The Blast Bulletin: October 13, 2025

THE WHITE HOUSE CHECK-IN

Despite voting to censure five of the 10 Texas House Republicans who had been marked as insufficiently conservative, the State Republican Executive Committee on Saturday rejected attempts to ban any of them from the 2026 primary ballot. Regardless, the SREC received a stern warning from the White House.

During deliberations leading up to the censure votes, Texas GOP Chair Abraham George put the SREC on notice that the White House was watching the livestream.

“They want to know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and they have their opinion about it, and they’ve very strongly expressed it,” George said.

And near the end of the meeting, George briefly kicked all visitors and press out of the Capitol auditorium to take a private call from White House political director Matt Brasseaux. Speaking to the SREC during the executive session, Brasseaux said the White House does not support banning anyone from the ballot and that it should be up to the voters to elect their candidates, according to sources in the room.

After the call, at least one SREC member declared that they don’t work for the White House.

President Donald Trump has endorsed every Republican member of the Texas House but the two school voucher holdouts, former Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont and Gary VanDeaver of New Boston. Phelan is retiring, but, as of now, VanDeaver is running for reelection.

Although the White House felt it was important enough to make that phone call mid-meeting, the call itself likely didn’t change the outcome. When George paused the meeting to take Brasseaux’s call, the SREC had already rejected ballot bans for nine of the 10. They had just voted to concur with the Red River and Morris County GOPs’ censures against VanDeaver, the final member on Saturday’s docket, and were about to decide on his penalties.

Plus, at the top of the meeting, the SREC shot down a motion to reject the ballot bans en masse, 33-28. While that cleared the way for the committee to consider the ballot bans, actually barring a lawmaker from the primary would require three-fifths support — six more than the 33 who voted to preserve the option. The 33 votes represented the apparent ceiling of support for a ballot ban.

When the SREC opened the meeting back up to the public, they rejected VanDeaver’s ballot ban by voice vote.

The call itself likely didn’t make a difference, but it proved White House officials were listening in — and willing to throw their weight around to defend Trump’s candidates.

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THE OTHER PENALTIES

No one is banned from the 2026 primary ballot, but the censured members do face other penalties.

One formally discourages the candidates from running in the Republican primary but doesn’t ban them. The other allows the state and county party to endorse challengers and spend money to notify voters of the censures.

Both penalties predate the Texas GOP’s 2024 overhaul of its censure rule.

Beyond the two retiring members, the three other censured members are Angelia Orr of Itasca, Jared Patterson of Frisco and Gary VanDeaver of New Boston.

Orr’s challenger, former congressional candidate Kat Wall, received a shoutout during the meeting. So did VanDeaver challenger Chris Spencer, who lost to VanDeaver in their 2024 primary runoff by 7 points with the backing of Gov. Greg Abbott.

The latter penalty authorizes the SREC to spend up to 12% of its general fund to distribute the censure resolution in the member’s district. Texas GOP Chair Abraham George said the SREC would consider that in December, after the candidate filing deadline has closed.

Also of note is that while no one was hit with a ballot ban, the overhauled censure rule now requires candidates to affirm that they have not been censured in the last two years. Texas GOP general counsel Rachel Hooper told The Blast that she recently instructed county party chairs to not reject anyone from the ballot for that reason, unless the SREC told them to.  If the local chairs play along, this should be the end of the ballot ban effort — at least during this primary cycle.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY:

• Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows appointed general investigating committees on the July 2025 floods.

  • Senate committee

    • Chair Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton

    • Vice Chair Charles Perry, R-Lubbock

    • Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola

    • Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham

    • José Menéndez, D-San Antonio

  • House committee

    • Chair Morgan Meyer, R-University Park

    • Vice Chair Joe Moody, D-El Paso

    • Drew Darby, R-San Angelo

    • Paul Dyson, R-Bryan

    • Erin Gámez, D-Brownsville

• State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, a Rio Grande Valley native, has a special announcement lined up in Brownsville on Wednesday. She is expected to launch a gubernatorial campaign.

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