They are going to call Jasmine Crockett a socialist.1 Of course they are. In the modern Republican lexicon, “socialist” is just a synonym for “person I am afraid of,” and right now, there is nobody the Texas GOP fears more than the Congresswoman from Dallas who treats a committee hearing like a cross-examination and a viral clip like a weapon of mass instruction.
But let’s be clear about what “socialism” actually means in the Lone Star State in the Year of Our Lord 2025. If you are a single mother in Houston trying to figure out why your grocery bill looks like a mortgage payment, asking for help is “socialism.” If you are a senior in the Rio Grande Valley wondering why your electricity bill is higher than your social security check, expecting the grid to work is “entitlement.”
However, if you are Elon Musk, and you want the state of Texas to subsidize your space hobby to the tune of millions while you tweet through it? That’s not socialism. That’s “innovation.” If you are a fossil fuel executive wanting a piece of the $7.2 billion state-backed loan program to build gas plants that might work when it gets cold (maybe, no promises), that’s just “good business.”
We are living in the golden age of Socialism for the Rich, and Jasmine Crockett seems to be the only person in the state with the nerve to point out that the emperor has no clothes, just a very expensive subsidy package.
The Public Defender vs. The Public Offenders
Crockett’s rise from public defender to the Texas House to the halls of Congress has been less a career ladder and more a series of controlled explosions. She didn’t come to Washington to make friends; she came to make a point. And the point is usually that the people across the aisle are looting the treasury while lecturing the poor on personal responsibility.
Her entry into the 2026 Senate race isn’t just a campaign; it’s an indictment. She is running against a political machine that has turned the Texas state government into a concierge service for donors. While Senator John Cornyn polishes the brass on the Titanic, Crockett is the one pointing out that the ship is hitting an iceberg made of corruption and incompetence.
Take the case of “Border Czar” Tom Homan. While the rest of the Democratic caucus was wringing their hands, Crockett was on the Oversight Committee dissecting allegations that Homan took $50,000 in cash—allegedly stuffed in a takeout bag—in exchange for future contracts. That is the kind of detail that usually only exists in bad crime novels, but in this administration, it’s just Tuesday. Crockett’s ability to take that kind of grift and make it viral, to translate complex corruption into a thirty-second clip that explains exactly who is stealing from you, is a superpower.
The Tenant Living Rent-Free at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
But nothing terrifies the GOP establishment more than the fact that Jasmine Crockett has seemingly taken up permanent residence inside the President’s head, and she isn’t paying a dime in rent. It is a rare and beautiful thing to watch a freshman congresswoman rattle the Commander-in-Chief so thoroughly that he spends his executive time rage-posting about her IQ.
The obsession is palpable. Trump has launched multiple late-night missives calling her “Low (Very!!!) I.Q.” and challenging her to cognitive exams, a tactic he usually reserves for sworn enemies of the state or people who beat him at golf.2 He compares her to “AOC plus three,” trying to paint her as a radical caricature, but the insults don’t land.3 They bounce off her like bullets off Superman’s chest because she knows the secret: when the bully screams, it means you’re winning.
Crockett doesn’t retreat to the fainting couch when the President attacks; she walks right up to the microphone and hits back with the precision of a surgeon. “I live rent-free in his head,” she quipped after one particularly unhinged rant, pointing out the absurdity of the most powerful man in the world fixating on a “sophomore” legislator. She called him a “loser” for punching down, and she did it with a smile that said she knows exactly how small he feels.
She has turned the floor of the House into a counter-offensive operation. When Trump freezes funding or pushes tariffs that hurt working Texans, Crockett is there to connect the dots in real-time, explaining to her constituents that the economic pain they feel is a direct result of the man in the White House. She frames him not as a strongman, but as a “nepo baby” who failed upward, a “wannabe king” who is scared of a Black woman from Dallas who actually earned her degrees.4 It drives him mad. And in a political landscape where intimidation is the currency, her refusal to be intimidated makes her the richest woman in the room.
The Economics of “Freedom” (to Pay More)
The argument against Crockett will be that she is “too radical” for Texas. But look at the reality of life in Texas right now and tell me what “moderate” looks like.
Is it moderate that Texas home insurance premiums are the sixth highest in the nation, rising faster than inflation, because the state refuses to regulate the industry or acknowledge the climate reality slamming into our coast?
Is it moderate that grocery prices—specifically for beef and eggs—are up double digits, a direct result of supply chain chaos and the very tariffs the President loves to tweet about?
Is it moderate that the “Texas Miracle” now includes electricity bills that rival a car payment, all to prop up a grid that prioritizes profit over reliability?
Crockett frames this perfectly: Trump and his enablers in Austin are top-down socialists. They redistribute public money upward with a firehose. They give tax carve-outs to corporations that price-gouge you at the checkout line. They hand defense contracts to donors who treat the Pentagon budget like a piñata. And then, when the bill comes due, they tell you that you are the problem because you wanted affordable healthcare or a living wage.
The Musk Problem
Nothing encapsulates this hypocrisy better than the state’s relationship with Elon Musk. Here is a man who has received billions in government subsidies over the years—from federal loans to state tax breaks to a fresh $17.3 million grant from the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund just to expand a facility that was already expanding.
Musk is the ultimate welfare queen. He privatizes the profit and socializes the risk. And yet, the Texas GOP treats him like John Galt. Crockett, with her now-legendary ability to cut through the noise (her “f*** off” to Musk’s trolling was less a profanity and more a policy position), is the only one willing to say it: Why are we bailing out the richest man in the world while Texas teachers are buying their own chalk?
The Fighter Texas Needs
The knock on Democrats in Texas is always that they are too nice, too soft, too willing to bring a white paper to a knife fight. Jasmine Crockett does not have that problem. She brings a flamethrower.
She has proven she can take a hit. The attacks on her appearance, the “low-IQ” slurs from the President, the constant barrage of misogyny and racism—she doesn’t just weather it; she metabolizes it. She turns it into fuel. When Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to come for her in a committee hearing, Crockett didn’t retreat; she delivered a clapback so precise (“bleach blonde, bad-built butch body”) it should have been registered as a kinetic strike.5
This is what the “incisive committee work” looks like in 2025. It isn’t just about reading the briefing book (though she clearly does); it’s about understanding that in the attention economy, you have to command the screen before you can command the policy.
The Coalition of the Fed-Up
Crockett’s path to victory isn’t about winning over the country club Republicans who find Trump “distasteful” but will vote for him anyway because of the tax cuts. It’s about mobilizing the millions of Texans who have been left behind by the “miracle.”
She is building a coalition that looks like the actual future of Texas: young voters who know they will never own a home under the current system; Black and Latino communities who have been gerrymandered into irrelevance; women who are terrified of a state that views their bodies as state property.
Her digital reach is massive. She speaks the language of the internet, not in a “fellow kids” way, but in a way that acknowledges the absurdity of the moment. She connects the dots between the loss of civil liberties, the attack on reproductive rights, and the economic squeeze on working families.
The Verdict
The 2026 Senate race is not a choice between Left and Right. It is a choice between a corrupt machine that feeds the rich and starves the rest, and a woman who has spent her entire career fighting for the people in the back of the room.
They will call her a socialist.6 Let them. If “socialism” means fighting for a Texas where the electricity works, the schools are funded, and the billionaires pay their fair share, then maybe it’s time Texas tried a little socialism. Because the “capitalism” we have right now looks a lot like robbery.
Jasmine Crockett has prosecuted the case against the MAGA corruption in committee rooms and on cable news. Now, she is ready to take it to the jury. And in Texas, the jury is finally starting to pay attention.