What should you expect from Gina Hinojosa? "Culture wars" vs blank slates

Not as much as a lot of non-Texas national DSA Rosey Dems, let along national non-Democrats think, based on an infamous NY Slimes video interview pre-election that made the social media rounds afterward. I am posting a link to a 4-minute clip as posted by David Sirota on Substack, because I both quote-stacked it and later, separately, commented to it. (You can't grab embeds or video links directly off Substack, it seems.) Full video and interview here. And a sidebar note at bottom.

First, what counts as "culture wars"? Hinojosa had a great song-and-dance, but refused to be called out. Scratch that. That's duopoly phrasing. Rather, her tap dance refused to take a stand or make a definition. Whether that comes from paid Democrat consultants more, or more her dad, former state Democrat jefe Gilberto Hinojosa, take note. 

So, is BDS, or rather, current Texas Rethuglican government anti-BDS, from Strangeabbott, Dannie Goeb, the Lege, former Comptroller Glenn Hegar, acting replacement Kelly Hancock and his acting replacement Don Huffines, "culture wars"? The anti-BDS that Democrat Comptroller-elect Sarah Eckhardt said nothing about but Green candidiate Shelha Faizi pledged to dismantle — is that "culture wars"?

Given that she said "we engaged, but ... agreed to disagree" on Mooslims taking over Merikkka with Sharia law? Yeah, that's going on the back burner. 

Ditto on anti-ESG issues from the same group of people. 

Now, we can assume Hinojosa meant transgender and transsexual issues. But, I'm not going to do her dirty work for her. All she mentioned was "Sharia law" and I'm not going to let go of that. I'll do more further below.

After all, given that she's a ConservaDem on reproductive choice, per the Monthly, THAT might be "culture wars." Hinojosa claims that it's a "human rights issue," but interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro doesn't know how to ask the right questions there. Beyond that, for my callout? BDS is a human rights issue, too.

I think she, and outside of legislation, AG-elect Nathan Johnson, will do all they can to restore funding and support to public education.

But, even there? Is the Ten Commandments in public schools, or getting rid of them by legislation, "culture wars"? For that matter, Johnson, what are you going to do on the lawsuits winding through the court system?

Hinojosa has rightly been touted as pro-labor. If she gets a law mandating summer heat safety breaks for outdoor workers, will that be "culture wars," at least if she invokes climate change?

Speaking of, that was a phrase absent from even the lips of Ag Commish elect Claytie Tucker and Railroad Commish elect Jon Rosenthal.

Did Hinojosa mention climate change along with concerns about data centers? Didn't hear it. It's not in the text story.

Back to Sharia law. Hinojosa went on to talk about meanie Gov. Greg Abbott on ICE.

Gina, you know and I know that, to get back to "Sharia law," that's the same meanie Strangeabbott cheerleading the "Sharia law" bullshit over pushing Plano wingnuts into an anti-First Amendment attempt to block expansion of the East Plano Islamic Center. The Monthly talked about that just a month ago.

Bottom line? I worry about a lot of people mentioned above doing a lot of "projection" on newly elected Texas Democrats as blank slates.

Don't.

I do think Lulu Garcia-Navarro, the interviewee, came off as looking a bit arrogant and a bit other things; she ultimately looked like gotcha in the clip Sirota posted, while she got royally "owned." That itself is funny that someone with all those shitloads of experience got "owned." Or "punked." Or "played." In fact, I think Hinojosa went into the interview having game-planned for this.

I also know this was a pre-election interview, and almost nobody thought Texas Dems would flip the state House. Would Hinojosa, if interviewed now, change anything? No.

I also know, of course that Texas Democrats have not flipped the state Senate. If they do in 2028, would she change anything? Unlikely. 

Knowing that "1994" didn't finalize until 2002, let's move forward two years. Let's say Hinojosa is re-elected. Let's say the Senate is flipped then, if not in 2028. Let's say the House has remained Democrat three straight cycles.

Would THAT lead Hinojosa to "expand her playbook"? Not that much. Not as I see it. 

Perhaps the fact that Suzanne Bellsnyder hopped the duopoly fence to flak ONLY for Hinojosa among statewide Democrats is another tell. 

And, to riff on Dear Leader? After she's in office, will Hinojosa ask people to hold her feet to the fire, then get mad when people to her left actually do? 

