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Tag: James Talarico

  • Cornyn’s Nasty Attack on Paxton May Haunt Texas Republicans

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    Photo-Illustration: Cornyn Lonestar Victory Fund

    In many years of observing politics, I’ve seen a lot of nasty, negative ads between primary opponents who belong to the same party. But for sheer volume of vitriol, the latest John Cornyn ad against Ken Paxton, his opponent in the Texas GOP Senate primary, is hard to top:

    As Inside Elections reporter Jacob Rubashkin points out, this wildly negative ad is co-sponsored by the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, whose fundamental purpose is to maintain GOP control of the upper chamber. Cornyn’s seat is one that could very well become the key to a Democratic takeover of the Senate, which was thought to be highly improbable just months ago. So the very people running this ad calling Paxton a despicable family-wrecking, corrupt, and LGBTQ-loving piece of garbage may soon be backing his general-election candidacy to the absolute hilt. Paxton is the favorite in a toxic contest that will almost certainly go to a May runoff, in which his brand of fierce MAGA conservatives are likely to dominate turnout.

    Democrats have their own issues in this race: U.S. representative Jasmine Crockett and state legislator James Talarico are locked in a close and increasingly fractious primary of their own. But at least Democrats are very likely to know the identity of their Senate nominee six days from now (barring a virtual tie that allows a minor candidate’s vote to deny either major candidate a majority). They will have many months to heal their divisions as Cornyn and Paxton drag each other to the bottom of the sea like sharks taking down their prey.

    It’s unclear how effective the savage (and lavishly funded) attacks by Cornyn and his D.C. friends will be in eroding or eliminating Paxton’s long-standing lead in this race. The intensely combative attorney general’s many ethics issues involving both his personal life and his finances are very well known. Republican voters may have already discounted them, much like Donald Trump’s many vices, as acceptable considering his longtime service to right-wing causes like stamping out abortion and blowing up public education in favor of private (and often religious) schools.

    The Texas GOP is in the midst of an ideological revolution against a “Republican Establishment” typified by Cornyn. In 2024 Paxton, along with Texas governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, led a high-profile primary purge of Republican legislators who resisted a school-voucher push and voted to impeach Paxton on corruption grounds (he was acquitted by the Texas Senate). To put it simply, the Texas party is racing to the right at an amazing pace, and the four-term incumbent simply hasn’t been able to keep up. Worse yet, Cornyn looks and sounds like a stereotypical senator, making him a “swamp” creature in the eyes of Washington-hating Texas Republicans (his self-depiction in his latest ad as a cowboy-hat-wearing “Texas Workhouse” probably inspires as much derision as admiration).

    Team Cornyn had hoped his bacon might be saved by a Trump endorsement, but the president chose to endorse all three major candidates in the race (Cornyn, Paxton, and U.S. representative Wesley Hunt), a familiar tactic that operates as a permission slip for MAGA diehards in Texas to follow their own preferences. Any way the wind blows, the GOP is going to have a major restoration project come May to bring supporters of either the empty-suit RINO Cornyn or the adulterous “Crooked Ken” back into the party corral during what could be a very difficult midterm election for the party.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Talarico Contests MAGA’s Conquest of American Christianity

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    Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon with his Christian nationalist mentor Doug Wilson.
    Photo: @PeteHegseth/X

    At the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on February 5, President Donald Trump indulged himself in a 75-minute rambling tirade devoted to glorifying himself, attacking his enemies, claiming a Republican monopoly on faith, and pledging to “viciously and violently” defend his kind of Christians. But his wasn’t the most alarming speech at the event. That distinction belonged to Trump’s secretary of Defense, as Baptist minister Brian Kaylor observed:

    Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself the “Secretary of War,” spoke after Trump to baptize the U.S. and especially its military. He did so by highlighting the worship services he’s been leading at the Pentagon. And he even suggested that soldiers can gain salvation by fighting for the United States.

    “America was founded as a Christian nation. It remains a Christian nation in our DNA, if we can keep it. And as public officials, we have a sacred duty 250 years on to glorify him,” Hegseth said as he pointed upward. “That’s precisely why we instituted a monthly prayer service at the Pentagon, an act of what we see it as, spiritual readiness.”

