Joan Esposito is joined by Kendall Scudder, new chair of the Texas Democratic Party.

Scudder discussed the aftermath of the Kerr County floods, criticizing Republicans for their lack of action and accountability.

"Here's the thing," he said. "There have been years and years and years of Republicans in Texas, particularly, who are fighting to tear down governmental systems that were designed to help people, and people don't realize how much and how badly they need them until they need them. And this was a situation where they needed them, but the county government had been returning infrastructure funds because they didn't want money from Joe Biden. The state had been failing to pass the flood warning bills that were going in front of the legislature, HB 13 that didn't even get a hearing in [Lieutenant Governor] Dan Patrick's Senate this cycle, and Republican President Donald Trump has been defunding the weather service so that there were not people whose job it was was to warn people when these were happening. So it's a failure of Republican government, from the bottom to the top, from county commissioner all the way up to the White House. And it's very sad that elections have consequences, and this is one of those. I hope that we use it to learn. But if the Republicans have taught me one thing, it's that that's not what they do in times like this. They try to do self-preservation, pass the buck, do anything they can to not have to take accountability for their actions."

Scudder addressed the 2026 U.S. Senate election, predicting Ken Paxton will defeat incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary, which he says will give Democrats the "best opportunity we've had in my lifetime" to flip a U.S. Senate seat in Texas.

"There are a lot of Democrats who are lining up to be the nominee," Scudder told WCPT, noting that former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred has declared his candidacy. "But I've heard five, six other folks who have also expressed interest there, all of them really high-quality candidates. So we'll actually probably be having a heavily contested primary for U.S. Senate here in Texas, which I think will serve us well, allow us to spend money outreaching to Democrats, reintroducing ourselves, defining what it means to be a Texas Democrat, and then sprinting forward to the general election in November [2026], where we can knock out a Republican stronghold."

Scudder also touched on the redistricting fight that is developing in the state, explaining:

"There are a lot of Democrats who live in Texas, and as a result, we make up a very large chunk of the Democratic delegation to Congress, because we have five major metros, each of them are heavily Democratic. They have to draw minority protection districts. Those are largely centered in those major metro areas, and it's just really hard for them to draw maps with people that does not give Democrats lots of seats in Texas. Now, we still don't have a proportionate number of seats. They are still bad maps as they exist. However, they, right now, at least exist in a legal fashion.

"What Donald Trump has done is ask his attorneys at the Justice Department to send a letter to [Governor] Greg Abbott questioning the legality of minority districts. So they've called into question a Hispanic district, two Black districts and a coalition district that is his majority Hispanic and African American combined. And what they're going to try to do is declare minority districts unconstitutional, even though they are clearly protected within the Voting Rights Act. And if they do that, it'll be the first shot across the bow where they're going to start going into every single state in the union trying to take away minority representation in the legislature. And the Congress could end up being as white as it was before Reconstruction. And so we're on the front lines of that fight right now to make sure that we're we're beating back any efforts to strip local citizens from the opportunity to have the representation that they want."

Catch "Joan Esposito: Live, Local and Progressive" weekdays from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/programs/live-local-progressive).

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