely: Emerson has Talarico up 15 points among Hispanics, the NYT/Siena poll had him up 32, and a summer TPOR poll had Paxton narrowly ahead in that group, so the size of the swing is uncertain.
Why the shift? Pocketbook issues dominate, and immigration matters but ranks lower than many assume. The top issues Latino voters will weigh in November are not unlike what the rest of the country cares about: cost of living and inflation: 60%, jobs and wages: 40%, health care: 37%, and housing: 27%. The reason this group swings is that it votes heavily on the economy, much like other working-class voters. Economic frustration helped Trump in 2024, and similar frustration is now working against Republicans.
Paul Krugman explains it well. Donald Trump won the 2024 election basically because a significant number of credulous voters believed his promises to bring prices down beginning on “day one.” What actually happened was that America, along with the rest of the world, experienced a temporary surge in inflation in 2021-22, mainly because of the lingering effects of Covid disruptions. And voters still blamed Joe Biden for that surge. But by 2024 the war against inflation had been largely won. And then Trump snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. There is no question who is responsible for the resurgence in inflation: this is all on Trump, first the tariffs and then the Iran war.
My assessment is that Texas Republicans are toast.