Sidebar: Sirota's gushing over Hinojosa itself needs grains of salt. A couple of days earlier on Substack, Sirota said that Michigan's Haley Stevens was rejected because she got in bed with MAGA and big tech or whatever. NOOOO, David, she was rejected because she got in bed with Zionism and Islamophobia. But, because you're one of those semi-endangered species odd ducks, a liberal Zionist, you'll make claims like that, just like your Planned Parenthood wife will undercut your economic populism by union-busting. (Way back in 2022 he blocked me on Shitter after I called him out on his Zionism, and noted how others had busted him scrubbing his own Shitter account to hide his past AIPAC ties. The whole story is here. To be fair, since then, per The Lever and his Substack, he's apparently dropped Zionism totally, and will even use the word "genocide." But, that's only when pushed, and as of 2024, he was still blocking people on Shitter for calling him out. Beyond that, in 2006, per this TNR piece, he was almost as much a self-marketing blowhard as Glennwald, and IMO, he remains such 20 years later.)

Finally, contra another NYT reporter, post-election, out of their Tex-ass bureau, this interview shows that Hinojosa won on data centers, not immigration. God, that one was one of the dumbest claims.  

Texas Progressives do the post-election tango

SocraticGadfly offers his quick and dirty thoughts about the 2026 midterms.

Off the Kuff has some initial impressions of the blue earthquake.

I said there that Hinojosa won primarily on the local control issue that lies behind "data centers" and expect change there. The Trib agrees, while noting a variety of possible speed bumps.

John Whitmire partially rediscovered his testicles after the election results.  Houston Democracy Project Blog reports on Mayor Whitmire's revision of HPD/ICE policy. He takes credit for work and effort from Houstonians who spoke on issue & only mentions Councilmember Martinez who has offered no leadership.

At the Monthly, Chris Hooks' talk of Texas Republicans' backfire looks hard at the mid-decade gerrymandered Congressional redistricting, noting it backfired in Tex-ass and its domino effect backfired even worse nationally. 

Hooks said it was a "dummymander," not gerrymander, in North Carolina, and arguably that in Texas. At the Observer, Justin Miller calls it that here. 

Dan Solomon looks at the nuts and bolts of what Hinojosa might be able to do. I'll have more next week on what she likely WILL do, in 2027 and beyond.

Senfronia Thompson says she has the votes to be Speaker of the Texas House. I'm OK with one courtesy term, but after that, the 87-year-old needs to be replaced as both Speaker and as representative of her district. 

Bobby Pulido will be a Blue Dog Dem and largely a blank slate. 

Democrats crushed Republicans in Tarrant County. Chris Tackett goes deep on Tarrant County's big day.

The Dallas Observer has the sights and sounds from Election Day in Dallas. 

 Raise Your Hand Texas shows what it would take to make Texas just average in education spending. 

Fortune wants Democraps in Congress (as is normal from GOP-fellating business wingnutistan) to do to the dirty work on the national debt and deficit. And, as is normal, I worry that Dems will cave, and not just in the lame-duck session. 

Steve Vladeck looks at the possible effect of this election on SCOTUS.  

Responsible Statecraft talks about European "blue blinders" in the wake of the US elections. For those of us who vote outside the duopoly in part on foreign policy, this bears noting. 

==

Non-election news: SCOTUS is letting Donald Duck continue with the border wall in Big Bend, and by their silence, two of three Democrats on the court are squishes. 

Top blogging for October 2026

As is normal, over on Blogger, these are not necessarily the 10-most-read posts written IN October 2026. Instead, they’re the 10-most-read, period.

As is usual, I’ll note the original date of newly evergreen posts plus, to the degree I remember, the circumstances behind their original writing.

Drumroll, then …

No. 10? Way back in Shrub Bush’s second term in 2006, I said that “Some Democrats like Torture Ultra-Light, Too.” (I was already outside the duopoly box then.)

No. 9 was not until early in Dear Leader’s time, but was also about a Bushie. I called Greg Mankiw a liar on talking about taxes and tax rates.

No. 8? Way back in 2012, I was already wondering if Google was becoming worse than Microsoft. I didn’t have Cory Doctorow’s “Enshittification” word back then. Today, Google is horribly enshittified, Microsoft is not fantastic, they’re both rapers of the planet and they’re both in bed with and officially enabling Zionist genocide.

No. 7? Actually from October, I analyzed the Texas Trib analyzing the duopoly’s ad priorities.

No. 6? Very related I mocked Elmo Musk’s direct mail stupidity against Talafreako.

No. 5? The Gadfly slate for the midterms. Neither of the nonduopoly candidates I supported won, but that’s that.

No. 4? Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse called out Texas and national Democrats for not talking more about climate change, and I discussed. Of course, he then shat his own bed by agreeing, along with New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, to put the “bi” in a bipartisan bill for permitting “reform” that pissed off even Gang Green type environmentalists and neoliberals like John Podesta.

No. 3? Going back to February, my first big piece this year on the Colorado River Compact and the pending expiration of recent minutes that would make it fall apart. It since, of course, has fallen apart and BuRec has imposed mandatory cuts on the three Lower Basin states. With Dems now controlling Congress, what are the odds that, rather than face climate change reality, as they accuse Rethugs of doing, they try to roll that back?

