When Politics Needs an Enemy: The Rise of the “Other” in Republican Messaging

There is a profound difference between saying, “I disagree with this policy,” and saying, “Those people are the reason your country is falling apart.” That distinction matters because disagreement is an essential part of democracy, while fear can be used to transform disagreement into something much more consequential: the creation of an enemy.

Political parties have always used fear. American politicians have warned voters about foreign enemies, criminals, economic instability, political opponents and social upheaval for generations. Republicans are certainly not the only politicians who use emotionally charged rhetoric, and Democrats have their own history of portraying political opponents as villains. Fear is not owned by one ideology or one political party.

But over the past several years, I have found it increasingly difficult to ignore a particular pattern within prominent Republican messaging: certain groups of people are repeatedly presented not simply as populations with whom Americans might disagree about policy, but as threats to America itself. Immigrants become an “invasion.” Muslims become associated with terrorism or Sharia law. Transgender people become threats to women and children. LGBTQ+ inclusion becomes “radical gender ideology.” Political opponents become “the enemy within.” The individual issues are different, and reasonable people can have legitimate disagreements about every one of them, but the rhetorical structure connecting them is remarkably similar.

This is not an argument that every Republican hates immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people or transgender people. It would be both unfair and impossible to establish what millions of individual voters feel in their hearts. It is an argument about something we actually can examine: what prominent political leaders say, which groups they repeatedly place at the center of political conflict, how those groups are characterized, and what happens when that rhetoric is translated into political action.

And once I started looking at the pattern that way, I began noticing something that seemed increasingly difficult to dismiss as coincidence. The people being presented as threats are often people whose religion, nationality, race, sexuality or gender identity already makes them vulnerable to being perceived as outsiders. The political argument is no longer simply about what someone believes or what policy they support. Increasingly, it becomes about what someone supposedly is.

Immigration provides perhaps the clearest example.

There is nothing inherently hateful about wanting secure borders, enforcing immigration laws, limiting illegal immigration or debating how many immigrants the United States should admit. Those are legitimate questions in a democracy, and people can hold very different answers to them without hating anyone.

The problem begins when immigrants stop being presented primarily as a policy challenge and start being presented as an invading force. The Republican Party's 2024 platform did not merely promise stronger border enforcement. Its first promise was to “SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION,” followed by a commitment to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history.” The platform also described a “migrant crime epidemic” and characterized what it called an “Invasion” at the southern border.

That language changes the emotional nature of the conversation. Instead of asking how America should manage immigration, the question becomes who is invading America and how we are going to stop them. Donald Trump has repeatedly used that framing as well, describing undocumented immigrants in dehumanizing terms and portraying migration as an invasion, including claims during his 2024 campaign that migrants were “building an army” inside the United States. Once immigration is described in the language of invasion, the people themselves become part of the threat. The distinction between addressing a border and fearing the people crossing it begins to disappear.

That is what I mean by threat construction. There is an enormous difference between telling Americans that illegal immigration is a complicated governmental problem that needs to be addressed and telling them that people arriving from other countries constitute an invading force. The first invites a debate about policy. The second asks people to fear a population.

And fear is politically powerful precisely because it makes complicated problems feel simple. Housing costs are complicated. Healthcare is complicated. Inflation is complicated. Crime is complicated. Immigration is complicated. But “they are doing this to you” is easy to understand. It gives frustration a face and gives fear somewhere to go.

The same dynamic becomes even more complicated when we look at Muslims.

The Republican Party's relationship with Muslim Americans cannot honestly be reduced to a claim that Republicans are universally anti-Muslim. There are Republican Muslims. There are Republicans who advocate for religious liberty and who believe Muslims are an important part of the American community. There are undoubtedly Republican voters who would reject anti-Muslim rhetoric entirely. Those facts matter because if we are going to make a serious argument, we have to distinguish between the beliefs of millions of individual Americans and the messaging coming from influential political figures.

But Donald Trump's rise to political prominence included some of the most consequential anti-Muslim rhetoric in modern presidential politics. In 2015, he called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States, and his administration subsequently implemented travel restrictions affecting several predominantly Muslim countries. Whatever one thinks of the policy itself, that rhetoric helped establish a political vocabulary in which Islam could increasingly be discussed as a security problem rather than simply as a religion practiced by millions of Americans.

That vocabulary has continued to surface.

In Texas, for example, opposition to “Sharia law” has become a recurring political theme. But there is a basic factual question that often gets lost beneath the rhetoric: what actual mechanism exists for American Muslims to replace American law with Sharia law? Muslim Americans are subject to the same Constitution and laws as everyone else. A Muslim judge does not acquire the authority to replace American law with Islamic law, and a Muslim elected official does not acquire religious authority over the legal system simply because he or she is Muslim.

So when politicians repeatedly warn that America must be protected from “Sharia law,” we should ask what actual legislative proposal they are talking about. If there is no concrete proposal, then the political message is no longer primarily about stopping a law that someone has actually proposed. It is about making voters imagine what might happen if a group they have been taught to fear gains too much influence.

That is one of the most effective ways an out-group narrative works. The threat does not necessarily have to be happening. It only has to feel possible.

Which brings us to something that, on its face, seems almost absurdly small compared with the amount of political attention it has received: Muslim ablution facilities at Texas airports.

Wudu, or ablution, is simply the ritual washing Muslims perform before prayer. Airports have facilities that accommodate all kinds of needs, and George Bush Intercontinental Airport has an ablution facility. The controversy surrounding similar facilities at Texas airports nevertheless became a political issue, with Gov. Greg Abbott directing scrutiny toward airport facilities and state funding and framing the question in terms of religious favoritism. DFW ultimately canceled plans for an additional facility, saying the project would not deliver its anticipated operational benefits.

And I keep coming back to the sheer ordinariness of what was being discussed. Someone wanted a place to wash before praying.

That is not an endorsement of Islam. It is not the establishment of Islam as a state religion. It is not the implementation of Sharia law. It is an accommodation for a religious practice.

We don't generally consider a wheelchair ramp government endorsement of disability. We don't consider a nursing room government endorsement of parenthood. We don't consider a halal or kosher food option government endorsement of Islam or Judaism. Accommodation and endorsement are not the same thing.

Yet a facility designed to accommodate a Muslim religious practice can be transformed into evidence of a much larger cultural threat. Something as mundane as a person washing their feet before prayer becomes part of a political story about whether Islam is somehow taking over Texas.

At some point, the disproportion itself becomes worth examining. If the supposed threat is so enormous, but the thing being presented as evidence of that threat is simply a person washing before prayer, perhaps the question we should be asking is not only whether the accommodation is appropriate. Perhaps we should also ask why we have been taught to see the accommodation as frightening in the first place.

The same pattern appears in the Republican campaign against transgender participation in women's sports.

There is a legitimate policy debate here. People can disagree about competitive fairness, eligibility requirements, hormone levels, age categories and how individual sports should regulate transgender participation. Those questions deserve serious discussion, and people should be able to hold conservative positions on them without being accused of hatred.

But political messaging often strips away that complexity. The Republican Party's 2024 platform promised to “keep men out of women's sports” and described policies it opposed as “radical gender ideology.” That framing does something different from simply proposing an eligibility rule. It takes a complicated question involving a relatively small population and transforms it into an emotionally powerful image of men invading women's spaces.

Once that image is repeated often enough, people who have never met a transgender athlete can nevertheless begin associating transgender people with danger. The policy question becomes a cultural threat, and the person becomes the symbol of that threat.

That matters because the transgender debate exists within a much larger political battle over LGBTQ+ Americans. Republicans have legitimate disagreements with Democrats and LGBTQ+ advocates over parental rights, school policies, gender identity, medical care for minors and religious liberty. Those disagreements are part of democracy.

