The Spectacle Ep. 423: GOP Texans Are Over Establishment Losers Like John Cornyn

Texas GOP Primary Upends Senate Race

Attorney General Ken Paxton benefited from a late endorsement from President Donald Trump and enthusiasm from Republicans’ MAGA voters to a historic blowout victory in the Senate primary runoff over incumbent John Cornyn. Bloomberg News Texas Bureau Chief Julie Fine and The New York Times Texas Bureau Chief David Goodman joined Christina Ruffini and David Gura on Bloomberg This Weekend to discuss how hard will the Republican establishment rally behind him after backing Cornyn in a bitter campaign that burned through more than $100 million? Many GOP leaders had argued that Paxton would be a weaker nominee because of his past legal and personal woes. But Senator Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott quickly came out with statements supporting him. His opponent in November will be James Talarico, who’s been building his war chest since winning the Democratic primary outright in March. (Source: Bloomberg)

GOP's anti-"woke" playbook faces ultimate test in Texas

The Texas Senate race has become a national laboratory for anti-"woke" politics, testing whether voters still recoil from the language of 2020 amid the economic pain of 2026.Why it matters: Republicans came away from 2024 convinced they had won more than an election — they had broken through on culture, turning Democrats' progressive language and identity politics into symbols of elite detachment.The durability of that culture-war coup is now an open question, as the GOP tries to redeploy the same playbook in a far more hostile midterm environment.Zoom in: Texas has produced a Senate race in which both parties see the other nominee as the perfect caricature of everything voters hate about the opposition.For Republicans: Texas state Rep. James Talarico offers the dream target — a young, viral progressive whose old comments can be stripped of context and turned into a one-man museum of "woke" Democratic excess.Republicans have seized on Talarico's 2021 floor speech declaring that "God is nonbinary," along with past comments on racism, whiteness and trans children, to cast him as a radical disguised as a Texas preacher.The attacks already are veering into sexuality- and masculinity-coded territory: Talarico's opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has mocked him as "Low-T," while White House adviser Stephen Miller falsely labeled him as Democrats' "first transgender Senate candidate."Talarico has conceded that he "missed the mark" on some "cringey comments," while insisting his underlying principles — that "racism is immoral and wrong" and that "trans people deserve dignity and equality" — flow from his Christian faith.For Democrats: Paxton is a scandal-scarred Trump ally whose legal and ethical baggage could turn even a red-state Senate race into a referendum on Republican corruption.Paxton was impeached by the GOP-led Texas House in 2023 — then acquitted by the Texas Senate — over allegations that he abused his office to benefit a donor.He spent nearly a decade under indictment on fraud charges before reaching a pretrial deal in 2024, and has been plagued by whistleblower claims, a now-closed federal corruption probe and a very public divorce tied to allegations of adultery.Talarico's campaign wants to make Paxton the face of Republican impunity — arguing that his scandals are not distractions from the race, but the clearest evidence of what the GOP has become.Between the lines: Republicans believe Texas will prove the anti-"woke" playbook still works. Democrats believe prices, Paxton and two years of Trump have changed the terms of the fight.An influx of new residents — plus signs of buyer's remorse among Latinos who backed Trump — has cracked open a once-unthinkable Democratic scenario: Texas as the path to a Senate majority.Flashback: The Trump campaign's most memorable 2024 attack ad turned trans rights into a broad indictment of Democratic priorities, ending with the now-famous tagline: "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you."Testing by Harris' top super PAC found the ad — which highlighted her 2019 support for taxpayer-funded gender-transition surgeries for prisoners and detained immigrants — moved viewers 2.7 points toward Trump.The big picture: The ad worked because it converted one obscure policy position into a sweeping theory of Democratic "wokeness": a party fluent in elite cultural language, but alien to voters' daily lives.But it didn't work in isolation: The Biden administration's handling of inflation, immigration and affordability were already making Democrats look out of touch before "they/them" gave the GOP the perfect slogan.Today, those forces have flipped: Trump is now 52 points underwater on inflation, turning the economy from a tailwind into the central threat to his party's midterm survival.The bottom line: Texas will be the ultimate test of whether the GOP's anti-"woke" strategy can survive the transition from insurgency to incumbency.