    This was just an appetizer. As Kaylor notes in a separate dispatch, Hegseth has used his government-sanctioned Pentagon worship services to promote the rawest kind of Christian nationalism, most recently treating military leaders to the spiritual stylings of Doug Wilson:

    The Idaho pastor and self-described “paleo-Confederate” preached about the importance of trusting God for protection in battle and praised the monthly worship services as perhaps a sign of a new revival like the Great Awakening or the biblical Day of Pentecost….

    Wilson, an outspoken proponent of Christian Nationalism, has sparked numerous controversies over the years for what he preaches and teaches. He has downplayed the horrors of slavery and defended enslavers. He also pushes a hardline version of patriarchy, not just insisting only men can serve as pastors or in other church leadership roles but also that they should rule in families.

    Hegseth doesn’t just promote Wilson’s views at the Pentagon; he is a member of a congregation affiliated with the denomination Wilson founded and seemed thrilled to be able to welcome this prophet of patriarchy to bless America’s war fighters: “Thank you for your leadership, for your mentorship, for the things you’ve started, the truth you’ve told, your willingness to be bold.”

    Irreligious folk accustomed to hearing this sort of divinization of cultural conservatism proclaimed as “Christianity” should be aware that this isn’t what all Christians believe. Indeed, when it comes to the fraught subject of church-state separation, Christian nationalists stand at one extreme on a spectrum that includes many millions of believers who staunchly defend rigorous church-state separation on religious grounds. The same day that Hegseth and Wilson were whooping it up for a militarized American Jesus, Texas legislator and U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico gained a viral YouTube audience for an interview with Stephen Colbert in which he pronounced Christian nationalism as, well, basically unclean:

    We are called to love all our neighbors, including our Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, agnostic, atheist neighbors. And forcing our religion down their throats is not love. It’s why I fought so hard for that sacred separation in our First Amendment.

    My granddad [a Baptist minister] raised me to believe that boundary between church and state doesn’t just benefit the state or our democracy, although it certainly does, but it also benefits the church.

    Because when the church gets too cozy with political power, it loses its prophetic voice, its ability to speak truth to power, its ability to imagine a completely different world. And this separation between church and state is something we have to safeguard. It’s something we have to fight for.

    And I think we need someone in the U.S. Senate who is going to confront Christian nationalism and tell the truth which is that there is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. It is the worship of power in the name of Christ. And it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.

    Talarico, as it happens, is a Presbyterian seminarian. Mainline Protestant horror at the Prince of Peace being turned into a Man of War is not unusual, although until now it has gotten little attention. Alongside the faith-based backlash to Trump’s mass-deportation effort, which is especially strong among Catholics, we are beginning to receive regular reminders that alongside partisan and ideological polarization is a quiet battle among religious believers spurred by the particularly aggressive version of Christian nationalism espoused by Trump allies. It may be an accident that Talarico’s interview went viral after CBS clumsily discouraged its airing at the behest of Trump’s thuggish FCC chairman Brendan Carr. But the MAGA conquest of American Christianity will not be uncontested.

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    Ed Kilgore

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  • CBS Spikes Colbert’s Talarico Interview in Latest Capitulation to Trump

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    Texas representative James Talarico speaks to the crowd during a Stop ICE Rally at Pan American Neighborhood Park in East Austin, January 31, 2026.
    Photo: Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman/Getty Images

    Stephen Colbert, the host of CBS’s The Late Show, is alleging that the network refused to air a prescheduled interview with Democratic state legislator and Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico due to new guidance from the Federal Communications Commission, the latest example of CBS appearing to bow to pressure from the Trump administration.

    Colbert opened his show Monday by telling his audience that he would be joined later by actress Jennifer Garner as his guest. But then the late-night host began to talk about who wouldn’t be part of that evening’s broadcast. “You know who is not one of my guests tonight? That’s Texas state representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no certain terms by our network’s lawyers — who called us directly — that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said. “Then I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on. And because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”

    Colbert then began to describe the FCC’s “equal time” rule, which requires radio and broadcast television programs to provide equal coverage to all of an election’s candidates, saying there’s been a long-standing exemption for news interviews and talk-show interviews with candidates. But Colbert said that FCC commissioner Brendan Carr issued a guidance in January targeting the daytime and late-night talk-show exemption, claiming that many of the programs are motivated by “partisan purposes” and may no longer qualify. Per the host, CBS pulled the interview based on the memo.