But again, the question is not whether the disagreements exist. It is how the people at the center of those disagreements are characterized.

When an entire group is repeatedly described as an ideological threat to children, families, women or American culture, the conversation begins moving away from what individual people are actually doing and toward what their existence supposedly represents. Congressional Republicans have introduced legislation that goes well beyond athletics, including proposals targeting gender-affirming care for minors. The existence of those proposals does not prove that their supporters hate transgender people, but it does demonstrate that transgender identity has become a significant target of Republican political action.

And then the issue becomes even more personal when Muslim Americans themselves enter the political arena.

The recent treatment of Abdul El-Sayed is particularly revealing because he isn't an abstract group of people crossing a border or a hypothetical religious community. He is an American running for office.

In August 2026, El-Sayed became the first Muslim nominated by the Democratic Party for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan. Republicans have every right to oppose his politics, criticize his policies and challenge his record. But some of the attacks surrounding his candidacy quickly moved beyond those questions and toward his Muslim identity.

Rep. Nancy Mace went even further, writing that “every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse” and a threat to national security and the republic.

That is no longer a disagreement about healthcare, taxes, policing or foreign policy. It is a statement about whether belonging to a particular religion should itself make an American suspect.

Imagine applying the same logic to Christians. Imagine a politician saying that every Christian holding public office was a Trojan horse and a threat to the republic. Most Americans would immediately understand that as an outrageous generalization about an entire religious group. The same standard should apply to Muslims.

Criticize El-Sayed's policies. Challenge his political philosophy. Examine his record. But his religion should not be treated as evidence of disloyalty.

The same question arose around Zohran Mamdani. Republicans have every right to oppose his socialism, housing policies, tax proposals, foreign-policy positions or any other part of his political agenda. But when his political success is characterized as evidence that he is bringing Sharia law to America, the argument has changed. It is no longer about what Mamdani actually proposes. It is about what his Muslim identity supposedly means.

And that is where the pattern becomes difficult to ignore.

The argument keeps moving from what people believe politically to what people supposedly are.

An immigrant becomes an invader. A Muslim becomes a potential extremist. A Muslim politician becomes a Trojan horse. A Muslim traveler washing before prayer becomes evidence of religious favoritism. A transgender person becomes a threat to women and children. LGBTQ+ inclusion becomes radical ideology.

The individual issues are not identical, and neither are the policies being proposed. But the rhetorical structure is remarkably similar: a particular group is associated with a threat, the threat is made emotionally immediate, and the politician offering the warning positions himself or herself as the person who can protect the public from it.

And that brings me back to something I had been thinking about before I ever turned on the movie.

While watching Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, I heard Queen Ingrith explain to Aurora what she believed made a great leader: “The ability to instill fear in your subjects and then use that fear against your enemies.” She goes on to explain that she created a story about the “evil witch,” and that it didn't matter who woke Sleeping Beauty because everyone was terrified. Eventually, the story became legend.

I didn't watch that scene and suddenly come up with this argument. I had already been thinking about the way political fear works. But hearing the idea expressed so plainly in a completely fictional story gave me language for something I had been struggling to articulate.

The frightening part isn't simply that someone can invent a story about an enemy. It is that once people are afraid, they don't necessarily need to know the person they fear. They don't necessarily need to understand the facts. They only need to know the story.

That is what makes fear such an effective political tool.

You don't have to know a Muslim personally to fear “Sharia law.” You don't have to know a transgender athlete to believe transgender people are threatening women's sports. You don't have to know an immigrant to believe immigrants are invading the country. You don't have to know a Muslim politician to believe that his religion makes him a Trojan horse.

The story can become more familiar than the person.

And once the story becomes familiar enough, it can become legend.

That is why I think the word “hate” needs to be handled carefully. I don't think wanting immigration enforcement is hatred of immigrants. Opposing gender-affirming care for minors isn't automatically hatred of transgender people. Supporting immigration restrictions isn't automatically hatred of Muslims. Opposing LGBTQ+ instruction in schools isn't automatically hatred of LGBTQ+ people. People are entitled to hold conservative positions on all of those questions.

But dehumanization is different from disagreement.

When a population is repeatedly characterized as an invasion, a disease, a threat, criminals, predators, garbage or something fundamentally incompatible with the nation, we are no longer simply debating policy. We are deciding how human beings should be understood.

And that matters because before people can be treated as outsiders, they first have to be imagined as outsiders.

That doesn't mean every politician who uses inflammatory language is consciously trying to produce some catastrophic historical outcome. It means we should understand the power of the language we normalize, particularly when the same groups are repeatedly presented as sources of danger.

The most important question, then, isn't “Are Republicans hateful?” That question is too broad to be useful, and it asks us to speculate about the inner motivations of millions of people.

The better question is this: What happens to a democracy when political success increasingly depends on convincing citizens that another group of Americans—or people living among them—is the source of their fear, anger and decline?

Because once politics becomes a contest over which group deserves blame, there is always another group waiting to be blamed. Today it may be immigrants. Tomorrow Muslims. Then transgender people. Then LGBTQ+ people. Then political opponents. And eventually, the definition of the “real American” can become so narrow that millions of actual Americans find themselves on the outside looking in.

That is why we should pay attention not only to what politicians promise to do, but to how they teach us to think about the people they promise to do it to.

A country can have fierce disagreements about borders, gender, religion, crime, schools and culture. It should. That is democracy. We should be able to argue about immigration without turning immigrants into an invading army. We should be able to debate transgender participation in sports without turning transgender people into a civilization-ending threat. We should be able to debate religious accommodations without treating a Muslim traveler washing before prayer as evidence that Sharia law is taking over America. We should be able to oppose a Muslim politician's policies without treating his religion or his name as evidence of disloyalty.

And we should be able to criticize Democrats just as vigorously.

The goal isn't to eliminate political conflict. The goal is to preserve the distinction between political disagreement and political demonization.

Because there is a line between saying, “I disagree with you,” and saying, “You are the reason America is broken.” The first is democracy. The second creates an enemy.

And when creating enemies becomes a reliable way to win elections, the question isn't simply whether the rhetoric is effective.

We should be asking what that rhetoric is doing to us.

We should ask for evidence rather than accepting slogans as facts. We should ask what actual law is being proposed, what actual problem is being solved, how large the problem really is and what the data actually shows. We should question whether we would describe the same behavior in the same way if the people involved belonged to a different religion, race, sexuality or political party. Most importantly, we should be willing to challenge politicians we support when they turn entire populations into villains.

Democracy does not require us to agree with one another, like one another or share the same vision for the country. It requires something more fundamental: that we recognize one another as human beings who belong here.

Because the easiest way to unite people is not always to give them something to believe in.

Sometimes, it is to give them someone to fear.

And that is why we should be very careful about the stories we allow to become legend.

Don't let anyone convince you that your neighbor has to become your enemy before your country can become great.

Ask questions. Check the claims. Look past the slogan. Listen for the language of threat. And when you see an entire group of people being turned into a political scapegoat, say something.

Because democracy isn't protected only at the ballot box.

It is protected every time ordinary people refuse to let fear decide who gets to belong.

When the System Feels Broken: Why Americans Can Experience the Same Problems and Vote for Completely Different Solutions

I keep thinking about a question that seems much more complicated than the usual political arguments make it sound: Why can two people look at the same country, see many of the same problems, and come away believing that completely different political movements are the answer?

I started thinking about this after reading an argument that young, college-educated voters are increasingly drawn to socialist candidates because colleges have failed to teach them enough economics. There is a legitimate question underneath that argument, but I don't think the answer is that simple.

The more interesting explanation may have less to do with whether someone went to college and more to do with what kind of insecurity they experience, what they believe caused it, and which political movement gives that frustration a convincing explanation.

And the data show that something significant really has changed.