No. 2? Way back in 2018, I called out Emptywheel Marcy Wheeler, a Daily Kos alum and left hand of the duopoly tribalist, along with her fellow writing flunkies, for fixation on Trump’s alleged conspirings on Russiagate, for hoisting herself by her own petard, and for narking on another journalist she refused to name.

No. 1? Other than the header itself, I have no idea why this one is trending, but it’s about the Texas Progressives organization offering a post-election roundup — for 2016.

Be vewwy, vewwy careful: I’m RINO hunting (and Overton Window moving)

So now, Jeebus H. Trump fancies himself as Darth Cheney with a firearm, at least a metaphorical one, eh?

In reality, Trump would be as much a laughingstock with an actual firearm as his big game target: Strangeabbott the RINO. (Supposedly, ranchers took him on a shoot years ago and he came off almost as “sissified” as Bobby Kennedy did out at the LBJ Ranch.)

To remind you what’s up, Jeebus had this comment after the Blue Wave flooded Texas Tuesday night:

“If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost. He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!”

First, this is the usual mix of Trumpian lies and blame shifting.

Strangeabbott changed nothing until the last month or so before the election, when by executive order he promulgated some fake audits of data centers for water usage and then put a temporary pause on grants to finance local law enforcement use of Flock cameras, then claimed he didn’t know the money had been diverted in the first place.

That said, this is a reflection of the circular firing squad already unlimbering within the Tex-ass GOP, which will soon probably go full bore on:

Ready.Fire.Aim.

Jokery about some firing squads.

What’s going to happen in all likelihood is an intra-party Overton Window. And, yes, we in Merikkka, especially we non-duopoly leftists, but to a fair degree the DSA Rosey types as well (though their sheepdogging still enabled it in the past), know what the normal Overton Window is.

And, that’s that every time Rethuglicans move right, Democraps move right chasing them. This is despite political science polling indicating as low as the individual Congressional district that constituents, whether in an R or a D district, are often to the left of their Congresscritter.

But, the Overton Window shifting can happen within a party, as well.

And, it usually happens when euphemisms and excoriations wear out.

Outside the party, “socialist” lost its bite, so Democrats were called “communist” instead, for example.

Here in Tex-ass, within the GOP, positive euphemisms have lost their power.

“Conservative” means nothing. So, “true conservative”? “Real conservative”? “Real Texas conservative”?

Those have started losing power, too.

So, “super dooper paratrooper conservative”? “King James Version conservative”? “Unaltered Augsburg Confession conservative”? (That’s for Lutefash Lutherans.)

None of those is (yet) real, but could become that way.

Within all of this, Republican population biologists are weighing in.

Some think the RINO, especially the White RINO species pictured, is in critical danger and should be put on the endangered species list, housed in a political zoo, or something similar, if nothing else to be preserved as a Republican living history legend.

Others want to hunt them to extinction.

Yet others claim that since this species exists by definition, more can be conjured up out of thin air and that RINO hunting will always exist and be plentiful and bountiful.

Indeed, for some, like “the cockroach of the Lege,” Brian Harrison, an expansive definition of RINOs is an easy way to shove your face in the media.

==

Expect a second or third round of follow-ups, but not immediately. Maybe something before the end of the year and something else during next year’s Lege.

At the same time, if Gina Hinojosa is really, really ConservaDem? I’ll invent a parallel acronym, even if BlueAnon objects. I could do TransRINO but that would be wayyyyyy too easy.

She has, already, as of last night, uttered that BlueAnon and Democratic consultant beloved concept: Bipartisanship. What do you expect from Gilberto’s daughter, I guess? Well, per her transition team, appointing the good old bipartisan Republican as part of it. Maybe she thinks, on modifying or overturning some of Strangeabbott’s education moves, that will work. Maybe it will. Or maybe, like Preznit Kumbaya, she’ll get her face handed to her. (It’s been a while since I’ve use that phrase instead of Dear Leader.)

Dan Patrick has wanted to Christianize America along with Texas, and screw up its universities

The biggest lie you'll hear from any Tex-ass politician is one that Dannie Goeb has been pushing hard for years — the claim that there is no such thing as separation of church and state. Per the Monthly's piece, it's like, even more than Karl Marx, he sees secularists and atheists lurking under every bush and behind every tree in Texas, as well as actually believing that Merikkka is legally and constitutionally, not just sociologically (at least now) a "Christian nation." Related, from the same piece, and indirectly, is his second-biggest lie, that he really cares about rural Texas, when in reality, his talk about "government-run schools" show he's as big of a voucher enthusiast as Strangeabbott. I am breaking out the Christian nationalism stuff for a separate piece.

