Trump endorses nearly every GOP state lawmaker in Texas. Here’s the backstory.

President Donald Trump is officially endorsing nearly every Republican in the Texas Legislature for reelection, rewarding them for a key vote earlier this year with the most coveted prize in GOP politics and clearing up some drama that arose in GOP circles in recent weeks.

Trump this week began sending individual letters of endorsement to the over 100 members of the Texas House and Senate who are seeking re-election and also voted to approve Gov. Greg Abbott’s priority legislation on school vouchers, according to two White House officials familiar with the plan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the letters before they were sent.

Abbott signed the bill into law in May, marking a long-sought victory for the governor, who teamed with Trump in the 2024 primary to unseat state House Republicans who previously blocked the proposal.

Trump, in an aside during a recent speech at the White House, recalled his influential role in clinching the school voucher victory for Abbott.

“That was a big deal,” Trump said. “They’ve been trying to get it for nine years, and they asked me if I’d call … Republicans in the legislature, and I did. Then I gave them a pep talk and everybody voted for it. It’s the first time. They were shocked.”

It is highly rare, if not unprecedented, for Trump to endorse so many GOP officials at once, and the move comes as other GOP candidates across the country continue to compete aggressively for his support – the most valuable currency in Republican politics. Even in Texas, GOP Sen. John Cornyn is battling primary challenger Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, to appeal to Trump, who has stayed neutral.

The president’s bulk endorsement caps a somewhat unusual chain of events that shows how various Republicans have sought to use his endorsement to their advantage.

Trump’s decision to send the letters also puts to rest something that has become a political question mark in Texas in recent weeks. When Trump phoned in to a meeting of state House Republicans shortly before the school voucher vote in April, he gave a pep talk that left the impression that he would endorse for re-election any member who voted for the bill, according to GOP strategists close to the lawmakers.

Based on that impression, at least 11 GOP incumbents launched re-election campaigns claiming to be endorsed by Trump, frustrating intraparty critics who countered that the president’s support was not official. They noted, among other things, that Trump almost always announces endorsements first on his Truth Social network.

In one example, state Rep. Stan Gerdes issued a news release on June 17 declaring that he was seeking another term and that he has “already earned” Trump’s endorsement. A primary challenger to Gerdes, Tom Glass, has taken issue with the branding, suggesting the incumbents’ touting of Trump’s backing “cheapens and devalues” the president’s endorsement.

Texas GOP Chairman Abraham George, who is aligned with the antiestablishment wing of the party, released a video last month pleading with Trump to hold off on endorsing any state House Republicans for now. The State Republican Executive Committee recently called on Trump to withhold endorsements until the party could finish a process of censuring elected officials who are accused of violating party principles.

But the letters from Trump show the president has been undeterred by the efforts to keep him on the sidelines.

Trump has long championed “school choice,” a term that supporters use to generally refer to government-backed efforts to help parents find alternatives to public schooling for their children. When Trump signed an executive order in March to start shutting down the Education Department, Trump declared that “the time for universal school choice has come.”

The Texas program, which is expected to launch late next year, makes certain families eligible for thousands of taxpayer dollars to help pay for private school tuition and other schooling costs.

The passage of the program marked a breakthrough after years of opposition from a coalition in the Texas House of mostly Democrats and some Republicans who represented rural districts with few, if any, education options beyond public schools.

But Abbott made the extraordinary move of targeting the Republican holdouts in the 2024 primary, helping unseat enough incumbents to pave the way for the proposal in the latest legislative session. Only two House Republicans voted against it. One Republican opposed it in the Senate.

While Trump has seen his standing decline with voters nationwide during his second term – even in Texas – he remains popular in his party. A recent University of Texas poll found that 87% of Texas Republicans approved of his job performance.