    “Well, sir, you’re chairman of the FCC. So ‘FCC you’ because I think you are motivated by partisan purposes yourself,” Colbert said to applause from the crowd. “Let’s just call this what it is. Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV.”

    Colbert said he intended to go forward with his interview of Talarico, telling his viewers that it would be available online on The Late Show’s YouTube channel rather than aired live. The 14-minute sit-down was posted early Tuesday morning and had more than 730,000 views by 10 a.m. Forbes reports that Colbert’s conversation with Talarico quickly became the host’s most-watched interview in months and, by Tuesday afternoon, was on pace to succeed his interview with pop star Taylor Swift which has approximately 1.4 million views. At the top of their interview, Talarico floated his own theory for the network’s refusal to air his conversation with Colbert. “I think that Donald Trump is worried that we’re about to flip Texas,” Talarico said.

    Anna Gomez, an FCC commissioner, issued a statement condemning CBS’s move, calling it “yet another troubling example of corporate capitulation in the face of this Administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech.”

    In a statement, CBS claims that The Late Show was “not prohibited” by the network from airing the Talarico interview. “The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled,” the statement read. “THE LATE SHOW decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”

    Over the past year, critics have torched CBS for appearing to cave to the Trump administration’s moves to reshape the country’s media ecosystem. Paramount, CBS’s parent company, paid out a multimillion-dollar settlement to President Donald Trump, who had sued the network over a 2024 60 Minutes interview with Vice-President Kamala Harris, a lawsuit most legal experts deemed meritless and doomed to fail in court. Soon after, the FCC would approve Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media. In the months since, CBS underwent sweeping changes, including an overhaul of 60 Minutes and CBS News as a whole through the hiring of Bari Weiss, as well as the announced cancellation of The Late Show after Colbert denounced Paramount’s settlement with Trump as a “bribe.”

    But CBS is not the only network facing scrutiny for its coverage of Talarico’s campaign to flip a Republican Senate seat in Texas. Earlier this month, Fox News reported that the FCC was investigating ABC’s The View following Talarico’s appearance on the show, citing the “equal time” guidance.

    Talarico told Colbert that the federal government’s actions represented the “most dangerous” form of cancel culture: “the kind that comes from the top.”

    “They went after The View because I went on there. They went after Jimmy Kimmel for telling a joke they didn’t like. They went after you for telling the truth about Paramount’s bribe to Donald Trump,” he said. “Corporate media executives are selling out the First Amendment to curry favor with corrupt politicians. And a threat to any of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all our First Amendment rights.”

    In practice, the increased attention might ultimately be a boon for Talarico’s Senate chances. Early voting for the March 3 primary began Tuesday just as news of CBS’s punted interview emerged. The state representative is set to face off against Representative Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary. The winner will face the victor in the tense Republican primary featuring incumbent Senator John Cornyn, Representative Wesley Hunt, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton.


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    Nia Prater

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  • What’s Going on With Texas’s Democratic-Primary Mess?

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    Things kicked off when Morgan Thompson, a Dallas-based content creator focused on Texas politics, recounted a story to her more than 185,000 TikTok followers regarding an off-the-record meeting she had with Talarico about the Democratic primary on January 12. Thompson claimed that during their conversation, Talarico made an offensive comment comparing Crockett to Allred, a former representative whom Talarico was initially running against. (Allred, who dropped his bid after Crockett entered the race, was also Texas’s Democratic Senate nominee in 2024, losing to Ted Cruz, and is now running for Congress again.)

    “Talarico told me that he signed up to run against a mediocre Black man, not a formidable and intelligent Black woman,” Thompson said in a video posted on Sunday.

    Thompson explained that she initially supported Talarico over Allred but expressed concern after his campaign pushed out a fundraising appeal under the name of James Carville, the storied political consultant who authored a New York Times op-ed last year looking to warn Democrats against embracing what he called “performative woke politics.”

    “I’m always going to advocate for Black people ’cause I don’t care about how much you talk about affordability, housing, health care, whatever. If ‘woke politics’ is not included in that — which directly impacts Black people — then we’re left out of that conversation and policy,” Thompson said.

