BThe Wall Street Journal is reporting Texas Democrats have swept every statewide seat.
BAnd they took the statehouse too.
BThat's not a ripple, Brian. That's a realignment people said was ten years away.
BOr never. Ted Cruz himself says Texas is, quote, blue.
BThe party that couldn't win a dogcatcher race there is now running the table.
BFor years the line was demographics would eventually flip Texas.
BThe suburbs outside Dallas and Houston have been trending blue for cycles.
BBut the border counties mattered too. James Talarico beat Ken Paxton for a Senate seat.
BGina Hinojosa unseated Greg Abbott. The statehouse flipping is the bigger deal.
BThat's where redistricting and energy policy get written.
BMy read: this was a wave, not a permanent blue Texas.
BOh, come on. A governor, a senator, and the legislature? That's an earthquake.
BWhich is exactly why the swing is so large. It doesn't make the next cycle automatic.
BNo, no, wait. You keep saying "wave." I'm saying the Republican coalition cracked like it did in Arizona and Georgia.
BArizona and Georgia don't flip every cycle. They swing. Texas will now be contested, not owned.
BContested is a massive change! For decades Texas set the Republican baseline for the whole country.
BFine. Grudgingly, that's true.
BBut the harder question is whether Democrats can hold oil and gas workers together with urban progressives.
BThat's the real fight. The coalition that won this election is broad, and broad coalitions splinter.
BRepublicans are learning that lesson in reverse. They don't get to run Texas like a one-party state anymore.
BDifferent world entirely: Reuters is reporting a seafarer was killed in a suspected missile attack on a tanker in the Gulf.
BNo independent confirmation yet, so we say suspected. But if it holds, this is escalation.
BThe Gulf is the world's oil artery. A burning tanker there ripples into insurance, routes, and energy prices.
BThis is not random. Attacks on tankers have a long history in the Gulf, including the Tanker War in the eighties.
BAnd now the Red Sea crisis is on one side, and this on the other. Civilian crews are being treated like military targets.
BThe crew member killed is the story. These are civilian sailors.
BWe don't know who fired, and we shouldn't guess. But shipping operators will start asking about escorts and routes.
BIf this becomes a pattern, insurers will reprice the entire Gulf. That drags every economy dependent on those lanes.
BThat's the lesson. You don't need a declaration of war to change global trade.
BAnd the US Navy is already there. The whole point of the fleet is to keep those lanes open.
BKeeping a strait open is different from chasing every drone or missile. You can't sink an ideology with a destroyer.
BNo, but you can make the cost of firing so high that it stops.
BThat's a real argument. But the Gulf is not the Red Sea. The geography is narrower, the threats are different.
BWhich means the response has to be different too. You don't just wait for the next tanker to get hit.
BHere's a heavier one. Fox News posted a quote from Andrew Colabella, who lost his cousin in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
BAndrew Colabella says, "As a nation, we don't negotiate with terrorists. But now we're voting in terrorist sympathizers."
BLet me stop there. The target is Adam Hisham Hamawy, a New Jersey candidate with past ties to the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman.
BTies matter. If a candidate took the stand for a convicted terrorist, voters should know that.
BThey should know the full picture. Hamawy was never charged and denies wrongdoing. That's a world away from "sympathizer."
BI'm not saying he's guilty of anything. I'm saying the instinct to defend the worst people is a legitimate character question.
BNo, the phrase "voting in terrorist sympathizers" is not a question. It's an accusation dressed as grief.
BOh, come on. Politicians invoke 9/11 to justify all kinds of things. This family has a right to speak.
BThey absolutely do. But we don't have to repeat a claim that's more smear than fact.
BThen what's the fair version?
BA candidate with a controversial past association won a primary. Voters can weigh it. The rest is fire.
BFine. The fire is real, but the facts are muddier than the quote makes them sound.