Beto O’Rourke recently sat down with Jeremy Wallace on Texas Take, the political podcast from the Houston Chronicle, for a wide-ranging conversation about the 2026 midterm elections, executive power, and the future of American democracy. The full interview runs close to an hour. What follows is a single uninterrupted excerpt in which O’Rourke lays out what he believes is at stake if Democrats lose control of Congress in 2026, and why he sees Texas as central to the outcome.

In my mind, this election is for all the marbles. If Democrats lose, then the consolidation of power in the hands of the president will be unstoppable. This slide to authoritarianism, I think, will reach its natural conclusion. We will live in a fascist country where it will be completely normal—not exceptional, as it is now—for masked, plainclothes federal agents to come and sweep you up off the streets without warrants or badges, to either imprison you or deport you to a country you’ve never been from.

The corruption and criminality we see from the Trump crime family and their associates will become the de facto fascist state ruling party in this country going forward. We won’t have free and fair elections. The Republican majority you have now will roll out the royal red carpet for a Trump third term or his designated successor.

On the other side, if Democrats win—if we win congressional races in Texas, and if we win this Senate race, which is what puts us at 51 votes in the U.S. Senate—then you have a check on Trump’s lawlessness. You have accountability for his crimes. You have the very real possibility of free and fair elections in 2028. Trump sees that. He understands that Democrats with subpoena power and committee chairs in Congress in 2027 are going to bring his crimes to light, that he’s going to lose the White House in 2028, and that there will be no Merrick Garland 2.0.

Justice will be full, and justice will be swift — for him, for his family, and for his associates. That explains him trying to rig elections in Texas, redraw the maps mid-decade. It explains him trying, through executive order, to outlaw mail-in voting. It explains him telling The New York Times last week, “I wish I had sent the National Guard to seize the voting machines” in the 2020 election. It explains not only him inciting a violent insurrection at the Capitol in 2021, but pardoning every one of those [bleeped expletive], who beat a Capitol Police officer—some nearly to death—five of whom took their own lives in the days following that insurrection attempt.

The best predictor of future behavior is past performance. We know exactly what this president is going to do. The only question is how we make sure we respond in kind—not lawlessly, not violently—but peacefully, democratically, and ruthlessly focused on winning political power.

I think this all comes down to the state of Texas. That’s why I’m out here right now. I’m not paid for it. I’m a volunteer with Powered by People. I’m not on the ballot. I may never hold political office again. But I know this one is for the greatest stakes possible—our children’s future, the future of this country, 250 years into this great experiment. Will we, as Abraham Lincoln asked, meanly lose or nobly save the last, best hope of Earth? We have got to come through.

-Beto O’Rourke

The excerpt above begins at 12:12 in the full interview.

O’Rourke and Wallace also spend a lot of time on the unglamorous mechanics of winning in Texas: Powered by People’s voter registration and follow-up model, why down-ballot races matter even in deep-red counties, and how Republicans changed voting rules after 2018 to make turnout harder for the people they assume won’t vote for them. They get into the current Texas statewide field and the Crockett vs. Talarico Senate primary, plus O’Rourke’s view that primary competition can build attention and turnout if everyone unifies after. Wallace also asks about Ken Paxton’s legal attacks on Powered by People and the costs of fighting that case. And because they’re recording at Stubb’s, they take a detour into music: O’Rourke’s touring days with his punk band FOSS, playing half-empty rooms, and why the DIY “punk” ethic maps onto grassroots organizing.

Watch the complete conversation below.

Reported and edited by TCS staff