Tony Gonzales Needs to Go. His Party Knows It. Trump Knows It. He Doesn’t Care.
The congressman who survived everything is about to find out if he can survive himself.
On Friday, February 27, President Trump flew to Corpus Christi, Texas, for a rally that was supposed to be about energy dominance and Republican midterm momentum. Before the event, Trump reposted every congressional endorsement he holds in Texas — a long, enthusiastic list covering 38 districts.
Tony Gonzales was not on it.
From the stage, Trump acknowledged the embattled congressman from Texas’s 23rd District in the only way a political survivor can acknowledge someone he can no longer fully defend: “Congressman Tony Gonzales is here. Tony, congratulations.” Then he moved on.
Congratulations for what? Nobody knows. Trump didn’t say. The crowd didn’t ask. The omission from the endorsement list said everything the words didn’t.
This is where Tony Gonzales stands: too radioactive for a full Trump embrace, too stubborn to resign, too compromised to make the case for himself in a district that deserves better than what he’s given them.
What Happened
The facts are documented and damning.
Regina Ann Santos-Aviles was a political aide to Congressman Gonzales. They had an affair in 2024. She confessed to her husband on May 29, 2024 — one day after Gonzales won his primary. In the months that followed, she died by suicide. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sealed the 911 calls and video related to her death — a decision that has raised questions that remain unanswered.
When the story broke publicly in February 2026, Gonzales accused her widower of trying to “profit from his wife’s death” and said he would not be “blackmailed.” Then the explicit text messages were published. Then Republican colleagues — Boebert, Massie, Chip Roy, Kevin McCarthy, and others — called for his resignation. Then he said he wasn’t resigning.
The widower, Adrian Aviles, went on CNN and called Gonzales a liar. The congressman had no response. He has refused to answer reporters’ questions about the affair for months.
A woman is dead. Her husband is calling him a liar. Members of his own party are calling for him to leave. And Tony Gonzales is staying put — because Tony Gonzales has always believed that the rules applying to other people do not apply to him.
He has been wrong before. He may be wrong again on Tuesday.
The War He Won’t Fight
Here is where the scandal and the policy converge — and where it gets personal for the families of the 23rd District.
Gonzales represents a district that is majority Hispanic, majority working class, and home to multiple military installations. The sons and daughters of the border communities in his district are the people most likely to fight the unauthorized war that began last Friday morning while their congressman was preparing to stand onstage with a president who couldn’t bring himself to fully endorse him.
His response to the bombing of Iran has been characteristic: vaguely supportive, mildly worried, and fundamentally unwilling to challenge the party line. He told a Texas television station he hopes Trump will “lean on his generals for an exit strategy.” He worried aloud about “the situation spiraling.”
He did not invoke the War Powers Act. He did not stand with the bipartisan coalition of Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna demanding a congressional vote. He did not stand before his constituents — the border families, the veterans, the working class communities of the 23rd District — and demand that any war their children fight be authorized by their elected representatives.
He expressed concern. To a local TV station. That is the sum total of Tony Gonzales’s response to an unauthorized war that may cost the lives of people who voted for him.
The Pattern
Gonzales has spent his career positioning himself as the Republican that Democrats in his district can almost stomach. He voted for the Respect for Marriage Act. He supported gun safety legislation after Uvalde — a shooting in his own district. He called MAGA hardliners “scumbags” who “walk around with white hoods.”
And yet when it mattered — when a woman in his office needed protection, when a war affecting his constituents needed authorization, when his own colleagues told him to step aside with dignity — Tony Gonzales chose himself.
That is not a representative. That is a man wearing the costume of representation while serving his own survival.
The 23rd District of Texas has 800 miles of the US-Mexico border. It has ranchers, veterans, farmworkers, Border Patrol families, and community members who have been told for three terms that Tony Gonzales is fighting for them in Washington.
He wasn’t fighting for Regina Santos-Aviles.
He’s not fighting for the families whose sons may ship out for Iran.
And a president who couldn’t bring himself to repost Gonzales’s endorsement on his way to Texas told you everything you need to know about what Tony Gonzales’s word is worth — in Washington, in Corpus Christi, and in the 23rd District that deserves far better than what he’s delivered.