== 

Speaking of Patrick, in a long-form at the Texas Monthly, Forrest Wilder talks about the wingnuts taking over tea-sipping UT. Dan-o was, and still is, a key part of that play. It first led to that playbook being copied for the A&M and Texas State university systems, etc. It then expanded to actively attack anything "woke" on campuses. A big part of the piece is the faculty exodus that is already starting, especially among people of color, marginal groups, and above all, people who fall into both categories.

Then you have what looks like a spinoff of Stockholm Syndrome:

Devin Stauffer, a mildly disheveled government professor with a scruffy beard, said his colleagues were too dour about the changes afoot. I met with him in May at his office. His desk was watched over by Plato’s visage in a nod to his area of expertise, classical and early modern political philosophy. A university spokesperson sat in on our interview, which I found strange, though Stauffer didn’t seem to mind.

Really? That said, if you're believing even one-third of the worst of what wingnuts are calling "woke," you'll be OK with making yourself a willing captive of the Austin version of the Stockholm bank robbers. 

And, fallout could indeed happen, as Wilder cites past history.

The Rainey episode did lasting damage to UT. The stain made it harder to recruit faculty, and it landed the school on the American Association of University Professors’ censure list for nine years.

Of course, you'd have to have modern collegiate oversight institutions, or non-wingnut, non-ConservaDem US presidents be part of the pushback. If there is? Current wingnut UT president Jim Davis would probably screw the pooch more under orders from state higher authority.

If it did happen? 

Compared to "up north," Texas and other Southern-like states lag in other ways. Unionism is one. Directly connected to academia is another — the number of newspapers per 100,000 people. Even as print media still declines, nonetheless, that decline is a lot slower in the Midwest and Northeast. Also, per the Kuffners who refuse to write about this issue, even in Tex-ass, at least one former prof, who called herself "right of center," was crushed by Strangeabbott and his minions crushing anti-Zionist protests on various campuses. Speaking of?

Liberal Zionist bullshit is bad enough here in the United States. Per Mondoweiss, it's far worse in Israel. 

==

Fortunately, it's too late for Dannie Goeb to go further.

Cockroach of the Lege Brian Harrison strikes again

Harrison, so identified in 2025 by the Texas Monthly, on Wednesday asked Strangeabbott to call a special session of the Lege ASAP to block Gina Hinojosa from making herself a dictator in January.

Harrison has been known by his fellow Rethuglicans as a grandstander. Even Tony Tinder(holt) said so over one of his 2025 stunts, which was to try to unseat Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows midsession.

The loneliest point in Harrison’s session came when he tried to unseat Burrows by forcing a mid-session recall vote. “I’m not here to fight for Brian Harrison’s interests,” Harrison said, drawing mocking laughter from his colleagues. Just one member voted with him. Even Arlington Representative Tony Tinderholt—once the king of the solitary right-wing stand—condemned the effort: “Representative Harrison stood for himself.”

There was plenty of other stupidity that the Monthly documented. 

He's also a zero-IQ fucking idiot who doesn't even understand Texas law and the Texas Constitution.

Who said that, me?

No, Monty Bennett's wingnut identity thieving "media" outlet, the Dallas Express.

A bill would need support from two-thirds of the full membership of each chamber to take effect before the January transition. Otherwise, the state Constitution generally requires a 90-day wait after adjournment.

Obviously, that ain't happening. And, no, I don't think the cockroach, even lower than a MAGAt, knew that at the time he made his request, which he could have used as a call to reform overthrow the Texas Constitution.

It would fit with his grandstanding persona, also called out by Rethugs, per the Monthly:

He is an “insufferable combination of hair gel, studio makeup, and narcissism,” one Texas GOP executive committee member said.

But, he's not that smart to deliberately do something he knows would fail. 

He's also also a liar.

He claimed he did similar with Abbott back in 2022.

The same Dallas Express piece said, nope. Instead, in 2022, he filed a normal regular bill for the 2023 regular session of the Lege, to that end. It went nowhere, of course. 

Remember, Brian? God damns liars! 

Side note: You can tell how many MAGAts on Shitter either aren't from Texas, or if they are, are totally illiterate about politics, who uncritically re-Shit Harrison's Shits. (That said, some are surely bots; Elmo will give anybody a blue check for cash.) 

Side note two: Any Rethug in the Lege who's more than two degrees left of Tinder(holt) knows Hinojosa is a ConservaDem anyway, even if they won't admit it in public. 

Side note three: If Strangeabbott was even one-quarter as gracious as Gina Hinojosa claimed he was yesterday in their first transition meeting, he's already told Harrison privately to fuck off. 

Side note four: Harrison is also apparently too stupid to notice the irony and hypocrisy of trying to get Strangeabbott to become a short term dictator to block the alleged dictatorship Hinojosa is about to impose.