The Visitor Center Line in Big Bend and the Politics of a National Parks Pass
In a recent essay published by newyorker.com, a writer described standing in line this summer at the visitors’ center in Big Bend National Park in Texas, watching a couple buy an annual parks pass. Instead of featuring a natural landscape, the plastic card depicted George Washington and a glowering Donald Trump. When the couple expressed dismay, a park ranger told them they were not supposed to talk about politics. The next person in line, a bearded man in motorcycle gear, complained about paying four dollars a gallon for gas while the president put his face on the pass, declaring he would not buy one. That small encounter captured a shifting mood in a state where political certainties have long felt immovable.
For decades, Republicans in Texas have operated as though their dominance were permanent. That political reality persisted through school shootings, failures of the state electrical grid, and scandals surrounding the preventable deaths of pregnant women. Yet the essay notes that the state has also produced figures like Lyndon B. Johnson, Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, and Molly Ivins, proving that a single political expression has never fully defined the territory. Even so, the rise of the far-right Christian-nationalist wing of the party over the past decade left many activists, immigrants, public school advocates, and parents of transgender children questioning their place in Texas, with some ultimately choosing to leave.
The Long History of False Dawns for Texas Democrats
Hope has historically proved treacherous for Democrats in the state. During the 2014 governor’s race, Wendy Davis energized an army of Texas women in pink sneakers to fight for reproductive rights, only to lose to Greg Abbott by twenty points. Four years later, out-of-state observers predicted that Texans would reject Ted Cruz in favor of Beto O’Rourke. That cycle ended in familiar disappointment on Election Night, reinforcing the idea that demographic destiny would not easily translate into blue victories.
Long before the national results of recent election cycles, Texas served as a laboratory for hard-right policies. The state investigated gender-affirming care for minors as child abuse, banned diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public higher education, and pursued aggressive immigration crackdowns. Supporters wore shirts reading “Make America Like Texas,” signaling an exportable model of governance. When Donald Trump won the subsequent presidential election, the writer recalled feeling a mixture of despair and a grim recognition that the rest of the nation would now experience the policies Texans had dealt with for years.