    Thompson said she reached out to the campaign and shared her concerns to a staffer, who offered her the chance to speak with Talarico one-on-one about the issue. In a subsequent video, Thompson said her conversation with Talarico had been going well and that the comment came as talk turned to which offices the various candidates could have run for besides the Senate. Thompson acknowledged that she doesn’t have a recording of their conversation. She has since endorsed Crockett’s campaign and said the representative was not involved in her decision to speak about her interaction with Talarico.

    Talarico-campaign spokesman J.T. Ennis confirmed to CNN that Thompson and Talarico did meet in Plano, adding that “the Talarico campaign works with lots of creators in Texas to keep them updated on the campaign.”

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    Nia Prater

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  • Jasmine Crockett: ICE agents in Minneapolis are ‘turning us into Nazi Germany’

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    NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 13: Rep. Jasmine Crockett speaks onstage during Storytellers - Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett during the 2025 Tribeca Festival at SVA Theater on June 13, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

    NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 13: Rep. Jasmine Crockett speaks onstage during Storytellers – Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett during the 2025 Tribeca Festival at SVA Theater on June 13, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)


    Cindy Ord

    Getty Images for Tribeca Festiva

    Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett compared the actions of federal agents in Minnesota, where an agent shot dead a man Saturday, to “Nazi Germany” during a Democratic debate for the U.S. Senate.

    Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico are the leading candidates in the Democratic primary, hoping to win in March and be on the ticket in November for Sen. John Cornyn’s seat.

    The two Democrats took the stage in Georgetown, north of Austin, shortly after federal immigration agents in Minneapolis had shot 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive-care nurse for a VA hospital. The shooting came just weeks after Renee Good was shot and killed by an immigration officer in the same city.

    The Saturday killing was recorded by bystanders from different angles, showing a group of federal officers tackle Pretti as he appeared to be using a phone to record them. Pretti was legally carrying a handgun, according to Minnesota authorities, and was shot multiple times after he was on the ground. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters that the fact that Pretti carried a weapon “looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement,” contradicting video evidence of the encounter.

    At one point during Saturday’s debate, the moderators asked Crockett and Talarico about how they’d balance their feelings toward ICE while also representing Texans who support deporting undocumented immigrants.

    “As it relates to the enforcement that we see right now, let me be clear: They are supposed to do immigration and customs enforcement,” Crockett said. “Not going after U.S. citizens. Not going after people that are documented. That is not what they are supposed to do, but that is what they’re doing. They are turning us into Nazi Germany by saying they’re going to go door to door.”

    She continued, “They’re going after people because of their accent or the color of their skin, because this Supreme Court gave them carte blanche ability to do so. So all we want ICE to do is to do what ICE was created to do, and unfortunately, that’s not what they are doing.”

    Asked the same question, Talarico said the southern border should be like a front porch.

    “There should be a giant welcome mat out front and a lock on the door,” he said. “We can welcome immigrants who want to live the American dream. We can build a pathway to citizenship for those neighbors who have been here making us richer and stronger, and we can keep out people who mean to do us harm.”

    Earlier in the debate, Talarico also had sharp words about ICE, when asked whether he thinks the agency should be abolished or defunded.

    “ICE shot a mother in the face,” he said. “ICE kidnapped a 5-year-old boy. ICE executed a man in broad daylight on our streets just this morning. It’s time to tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that actually is going to focus on public safety.”

    Pressed again on whether he’d abolish or defund ICE, Talarico responded that the country has seen a historic increase in ICE funding.

    “That money has come out of our health care, so what I would say is that we should take that money back and put it in our communities where it belongs,” Talarico said.

    Crockett said “we absolutely have to clean house.”

    “Whatever that looks like, I am willing to do it,” she said. “Because if there are truly Proud Boys that are currently in ICE, that’s a problem.”

    Both candidates said they support impeaching United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

    ICE isn’t following the law, Crockett said.

    “They’re killing people in the middle of the street,” she said. “They decided to execute a mother of three in broad daylight. I don’t understand how we are sitting here and acting like this is normal.”

    Eleanor Dearman

    Fort Worth Star-Telegram

    Eleanor (Elly) Dearman is a Texas politics and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She’s based in Austin, covering the Legislature and its impact on North Texas. She grew up in Denton and has been a reporter for more than six years.
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    Eleanor Dearman

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  • What ‘fighters’? Texas Democratic Senate rivals pull punches in debate | Opinion

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    State Rep. James Talarico, left, and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Democratic primary candidates for U.S. Senate, shake hands prior to a debate at the Texas AFL-CIO COPE Convention in Georgetown, Texas on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026.

