A new statewide report from the advocacy group Defend America Action, titled “The Lone Star State Affordability Crisis,” reveals just how much Texans are struggling with rising costs.
The report finds 57% of Texans rate the cost of everyday necessities as “poor” or “terrible,” and that as of June 2026, the average Texas household has spent more than $3,500 extra on goods and services since Trump took office as a result of the president’s tariffs and war on Iran. Wage growth is also trailing inflation for a fourth straight month—3.2% against 3.4%.
The report is just the latest piece of data highlighting growing economic and quality-of-life concerns among Texans.
Residential electricity rates have risen nearly 16% nationally since January 2025, and gas prices in Texas are up 50% since the start of the year. On healthcare, nearly nine in 10 Texans are concerned about healthcare costs, and two-thirds are “very concerned.” It’s the No. 2 issue for Latino voters (behind inflation), and 42% of renters have delayed seeking medical care due to other expenses. Healthcare is also the worst-rated issue for both Trump (28% approve, 53% disapprove) and state leaders (22% approve) in Texas.
In particular, the Rio Grande Valley came up repeatedly on an Aug. 26 press call hosted by Defend America Action focused on their report. Emmy Ruiz, a former senior adviser in the Biden White House who grew up in the Valley, said she’d been there the week before: “People are incredibly frustrated, disillusioned, desperate in some cases, to try to make ends meet,” she said when asked by Courier Texas about struggles she’s hearing on the ground, adding the region has been “deeply impacted by various healthcare cuts.”
State Rep. Mary González (D-TX-75), whose El Paso-area district borders Mexico, tied the affordability squeeze directly to federal funding, which now exceeds $200 billion, for immigration enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.
“There are over 4,000 colonias in Texas—communities [that] don’t have sewer or water infrastructure,” González said. “I hear all the time, ‘Why are we spending more money on ICE, on border walls that are unnecessary, like at Big Bend, than we are actually putting infrastructure into our communities that has been needed for decades?’”
Nowhere is that tension more acute than in South Texas’ 34th Congressional District, rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report and one of the nation’s most closely watched House races. There, Democratic US Rep. Vicente Gonzalez is seeking a third term against Republican Eric Flores, an Army veteran and former federal prosecutor who won President Trump’s primary endorsement.
The district stretches along the Gulf Coast between Brownsville and Corpus Christi and includes the northeastern portion of McAllen—part of the state redrawn last year on Trump’s order to shed Democratic-leaning parts of McAllen and pick up Republican-leaning areas near Corpus Christi. Gonzalez carried the district by nearly three percentage points in 2024, the closest margin of any of Texas’ 38 congressional districts, making it one of just 13 House seats nationwide held by a Democrat in a district Trump won.
Gonzalez has built part of his campaign around legislation aimed at housing and health care costs. He voted for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan package meant to expand housing supply by streamlining regulations and cutting red tape on rural development. He also co-sponsored the bipartisan MORE Opportunities for Homeownership Act, which aims to expand access to low-cost mortgage lending through the Federal Home Loan Bank System.
Gonzalez has pressed federal officials on how immigration enforcement is affecting housing affordability and criticized cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—which the report notes have left some 650,000 Texans with less access to food—and continues pushing to restore Affordable Care Act premium tax credits.
Flores, by contrast, has centered his campaign on his alliance with Trump, whose approval ratings, the report points out, are at -17% in a state the president won by double digits in 2024. In a May interview, Flores praised Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” saying it “has put more money into the pockets of people in South Texas.”
That alliance is being tested by conditions on the ground. In South Texas, ICE raids have slowed residential construction, with builders reporting labor shortages and stalled housing projects across the Rio Grande Valley.
Gonzalez has pointed to those pressures directly. Responding in June to the passage of the ROAD to Housing Act, he said: “South Texas is rapidly transforming, and we must meet the housing needs of our population. However, our region is facing an alarming labor shortage due to rising costs and a reckless ICE agency indiscriminately targeting construction sites and delaying the ability to build enough housing for families.”
Meanwhile, across the state, rising beef prices driven by a 75-year-low US cattle inventory have contributed to a wave of BBQ joint closures statewide. A recent SmartAsset study found a family of four needs a household income of more than $200,000 before taxes to live comfortably in Texas.
How that translates in TX-34 remains an open question. The race may ultimately test whether a close alliance with Trump helps or hurts a candidate like Flores as prices climb amid tariffs and the war with Iran, and cuts land on programs like SNAP and the cost of healthcare becomes increasingly out of reach.
