President Donald Trump has set his sights on another Republican this week: longtime Texas Sen. John Cornyn.
Trump has blasted Cornyn as “VERY disloyal” while throwing his full support behind Ken Paxton, the outspoken Texas attorney general who has become one of Trump’s closest allies in the state.
Tuesday’s high-stakes runoff for the Republican Senate nomination in Texas has turned into the latest major test of Trump’s dominance over the Republican Party and the continuing power of his endorsements in GOP primaries.
The winner will advance to face left-wing Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in November in what could become one of the most important Senate races in the country as Republicans fight to preserve their narrow 53-47 majority.
Talarico emerged as the Democratic nominee after defeating another left-wing member of Congress, Rep. Jasmine Crockett — one of Trump’s loudest critics in Congress — during the March primary.
Democrats are hoping to pull off a political earthquake by flipping a Texas Senate seat for the first time in nearly 40 years, while Republicans are locked in an increasingly bitter internal battle over the future direction of the GOP.
The Senate contest is the marquee race on a Texas runoff ballot that also features high-stakes Republican and Democrat runoffs for attorney general, along with several closely watched congressional primaries.
One of the most controversial contests is unfolding in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, where a Democratic runoff candidate sparked outrage after proposing on social media that a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility be converted into a prison for American supporters of Israel.
The remarks intensified already-heated tensions surrounding immigration enforcement, anti-Israel activism, and the growing ideological divide inside the Democratic Party.
Talarico’s left-wing language on social media, which endeared him to Lone Star state progressives, is proving to be a liability as he tries to woo Texans in the general election.
Republicans have been pulling up footage and X postings from Talarico from within the last few years.
Talarico’s been saying things like “poverty is violence,” the Bible supports abortion, there are six biological sexes, and other radical stuff.
Talarico declared in another prior speech that “people don’t belong in cages” and even seemingly likened prisons to “domestic abuse.”
Groups like the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) have seized on statements like that, optimistic that they won’t play well in historically red Texas.
The NRSC launched a deepfake attack ad against Talarico to show him as reading his prior “extreme statements praising transgenderism, twisting Christian beliefs, and advocating for open borders.”
One theme the GOP has especially grabbed onto is Talarico’s use of religion to promote his liberal agenda.
Presbyterian seminarian Talarico has long claimed that conservatives distort Christianity.
“In my faith, God is non-binary,” Talarico said in a 2021 speech in which he railed against a GOP bill requiring K-12 athletes to play sports that align with their biological sex.
Earlier that year, Talarico suggested that there are more than two biological sexes.
“The one thing I want us to all be aware of is that modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes,” Talarico claimed at the time.
“In fact, there are six, which honestly, Rep. [Cole] Hefner, surprised me, too.”
Talaricos’ comments on transgender issues have given Republicans a field day.
“I want to acknowledge that our trans community needs abortion care too,” Talarico said at one point.
“It has been a blessing for parents across the Lone Star State to learn they need to be on the lookout for a creepy single man in his 30s looking to speak with kids about sex changes and which of the six genders they identify as,” RNC spokesman Zach Kraft told The Post.