    State Rep. James Talarico, left, and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Democratic primary candidates for U.S. Senate, shake hands prior to a debate at the Texas AFL-CIO COPE Convention in Georgetown, Texas on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026.


    Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune via POOL

    Most political campaigns are way too long, but in the case of the U.S. Senate primary between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico, it’s good that there are a few weeks left.

    That’s because Saturday’s debate didn’t offer undecided Texas Democratic voters much to go on.

    Crockett, the bombastic Dallas congresswoman, and Talarico, the more-measured Austin-area state representative, largely agreed on immigration, health care, the economy, foreign policy and taking on Donald Trump. Over the course of an hour, they had no significant exchanges airing either policy or stylistic differences with each other.

    Squint, though, and you could see some separation. Crockett was more blunt about Trump, pointing to the latest horrendous killing by federal agents in Minnesota and framing the current political atmosphere as a dangerous, “unprecedented time.” Talarico blasted the president, too, but he also offered a broader attack on billionaires and corporations.

    Their policy prescriptions were variations on the same theme, and standard Democratic fare at that. Both would raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy but declined to say where they would draw the line on who pays more. Both supported sweeping expansion of government-funded health insurance. Both condemned Trump’s recent actions in Venezuela.

    Moderators Daniel Marin of Austin’s KXAN-TV and Gromer Jeffers Jr. of The Dallas Morning News, seeming to anticipate the reluctance, opened the debate by trying to draw the two out on their stylistic differences and who could fulfill the ultimate Democratic priority: winning a statewide race in Texas for the first time in more than three decades. Crockett argued that she is a brawler who does better with constituencies Democrats need to win back, including Black men and the working class.

    Talarico repeated his message that he is a progressive Christian while also insisting that he’s a fighter who has taken on education cuts and pharmaceutical companies during his three terms in Austin. “I have fought tooth and nail for our values,” he said.

    What’s a Texas Democrat to do? When Crockett entered the race at the last minute in December, she seemed like a shoo-in, given her national profile for caustic combativeness toward Trump and other Republicans, especially Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. But Talarico has shown impressive fundraising strength and built a quieter national profile of his own, winning praise from figures such as podcasting king Joe Rogan.

    Reliable polls are scarce, and even among the few released so far, the results swing wildly. Each candidate appeals to different constituencies in the party, and it’s hard to measure who will turn out to vote between Feb. 21, the start of early voting, and Election Day, March 3. And turnout could be higher than usual because Democrats smell vulnerability on the Republican side, especially if the GOP nominates the tarnished Ken Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn.

    That deeper interest isn’t reflected just yet. Talarico and Crockett were understandably reluctant to brawl with each other in a sleepy Saturday afternoon debate when Texans are thinking more about wind chills and chili than primaries and polls.

    But if the candidates are the fighters they claim to be and the prize is as attainable as they want to believe, they’d better start throwing punches soon — and not just at Trump and Paxton.

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    Ryan J. Rusak is opinion editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He grew up in Benbrook and is a TCU graduate. He spent more than 15 years as a political journalist, overseeing coverage of four presidential elections and several sessions of the Texas Legislature. He writes about Fort Worth/Tarrant County politics and government, along with Texas and national politics, education, social and cultural issues, and occasionally sports, music and pop culture. Rusak, who lives in east Fort Worth, was recently named Star Opinion Writer of the Year for 2024 by Texas Managing Editors, a news industry group.

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  • Democratic debate for Texas’ US Senate seat: How to watch in Dallas-Fort Worth

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    U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and Texas state Rep. James Talarico

    Getty Images file photos

    U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and State Rep. James Talarico will debate for the first time on Saturday afternoon, as they bid to represent Texans in the U.S. Senate.

    Crockett and Talarico are the frontrunners in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat that is currently held by Sen. John Cornyn, a longtime Republican lawmaker who is in the midst of a heated primary of his own. The winner of each primary will face off in the Nov. 3 general election.

    Crockett and Talarico will go head-to-head in the Jan. 24 debate in Georgetown hosted by Texas AFL-CIO, a labor federation representing union workers across the state. The debate is set for 2 p.m and aligns with a convention hosted by the group’s political arm.

