In 29 days, every piece on the chessboard changes. Republicans know what’s coming. Perhaps that’s why that drunk, racist guy in charge of our military has cut 20% of the military generals. He’s also appointed a fascist oligarch who has repeatedly discussed civil war in America to lead an AI war commission. You know, last year the Pentagon ordered states’ National Guards to form a ‘quick reaction task force’ and train for crowd control (i.e., riots).
Before the Republicans’ loss in 2020, they spent almost a year talking about “stop the steal,” convincing their QAnon-brainwashed base that Communists had infiltrated our country and they had to fight to save America. That’s how January 6 happened. But even the GOP knows they can’t convince enough dummies to pull off another January 6.
On the far corners of the internet, concerns that the next time Trump tries to stay in there, it will be through a military coup, with the help of Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk. But don’t get scared. That won’t happen in 2026. We have to worry about 2028.
But Democrats will win big in 2026. In Texas, we’re going to win big.
Hopefully, the new Democratic majority will impeach Hegseth and get Musk out of our government.
And now everything is going to come at us really fast. If you’re new here since the last election, I’ll bring you daily early-election totals during early voting, along with various reports I see from data agencies. We’ll see how well the Secretary of State does on reporting this year. It sucked in the primaries.
I’ve been playing with midterm numbers, and before early voting starts, I plan to share more data over the next few weeks.
Since we missed last year, we have a special Halloween episode this year (which I’m excited about).
And before we know it, the Legislature will be in session.
For two decades, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks have been building their golden calf out of the Texas GOP.
Now one of their mouthpieces is begging voters to point their fingers at anyone but the fascists in the mirror.
Everything wrong in Texas is absolutely because of the far-right arm of the Republican Party, which includes Luke Macias, which includes the Defend Liberty PAC, which includes the Texas Scorecard, which includes Empower Texans. And all of those are basically the same thing.
It’s rich now that the mouthpiece of this operation that brought you such hits as Bryan Slaton and Nick Fuentes in their Ft. Worth offices thinks it’s everyone else’s fault.
So, we’re going to talk about how it’s this organization’s fault. Their 20-year grip on government here, and why once they lose, campaign finance reform in Texas needs to take priority.
What did Macias say?
He encouraged everyone to vote on the first day of early voting. And if you want to do that, more power to you. I get the excitement. But everyone is excited, and unless you are at risk of forgetting or getting too busy, I would wait until the end of the first week or the second week. That’s when I always vote. It’s a lot shorter lines.
Then he said what every pollster, analyst, and talking head has been saying for months. “Democrats have more energy, and Republicans are discouraged.”
And perhaps Independents will swing blue, but he never talked about those, and maybe he, like I, always assumed Independents were just Republicans who were too embarrassed to say so. Or perhaps the Hispanic vote is truly an Independent/swing vote this year.
Macias talked about the cost of living and gas prices hurting people. He caught himself blaming the Iran war, then called it an “oversimplification.”
Remember in 2024, when 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists warned that Trump’s economic plans could reignite inflation?
But what Macias conveniently leaves off the table is that the costs that make Texas worse than other states come from decisions the Texas Legislature made, mostly under pressure from his own network.
Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country at 16.7%.
When the Legislature killed Medicaid expansion in 2013, Texas Republicans were afraid of a Tea Party primary challenge if they even said “health care” on the House floor. That was the Empower Texans era.
Texas had the fourth-highest home insurance premiums in the nation at the end of 2025. Premiums rose 21.1% in 2023 and 18.7% in 2024.
Between 2022 and 2023, the increase was the largest of any state.
Nearly 18% of Texas homeowners went without insurance in 2024.
Efforts to strengthen regulatory oversight have stalled, with the insurance industry warning it could pull coverage. One-party Republican rule in Texas has played well for the right and big business.
Texas has the ninth-highest effective property tax rate in the nation.
We have the seventh most regressive tax system in the country. The poorest fifth pays 12.8%
Poor Texans pay more taxes than any income group in California. Rich Texans pay 1/3 the rate of the poor.
Tim Dunn and his Christian Nationalism arm, Empower Texan/Texas Scorecard/Defend Texas Liberty PAC, have been the largest source of money to buy legislators and their votes for years.
Luke Macias has long fallen under this umbrella, as an author for Texas Scorecard and the president of Defend Texas Liberty.