GOP leadership prepping for Alito retirement before midterm election: report

With the current Supreme Court term coming to an end soon, there is growing speculation that 76-year-old Justice Sam Alito may step down from the seat he has held for 20 years, and that is leading to some under-the-radar maneuvering.According to the Washington Post, Alito is widely considered the justice most likely to step down, with observers pointing to his age, the release of his first book, and the November midterm elections as potential motivators due to Republican fears of losing control of the Senate. That has Republican leaders already preparing to fast-track a successor, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), both of whom could be pushed through swiftly.Though recent reports suggest Alito has no plans to retire, the speculation has also triggered a broader shift in judicial behavior across the conservative legal establishment, the Post is reporting.Legal experts warn that many conservative judges are now deliberately writing attention-grabbing opinions as a form of open "auditioning" for higher office — a phenomenon they attribute directly to Trump's well-documented preference for loyalty and grandiose personalities."Trump, and the people around Trump, are going to try to look for people that they have more confidence in even than the previous set of nominees, and that is going to require some kind of further signals of loyalty to the agenda," Daniel Epps, a law professor at Washington University who closely follows the Supreme Court told the Post. "That just increases the incentives to audition as much as possible."The trend has accelerated since Republicans eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 when Democrats blocked Neil Gorsuch's nomination, allowing confirmations by simple majority instead of requiring a two-thirds vote.That rule change fundamentally altered the incentive structure for ambitious judges, making partisan grandstanding less risky and more rewarding.Even before the filibuster elimination, then-appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch demonstrated the effectiveness of the strategy. In 2016, he wrote both the majority opinion and a separate concurring opinion in a federal agency power case — a calculated approach that showcased his judicial philosophy before his eventual Supreme Court nomination.Mike Fragoso, an attorney at Torridon Law who served as chief counsel to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, acknowledged the phenomenon while noting it can be difficult to distinguish between genuine judicial positioning and deliberate auditioning."But in the Trump era, writing buzzy opinions can't hurt a judge's Supreme Court prospects," Fragoso said.

The 2026 Battle for the Senate Is Still Likely Republican

Can Talarico win over some of Cornyn’s voters in Texas?

Democrats hope so, but there are good reasons to be skeptical.

John Cornyn Sends Internet into a Frenzy with This Cryptic Tweet Following Landslide Loss to Ken Paxton

Senator John Cornyn (RINO-TX) drove the internet crazy on Friday after posting a very cryptic tweet a few days following his massive loss to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas GOP Senate runoff election. The post John Cornyn Sends Internet into a Frenzy with This Cryptic Tweet Following Landslide Loss to Ken Paxton appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

GOP war brews in Iowa as Trump and MAGA youth group split on key race

A potential civil war is brewing for the Republican Party in Iowa, as President Donald Trump is pitted against a major faction that usually stands with him.On Friday, Trump took to his Truth Social account to endorse Rep. Randy Feenstra's gubernatorial campaign."A Fourth Generation Iowan, successful Businessman, former Treasurer of Sioux County, State Senator, and now, as a distinguished U.S. Congressman, Randy has delivered strong results for the Hawkeye State," wrote Trump, running through the usual laundry list of MAGA policy positions he expects Feenstra to hold.He concluded the endorsement with his usual "RANDY WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!"But mere minutes after this endorsement dropped, Turning Point USA, the far-right student group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, bucked Trump to instead back farmer and businessman Zach Lahn, despite their usual alignment on issues."Honored to have just received the endorsement of my longtime friend Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action," wrote Lahn. "Charlie and I first became friends when he was just 17 years old. Much of our campaign is centered around the issues he and I both cared about for a very long time. We have the momentum to win this race June 2nd. Grateful for their support to put IOWA FIRST."All of this, noted CNN politics reporter Patrick Svitek, comes as "The primary is Tuesday, and Feenstra's had to go negative on rival Zach Lahn in recent days."Democrats have landed a formidable recruit for the race in state auditor Rob Sand, who has led in a number of polls; Iowa GOP lawmakers are so frightened he could flip the office that they are pre-emptively passing legislation that would limit some of his powers.

Top White House aides mull over killing Trump's slush fund as GOP senators revolt: report

White House officials are seriously considering abandoning President Donald Trump's $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund," a controversial legal "settlement" Trump arranged with his own administration that critics have called a slush fund to pay out his allies who have faced legal troubles.The fund was created after Trump dismissed his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for failing to keep his tax records safe from a whistleblower who illegally leaked the information to the public.According to the Wall Street Journal, over a dozen GOP senators "privately urged top Trump aides to drop the fund since its creation last week, said people familiar with the outreach" — one of them being Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who not only is usually a close ally of the president but championed a controversial congressional provision to let himself sue over investigations into election interference."Administration officials have grown increasingly concerned about the viability of the fund, people familiar with the matter said, which had been expected to provide payouts to an array of Trump allies," said the report. The president, for his part, "hasn’t agreed to drop the fund" as of now, but has acknowledged it has created significant political problems for the GOP.This news comes after a federal judge in Virginia blocked the fund from taking effect, issuing a temporary stay to give time for a hearing to debate whether the fund is legal and was created through a valid process.It also comes as other litigation advances against the fund, including a group of 35 retired judges who have urged the judge overseeing Trump's dismissed case against the IRS to revive it so the settlement can be put under judicial scrutiny.