    The debate is set to last one hour and will be livestreamed on cw33.com and on the CW33+ app in North Texas. KXAN anchor Daniel Marin and Dallas Morning News political writer Gromer Jeffers are moderating.

    Texas’ primary elections are on March 3. Early voting starts Feb. 17 and runs through Feb. 27.

    Eleanor Dearman

    Fort Worth Star-Telegram

    Eleanor (Elly) Dearman is a Texas politics and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She’s based in Austin, covering the Legislature and its impact on North Texas. She grew up in Denton and has been a reporter for more than six years.
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  • Jasmine Crockett, James Talarico taking Texas Democrats to church | Opinion

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    U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett greets well-wishers at Nana’s Kitchen in Fort Worth, Texas, Dec. 21, 2025. She is accompanied by staffer Kendyll Locke.

    U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett greets well-wishers at Nana’s Kitchen in Fort Worth, Texas, Dec. 21, 2025. She is accompanied by staffer Kendyll Locke.


    Bud Kennedy

    bud@star-telegram.com

    FORT WORTH

    The battle for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate is coming soon to a mailbox near you.

    But so far, it’s been waged somewhere unusual for Texas Democrats: in churches.

    Both U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas and state Rep. James Talarico of Austin have taken their campaigns to churches, the first stops on a breakneck rush to Feb. 17 and the start of voting in the March 3 party primaries.

    It is not unusual to see Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and frequent guest preacher, deliver a sermon like he did Dec. 14 at Central Presbyterian in downtown Austin.

    We see Crockett, a lawyer who represents south Dallas and southeast Tarrant County, more on national TV news. She’s usually delivering saltier comments and litigating the case against Congress, the current Washington leadership and President Donald Trump.

    “I know I may have a potty mouth here and there, but my dad is a preacher,” Crockett said Sunday.

    She was meeting reporters at a restaurant in far east Fort Worth after visiting worship at Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church, New Breed Christian Center and Pilgrim Valley Missionary Baptist Church.

    “All the civil rights movements were born in the Black church,” she said, “and right now, we are definitely in a moment where we need a movement.

    “ … So that is why, absolutely, as many Sundays as I get, I’ll most likely be in church praising God and meeting people.”

    Don’t get me wrong.

    It is not unusual for a Presbyterian seminarian and a United Methodist pastor’s daughter to be in church on Sunday.

    But it is unusual for rival Texas Democrats to make religion a front-and-center part of their campaigns.

    In particular, white Democratic voters are mostly not church regulars, according to the Pew Research Center.

    The three recent Democratic nominees for Senate — Beto O’Rourke, M.J. Hegar and Colin Allred — did not mention church or faith prominently.

    O’Rourke did talk occasionally about the Roman Catholic church’s power, and Allred talked about his days at Southern Baptist-affiliated Baylor University.

    It’s clear already that no matter whether Crockett or Talarico is the nominee, this campaign won’t be like those.

    In his sermon in Austin, Talarico preached about Christ’s message of love — as in “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” — and support for those on the margins of society.

    “Do you know people who love Jesus and don’t seem to love anyone else?” Talarico was quoted as saying by the Houston Chronicle.

    “That kind of religion that says you can treat people however you want, as long as you have a personal relationship with Jesus, is an abomination. It is a cancer on the body of Christ.”

    Crockett isn’t a preacher like Talarico. But she can also talk liberation gospel.

    That contrasts with Republican frontrunner Ken Paxton’s message about martyrdom — his own — and how Christians should resist Islamist governance.

    At Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church, Crockett apologized to worshippers up front, saying, “You know it’s political season when the candidates show up.”

    She delivered completely different messages in the Fort Worth churches but focused on having a U.S. senator “putting people first” for Texans who feel like their votes don’t count.

    “We have two senators that were elected to represent 30 million people,” she told reporters later, “but they have decided that they only want to represent the 1-percenters.”

    Crockett said faith isn’t a major theme of her campaign: “It’s just who I am. … I’ve got to remain true to who I am and my roots, and so my faith is a part of that.”

    The road to the Democratic Senate nomination runs through a lot of town squares.

    And down some center aisles.

    Do you have an opinion on this topic? Tell us!

