Last week, Congressman Bill Flores announced that he would not seek reelection in 2020, the fifth Texas Republican in recent weeks to throw in the towel on returning to Capitol Hill as an elected official, adding to what has been dubbed as the “Texodus.” The five congressman have offered up a variety of reasons for their retirements, but within the ranks of the GOP strategist world, their pending exits from the elected political class are, in part, being interpreted as a reflection of a growing fatigue with the state of politics in Donald Trump’s America and dread at the prospect of two more years in the House minority under Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rule. And they probably won't be the last.

With Trump’s approval rating still underwater, the GOP is bracing for another tough election in 2020, with little to no expectation that the party can win back the House from the Democrats. “Pelosi worked from the assumption that the 2020 race would see only a couple more GOPers retire and she’d have to defend her pickups and not much more. Now, we’re looking at Donald Trump costing the GOP another 10? Twelve? Fifteen? House seats next fall,” Never Trumper and Republican strategist Rick Wilson, told me in an email. “It’s a crushing blow. The NRCC isn’t even bothering to pretend they can take back the House.” And this leaves Republicans up for reelection in 2020 with a decision to make. “Obviously, the Dems have the House currently,” Republican operative Brendan Steinhauser, who worked on the campaigns of Senator John Cornyn and Congressman Dan Crenshaw, explained. “But I’m just saying, they’re making decisions based on whether they think they can win or not, whether or not they think they will hold the House.”

For Republicans in a state like Texas—a longtime conservative stronghold, but one that has been undergoing stark demographic and political changes—that calculus is complicated. The five Texas congressmen who have announced their retirements—Flores, Pete Olson, Mike Conaway, Kenny Marchant, and Will Hurd—represent districts of varying degrees of competitiveness. For instance, Conaway and Flores handily won their elections in 2018, with victory margins of roughly 62 and 15 percentage points, respectively. But by contrast, Olson won his district by approximately 5 percentage points, Marchant bested his Democratic challenger by just 3 percentage points and Hurd only eked out a victory by a less than 1 percentage point.

Coupled with Beto O’Rourke’s narrow three-point loss to Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate race last year, these tight margins portend an uphill battle for some Republicans seeking reelection in the state next fall. “There is a real reality that these guys have to work for their seats…. They’ve not had to worry about cash-on-hand numbers for the second quarter of the off year. They kind of do their deal and they raise about a million bucks and spend $250,000 and they’ve got to sock it away and scare people away. And now they just have to work for their seats,” a GOP strategist, who has run campaigns in Texas, told me. “I don’t think any of these are dead seats or anything…. I don’t think it’s like a fear of losing, really. I think it’s a fear of having to work hard. The fear of accountability to your political party that you are working hard. And then really there’s just no light at the end of the tunnel and what happens if you win? You got to go serve as Nancy Pelosi’s stooge.”