From The Texas Tribune:
When a Republican is elected president, he often brings loads of Texans to Washington with him. That’s because of the state’s size, influence and political leanings.
It’ll likely be no different now that Donald Trump has won a second term next. He has close ties with many Texans. Some of his most prominent donors come from here. Our politicians proudly support him. And judges from the state could be on his list for any openings on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Here’s a look at some of the Texans who might see their influence rise on a national stage with Trump back in the White House.
The donors
Kelcy Warren
Kelcy Warren is Dallas billionaire who founded and runs the pipeline company Energy Transfer. He has donated millions to Republican politicians inside and outside Texas. His giving to Trump has been consistent since Trump was elected president in 2016. In 2020, he hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home that reportedly raised $10 million. This May, he contributed $5 million to Trump’s campaign. When it comes to politics, he’s particularly interested in energy and climate policy. He has expressed concern about proposals to ban fracking — which Harris supported in 2020 but has said during this year’s campaign that she would oppose — and Democrats’ efforts to promote green energy.
Tim Dunn
West Texas oil tycoon Tim Dunn has typically used his fortune to reshape state politics. But the hardline conservative megadonor — who just added at least $2 billion more to his net worth with the sale of his company — emerged as one of Trump’s largest donors this cycle. He also further enveloped himself in MAGA world, quietly launching business partnerships with Trump’s former campaign director and joining the board of the America First Policy Institute, which could play a major role in staffing a second Trump administration and guiding its policies. Rather than angling for a position in the new government, Dunn is likely content to continue wielding his power quietly and behind the scenes — maybe pushing the new government to develop social policies that resemble those of the Texas GOP’s right wing. Already, there have been some signs of that influence: The Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Dunn is the longtime vice chair, helped craft Project 2025; and Heritage Foundation leader Kevin Roberts, whose organization took point on the plan, spent five years with Dunn at TPPF before joining the Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a relative newcomer to Austin, but is poised to play perhaps the biggest role of any Texan in the new Trump White House. Already, the world’s richest man has offered crucial help to Trump’s campaign. He’s appeared at rallies. He’s donated at least $75 million to his pro-Trump political action committee. And he has used his ownership of X, formerly known as Twitter, to stifle negative stories about Trump while spreading pro-Trump conspiracy theories and pushing the former president’s anti-immigration talking points to his 202 million followers. Trump is reportedly considering Musk to lead a new office that focuses on “government efficiency” — but, given Trump and Musk’s political leanings, it maybe more likely focus on massively downsizing the federal government and the many regulators it includes. “Let’s start from scratch,” Musk said of the federal bureaucracy last month. The proposal has already raised concerns from ethics groups given that Musk, whose companies received billions of dollars in federal subsidies and contracts, could theoretically help decide who does — and doesn’t — get to do business with the U.S. government.
The policy minds
Kevin Roberts
Project 2025, the agenda to remake the federal government on conservative lines, was one of the biggest flash points of the 2024 election. Democrats routinely evoked it when criticizing Trump, describing it a policy map for Trump second administration. The Heritage Foundation crafted Project 2025 under the leadership of Kevin Roberts, the group’s president. Roberts took the helm of the Heritage Foundation in 2021 after serving as CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the state’s biggest think tank. Under his leadership, TPPF doubled in size. He has continued focusing on many of the same issues at Heritage on a federal level, including elections, education and the border. He also leads Heritage Action, the sister group to the Heritage Foundation directly involved in elections. A storied institution at the heart of conservative policy making, the Heritage Foundation has taken steps to the right in recent years, including under Roberts. The Trump campaign disavowed Project 2025, saying it was solely a Heritage Foundation project. But over half of its authors served in the Trump administration, campaign or transition team.
Brooke Rollins
A native of Glen Rose and a graduate of Texas A&M University, Brooke Rollins left her job as CEO of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2018 to oversee the Office of American Innovation in the Trump White House. She currently serves as the chief executive of the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that has employed many former Trump administration staffers and has been preparing for a second Trump term. The institute has prepared scores of executive orders Trump could deploy upon taking office and has issued policy proposals like banning federal funding for Planned Parenthood, increasing oil and gas production and eliminating civil-service protections for nonpolitical appointees in the federal workforce. The New York Times has reported that Rollins, who is close to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is being considered by Trump as a potential chief of staff.