    We love to hear from Texans with opinions on the news — and to publish those views in the Opinion section.

    • Letters should be no more than 150 words.

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    • Email letters@star-telegram.com (preferred).

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    Please note: Letters will be edited for style and clarity. Publication is not guaranteed. The best letters are focused on one topic.

    This story was originally published December 27, 2025 at 4:31 AM.

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    Bud Kennedy is a Fort Worth Star-Telegram opinion columnist. In a 54-year Texas newspaper career, he has covered two Super Bowls, a presidential inauguration, seven national political conventions and 19 Texas Legislature sessions..
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  • Obama rips concessions that businesses and others have made to Trump

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    (CNN) — Barack Obama ripped into the law firms, universities and businesses that have worked out settlements or other deals with President Donald Trump’s administration, arguing that “We all have this capacity, I think, to take a stand.”

    The former president said the organizations that concede to Trump should be able to say, “We’re not going to be bullied into saying that we can only hire people or promote people based on some criteria that’s been cooked up by Steve Miller,” referring to the top White House aide.

    According to an advance podcast transcript, Obama said he sympathized with those looking to avoid a backlash, but said, “We’re not at the stage where you have to be like Nelson Mandela and be in a 10-by-12 jail cell for 27 years and break rocks.”

    The comments, some of the most direct that Obama has made about Trump outside of his campaign trail appearances in 2020 and 2024, came in an interview posting Monday for the final episode of the “WTF” podcast hosted by comedian Marc Maron.

    Maron, who last interviewed Obama in 2015, has frequently talked about that conversation in subsequent episodes. In July, after announcing he would end the 16-year run of the pioneering podcast, he suggested that another talk with Obama would be a dream way to finish. Last week, he got his wish — though not by having Obama make another visit to his house, as many of the podcast guests tend to.

    Maron kept the interview a surprise even from fans, only teasing in his penultimate episode that he traveled to record it. They met in Obama’s office in Washington.

    The conversation focused on the state of America and what Democrats can find hope in — but Obama also criticized progressive absolutism and singled out one rising Texas Democrat who impresses him.

    The news out of his hometown on his mind, Obama called Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Chicago “a deliberate end run around not just a concept, but a law that’s been around for a long time” — the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits the use of the military inside the US for law enforcement purposes.

    “That is a genuine effort to weaken how we have understood democracy,” he said.

    Obama reflected on his own experiences in the White House, including dealing with pushback from Republican leaders such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

    “If I had sent in the National Guard into Texas and just said, ‘You know what? A lot of problems in Dallas, a lot of crime there, and I don’t care what Gov. Abbott says. I’m going to kind of take over law enforcement, because I think things are out of control,’ it is mind-boggling to me how Fox News would have responded,” he said.

    The two also discussed the evolution of the media environment, particularly around the podcast world Maron helped shape, and what it has done to political communication.

    “It was interesting to me when people started criticizing Bernie [Sanders] or somebody else for going on Rogan. It’s like, why wouldn’t you? Yeah, of course, go,” Obama said, referring to “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.

    Among the Rogan guests who caught Obama’s eye: Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who turned a viral appearance on the podcast into fuel for what has now become a competitive Senate primary run.

    Obama called Talarico “terrific, a really talented young man,” adding that his appearance proves that going on long-form podcasts requires “a certain confidence in your actual convictions to debate and have a conversation with somebody who disagrees with you.”

    Overall, Obama argued, “what people long for is some core integrity that seems absent, just a sense that the person seems to walk the walk, just talk the talk.”

    Obama said he particularly enjoyed a bit from Maron’s latest stand-up special when the comedian jokes that progressives annoyed the average American into fascism.

    “You can’t constantly lecture people without acknowledging that you’ve got some blind spots too, and that life’s messy,” Obama said. “I think this was a fault of some progressive language, was almost asserting a holier-than-thou superiority that’s not that different from what we used to joke about coming from the right moral majority and a certain fundamentalism about how to think about stuff that I think was dangerous.”

    “If I talked about trans issues, I wasn’t talking down to people and saying, ‘Oh, you’re a bigot,’” he said. “I’d say, ‘You know, it’s tough enough being a teenager. Let’s treat all kids decently. Why would we want to see kids bullied?”

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    Edward-Isaac Dovere and CNN

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