Texas attorney general candidate says if he wins, he’d try to revoke Democratic leader Gene Wu’s citizenship
Alejandro Serrano
Mon, February 9, 2026 at 8:43 PM UTC
4 min read
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Aaron Reitz, among the GOP candidates running to be Texas Attorney General, on Monday suggested without evidence that the leader of the Texas House Democrats, who is Asian, had lied during his citizenship application process and should have his citizenship revoked.
“As AG, I want to see [Rep. Gene Wu] de-naturalized,” he posted on X in a response to a 28-second clip of an interview of Wu talking years ago about racial divisions in the country.
The clipping, from a 2024 interview, instantly infuriated some Texas Republicans who accused Wu, a Houston Democrat, of being anti-White and racist, for his suggestion that non-white communities could come together to win elections in Texas once they realized “they share the same oppressor.”
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Reitz is facing three others for the GOP nomination in the March 3 primary: state Sens. Joan Huffman of Houston and Mayes Middleton of Galveston as well as U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Austin. He appeared to be the only candidate offering to take action against Wu for his comments.
“On what basis? He likely concealed his anti-American sentiment throughout his citizenship app process—the details of which are conspicuously absent from the public record,” Reitz wrote on social media. “Wu is a subversive whose citizenship should be revoked.”
Through a spokesperson, Wu declined to comment.
Denaturalizations are historically rare, and under federal law, can only occur if someone committed fraud while applying for citizenship. The federal government can also denaturalize someone if they become affiliated with the Communist Party, or a terrorist organization within a few years of becoming a citizen.
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President Donald Trump has increasingly pointed to denaturalizations as a means to increase his crackdown on immigrants. Last year, the administration issued guidance to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices, issuing monthly quotas for offices to initiate denaturalization cases.
The video clipping that went viral shows Wu talking about relationships between different immigrant communities. The entire interview, nearly 40 minutes long, features a conversation about Texas’ GOP leadership, life in Texas for immigrants and Wu’s own life, from when he migrated as a child from China with his family to seeing the Asian American community in Houston flourish.
“I always tell people the day the Latino, African American, Asian and other communities realize that they share the same oppressor is the day we start winning,” Wu says in the short clipping circulating social media. “We have the ability to take over this country and to do what is needed for everyone and to make things fair. But the problem is our communities are divided.”
The video was posted Saturday evening by an X account with nearly 4 million followers. A few hours later it was reposted by LibsofTikTok, the right wing disinformation account with almost 5 million followers.
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By Monday morning, numerous Texas Republicans were outraged at Wu.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said the “Democrat party is built on bigotry.” Paxton called Wu a “radical racist who hates millions of Texans just because they’re white.”
Roy, in a heated primary contest against Reitz, said Wu should resign from his state House seat, a move other conservative influencers and commentators also encouraged.
“Unlike many Democrats, he admits his racism against white people and call to ‘take over this country,’” Roy wrote on social media. “He should resign or the TX House should strip him of any power.”
Bo French, the former Tarrant County GOP chair running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, referred to Wu as a “commie,” even as Wu has shared personal stories of how his family was the victim of the Chinese communist party.
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Texas Republicans in the Capitol and beyond have for years baselessly accused Wu of similar offenses, and questioned his loyalty to the state and country. The criticism reached a new peak last summer when Wu and other House Democrats left the state to delay the passage of a new congressional map aimed to max GOP gains in the U.S. House.
Two lawsuits seeking to remove Wu from office for breaking quorum remain pending before the state’s supreme court.
At one point in the interview where the viral clip came from, Wu talks about how he sees all the residents in his district as Americans, regardless of their legal status. The journalist host then asks Wu about his biggest fears for Houston’s undocumented population during Trump’s second term, secured with promises of a historic deportation effort.
“It’s not just the fate of undocumented people. It’s the fate of all immigrants,” Wu responds, pointing to the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. “People say I’m not worried. I’m a citizen. … When the mass deportation begins, I promise you it will not just be illegal immigrants who are affected. It will be Americans.”