The American political coalition is increasingly divided by education. Pew Research Center found that in 2024, voters with a bachelor's degree or higher favored Kamala Harris by 16 percentage points, while voters without a four-year degree favored Donald Trump by 14 points.

This isn't simply a story about Democrats becoming the "college party" and Republicans becoming the "working-class party." The reality is more complicated. In 2024, about 67% of Trump's voters did not have a college degree, but that was actually a smaller share than in his previous presidential campaigns. Meanwhile, Harris's coalition was almost evenly divided between college graduates and people without degrees.

Still, the educational divide is real. Pew found that 63% of White voters without a bachelor's degree identified with or leaned Republican, compared with 51% of White college graduates who leaned Democratic. That relationship has reversed dramatically from previous decades, when college graduates were more likely to align with Republicans.

So what happened?

One possibility is that different groups have developed different versions of the same frustration: "The system isn't working for people like me."

Consider a young college graduate who did everything she was told would lead to a stable middle-class life. She went to college, earned a degree, found a professional job and works hard. But she is still renting, can't afford to buy a home in the city where she works, worries about healthcare and childcare costs, and wonders whether the career she trained for will still exist in its current form ten years from now.

Her frustration might lead her to conclude that the economic system itself is the problem.

That doesn't necessarily mean she understands "socialism" as an economic system in the traditional sense. In fact, one reason political conversations become so confusing is that Americans use the word socialism to describe a wide range of policies, from universal healthcare and stronger unions to government ownership of major industries.

But there is evidence that young Americans really are becoming more skeptical of capitalism. Harvard's 2025 Youth Poll found that only 19% of young Americans identified as capitalist, down from 29% in 2020. Democratic socialism had its strongest support among college graduates in that survey: 43%, compared with 24% among young people without degrees.

That doesn't prove that college graduates are being indoctrinated or that they don't understand economics.

It may simply mean that some young people have looked at the bargain they were offered—get educated, work hard, and you'll be okay—and don't believe the bargain is holding up.

Now consider someone else.

He doesn't have a four-year degree. He works with his hands, owns a modest home or rents in a community where housing used to be affordable, and has watched good-paying jobs disappear or change. He sees the cost of groceries, insurance and housing going up. He feels that politicians talk about working people but rarely seem to understand what life actually feels like for them.

He may reach a very different conclusion.

Instead of thinking, "Capitalism is the problem," he might think, "The people running the country have forgotten people like me."

And that is where populism becomes powerful.

Populism doesn't necessarily need to convince someone that a particular economic theory is superior. It can offer something more emotionally immediate: an explanation for why life feels unfair.

You are working hard.

You are not imagining that things have changed.

The people in charge haven't listened.

The elites benefited while your community paid the price.

That message can be incredibly powerful, particularly when people feel that established institutions no longer represent them.

And here's where I think we have to be careful.

It is very easy for someone on the left to look at a working-class Trump voter and say, "You voted against your own economic interests."

But that assumes economic self-interest is the only thing being considered.

People don't vote with a spreadsheet.

They vote based on their understanding of the economy, but also their families, communities, religion, identity, experiences, fears, values, cultural beliefs and trust—or distrust—of institutions.

For some voters, immigration may feel more urgent than wages. For others, crime may matter more than taxes. For others, abortion or religious freedom may outweigh economic policy. Some voters may be motivated primarily by national identity or the belief that their culture is being dismissed.

And some may simply feel that one political party has stopped speaking to them.

That doesn't mean every political concern is equally supported by evidence. It means that people don't experience politics as a policy exam. They experience it as part of their lives.

This is also where I think discussions about MAGA, immigration and Muslims become particularly difficult.

It is entirely possible to criticize rhetoric or policies that target immigrants, Muslims or other groups without concluding that every person who votes Republican is hateful.

Those are different claims.

If someone says something dehumanizing about Muslims or immigrants, we can evaluate that statement on its own terms. We don't need to pretend it is acceptable simply because the person has legitimate economic frustrations.

At the same time, we shouldn't assume that every person who votes for Trump, identifies as MAGA, supports stricter immigration policies or has conservative views about Islam personally hates Muslims or immigrants.

Political coalitions are enormous. They contain people with different motivations.

The same principle should apply to the left.

A young person who supports democratic socialism isn't automatically economically illiterate, naive or indoctrinated. Someone can understand supply and demand and still believe that healthcare, housing or education should involve substantially more government intervention.

In fact, data suggest that working-class and college-educated Americans sometimes want surprisingly similar economic outcomes. A Center for American Progress analysis of 2024 election data found substantial support across both groups for higher minimum wages, stronger unions, higher taxes on wealthy Americans, infrastructure investment and an expanded social safety net.

That is fascinating.

Because it means the disagreement isn't always:

"One group wants workers to succeed and the other doesn't."

Sometimes people want many of the same things but disagree about who is responsible for the problem, which policies will solve it, and what trade-offs they are willing to accept.

And that distinction matters.

If someone says, "I want politicians to put American workers first," we should ask a very simple question:

What policy actually does that?

Not what does the campaign slogan say?

Not what does the candidate call himself?

Not what does the political advertisement say?

What did the policy do?

Did wages increase?

Did employment increase?

Did union membership increase?

Did healthcare become more affordable?

Did housing become more affordable?

Did grocery costs fall?

Did communities gain or lose jobs?

Who benefited?

Who paid?

What were the unintended consequences?

And perhaps most importantly: Did the people the policy was supposed to help actually become better off?

That standard should apply to everybody.

If a socialist politician promises that a government program will solve a problem, we should ask whether the program actually works.

If a Republican politician promises that tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs home, we should ask whether they actually do.

If a Democrat promises that a new social program will lower costs, we should measure whether it actually lowers costs.

If a populist promises to "fight for the working class," we should examine the legislation, not just the rhetoric.

And if a politician claims that immigrants are responsible for a particular economic problem, we should look at the evidence rather than accepting the claim simply because it fits a political narrative.

That, to me, is what gets lost when politics becomes tribal.

We start evaluating people instead of claims.

We decide that someone must be stupid because they believe something we consider obviously wrong. Or evil because they belong to a political movement we distrust. Or brainwashed because their explanation for the world doesn't make sense to us.

But human beings are rarely that simple.

Someone can have legitimate economic anxiety and reach a conclusion I think is unsupported by evidence.

Someone can have legitimate concerns about immigration and express them in a way that becomes cruel or dehumanizing.

Someone can care deeply about racial or religious equality and simultaneously support an economic policy that doesn't work as intended.

Someone can support socialism while misunderstanding basic economics.

Someone can oppose socialism while misunderstanding basic economics.

Being on the "right" side of one argument doesn't make someone right about everything else.

And perhaps that is the bigger lesson hiding underneath the original debate about college graduates and socialism.

The question shouldn't be whether college made someone liberal or whether a lack of college made someone conservative.

The better question is:

What happens when people lose faith in the system—and why do different people blame different parts of the system for their problems?

The data show that America's political coalitions really are changing. College graduates have moved increasingly toward the Democratic coalition, while voters without four-year degrees—particularly White voters—have moved increasingly toward the Republican coalition.

At the same time, younger Americans are becoming more skeptical of capitalism itself. Harvard's youth polling shows that this skepticism exists across party lines, even though support for democratic socialism is much stronger among young Democrats than Republicans.

So maybe the most important political story isn't that one group is smarter, more educated, more compassionate or more economically literate than another.

Maybe it is that a growing number of Americans don't believe the existing system is delivering the life they were promised.

The left and the populist right are offering competing explanations for why.

One says the economic system is fundamentally stacked against ordinary people.

Another says elites, globalization, government institutions and cultural changes have taken the country away from ordinary people.

Neither explanation should get a free pass.

We should be willing to test both against reality.

Because ultimately, I don't care whether a policy comes wrapped in a red, blue or socialist label.

