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What To Know <\/p>\nTucker Carlson is warning that Texas Governor Greg Abbott could be in serious political trouble heading into the 2026 midterm elections, as Democrat Gina Hinojosa has narrowed the gap in the traditionally Republican state. The latest polling shows a close race, giving Hinojosa an opening as she seeks to unseat the three-term Republican governor.<\/p>\n
The contest comes as Abbott faces criticism over his shifting position on artificial intelligence data centers. Abbott previously promoted Texas as an AI hub but has recently moved toward greater oversight of the industry. On August 3, he directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to conduct a comprehensive audit of data centers seeking to connect to the state\u2019s power grid, requiring the audit to be completed before projects could move forward. Abbott said projects that fail to meet state requirements will be denied connections, citing concerns about the strain data centers could place on Texas\u2019 electricity grid.<\/p>\n
Hinojosa has made the data-center controversy a part of her campaign, arguing that Abbott is reversing course to protect his reelection chances and because voters have grown increasingly concerned about the projects. In an email to Newsweek on Thursday, Texas Democratic Party spokesman Jacob Long accused Abbott of previously giving data centers generous tax breaks and promoting Texas as an \u201cAI playground for billionaires,\u201d before declaring that voters would send him into retirement and elect Hinojosa. The criticism comes as opposition to data centers has spread across party lines, with a recent Texas Politics Project poll finding only 30 percent supported having a data center in their community.<\/p>\n
Read More on Politics<\/p>\n
Newsweek reached out to Abbott’s campaign via online form on Thursday for comment. <\/p>\n
What To Know <\/p>\n
In an episode of The Tucker Carlson Show released Wednesday, Carlson sat down with podcast host Saagar Enjeti.<\/p>\n
Enjeti said that Donald Trump has run numerous times now on rebuilding America but, as of late, has backed AI and data centers.<\/p>\n
“How about a bill in Congress that Trump could call for, saying, ‘You want your data centers, okay, but we’re not gonna turn this into East Germany,” Carlson said.<\/p>\n
“If we had abundant cheap power, none of this would really be as much of a conversation, but it is actually living in a world where the administration is coming to the back of these data center companies and is in many cases is attacking Republican governors who, again, in my opinion, are just trying to do some very sensible stuff,” Enjeti later added. “Greg Abbott, who, let’s not pretend he’s doing this out of the goodness of his own heart, he dragged kicking and screaming to the data center moratorium.”<\/p>\n
“He’s about to lose that election,” Carlson said. <\/p>\n
“He very well may,” Enjeti said. “But he signed the data center moratorium, and in it, all he says is, ‘Look, we’re doing a moratorium; we have to figure out rural land use and water, noise generation, we need to make sure that you don’t get certain tax breaks. We just need to make things normal so that when the local community allows the data center to be built, that they reap some of the benefits. And Trump comes out and is like, I think it’s a mistake.”<\/p>\n
Hinojosa reacted to the remark on X on Thursday, saying, “You heard it from Tucker Carlson: Greg Abbott is going to lose.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, on Monday, Trump took to Truth Social arguing that communities that reject data centers risk falling behind economically, saying the projects can bring jobs and lower taxes. “The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can\u2019t believe it is happening!” Trump said.<\/p>\n
Data centers are also emerging as a growing political sticking point within the Republican Party<\/a>, putting Trump at odds with members of his own party who are increasingly concerned about voter backlash. <\/p>\n While speaking during the White House press briefing on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said<\/a>, \u201cA very large chunk of it, not all of it, of course, but a very large chunk of it, is that people associate data centers with \u2018my neighborhood’s going to get worse.\u2019 In particular, \u2018my power bills are going to go up.'”<\/p>\n \u201cThe way to bridge that gap,\u201d Vance said, is to help put power back into the grid. <\/p>\n Vance was also asked about Carlson during the briefing, specifically on remarks he made against Republican nominee for Michigan Senate, Mike Rogers. “Tucker is a friend of mine,” Vance said. “I’m not gonna play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them.”<\/p>\n What Polls Show<\/p>\n A poll by Overton Insights and the Texas Public Policy Foundation found Abbott leading Hinojosa 47 percent to 46 percent <\/a>among likely voters. The poll of 1,167 likely voters was conducted August 24-26 and had a margin of error of 2.9 percent.<\/p>\n University of Texas\/Texas Politics Project poll shows Abbott up with 45 percent over Hinojosa’s 40 percent. The poll surveyed 1,200 registered voters in Texas from August 5-13, 2026, and had a margin of error of 2.83 percent.<\/p>\n An Emerson College Polling\/Nexstar Media survey shows that Abbott is up with 49 percent compared to Hinojosa’s 45 percent. The poll was taken from August 9-10, 2026, among 1,000 likely Texas voters, with a margin of error of 3 percent.<\/p>\n The polling, however, does not yet show Abbott losing. The overall trend has pointed somewhat toward a more competitive race, and Hinojosa’s standing could make the governor’s race one of the more closely watched contests in Texas this November.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, midterm elections are commonly seen as a measure of public approval for the current president, and the president’s party has traditionally lost seats during them.<\/p>\n Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon<\/a> and Gray R. Thomas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tucker Carlson is warning that Texas Governor Greg Abbott could be in serious political trouble heading into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5421,392,1773,7398,27,29,28,85905,4040],"class_list":["post-425837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-data-center","tag-greg-abbott","tag-poll","tag-polling","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tucker-carlson","tag-us-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}