{"id":48695,"date":"2025-11-13T23:43:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T23:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/48695\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T23:43:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T23:43:06","slug":"former-speaker-phelan-says-hes-not-a-maga-republican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/48695\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Speaker Phelan says he\u2019s \u201cnot a MAGA Republican\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan<\/a> on Thursday said his decision to drop his bid for another term leading the lower chamber last year was rooted in his disapproval of President Donald Trump\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n

Phelan, a Beaumont Republican who served two terms as speaker, narrowly survived a primary challenge last year from an opponent endorsed<\/a> by Trump. He later declined<\/a> to seek reelection as speaker amid opposition from within his own party.<\/p>\n

In August, Phelan announced<\/a> he wasn\u2019t going to run for reelection to his southeast Texas House district. Trump earlier this week posted<\/a> on Truth Social: \u201cFortunately for the Great State of Texas, their Former Speaker, who is no longer Speaker, Dade Phelan, is quitting Politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phelan at a Texas Tribune Festival event Thursday said it wasn\u2019t anything new to have the president come after him. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s fine,\u201d Phelan said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a secret I am not a MAGA Republican. I never have been a MAGA Republican. I\u2019m not a Donald Trump guy. Again, it\u2019s the reason I decided not to be speaker again. I could not carry his agenda through the Texas House.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phelan said that it felt \u201cphenomenal\u201d not to be running for office again. But he said he was concerned for the Republican Party as it headed into the midterms, where the party that controls the White House generally doesn\u2019t do well. He noted that prices weren\u2019t going down \u2014 \u201cregardless of what Mr. Trump says\u201d \u2014 and health care costs were set to rise next year with the looming expiration of Affordable Care Act tax credits, spelling political trouble for his party.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get a handle on this or we\u2019re going to have a very messy, very messy November of next year,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Subscribe\u00a0to The Blast, The Texas Tribune\u2019s premier newsletter, for exclusive reporting, nonpartisan analysis and the first word on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27921,145,2425,27,29,1862,293,28,17874],"class_list":["post-48695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-dade-phelan","tag-donald-trump","tag-speaker-of-the-texas-house","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-house-of-representatives","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-news","tag-tribcast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48695","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=48695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}