Tell me what problem it is supposed to solve.

Show me the evidence.

Show me who benefits.

Show me who pays.

Show me what happened after we tried it.

And then let's have the courage to admit when our own side gets it wrong.

That may be a much healthier form of civic education than simply teaching people which political ideology they're supposed to believe.

Texas Is a 21st-Century State Being Governed With a 20th-Century Toolbox

Greg Abbott often seems to govern Texas as though it were a much smaller, less complicated place than it actually is. The more I have looked at the policies adopted during his time in office, the less I think this is simply about whether a particular policy is conservative or liberal. What I keep coming back to is a question of scale, modernization and whether the state is taking advantage of the tools that are available to it in 2026.

Texas is no longer simply a collection of small towns, ranches and rural communities connected by highways. It is the second-most populous state in the country, with more than 30 million residents. Between 2012 and 2022, Texas added nearly 3.9 million people, the largest population gain of any state. More than 90 percent of Texans now live in metropolitan or micropolitan counties, and the state's four largest metropolitan areas—Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin—account for more than two-thirds of the state's population. During that same decade, Austin grew by 32 percent, Dallas-Fort Worth by nearly 20 percent, Houston by nearly 19 percent and San Antonio by nearly 19 percent.

That matters because governing a state of this size and complexity requires more than simply scaling up the solutions that worked when communities were smaller. Texas now contains some of the country's largest metropolitan areas alongside remote rural communities, rapidly expanding suburbs, major universities, global corporations, enormous medical centers, technology companies and some of the most technologically sophisticated industries in the world. The state's own Comptroller has described the challenge plainly: Texas needs infrastructure capable of supporting 30 million and growing Texans, while recognizing that population growth is putting increasing pressure on transportation, water, energy, broadband and other systems.

Texas is certainly not a state that rejects technology. Abbott and state lawmakers have actively pursued semiconductor manufacturing, artificial intelligence, data centers, broadband expansion and advanced energy. Texas created its Broadband Development Office in 2021, and the state subsequently committed billions of dollars toward expanding broadband access. The state is also investing in advanced nuclear energy and grid reliability. The contradiction is that Texas can be extremely enthusiastic about bringing the technology economy into the state while still approaching many of its everyday governing problems through systems and processes that have changed very little in decades.

That distinction is important. This isn't an argument that Greg Abbott doesn't understand technology or that Texas doesn't use technology. Obviously it does. The question is whether the state is using technology merely as an addition to existing systems or whether it is allowing new technology, data and scientific knowledge to fundamentally change how those systems operate.

The difference can be seen in the state's approach to border security. Since Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in 2021, Texas has invested billions of dollars in border enforcement, including the construction of a state-funded border wall. By 2025, Texas had spent more than $3 billion on the project, while only a fraction of the planned miles had been completed. The wall has consisted of separate segments rather than a continuous barrier, in part because of the enormous geographic and property challenges involved in constructing one across Texas.

There is nothing inherently irrational about a physical barrier. A fence can be useful in particular locations, just as a door or security gate can be useful on a property. The question is whether building physical barriers across a vast and difficult landscape should be the centerpiece of a modern border-security strategy when technology allows governments to monitor enormous areas through drones, cameras, sensors, geographic information systems and other forms of surveillance and data analysis. A modern approach doesn't necessarily mean replacing every physical barrier with technology. It means using data to determine where a physical barrier is actually useful and using technology to cover the enormous areas where building one would be impractical, expensive or environmentally destructive.

The same issue comes up when we look at healthcare. Texas has some of the world's most advanced medical facilities, yet access to healthcare can look completely different depending on where a person lives. Rural communities have experienced hospital closures and reductions in services, leaving some residents with long drives to reach care. In a traditional system, when a local facility cannot provide a particular service, the solution is often to send the patient somewhere else. But technology has changed the meaning of what can be considered local healthcare. Telemedicine can connect rural clinicians with specialists in major medical centers. Remote monitoring can allow specialists to participate in a patient's care without being physically present. Electronic records allow information to move with the patient, while remote imaging and virtual intensive-care systems can extend expertise into smaller facilities.

None of that means a computer can replace an emergency room, a surgeon or a full-service hospital. It means that the choice doesn't always have to be between having a massive hospital nearby and having nothing. Technology can allow smaller facilities to provide services that previously required a patient to travel. When a rural hospital loses a specialist, for example, the question should not only be where the patient can find the next specialist. It should also include whether technology can bring some of that expertise to the community.

Education presents a similar problem, particularly in the debate over school vouchers. Texas' universal education savings account program, signed into law in 2025, gives eligible families public funds that can be used for private-school tuition and other approved educational expenses. There is a legitimate argument that families should have more choices in how their children are educated. In a relatively small community with several public schools and several private schools, a voucher could provide a family with a meaningful alternative.

But Texas is not one small community, and the availability of a theoretical choice does not necessarily mean a practical choice exists. A private school has to exist within a reasonable distance, have available space and offer a program that works for that particular child. Private schools are not required to accept every student who receives voucher eligibility. The state can provide money for a family to leave a public school, but money alone cannot create a private school where one doesn't exist or guarantee that a private school has the capacity to serve that student.

That is where the scale of Texas becomes important. A market-based solution assumes that a functioning market exists. In a small town, there may be enough schools for that model to work naturally. In a massive metropolitan area, the situation can be different again, with large school districts serving tens of thousands of students and enormous differences between neighborhoods. A rural community may have an entirely different set of options. Treating all three situations as though they have the same educational marketplace risks confusing the existence of a policy with the existence of meaningful choice.

There is also another possibility that gets less attention in the voucher debate: using technology to expand what an existing public school can offer. A school doesn't necessarily need to employ every specialist full-time if students can access specialized instruction remotely. Virtual tutoring, teletherapy, advanced online coursework, artificial-intelligence-assisted learning tools and shared digital resources can give smaller schools access to expertise they could never afford to maintain independently. That doesn't mean technology replaces teachers or that every child should learn through a screen. It means that the physical location of a school no longer has to determine the full universe of resources available to its students.

The same principle applies to voting, although this is an area where modernization has to be balanced carefully against security and public trust. Texas has moved toward systems that produce voter-verifiable paper records and has procedures for auditing election results. Those safeguards exist for good reasons. A physical record provides something that can be independently examined when electronic results are questioned.

The problem is not that Texas uses paper. The more interesting question is whether Texas has used technology to make voting substantially easier while maintaining those safeguards, or whether it has layered technology onto an already complicated process without fundamentally redesigning the experience for voters. Modernization shouldn't mean eliminating every physical component of a system simply because digital alternatives exist. It should mean asking whether each step is still necessary, whether it serves a clear purpose and whether newer technology can make the process more secure and accessible without adding unnecessary complexity.

Water is another example where Texas has made enormous investments while illustrating the difference between infrastructure and modernization. Texas faces a genuine and growing water challenge. The Texas Comptroller has projected that the state's population could increase from roughly 29 million in 2020 to 47 million by 2050, creating enormous additional demand for reliable water supplies. The state has responded with major investments in water infrastructure, including funding for new supplies, infrastructure repairs, conservation and other projects.

Those investments are necessary. Pipes have to be repaired. Water has to be transported. Communities need reliable supplies. But modern water management can go beyond simply building more infrastructure. Smart meters can identify unusual consumption. Sensors can detect leaks. Predictive analytics can identify infrastructure that is likely to fail before it does. Advanced irrigation can reduce agricultural consumption. Wastewater can be treated and reused. Real-time data can help communities understand where water is being lost rather than discovering the problem only after a shortage becomes an emergency.

In other words, the most modern water system isn't necessarily the one with the most pipes. It is the one that gets the most value out of every gallon moving through those pipes.

