In KC visit, Beto O’Rourke hails Texas lawmakers, decries Trump’s policies

Former Texas Congressman and Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke visited Kansas City Monday, urging those present at a packed town hall to fight back against President Donald Trump’s policies in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections.

O’Rourke asked attendees to financially support the Democratic lawmakers from Texas who fled the state to Illinois in a bid to block redistricting efforts that would create five Republican-leaning congressional districts. He offered attendees a number to text to donate toward expenses like flights, meals, lodging and fines.

“Now in Texas, (Trump) seeks to grab even more power, commanding the governor and the Republican legislature to redraw those boundaries and hand him these seats,” O’Rourke said. “Why is he doing this? Because he knows full well that his policies and his conduct over these last six months will lose him the House of Representatives without these five seats.”

O’Rourke’s wide-ranging town hall in Kansas City’s Power & Light District touched on topics like immigration, the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the future of the Democratic party and the war in Gaza. The event was part of a tour with stops in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas.

During his Kansas City appearance Monday, O’Rourke denounced Trump’s actions in the first months of his presidency.

“How precious few generations get to join the fight to save this country,” O’Rourke said. “Folks, that can describe us today. In the last six months, since he was sworn into office, the current president of the United States has defied the coequal federal courts, he has dismantled congressionally mandated programs and agencies and departments, he has colluded with corrupt public officials and he has sought at every turn to dismantle this democracy.”

O’Rourke served in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Texas’s 16th congressional district from 2013 to 2019 and attracted national attention in a 2018 campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz defeated O’Rourke in that election, and a few months later, O’Rourke launched a campaign seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. He eventually suspended his campaign and endorsed Joe Biden.

O’Rourke decried Trump’s deportation campaign and suggested the administration’s efforts would ramp up in the future.

“It will go on steroids after the 2026 election if we fail to stop them now,” he said.

“I ask us instead of fighting back to think about fighting through this, think about fighting forward, think about getting off the back foot onto the front foot, off of defense, onto offense,” he said, before dressing his own party.

“Fighting does not mean the (Democratic National Committee) pours a billion dollars into seven battleground states, none of them named Kansas or Missouri or Texas or Alabama or Mississippi or Louisiana,” he said. “What the hell are they saying to the rest of us?”

At one point, the town hall was briefly interrupted by an attendee who addressed O’Rourke on the war in Gaza, and after a back-and-forth, the attendee was eventually escorted out of the event hall.

“The leaders of Israel have said that they want to wipe all Palestinians off the map in Gaza,” O’Rourke said. “They are trying to literally extinguish a people from the planet, from their homeland. By those criteria and those facts, to give you your answer, sir, yes, it is a genocide.”