President Donald Trump will campaign in a brand-new San Antonio-area congressional district that could hold the keys to the U.S. House majority in 2026.
He’ll appear Wednesday at the Freeman Coliseum with Republican Carlos De La Cruz, the GOP nominee in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, according to the Republican National Committee.
The district was drawn to help the GOP squeeze another Republican seat out of Texas, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) deemed it the “whole enchilada” this midterm election.
The battle for the U.S. House runs through South Texas. Here’s a cheat sheet to the races.
The GOP’s razor-thin House majority is so precarious this cycle that Trump urged Texas to redraw its congressional districts to try to keep it.
Now battle for the U.S. House runs straight through San Antonio and South Texas, where millions of dollars are flowing to five key congressional races where voters swung hard toward Trump in 2024.
Under the new maps, each of the five redrawn districts would have supported Trump by 10 to 18 points in 2024.
Yet neither party considers them safely red in an election where Democrats across the country are polling about 8 points ahead on the generic ballot.
“[Republicans] may have — depending on what election night looks like in a few weeks — inadvertently created a bunch of swing districts,” New York Times White House Correspondent Maggie Haberman sized it all up in this month.
Trump has many smart strategists who understand Texas, Haberman said, but “there’s what they want to do, and what they can control in terms of what Trump wants.”
If the Texas gamble goes south, she said, that means the loss will be the president’s alone to bear.
“Trump wanted to take total control of his party, and so did his aides, frankly, for different reasons in many cases,” Haberman said. “But when you do that, you leave yourself absolutely no room to say this is somebody else’s fault.”
A focus on San Antonio
Under its new boundaries, Texas’ 35th Congressional District would have supported Trump by more than 10 percentage points in 2024.
Republicans broke up progressive U.S. Rep. Greg Casar’s (D-Austin) seat, which looped downtown San Antonio and Austin into a single deep-blue district.
In its place, they created a district that starts in San Antonio but stretches east to include more rural territory in Karnes, Wilson and Guadalupe counties — three counties Trump carried.
There’s no incumbent on the ballot because Casar, who lives in Austin, moved over to run in a different district that’s closer to his home.
Instead Republicans and Democrats are both leaning on political newcomers who aren’t well-known to voters but have received big help from national PACs trying to influence who controls the U.S. House in 2026.
Republicans nominated De La Cruz — the brother of U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Edinburg) — who Trump helped lift from obscurity in a tough GOP primary.
Democrats nominated longtime Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Johnny Garcia after party leaders spent big to defeat a more progressive primary opponent.
In fight for the U.S. House majority, Democrats target two uphill San Antonio-area races
The event is also close to Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, where Trump and other Republicans are embracing Brandon Herrera, a social media star with a penchant for controversy, who is running to replace disgraced Republican Tony Gonzales.
Read more about the candidates in the San Antonio Report’s 2026 Voter Guide.