Energy presents the same tension on an even larger scale. Texas has experienced enormous population growth while also becoming a destination for energy-intensive industries, data centers and artificial-intelligence infrastructure. The Texas Comptroller has noted that population growth, extreme weather, electric vehicles, data centers, AI and cryptocurrency mining are all contributing to changing electricity demand.

That means Texas is dealing with an electricity system that is fundamentally different from the one it had decades ago. The traditional approach to increasing supply is familiar: build more generation and transmission. Texas certainly needs additional generation and transmission, but modern grid management can also involve battery storage, demand response, distributed generation, sophisticated forecasting and systems that allow electricity consumption to respond dynamically to grid conditions.

This is particularly important because Texas is simultaneously encouraging enormous new electricity users to locate here. Data centers can require amounts of electricity comparable to entire communities. If the state wants to become a global center for artificial intelligence and data infrastructure, it has to think beyond attracting the facilities themselves. It has to think about how those facilities interact with the grid, water supplies, roads, local communities and the people already living here.

The pattern that emerges across these issues isn't that physical infrastructure is bad or that technology is automatically good. It is that Texas often seems to treat modernization as something that happens alongside government rather than something that should fundamentally change government.

That is what I mean when I say Texas sometimes appears to be governed like a small town.

In a small town, if the local hospital can't provide a service, you send the patient to the bigger hospital. If the local school isn't meeting a student's needs, you try to find another school. If a road is congested, you build another road. If a border needs securing, you build a fence. If water is running short, you look for another source. If government needs information from you, you go to the government office and complete the process.

Those solutions make sense when the system is small enough that moving people and resources around is relatively simple.

But Texas is no longer operating at that scale. More than 90 percent of Texans live in metropolitan or micropolitan counties, and the state's four largest metropolitan areas alone contain more than 20 million people. The problems facing Houston are not necessarily the problems facing a small West Texas community, and the solution that works for a rural county may be completely impractical in Dallas or San Antonio.

The state has become too large and too technologically sophisticated for government to assume that the answer to every problem is simply to move people, build another physical structure or create another layer of rules.

There is a reason this matters beyond Greg Abbott. Abbott has been governor since 2015, but the underlying challenge is bigger than one politician. Texas has changed enormously during those years, and government has to keep changing as the population, economy and technology change. Abbott's administration has made some significant investments in modernization, particularly in broadband, energy and economic development, which makes the issue more complicated than simply labeling his administration technologically backward.

In fact, that complexity is what makes this argument worth having. Texas clearly knows how to use technology when technology is connected to economic growth. The state knows how to attract companies building the future. It knows how to invest in data centers, broadband, advanced energy and other emerging industries. What is less clear is whether the same appetite for innovation consistently extends to the systems through which ordinary Texans interact with their government.

Modernization should not mean chasing every new gadget or replacing proven systems simply because something newer exists. Sometimes the older solution really is better. A paper record may be more useful than a purely digital election record. A physical hospital will always be necessary for certain kinds of care. Roads will still have to be built. Water infrastructure will still have to be constructed. Teachers will still need classrooms.

But technology gives us the ability to do something that previous generations of government simply could not do: redesign systems around the individual rather than forcing individuals to conform to the limitations of the system.

That is the opportunity Texas should be taking more seriously.

A rural patient shouldn't necessarily have to travel hours simply because the specialist is somewhere else. A child shouldn't necessarily have to leave a school simply because that school cannot afford to employ every specialist. A border strategy shouldn't necessarily depend on putting steel into every mile of a landscape that stretches hundreds of miles. A water strategy shouldn't necessarily focus primarily on finding more water when technology can help us waste less of what we already have. An energy strategy shouldn't necessarily treat additional power generation as the only way to meet rising demand when technology can also change when and how we consume electricity.

And government itself should not be exempt from the technological transformation that it expects every other industry to embrace.

Texas has spent the last decade becoming larger, more urban, more economically powerful and more technologically sophisticated. The state's own data show just how dramatically that transformation has occurred. The population has grown by millions, the largest metropolitan areas have expanded at extraordinary rates, and new industries are creating demands that didn't exist when many of our governing systems were designed.

The challenge for Texas is no longer simply keeping up with growth. It is learning how to govern a state that has outgrown the assumptions of the past.

That doesn't require abandoning the physical world or pretending technology can solve everything. It requires something much simpler and, in some ways, much harder: a willingness to reconsider whether the way we've always done something is still the best way to do it.

The question Texas should be asking is not whether a policy sounds familiar or whether it worked somewhere else at some other time. It should be whether the policy actually works at Texas' current scale, for the people who live in the state today, using the knowledge and technology available to us today.

Texas has become a 21st-century state.

Our government should be willing to become one, too.

When Sports Become a Battleground for Civil Rights

The debate over transgender athletes is often presented as a narrow argument about sports: fairness, competition, physical differences and the rules governing women's and girls' teams. Those are legitimate policy questions, and they deserve evidence-based discussion. But the broader political debate surrounding transgender inclusion is also connected to a much larger fight over what equality under the law should mean.

One place where that broader argument can be seen clearly is the Heritage Foundation's own writing.

In July 2026, the Heritage Foundation published a paper titled “Title IX's Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity.” Heritage describes Title IX as having evolved from an anti-discrimination statute into what it calls an “engine” of feminist social engineering. The paper argues that equality should accommodate what it considers natural differences between men and women rather than pursue equal outcomes or parity.

That matters because Title IX is considerably broader than women's sports.

Enacted in 1972, Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in education programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. Athletics became one of its most visible consequences because schools receiving federal funding must provide equal athletic opportunities. Minnesota's own regulations, for example, require schools to provide equal opportunities for students of both sexes in interscholastic and intramural athletics.

The current controversy over transgender participation therefore sits inside a much older debate about sex, equality and the meaning of discrimination.

There is also an important distinction between acknowledging biological differences and using those differences to justify unequal treatment. Women's sports exist in large part because sex-based athletic differences matter to competition. At the same time, civil-rights law has historically recognized that separate or sex-specific programs can exist while still requiring equal opportunity. Minnesota law illustrates that distinction: educational institutions may operate separate athletic teams when statutory requirements are met, while discrimination in athletic programs remains subject to enforcement.

Minnesota provides an especially useful case study because transgender students have been permitted to participate in school sports consistent with their gender identity, while the state has also maintained a strong girls' athletics system. A Minnesota House research document notes that the state has allowed transgender students to participate in sports consistent with their gender identity and reports that Minnesota has had the country's highest percentage of girls' sports participation for more than a decade.

That doesn't settle every question about transgender participation. It does, however, challenge the idea that recognizing transgender students automatically destroys girls' sports.

It is also important to look carefully at what political organizations are actually arguing rather than attributing motives to everyone involved.

Heritage's 2026 paper explicitly argues against the current Title IX framework and says that its approach to sex differences should be reconsidered. That is a documented position. Whether someone agrees with Heritage's reasoning is a separate question.

The same distinction matters when discussing women's economic status. Employment statistics can show whether women's employment, unemployment or labor-force participation is rising or falling, but a monthly change cannot by itself establish why it happened or demonstrate that a particular political strategy caused it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the appropriate source for those claims, and its employment data are regularly revised as additional information becomes available.

That is why the conversation about transgender athletes deserves more than slogans from either side.

We can acknowledge that males and females, on average, have meaningful physiological differences relevant to competitive sport without turning those differences into a claim that women are inherently inferior. We can support women's athletics without treating transgender people as inherently threatening. We can debate eligibility rules without abandoning the broader principle that people should not be subjected to discrimination simply because of who they are.

The real policy question is not whether biological differences exist. They do.

The harder question is how the law should account for those differences while preserving equal opportunity and protecting people from discrimination.

That conversation should be driven by evidence, transparent policy arguments and actual legislation—not fear, stereotypes or viral political talking points.

