118 LANGUAGES AND DONALD IS ONLY FLUENT IN 88:

SUGAR LAND, Tex. -- Nearly 700 miles from the El Paso Walmart where the suspect in the killing of 22 people on Saturday denounced a "Hispanic invasion," Rish Oberoi, a candidate for state representative, gestured toward a bustling dining room in a popular Vietnamese restaurant and marveled at the diversity of this Houston suburb.

"You've got every ethnicity," Mr. Oberoi, the son of Indian immigrants, said of the lunchtime rush on Monday. "And that's standard for Sugar Land." He was not overstating the case.

The residents in this county speak at least 118 languages, elected an Indian immigrant as their leader in 2018 and elevated the first Muslim to the Sugar Land City Council this year. Once represented by Tom DeLay, the hard-line House majority leader known as the Hammer for his ability to keep fellow Republicans in line, the county supported a Democrat for president in 2016 for the first time since Lyndon B. Johnson led the ticket.

The much-anticipated future of Texas politics may not have arrived statewide yet, but it is hard to miss in the booming, polyglot metropolitan areas that are changing the face of the state.

The El Paso massacre has brought into devastating relief the clashing ideologies and demographics that have placed a solidly conservative rural Texas in tension with the two forces powering Democratic gains: soaring immigrant populations and affluent white suburbanites who recoil from President Trump's race-baiting.

In recent days, both before and after the gunman opened fire on summer shoppers and the manifesto spouting hate was published, a handful of Republican lawmakers decided to retire rather than seek re-election to House seats in districts like this one, where the electorate includes both multiethnic voters and the kinds of disaffected moderates -- even longtime Republicans -- who have drifted from Mr. Trump's party.

Last year, Democrats swept out two incumbent Republicans from similar districts and nearly unseated Senator Ted Cruz. Now, the party is poised to make additional gains in the House, threaten Republican hegemony in the State Capitol and perhaps even put Texas into play as a presidential state for the first time in over 40 years.

"The 2018 election should have been a wake-up call for a Republican Party in Texas that has become too complacent," said Karl Rove, the former adviser to George W. Bush, who built a multiracial coalition in his time as Texas governor. Mr. Rove urged Republicans to recognize that the state and country "are becoming more diverse and we need to reflect that."

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