Jonathan Mitchell
Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas Solicitor General, is best known for designing Senate Bill 8, the Texas law that allowed private lawsuits against anyone who performed an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Since then, Mitchell has continued waging audacious legal battles on everything from removing books he views as sexually explicit from libraries to limiting the Affordable Care Act and stopping affirmative action. His main target, however, remains abortion: He filed a wrongful death lawsuit against two women who helped a friend terminate her pregnancy, has tried to get information on out-of-state abortions, and is helping towns and counties try to ban people from using their roads to travel to abortion clinics. During the last Trump administration, Mitchell was unsuccessfully nominated to lead a small federal agency. This time around, he will likely be considered for higher power, especially after he successfully convinced the Supreme Court to reject Colorado’s attempt to remove Trump from the ballot.
The judges
Judge James Ho
Former Texas Solicitor General James Ho currently sits on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he has staked out a position to the right of even this most conservative federal appellate court. On issues from abortion to LGBT rights to environmental regulation, Ho has earned a reputation for brash, sharply worded opinions and eyebrow-raising rulings, at least some of which have been knocked down at the Supreme Court. He has written that abortion is a “moral tragedy” and that judges “apply our written Constitution, not a woke Constitution,” and in speeches, railed against what he sees as censorship of conservative ideas. Ho was appointed to the 5th Circuit by Trump in 2018 and is seen as a Supreme Court contender, possibly to replace his former boss, Clarence Thomas.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk
Kacsmaryk, a former religious liberty lawyer born of the anti-abortion movement, has become a key conservative player since Trump appointed him as the only federal judge in Amarillo in 2019. Kacsmaryk has authored opinions that stopped Texas teens from getting confidential birth control, blocked the Biden administration from ending Trump-era immigration policies, and overturned guidance requiring workers be allowed to use a bathroom consistent with their gender identity. In a case later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, Kacsmaryk ruled that mifepristone, a common abortion-inducing drug, should be removed from the market. Even without the Biden administration to battle with, Kacsmaryk’s courtroom is expected to remain a popular destination for conservative cases, unless he ascends to a higher role on the 5th Circuit or in the administration.
The elected officials
Attorney General Ken Paxton
The polarizing attorney general has long had a close relationship with Trump and the former president said at a rally earlier this year that Ken Paxton would make a good U.S. attorney general. In 2020, Paxton challenged Trump’s electoral loss in four battleground states and then spoke at a rally before the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters. Trump rewarded that loyalty with an endorsement in 2021 when an embattled Paxton faced a crowded field in the GOP primary for attorney general. Trump came to Paxton’s aid again in 2023, threatening to target any lawmakers who supported the attorney general’s impeachment in the House. He later took credit for Paxton’s acquittal in the Texas Senate. Paxton frequently meets Trump on airport tarmacs during Texas visits and he recently got one of the loudest cheers at a Trump event in Austin during the final days of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Sid Miller
You’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger cheerleader for Trump than Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who spent much of the summer on a bus touring swing states on the former president’s behalf. The “Gas and Groceries Tour” was Miller’s response to what he claimed was an attempt by Democrats to prevent Trump from campaigning by tying him up in legal battles, and it put him feet from the former president during July’s assassination attempt. Expect Miller to be high on Trump’s list to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture — a lesser-known but incredibly powerful agency that oversees, among other massive programs, food stamp allocations. Miller thinks it’s possible — he recently told The Texas Tribune that, before Trump’s 2020 loss, he was in early talks with his administration to lead the sprawling agency.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick
Few Texas politicians are more closely tied to Trump than the ultra-conservative lieutenant governor. Dan Patrick has served as Trump’s Texas state chairman in every presidential cycle since 2016 and seems to have a direct line to the former president. The support appears to be a two-way street with Trump occasionally attacking Patrick enemies, like House Speaker Dade Phelan, and endorsing relatively obscure politicians supported by Patrick who a national politician would not likely know. He frequently sits front row at Trump’s Texas appearances. But with Patrick holding such a strong grip on Texas politics, it’s unclear why he’d want to leave for a national job or what potential administration job he’d want to fill.