If we care about women's sports and civil rights, we should demand both: strong protections for women's athletic opportunities and strong protections against discrimination. Those principles don't have to be enemies.

Start with the primary sources. Read what policymakers and advocacy organizations actually propose, check the underlying data, and distinguish documented policy positions from claims about someone's motives. That's how we have a serious conversation about equality.

If You Want More Babies, You Have to Support the People Raising Them

There is a particular phrase that keeps coming up in conversations about paid maternity and parental leave: “Corporations give and give.”

That framing leaves out a rather important part of the economic story.

American workers have become substantially more productive over the past several decades, but their compensation has not increased proportionally. According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 1979 to 2019, U.S. net productivity increased 59.7%, while compensation for a typical worker increased only 15.8%. That is a 43.9-percentage-point gap between productivity growth and compensation growth. If median hourly compensation had grown at the same rate as productivity over that period, EPI estimates the median worker would have been earning approximately $9 more per hour.

That does not mean businesses contribute nothing to productivity. Technology, investment, management, capital and entrepreneurship all matter. But workers are not passive recipients of corporate generosity. They are part of the production process that creates the goods and services businesses sell and the revenue those businesses generate.

The distinction becomes even more important when compensation includes benefits.

Paid leave is compensation. Health insurance is compensation. Retirement contributions are compensation. These are not necessarily corporations handing workers a gift out of the goodness of their hearts. They are components of the overall employment relationship and, in many cases, tools employers use to recruit and retain workers.

The federal government itself recognizes the economic value of paid parental leave. The Government Accountability Office found that most federal civilian employees became eligible for up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave beginning in 2020. GAO also found that the benefit can make federal employment more attractive and can improve employee morale and retention.

So paid parental leave can be understood as both a family benefit and a workforce policy.

That matters because the United States remains an international outlier. The OECD reports that the United States is the only OECD country without a national paid maternity-leave scheme. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act provides eligible workers with up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave, but that leave is generally unpaid, and the Department of Labor states that there is currently no federal law guaranteeing paid family and medical leave for private-sector workers.

And paid leave isn't some uniquely socialist invention.

Canada has paid maternity and parental benefits. Australia has government-funded Paid Parental Leave. Germany provides paid maternity protection and parental benefits. Japan and South Korea have paid maternity and parental-leave systems. The United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and New Zealand also provide forms of paid maternity or parental leave.

These are market economies. They have private businesses, private investment, competition and profits.

Capitalism clearly does not collapse when parents receive paid time away from work after having a child.

In fact, the economic case for supporting parents extends beyond the first few months of a baby's life. The OECD notes that parental-leave systems can help mothers remain connected to the labor market and return to work after childbirth. It also points out that employers can benefit because retaining experienced workers can be preferable to permanently replacing them.

This is where the current political conversation about having more children becomes especially interesting.

There is an increasingly visible pronatalist movement on the American right—people arguing that the country needs higher birth rates and more children. Vice President JD Vance has been one of the most prominent political voices making that case. At the January 2025 March for Life, Vance said, “I want more babies in the United States of America.” He also said that it should be easier for young parents to afford children and that government has a role in making that possible.

That isn't merely rhetoric about babies. It is an argument about economic policy.

And Vance's position deserves some nuance. He has not simply rejected paid family leave. During the 2024 vice-presidential debate, he said, “I think there is a bipartisan solution here” when asked about paid family leave, and he pointed out that his wife had benefited from paid family leave through her employer. He did not, however, commit to a specific national paid-leave program.

That distinction is important because the criticism should be aimed at the policy gap, not an inaccurate caricature of an individual politician.

Other prominent figures in the conservative movement have been considerably more explicit about prioritizing motherhood and larger families over career considerations.

In June 2026, Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA, told attendees at the organization's Women's Leadership Summit in San Antonio: “Have more babies than you can afford.” CNN's transcript confirms the statement and shows the audience cheering afterward. The conference promoted early marriage, motherhood and traditional gender roles.

Kirk had already argued in 2025 that young women should not look to government as a substitute for marriage or delay family formation for career ambitions. At The New York Times' DealBook Summit, she said she did not want young women to “look to the government as a solution to put off having a family or a marriage” and instead emphasized the financial support spouses can provide one another.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration considered a $5,000 baby bonus as a way to encourage Americans to have more children. Trump responded when asked about the proposal, “Sounds like a good idea to me.” No final federal baby-bonus program was established from that proposal, but its consideration illustrates how explicitly birth rates have entered the policy conversation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting Americans to be able to have the families they want. A declining birth rate can have significant long-term economic consequences, including a smaller future workforce supporting an aging population.

But encouraging people to have children and making it economically possible to raise those children are two different policy questions.

The second one requires more than a speech about the blessings of motherhood.

The United States has some of the highest child-care costs among wealthy countries, and roughly three-quarters of Americans surveyed by AP-NORC in 2025 said child-care costs were a major problem. The same polling found broad support for policies such as free or low-cost day care and requiring employers to provide paid family leave.

That disconnect matters.

A person can believe children are blessings and still recognize that babies come with very real economic costs. A newborn does not stop requiring food, housing, medical care or child care because someone has told their parents that motherhood is their highest calling.

And the economic consequences are not evenly distributed.

Paid family leave access has historically been much more common among higher-paid workers than lower-paid workers. A 2021 analysis by the Senate Joint Economic Committee found that only 23% of American workers had access to paid family leave, with access substantially higher among higher-wage workers than lower-wage workers.

That means the people who can most easily absorb an unpaid period away from work are often the people who need paid leave the least.

For a high-income professional with substantial savings, an employer-provided benefit and a supportive workplace, taking several weeks away from work can be manageable.

For a worker living paycheck to paycheck, unpaid leave can mean falling behind on rent, utilities, groceries or other necessities.

That is why reducing paid parental leave to “corporations giving away money” misses the economic reality.

The larger question is how the gains produced within an economy are distributed and whether the employment system gives workers enough stability to participate fully in both work and family life.

The productivity numbers are difficult to ignore. From 1979 to 2019, productivity rose nearly four times as much as compensation for the typical worker—59.7% versus 15.8%. And more recently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that annual-average nonfarm business productivity increased 2.3% in 2024, while real hourly compensation increased 2.0%.

The point isn't that every dollar of productivity growth should automatically become a dollar of wages. Economic growth has multiple inputs, and compensation is only one way workers share in the gains.

The point is that workers are not starting from a position where corporations have been endlessly showering them with benefits while receiving nothing in return.

Workers already contribute enormous economic value.

Paid parental leave is one relatively small way of recognizing that workers are human beings whose responsibilities do not disappear when they clock out. It can help families remain financially stable, help employees remain attached to the workforce, and help employers retain experienced people.

And if political leaders genuinely want Americans to have more children, the conversation should extend beyond encouraging birth.

It should include what happens after the baby arrives.

A serious family policy means considering paid parental leave, affordable child care, health care, housing, wages, workplace flexibility and the ability to take time away from work without putting a family's financial stability at risk.

Telling people to have more babies while dismissing the economic infrastructure that allows them to raise those babies is not a complete family policy.

It is an incomplete economic argument.

And calling paid parental leave “socialism” doesn't make much sense when wealthy capitalist economies around the world have already demonstrated that paid leave and market economies can coexist.

The United States can choose a different approach. But that choice should be based on evidence rather than the assumption that every benefit given to a worker is an act of corporate charity.

If we are serious about supporting families, let's stop arguing over political labels and start measuring outcomes. Look at productivity. Look at compensation. Look at child-care costs. Look at parental-leave policies in other capitalist economies. Then decide what kind of economy actually allows people to work, raise children and build stable lives. Follow the data—and hold policymakers accountable for whether their family policies actually support families after the baby is born.

Nearly Three Decades of One-Party Rule: What Are Texans Getting for It?

