Will Trump’s win in Texas lose him the Senate in November — and before?
After an endorsement by the president, Ken Paxton, the "scandal-scarred” attorney general of Texas, routed Sen. John Cornyn in a Republican primary runoff election on Tuesday, casting out the state’s senior senator and bolstering Democratic hopes of flipping the seat, reports The New York Times.
Here is more on the race, from The Texas Tribune.
Cornyn joins Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, fresh off his own primary loss after opposition from Trump, as Republican senators who are newly free to vote their consciences for the next seven months.
Last week, Carl Hulse, longtime reporter on Congress for The New York Times, wrote in an analysis: "Republican senators, boiling mad over President Trump’s intervention in GOP primaries that has cost one incumbent his seat and left another hanging by a thread, say Mr. Trump has chosen personal revenge over governing.
"Six months out from a midterm election in which their majority is at stake, Senate Republicans face a difficult legislative path with a rising number of restless lame-duck senators and a growing sense that the president cares much less about accomplishments that could boost them in November than about protecting himself and settling his political scores.
"It comes as Republicans already face a grim political environment made worse by Mr. Trump’s decisions to pursue a war in Iran that has driven up gas prices and impose tariffs that have led to higher costs for companies and consumers — all while continuing to demand loyalty from lawmakers whose political survival may depend on distancing themselves from him.
"They say he is getting his retribution at the risk of legislative success.
"Mr. Trump himself seems unbothered and confident in his actions, and is threatening to go even further, warning other Republicans against crossing him even as he needs their votes on key issues,” Hulse says.
And about those “key issues”:
Congress left Washington last Thursday for a weeklong recess without passing a GOP-backed measure to fund immigration enforcement amid dissent within their own ranks over Trump’s $1.776 billion federal fund to pay people who claim to have been politically persecuted, NPR reported.
Trump’s attempt to use taxpayer money to compensate those who say they were targeted by the federal government isn’t part of the $72 billion measure to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement through the end of Trump's term.
But Senate Republicans were alarmed over the compensation plan and intent on addressing it before sending the immigration funding to the president's desk, NPR said.
Republicans already had abandoned part of the bill that provided $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and Trump’s ballroom after backlash from members of their own party, reported The Associated Press.
In a related development, officers who defended the Capitol from rioters on Jan. 6 sued last Wednesday to block payouts to anyone — including those rioters — from the $1.776 billion fund.
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Former Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, who has died at 86, ‘was like no one else’
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