Blogs: Immigration

James Henson and Joshua Blank check in on Gov. Abbott’s pressure on Houston, Dallas, and Austin to change immigration enforcement politics and planned spending by both parties on Texas Congressional races, then go deep on the Texas Lyceum Poll’s look at Texans’ views of the quality of life in Texas.

In the latest Second Reading podcast, James Henson and Joshua Blank use Texas polling to compare and contrast the issues at play in the Republican and Democratic primaries in Texas. Plus, some brief discussion of the latest NYT/Sienna national poll and the coverage of polling conducted by campaigns.

James Henson and Joshua Blank look at the polling results on health care, immigration, and the 2026 U.S. Senate race in the final UT/Texas Politics Poll of 2025, and what those results portend for the 2026 election year.

The final University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll of 2025 found Texas voters' attention to high prices pivoting towards health care costs as the 2026 election moves to the center of state politics.

The UT/Texas Politics Project Poll team – – Joshua Blank, Daron Shaw, and James Henson – look at results the much-noted decline in President Trump's job approval numbers in their June poll, and how Trump's standing intersects attitudes on the economy and immigration, as well as what can be read into the current positions of Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton in anticipation of Paxton's challenge to Cornyn in the 2026 GOP primary.

James Henson and Joshua Blank talk about how immigration protests, the Trump administration’s push for redistricting in Texas, and the short-lived in-state tuition lawsuit have disturbed the post session lull in the Lone Star State.

In a meeting of the Texas Politics Project poll team, Daron Shaw and Joshua Blank talk with James Henson about results in the April 2025 University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll.

As legal challenges to the Trump administration's deportation tactics mount, Texas Politics Project polling reveals the sources of support in Texas for immigration enforcement at churches, schools, and hospitals – and its limits.

While pluralities of Republican voters approved of several of the specific tactics the Trump administration has threatened to use to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants, the poll revealed reservations among significant shares of the same partisans who profess to support the immediate deportation of anyone in the country illegally.

James Henson talks with Jonathan Blitzer about the threads he pulled together in his profile of Texas Governor Greg Abbott for the March 17 issue of The New Yorker.