Texas Republicans have controlled the governor’s office since 1994. Republicans have also held a majority in the Texas Senate since 1997 and the Texas House since 2003. In other words, Texas has had decades of relatively uninterrupted Republican control of state government. That matters when evaluating the state's problems because many of the policies affecting Texans’ health care, schools, electricity, taxes, insurance and local governments are not decisions being made in Washington. They are decisions being made in Austin.

That does not mean every problem in Texas is the fault of one political party. It would be intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise. Weather affects insurance costs. Population growth affects housing and electricity demand. Inflation affects school budgets. Federal policies affect Medicaid and health care. Markets matter.

But the reverse is also true: when a political party has controlled state government for decades, it is reasonable to ask what that government has actually accomplished—and what problems remain unresolved.

The question should not be, “Is Texas red or blue?”

The better question is: Are the policies being pursued by Texas government producing good results for Texans?

Health Care: Texas Made a Choice Not to Expand Medicaid

Perhaps the clearest example is Medicaid.

Under the Affordable Care Act, states were given the option to expand Medicaid to adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level. As of May 2026, 41 states, including Washington, D.C., have adopted the expansion. Texas is one of the 10 states that have not.

This isn't simply a federal-versus-state argument. The Supreme Court's 2012 decision made Medicaid expansion optional, meaning Texas policymakers have repeatedly had the authority to decide whether to participate.

The consequences are measurable.

KFF estimates that approximately 1.2 million uninsured people across the 10 non-expansion states fall into the Medicaid “coverage gap”—earning too much to qualify for their state's traditional Medicaid program but too little to qualify for ACA Marketplace subsidies. Texas has the nation's lowest Medicaid income eligibility threshold for parents: a family of three earning more than approximately $4,098 annually is above the state's parent eligibility limit. Adults without dependent children generally cannot qualify for Medicaid based solely on low income.

And the broader difference is significant. KFF reports that states that have not expanded Medicaid have an uninsured rate of 14.5%, compared with 8.0% in expansion states.

Texas also continues to perform poorly on several health-system measures. The Commonwealth Fund's state data show Texas' maternal mortality rate at 34.7 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 26.3 nationally.

To be fair, Texas has made some positive changes. The state extended Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months, an important improvement for new mothers. But that does not erase the larger coverage problem created by remaining a non-expansion state.

That distinction matters. Good policy should be acknowledged when it happens—even when you disagree with the people who enacted it.

Electricity: The Texas Grid Is Not an Accident

The Texas electricity market provides another example of why state policy matters.

Texas intentionally built a distinctive electricity market based heavily on competition and relatively limited regulation. In 1999, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 7, restructuring the state's electricity industry and deregulating electricity generation and retail competition in parts of the state. Texas law still explicitly states that electricity production and sale are not considered a monopoly requiring traditional regulation of rates, operations and services.

That doesn't mean every problem with the Texas grid was caused by deregulation. The 2021 winter storm, for example, involved extreme weather, failures across multiple parts of the energy system, natural-gas supply problems, generation outages and other factors.

But the structure of the electricity market is absolutely a state policy choice.

And Texas is now confronting another enormous challenge: electricity demand is growing rapidly. Data centers, industrial projects, population growth and other large electricity users are creating enormous new demand. ERCOT has responded by changing how large users connect to the grid, including a new process for studying projects of 75 megawatts or more so that new demand can be matched with available capacity and necessary transmission upgrades.

The important question isn't whether Texas should have a competitive electricity market. That's a legitimate policy debate.

The question is whether the state is adapting that market quickly enough to keep electricity reliable and affordable as Texas grows.

Taxes: No State Income Tax Doesn't Mean Texans Don't Pay Taxes

Texas is famous for not having a state individual income tax. But the absence of an income tax doesn't mean Texans don't pay taxes—it means the state relies more heavily on other revenue sources, including property and sales taxes.

Property taxes have become a particularly important political issue.

In 2025, Texas lawmakers approved more than $51 billion in property-tax cuts through the state budget and related legislation. The new laws raised the standard homestead exemption to $140,000, with a $200,000 exemption for homeowners who qualify because of age or disability.

That is a substantial tax cut, and homeowners who receive it should absolutely be allowed to count it as a benefit.

But there is another side to the equation: property taxes are a major source of funding for local governments and public schools. When the state reduces property-tax revenue, policymakers have to consider how schools, cities and counties will maintain services and replace lost revenue.

So again, the issue isn't simply “tax cuts are good” or “tax cuts are bad.”

The question is: Who pays less, who pays more, and what happens to the public services those taxes help fund?

Homeowners Insurance: A State Problem With State and Non-State Causes

Homeowners insurance offers another example of why policy debates need more nuance.

Texas homeowners have faced steep increases in insurance costs. According to the Texas Department of Insurance, statewide homeowners insurance rate changes averaged 21.1% in 2023 and another 18.7% in 2024.

Those increases cannot fairly be blamed entirely on Texas lawmakers.

Texas has hurricanes, hail, tornadoes, wildfires and other severe weather. Construction and repair costs have increased. Population growth means more homes and more property exposed to risk. Climate-related changes can also affect insurance losses.

But state regulation still matters.

Texas lawmakers control the state's insurance regulatory framework, and they have debated measures intended to increase oversight of rate increases, improve consumer protections and reduce the risks that make insurance more expensive. The difficulty is finding a balance between protecting consumers and maintaining an insurance market in which companies are willing to continue writing policies.

That is precisely why this issue shouldn't be reduced to partisan slogans.

Texas homeowners don't care whether the insurance company or the Legislature has the better talking point. They care whether they can afford to insure their homes.

Public Education: A Major Investment Doesn't Erase Years of Decisions

Education provides perhaps the clearest example of why the phrase “Texas is doing great” requires context.

In 2025, the Legislature approved approximately $8.5 billion in new public-school funding. The package included money for teacher and staff pay, special education, school operations, safety, educator preparation and early learning. The Texas Education Agency describes it as the largest one-time public education investment in recent memory.

That investment deserves to be recognized.

But it also came after years in which the basic per-student funding formula had remained stagnant. The Texas Tribune reported that districts had experienced six years of stagnant base per-student funding while inflation and other operating costs increased.

And even after the $8.5 billion investment, school districts continued reporting serious financial pressures. In 2026, Texas school leaders told lawmakers that districts were still facing budget problems, with some eliminating positions or closing campuses.

That doesn't mean the $8.5 billion was meaningless. It means public policy should be judged by outcomes over time, not simply by the size of a single legislative appropriation.

Vouchers: A New Policy Choice Texans Can Now Evaluate

Texas also made a major change to education policy by creating a statewide school-choice program.

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, established through Senate Bill 2 in 2025, allows eligible families to use state funds for approved educational expenses, including private-school tuition, tutoring, career and technical education and certain homeschool expenses.

The program launched for the 2026–27 school year. By June 2026, more than 102,000 students had been awarded accounts, while nearly 145,000 remained on the waitlist.

Supporters see this as an expansion of parental choice. Critics worry about the implications for public-school finances and whether public money should subsidize private education.

Both sides can make legitimate arguments.

But now that Texas has made the policy choice, the debate can move beyond ideology and into measurement.

What happens to public-school enrollment?

What happens to student achievement?

Who benefits financially?

How much does the program cost taxpayers?

Do students who leave public schools experience better outcomes?

And does the program improve educational opportunity for low-income families, or primarily subsidize families who were already choosing private education?

Those are empirical questions. Texans should demand the data.

Local Control: Austin Has Increasingly Limited What Cities Can Do

Another issue that deserves more attention is the relationship between the state and local governments.

Texas has increasingly used state law to limit the authority of cities and counties to regulate certain issues. Housing is one particularly important example.