If you aren’t as intimately familiar with Texas politics, or don’t know about the fascist right who has had their sticky little hands all over our government for the last decade or more, there are three particular billionaires you should be familiar with:
Those are their contributions since 2015 to Transparency USA, and they don’t include the money they’ve spent in county, city, or federal elections. Also, “David Middleton,” also known as “MAGA Mayes,” is a candidate, so his reads differently, but he’s spent plenty of money on Christian Nationalist candidates, other than himself.
It should be noted that these are not the only Christian Nationalist billionaires who have taken control of the Texas government and the Republican Party of Texas over the last many years. They are just the most well-funded and prominent.
Empower Texans ➡️ Texas Scorecard ➡️ Texans United for a Conservative Majority: A Timeline.
2007: Midland oilman Tim Dunn launches Empower Texans to fight a tax on investor-financed oil wells. The first cause of the group that would spend 15 years lecturing Texans about fiscal responsibility was one oilman’s own taxes.
2010: Dunn and fellow fracking billionaire Farris Wilks ride the Tea Party wave and start bankrolling primary challengers. The weapon is the “Fiscal Responsibility Index,” published by the outlet now called Texas Scorecard. Score low, and a challenger shows up in your district with a lot of oil money.
This scorecard births loyalists like Deer Park’s Briscoe Cain, who spent his entire career voting “no” on everything, even if it hurt his constituents, to keep his scorecard grade high.
2010: According to former House Speaker Joe Straus, Dunn told him only Christians should hold leadership positions in the Texas House. He also wanted committee chairs handed to Empower Texans’ Tea Party picks.
Texas Scorecard, home of Luke Macias’s show, is what ProPublica calls Empower Texans’ “media arm.” Dunn sits on the board of the foundation that publishes it. The outlet grades Republicans, the PAC funds challengers against the low scorers, and the columnists write up the traitors.
2013: The Legislature turns down an estimated $100 billion over 10 years to expand Medicaid. Republican Rep. John Zerwas tried a compromise, then explained on NPR that it died because he’d have to run again in two years and Texas Republicans feared a primary. Fear of the machine kept 1.5 million Texans uninsured.
2014: The Texas Ethics Commission fined Michael Quinn Sullivan $10,000, then head of Empower Texans, for failing to register as a lobbyist in 2010 and 2011. The commission found he used the scorecard to influence lawmakers’ votes. Sullivan insists it was journalism. He spent the next 11 years suing and lost at every level up to the US Supreme Court, which declined his case in 2025.
2014: Ken Paxton wins attorney general. The Texas Observer reports he owes his seat to a $1 million loan to his 2014 campaign. Dunn and Wilks become his biggest donors. When Sullivan sues the Ethics Commission, the state’s lawyer is Paxton, who takes a hands-off approach that costs the commission more than $1 million in outside legal fees. Texas taxpayers paid to defend the state’s ethics law because the attorney general wouldn’t do it against his own donors.
2016: Empower Texans and the Wilks family bankroll Straus’ critics in the House. Jonathan Stickland, Arlington’s Tony Tinderholt, Molly White, and Matt Rinaldi, who took $25,000 from the Wilks family. Yes, that Stickland, who would later host Nick Fuentes, and that Rinaldi, who was seen outside the building.
2019: Sullivan reveals he secretly recorded a meeting with House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and Rep. Dustin Burrows. On the tape, Bonnen tells Sullivan, “I’ll put your guys on the floor next session,” meaning House media credentials for Texas Scorecard, if Empower Texans went after 10 GOP incumbents in the 2020 primaries. Two lawmakers who heard it said a list was referenced “over and over and over again.” Bonnen’s speakership doesn’t survive it. Republican House leadership tried to make a deal with the machine, and the machine taped them doing it. Burrows is now Speaker.
2022: Empower Texans gives way to Defend Texas Liberty PAC. Dunn pours in at least $9.85 million, and Texas Monthly crowns him the state’s largest individual source of campaign money. The PAC spends it hunting Republicans it considers insufficiently conservative.
May 2023: The Texas House votes unanimously to expel Bryan Slaton after an investigation finds he had sex with a 19-year-old aide after giving her alcohol. Slaton was a darling of the far-right wing and Defend Texas Liberty PAC’s personal champion.
May 2023: The House impeaches Ken Paxton. Defend Texas Liberty puts up billboards in Glenn Rogers’ district attacking his vote, and Macias, then the PAC’s director, warns that billboards could go up across the entire state.
