In Texas, the nation’s biggest, most important red state, Trump’s disapproval rating has consistently lagged behind many of the 30 states he carried in 2016. This potentially puts the state — a must-win for the president if there ever was one — in play for 2020.

To think Trump’s unpopularity in Texas is because of Twitter, or Ukraine, or the media, or a smear job by the left is to underestimate the problem. The reality is that Trump’s signature policies are out of step with what most Texans want....

While the United States struggles to adjust to a changing demographic makeup, Texas has been “majority minority” for more than a decade, with Hispanics expected to outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the next few years. Hispanics and non-Hispanics live by, work with, are friends with and go to school with each other, and this familiarity increases fondness. Which is why Trump’s fear and disparagement of immigrants — and Mexicans, in particular — falls flat here.

According to a Texas Politics Project poll, more Texans strongly disapprove of Trump’s immigration approach than strongly approve. Only 39 percent of Texans support additional federal spending on border barriers along the Mexican border, according to a November 2019 report by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center....

Nonetheless, a state that should be a Republican shoo-in increasingly appears weary of the party’s standard-bearer. And if there’s anything I’ve learned living in Texas, it’s that Texans will not sit quietly and be taken for granted.

The labor unions that powered Bernie Sanders to a decisive victory here in 2016 are declining to get on board his campaign this time around — a potential warning sign for the neighbor-state senator’s hopes of a repeat performance.

One of the largest labor groups, which represents more than 10,000 New Hampshire state employees, broke with its national leadership when it issued an early endorsement of Sanders in the 2016 primary. Electrical workers joined a coalition of other unions to turbocharge the Sanders turnout operation that year.

Now, both organizations are remaining on the sidelines, refusing to pick a single candidate when several would suit them fine. Sanders is going to great lengths to lure their support — his campaign recently offered a free steak dinner to union members and hosted a rally for state employees who are fighting for a new contract. But nothing has moved the needle. …

Joe Biden, who won the support of state and national firefighters in the spring, has long been popular in the labor movement. Elizabeth Warren is also seen as a strong labor candidate, though she has not yet secured an endorsement from a New Hampshire union.

More than a dozen New Hampshire labor leaders said Sanders no longer has a monopoly on issues important to them like he did in 2016.

The federal judge who blocked the newest version of North Carolina’s voter identification law cited the state’s “sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression” as she ordered officials not to enforce the law in 2020.

U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs’ decision was released Tuesday and prevents North Carolina from requiring voters to provide identification starting in 2020. The Republican leaders of the state House and Senate, however, have asked North Carolina’s Department of Justice to appeal.

The federal court advised last week that Biggs would formally block the photo ID requirement until a lawsuit filed by state NAACP and others is resolved. Her decision provided insight into why she blocked the law, which she said was similar to a 2013 law that a federal appeals court struck down in 2016.

That court said the photo ID and other voter restrictions were approved with intentional racial discrimination in mind, and Biggs said the newest version of the law was no different in that respect.

“North Carolina has a sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression stretching back to the time of slavery, through the era of Jim Crow, and, crucially, continuing up to the present day,” Biggs wrote.