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Make no mistake: Blue Texas is a seismic event in American politics.
Just take it from the Republicans. Elon Musk warned that Talarico would usher in the end of the American experiment. Ted Cruz said that “if Texas falls, everything changes.”
Texas has fallen now, in almost every conceivable way.
Gina Hinojosa defeated three-term Gov. Greg Abbott. Democrats are poised to flip all 17 statewide offices that were on the ballot and take control of the Texas House of Representatives for the first time since 2002. They gained one seat in Congress from a map Republicans just redrew to flip five to the GOP.
Mother Jones national correspondent Tim Murphy drove across Texas ahead of the election, talking to many of the winning Democrats. Everywhere he went, candidates shared the same sentiment: People are sick of the lies, high costs, and blatant corruption.
“Red Texas fell, in the end, as all great empires eventually do, in bits and bobs and sudden clangs,” writes Murphy. “The myth that sustained it lost its shine. People started to die of the things they shouldn’t have. Their rulers became consumed by the struggle to control their borders, and their people. Fewer had more. And then one day, as a favor or on a whim, out of boredom or out of spite, a mad emperor tried to send his favorite horse to the Senate.”
Texas Democrats broke the map. Texas Republicans broke themselves.
Read Tim Murphy’s full story: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/11/blue-texas-james-talarico-gina-hinojosa-trump-abbott-paxton-bo-french/
Reporting by Tim Murphy
Video by Peter Berger