Karl Rove Warns of Potential Loss of Republican Seats in Texas
Longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove has raised concerns about the potential loss of Congressional seats in Texas, a traditionally red state, due to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Rove, who served as a senior advisor to George W. Bush, highlighted that the Republican Party could lose many of the Latino voters they gained in 2024, particularly because of recent ICE raids.
‘This is a variable group whose movement into the Republican column in 2024 helped elect Donald Trump to a second term and helped Republicans hold the Senate and the House,’ Rove stated during an appearance on Fox News.
According to Pew Research, around 50 percent of Latinos voted for Trump in 2024. However, recent polling shows that 70 percent of them disapprove of the president’s performance in his first year back in office. Rove pointed out that this decline in support is already visible in Texas, despite initial enthusiasm for border security measures.
Rove identified split districts as a key issue, where Trump won but Democrats managed to retain some Congressional seats. He cited districts like the 34th, which Trump narrowly won, and the 28th, where centrist Democrat Henry Cuellar refused to switch parties after receiving a pardon from Trump on money laundering charges.
‘If his support is softening among Hispanics, that makes it unlikely that we’re going to be able to knock off an incumbent Democrat,’ Rove said.
Every Congressional seat in Texas is up for election in 2026, along with one of its Senate seats. A poll conducted by a/JL Partners in November found that Trump’s immigration policies were among the top three reasons voters are souring on him.
These polls were conducted before the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota by ICE agents and the subsequent liberal protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Even before these events, Trump’s net approval on ICE operations had dropped four points, indicating that even tough immigration enforcement has its limits with voters.
The White House responded to the poll results, stating that Trump has ‘already delivered on many of the promises he was elected to enact.’ According to White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, Trump has secured the border, tackled Biden’s inflation crisis, lowered drug prices, ended taxes on tips, overtime, and social security, cooled inflation, deported criminal illegal aliens, and implemented reforms that put American workers first.
However, a progressive Democratic operative told a different story, claiming that Trump ‘failed’ to ‘fix’ the issues he promised to address. Bradley Beychok of American Bridge criticized Trump’s ‘tariff circus’ as the root of the economic downturn, suggesting that more challenges lie ahead.
Hispanic and young voters represent the largest demographic abandoning their support for Trump, with only 36 percent of each group expressing approval. Immigration attorney Benjamin Peña emphasized the human element of the situation, stating that witnessing the inhumane treatment of immigrants plays a significant role in declining approval.
Those who approve of the president point to his record on border security and improving crime and safety as the primary reasons for their positive view of the administration. This focus on border security became a cornerstone of Trump’s 2016 ‘build the wall’ campaign and resurfaced as a major issue in 2024 following record-breaking illegal immigration under former President Joe Biden and a spike in violent crime across the U.S.
With an overall margin of 10 percent among all 1,246 respondents, voters are becoming increasingly disillusioned with Trump’s approach to politics. Specifically, 41 percent of those who disapprove of the president say the way Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been tasked with enforcing Trump’s immigration agenda is why they don’t support the current administration.
