Donald J. Trump’s political honeymoon with Latino voters in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley appears to be over, and the buyer’s remorse is getting harder to ignore.
In 2024, voters in this heavily Latino region helped Trump break through decades of Democratic dominance. They were promised a better economy, lower prices, and an immigration crackdown supposedly aimed at dangerous criminals. Two years later, some of those same voters are wondering what the hell they were thinking, HuffPost reports.
One woman, Nivia, summed up life under the Trump administration in two words: “Screwed up.”
She said grocery and gas prices have climbed while wages haven’t kept pace, and she’s watched people she personally knows get swept up in ICE raids and deported, resulting in families torn apart.
“I regret it,” she said of her vote for Trump. “I guess I was blindsided.”
She’s hardly alone. HuffPost spoke with nearly two dozen voters across the Rio Grande Valley and heard plenty of frustration over increasing living costs, aggressive immigration enforcement, and a president who seems to have delivered just about everything except the promises that got him elected.
Linda, a 75-year-old former two-time Trump voter, said her grocery bill has gone from roughly $100 to nearly $300. She’s now planning to vote straight Democratic.
Another voter, San Juanita Garza, said watching ICE separate families has convinced her to switch sides. As she put it, she’s “pro-family, pro-good.” Apparently, that’s become a controversial position in Trumpworld.
Even among conservative Republicans, the administration’s economic talking points aren’t necessarily getting through. When her husband defended Trump by saying he’s trying his best, Ana Marie Gonzales had a rather inconvenient response: “Well, our wallets aren’t saying that.”
Ouch. It’s almost as if telling people the economy is fantastic doesn’t help much when they’re standing in the grocery store watching their bills triple.
The increasing dissatisfaction may have serious consequences for Republicans. The GOP redrew congressional districts in Texas based on the assumption that its gains among Latino voters in 2024 represented a lasting political realignment. Now, some of those very voters are threatening to send Democrats to Washington instead.
Republicans just might have made a huge error, mistaking a temporary political shift for a permanent change of address. Loyalty is a one-way street with Trump. Turns out, voters have a funny habit of remembering when politicians make promises — especially when those promises come with a much bigger grocery bill.
When a pendulum swings one way, it always comes back. And in politics, it hits hard. The midterms are almost here, and voters need to send a strong message to the unhinged, lawless president. All the polls in the world don’t matter if you don’t vote.