Summer 2023: Defend Texas Liberty gives Dan Patrick $3 million in donations and loans while he’s preparing to preside over Paxton’s impeachment trial. It was a bribe.
September 2023: The Senate acquits Paxton. Macias promises more primary challengers against House Republicans than he’s seen since 2006.
October 2023: Defend Texas Liberty president Jonathan Stickland hosts white supremacist Nick Fuentes for nearly seven hours at his firm’s offices. Texas GOP chair Matt Rinaldi is seen outside the building. He denies meeting Fuentes. Stickland’s name then vanishes from the PAC’s website, and Luke Macias becomes the new president. Speaker Dade Phelan and 60 House Republicans demand the Texas GOP cut ties. The party machine shrugs.
December 2023: Defend Texas Liberty goes quiet, and a brand-new PAC appears: Texans United for a Conservative Majority, with $2 million from Dunn and Wilks. It immediately starts spending against House Republicans.
March 2024: Nine GOP incumbents lose their primaries to hardline challengers. Eight more are forced into runoffs, mostly against candidates backed by Dunn’s network.
So, who does Luke Macias blame?
At first, he says “nobody.” Then, he spends 20 minutes naming names.
John Cornyn, for spending more time attacking Republicans.
Karl Rove, whom Macias says is calling people to oppose Ken Paxton and Bo French.
Glenn Rogers, the former Republican lawmaker who cut an ad for a pro-Talarico super PAC.
And the “blackpilled” online crowd who won’t vote because, in Macias’s words, “we didn’t deport 50 million people.”
Of course, he never blames Ken Paxton. Or Tim Dunn. Nor the PAC that controlled the Republican Legislature and also hosted white supremacists in its office. And he certainly never mentioned the orange one.
Macias closes every show with “May God bless Texas,” so he’ll know this one:
“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)
Of course, he would have to read it first. And that was by far the funniest part about Macias’ video. He recommended two separate books, admitted he’d never read either because “he isn’t a book guy,” but said he was recommending them based on the title alone.
You know, I met the Texas Scorecard people once, back in 2022, and they stuck me on the front page.
I still laugh about it. But my feelings haven’t changed.
In February 2021, the grid Republicans have run for two decades collapsed during Winter Storm Uri. The state’s own health department counted 246 dead across 77 counties.
In August 2023, while ERCOT begged Texans to turn up their thermostats during a record heat wave, it paid bitcoin miner Riot Platforms $31.7 million in power credits for one month.
Texas skipped the federal Summer EBT program in 2024, leaving $450 million on the table for 3.8 million eligible kids. In 2025, the Legislature put $60 million in the budget to finally join, and Greg Abbott line-item vetoed it.
Empower Texas/Texas Scorecard/Texans United for a Conservative Majority have spent almost two decades pushing extremists into our government, and millions of people in Texas have suffered because of it.
When Democrats flip the Texas House, the only way to shut them out is campaign finance reform.
I wrote about this in more detail in 2024, if you want to check it out, but just know that whoever wins this election, at the state and federal level, it has to be a priority.
So, Luke, you asked who we’re planning to blame if things don’t go your way in 29 days.
We already know. We’ve known for 20 years.
We blame the two oilmen who turned the Texas Legislature into a subscription service. We blame the scorecard that taught Republicans to fear a primary more than a hungry kid. We blame the PAC that changed its name three times and never once changed its checkbook. And we blame the guy who took over that PAC after it hosted a white supremacist, then went on his podcast to lecture everyone else about pointing fingers.
But beating them in November isn’t enough. Empower Texans got spanked in 2018 and came back with a new name and a bigger checkbook. Defend Texas Liberty got caught with Nick Fuentes and came back with a new name and a bigger checkbook. As long as two men can write $9.85 million checks and call it democracy, the machine just waits for the next primary.
So vote. Bring someone with you. And when the new Legislature gavels in, campaign finance reform HAS TO come first.
Luke told his listeners not to blame anyone. Just get to work.
For once, we agree. And we’ll get to work.
29 days until the November election!
Last Day to Register to Vote: October 5, 2026
First Day of Early Voting: October 19, 2026
Last Day to Apply for Ballot by Mail: October 23, 2026
Last Day of Early Voting: October 30, 2026
Election Day: November 3, 2026
Did you know you can find links to all the previous Meet the Candidate articles on these lists?:
Click here to find out what Legislative districts you’re in.
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Thank you, Michelle! I tried to share this on bsky. Hope I succeeded!