Gov. Greg Abbott
There has been all kinds of chatter about where Gov. Greg Abbott might fit into a future Trump cabinet, speculation that was thrown into overdrive earlier this year when Trump said he might tap the governor as his vice presidential running mate. Though Abbott never emerged as a serious contender, his name has been connected with cabinet posts like attorney general, the position he held in Texas before his elevation to governor. Whoever occupies that job would be a leading player in advancing and defending Trump’s immigration policies — an area where Abbott has made his name under the Biden administration, dramatically expanding Texas’ border presence and at times emerging as the main foil to Biden on border issues. Another possible landing spot for Abbott could be secretary of state, a position that would mesh with his experience making overseas economic development trips during his time as governor. It may also be one of the few offices with a high enough profile to lure Abbott away from the governor’s office at a time when he is arguably at the height of his political power, having shored up his right flank after a 2022 primary challenge and sent a clear message in the primaries by ousting a host of Republican lawmakers who defied him on private school vouchers. Abbott quickly shot down the vice presidential speculation earlier this year, so it’s uncertain whether he’d even be interested in a spot on Trump’s team.
Ronny Jackson
U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson is one of Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress — a loyalty born from his years serving him as White House physician. Jackson has used his medical experience to defend Trump’s physical and mental acumen and to accuse President Joe Biden of cognitive decline. After Trump was shot in the ear during an assassination attempt this year, Jackson traveled with Trump and treated his injury. Trump appointed Jackson to be secretary of veterans affairs in 2018 but withdrew the appointment amid allegations of improper and hostile conduct as White House physician. Jackson accused Democrats, particularly Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chair Jon Tester, and then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly of undermining him with a smear campaign. Jackson ran for Congress in 2020, winning his ruby-red Amarillo-based district. He often uses his perch to spread conspiracy theories about Biden and call for Biden’s impeachment.
Ted Cruz
Once Trump’s biggest adversary in the 2016 presidential primaries, Cruz was one of Trump’s biggest allies in the Senate during his presidency. Cruz supported Trump’s federal court appointments from his perch on the Senate Judiciary Committee and tapped into his constitutional expertise to lead an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential race. Cruz and Trump shared a bitter relationship during the 2016 primary, with Trump repeatedly calling Cruz a liar and ridiculing his wife and father. Cruz in turn called Trump a “sniveling coward” and refused to endorse him at the 2016 Republican National Convention. But Cruz changed his tune, recognizing the political necessity of backing Trump in the modern Republican Party. Now that he easily won reelection in Texas, Cruz will likely continue being an ally for Trump in the Senate, particularly on the Judiciary and Commerce Committee, where he currently serves as ranking member.
The Dallas-Fort Worth pastors
Trump may be able to lean on a team of veteran Texas politicos in his second term. But his power is only as strong as his base — and the pastors who shepherd them. White evangelicals in Texas have always played an outsized role in Trump’s political rise — nearly 25% of his 2016 spiritual advisory team was based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Many have remained in Trump’s orbit, so expect to hear from pastors such as Kenneth Copeland, Jack Graham and Robert Jeffress in a second Trump term.
At the same time, white evangelicalism has undergone stunning shifts since 2016. The former titans of the Religious Right are graying or dead, their spheres of influence filled by a younger generation of leaders who have put their predecessors’ calls for “spiritual warfare” into political practice. In Texas, figures such as Lance Wallnau have for years been laying the groundwork for movements to tear down church-state separations and reclaim America for God. They may get less attention than the megachurch pastors huddled laying hands on Trump in the Oval Office. But the last eight years have shown that they are coordinated, energized and almost unflinchingly loyal to Trump.
Correction. Nov. 1 at 4:35 p.m.: A previous version of this story had a photo of the wrong Kevin Roberts.
Disclosure: Energy Transfer, Planned Parenthood, Texas A&M University, Texas Public Policy Foundation and The New York Times have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