During the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers considered and enacted measures affecting municipal authority over residential development, zoning and occupancy. For example, Senate Bill 15 addressed residential lot size and density requirements in certain municipalities, while Senate Bill 1567 addressed municipal regulation of residential occupancy.

Whether those restrictions are good policy is debatable.

But the larger political point is not.

When the state Legislature restricts what cities can regulate, it becomes harder to blame local governments for every problem occurring within their borders.

If Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio or another Texas city is limited by state law in what it can regulate, then state lawmakers are part of the policy equation.

You cannot simultaneously argue that Texas cities should be held responsible for local outcomes while repeatedly limiting their ability to make local policy.

Housing: Texas Is Building, But Not Necessarily Fast Enough for Demand

Texas has long benefited from comparatively lower housing costs than many coastal states. But that advantage has been eroding.

A 2025 analysis cited an estimate from housing policy organization Up For Growth that Texas needed approximately 320,000 additional homes to meet housing demand. Despite Texas building more homes than any other state, population and economic growth have created demand faster than supply in many markets.

That shortage matters because housing economics are straightforward: when demand grows faster than supply, prices and rents face upward pressure.

Texas lawmakers have increasingly focused on housing supply and local regulations, including efforts to limit certain local development restrictions.

Again, reasonable people can disagree about the best solution.

But the affordability problem demonstrates why state policy matters. Decisions about zoning, density, development regulations, property taxes and infrastructure all influence how much housing can be built and what it costs.

The Bigger Picture

None of this proves that every Republican policy is bad.

It doesn't.

Texas has experienced tremendous population and economic growth. The state has attracted businesses and residents from around the country. Lawmakers have made substantial investments in public education, increased the homestead exemption, expanded postpartum Medicaid coverage and taken steps to address the electricity grid and housing supply.

Those accomplishments should be acknowledged.

But acknowledging them does not require Texans to stop asking questions.

If anything, decades of one-party control make accountability more important—not less.

A political party that has controlled the governor's office since 1994, the Senate since 1997 and the House since 2003 has had ample opportunity to shape the state's direction.

So when statewide Republican candidates gather to “chart the course to victory,” Texans should ask a very simple question:

What course?

A course toward what measurable outcomes?

More affordable health care?

A lower uninsured rate?

A reliable and affordable electric grid?

More affordable homeowners insurance?

Better-funded and better-performing public schools?

More affordable housing?

Sustainable local government finances?

Those are the metrics that matter.

Political victories are not the same thing as policy victories.

And party labels are not substitutes for results.

If Texas Republicans believe their policies are working, they should welcome an evidence-based comparison. Show Texans the numbers. Show us where the state has improved, where it has fallen behind, what policies produced those outcomes and what you intend to do differently where the results aren't good enough.

Because government isn't supposed to exist simply to preserve a political party's hold on power.

It is supposed to work for the people who live here.

After nearly three decades of one-party control, Texans are more than justified in asking whether the state's political leadership is working for us—or simply working to remain in power.

A Timeline of Claims vs. Evidence: Examining the Trump Administration's Record Through August 2026

Every presidential administration makes bold promises and ambitious claims. In a healthy democracy, those claims are tested against economic data, government records, independent research, and reporting from across the political spectrum. Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, fact-checking organizations, economists, federal agencies, and foreign policy analysts have repeatedly examined many of the administration's headline statements. Their findings reveal a recurring pattern: several of the administration's most widely promoted narratives have not aligned with the available evidence.

One of the administration's earliest economic arguments was that it inherited "the worst inflation in the history of our country." Historical data tells a different story. When President Trump took office in January 2025, the annual inflation rate was approximately 3%, far below the pandemic-era peak and nowhere near the record inflation of more than 14% experienced in 1980. While inflation remained an important concern for many Americans, economists across the political spectrum noted that describing it as the worst in U.S. history was historically inaccurate.

Tariffs quickly became another cornerstone of the administration's economic messaging. President Trump repeatedly argued that foreign governments were paying billions of dollars into the U.S. Treasury through tariffs. Trade economists, however, have consistently explained that tariffs are paid by U.S. importers when goods enter the country. Those additional costs are often passed along to wholesalers, retailers, and ultimately consumers through higher prices. Multiple economic analyses found no evidence that foreign governments were directly paying these taxes on behalf of American businesses.

The administration also promoted claims that it had generated between $18 trillion and $19.2 trillion in new domestic investment. Independent analysts questioned those figures immediately. For perspective, the entire U.S. economy produces roughly $28 trillion in goods and services annually. Reviews by independent fact-checkers concluded that the White House's numbers relied heavily on announced pledges, proposed projects, or loosely defined commitments rather than verified capital investments. Actual foreign direct investment was measured in the hundreds of billions—not tens of trillions—of dollars.

Employment statistics followed a similar pattern. The administration highlighted that more Americans were working than ever before. While the raw number of employed Americans did increase, economists noted that population growth naturally raises that figure over time. The employment rate—the percentage of Americans actually employed—declined slightly compared with January 2025, while unemployment rose modestly during the administration's first year. Likewise, claims of adding 70,000 construction jobs exceeded Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which recorded a smaller increase.

Immigration became another area where official records frequently differed from political rhetoric. President Trump repeatedly asserted that "zero illegal immigrants" had entered the United States after January 2025. Department of Homeland Security data showed that border encounters dropped substantially following stricter enforcement policies but never reached zero. Border crossings continued to occur throughout the period, even as overall numbers declined.

Another recurring claim alleged that foreign governments were deliberately emptying prisons and mental institutions into the United States. Criminologists, intelligence agencies, and independent investigations have repeatedly reported that no evidence supports the existence of any coordinated international effort of that nature. Although isolated individuals with criminal histories have crossed borders, researchers found no documentation of a systematic government-directed program matching the administration's description.

Crime statistics were also the subject of significant exaggeration. The administration claimed that murders in Washington, D.C., had fallen by nearly 100% and that the United States had achieved its lowest murder rate in 125 years. While many cities experienced fluctuations in violent crime, official crime data showed that homicide rates remained well above historic lows and certainly had not approached a complete elimination in the nation's capital.

On the international stage, President Trump frequently stated that he had ended eight wars during his first year back in office. Independent reviews found that several of the listed conflicts were either ongoing, represented temporary ceasefires, or did not meet the standard definition of active wars. Some diplomatic efforts did produce pauses in fighting, but major conflicts involving Israel, Hamas, Iran, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and others continued or later resumed.

The administration also claimed credit for personally brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Indian government officials publicly disputed that characterization, stating that the agreement resulted from direct bilateral negotiations rather than U.S. mediation. Military recruitment figures were similarly described as "record-breaking," yet Defense Department data showed improvements without establishing historic records.

Some of the most unusual claims involved highly personal anecdotes. President Trump stated that Maryland Governor Wes Moore approached him in tears and called him "the greatest president of my lifetime." Footage recorded during the encounter did not support that account, and no such statement appeared in the publicly available video.

Public health messaging also drew criticism. In 2025, statements published by the White House suggested a direct link between Tylenol use and autism. Medical organizations and scientific researchers responded that the available body of evidence does not establish a causal relationship between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism, contradicting the certainty implied by the administration's messaging.

Taken individually, political exaggerations are hardly new. Every administration has faced corrections from journalists and fact-checkers. What distinguishes this period, according to organizations such as the Associated Press, PolitiFact, and numerous independent analysts, is the frequency with which major policy claims have conflicted with documented evidence across multiple subject areas, including inflation, tariffs, employment, immigration, crime, public health, and foreign affairs. Rather than relying solely on campaign rhetoric or political messaging, these reviews emphasize the importance of comparing public statements with measurable data, official government statistics, and independently verifiable records.

For voters, regardless of political affiliation, the broader lesson extends beyond any single administration. Democracies function best when claims are evaluated against evidence, statistics are placed in their proper historical context, and public officials are held accountable to facts that can be independently verified.