Democrats underwent a dramatic change in their 2024 presidential ticket ahead of their convention, going from stubborn stasis, to despair and disarray, to a seemingly reinvigorated unity in a matter of just a few weeks. But on the Republican side—despite a few moments in the spotlight for now-also-rans Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley—it’s long been clear that Donald J. Trump would be the party’s nominee as he makes his bid for a presidential comeback.
Electorally speaking, Texas is unlikely to play any surprising role in the outcome of November’s contest as Trump is expected to extend the state’s 48-year streak of voting for Republican presidential candidates. But the titans of politics and industry who run this state are still doing everything they can to ensure their man gets back into office and delivers them their spoils—damn the consequences for ordinary Texans, who will face the brunt of the harm and havoc he unleashes.
Trump reluctantly left the White House on January 20, 2021, while still falsely claiming President Joe Biden stole the election, weeks after encouraging an insurrectionary mob to storm the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the election results by any means necessary. A makeshift gallows was on standby outside, where crowds shouted “Hang Mike Pence!”
Emboldened by a failed assassination attempt this July and the cultish backing of a Republican Party now unquestionably remade in his image, Trump’s presidential encore would be even more unfettered, more unsparing, more openly fascistic than his first performance. He could also be far more effective in achieving his aims.
Trump’s historic upset win way back in 2016 caught most in the GOP entirely off-guard. From the initial transition onward, Trump’s first term was marred by perpetual sideshows, infighting, and dissent within the White House and federal agencies, which prevented hardline ideologues from successfully instituting many of their most radical policies.
Since Biden defeated Trump in 2020, conservative activists have been carefully planning for the next Republican White House by drawing up a detailed 900-plus-page blueprint for their sweeping agenda of both bog-standard conservative priorities and more new-age radicalism. This agenda would hinge on consolidating the president and his appointees’ executive power over the entire federal government, purging thousands of workers in the federal bureaucracy, and installing vetted loyalists.
Then would come the expansive enactment of industry deregulation and new restrictions targeting abortion and contraceptives, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ protections. The plan is to do this with maximal efficiency and speed and with limited legal resistance—thanks to a Trump-installed conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The lead architect of all this is the right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, which has detailed the full scope of its second-term schemes under the banner of the now-infamous Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, is well known to followers of Texas politics as he previously led the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which itself served as a key pipeline for policy and personnel during Trump’s first term.
Appearing on former Trump operative Steve Bannon’s podcast over the summer, Roberts said conservatives are in the middle of leading a “second American Revolution,” ominously suggesting that it would be bloodless only “if the left allows it to be.” The subtitle of his book on Project 2025 was initially “Burning Down Washington to Save America,” and it featured a match on the cover.
Democrats have aggressively publicized every draconian detail of Project 2025 as a preview of Trump’s extremist intentions for a second term, leading the former president to attempt to distance himself from the right-wing policy manifesto. “They are extreme, they’re seriously extreme, but I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said, dubiously, of those behind Project 2025. His running mate, Ohio’s junior U.S. Senator JD Vance, meanwhile, wrote the forward to Roberts’ book and has praised him for remaking the once-stodgy Heritage Foundation into the “institutional home of Trumpism.”
Calling to mind how the reactionary oil barons known then as the Texas Regulars sought to take out FDR in the 1940s, Trump has relied on Texas’ big oil and gas billionaires, who are decrying Biden’s oppressive clean energy initiatives while they continue raking in record profits. The Midland fundamentalist mega-donor Tim Dunn gave Trump $5 million last year. Pipeline moguls like Kelcy Warren and Jeffery Hildebrand have also been key fundraisers.
Texas’ top elected Republicans are, of course, also among Trump’s most vocal boosters, as they stand to directly benefit from a second term. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a frequent companion on the campaign trail, could be in line for a cabinet position. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick wields his personal relationship with the former president as a political bludgeon to advance his legislative agenda and undercut his enemies. Trump’s return to the White House would likely serve to further entrench Patrick’s role as the big dog at the Lege.
While Governor Greg Abbott has spent the past four years inciting various legal skirmishes with the Biden administration by attempting to usurp federal authority over immigration enforcement, he would work hand in glove with the nativist zealots in Trump’s camp like Stephen Miller who are preparing to reengineer American immigration and asylum laws and to round up and deport potentially millions of undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers currently living and working in this country. This would, of course, devastate states like Texas, whose surging economic growth is propped up by a large, cheap, itinerant labor force of undocumented workers.
Abbott, whom Trump briefly considered as a possible veep pick, would likely serve as Trump’s general on the southern front of the border war, with the governor’s Operation Lone Star effectively rolling into Trump’s federal immigration schemes. Abbott’s large National Guard deployment at the border, and soldiers’ cruel tactics and use of force to repel migrants at the Rio Grande, would likely only intensify under a federal mandate. The Texas borderlands would once again host detention centers overflowing with migrants (or deportation camps). Trump’s border wall construction, which Abbott has continued at the state level, would likely return with a renewed fury.
Perhaps no one would benefit more from Trump’s ascendance than Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been a faithful acolyte and coconspirator. Trump, who personally took credit for saving Paxton from impeachment last year, could very well appoint Paxton as his U.S. attorney general—helming the same Department of Justice that is currently investigating Paxton for suspected bribery and corruption, and the same federal law enforcement agencies that Trump, Paxton, and other right-wingers have pledged to dismantle.
And even if he doesn’t become the top lawman in America, Paxton’s platform as Trump’s favorite state AG could easily launch him into the U.S. Senate if he decides to take on John Cornyn (the rare Texas Republican whose own ambitions could be hurt by a Trump win).
Abbott and crew have ruled the state with an increasingly authoritarian streak over the past several years, turning Texas into a cautionary example of what Trump may usher in nationwide if he wins a second term.
If Trump loses, the country just may finally be rid of him. Texas, however, may not have the same luck. As he mused at the NRA convention in Dallas earlier this year, “I want to move to Texas, and I want to retire in Texas.
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