Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won over voters Tuesday when he defeated Sen. John Cornyn in a historically expensive primary runoff, but now he’s working to convince K Street he’s a candidate worth investing in.
The Democratic National Committee didn't reach for a policy argument when White House senior adviser Stephen Miller deliberately misgendered Texas Senate nominee James Talarico on Wednesday. They went straight for the jugular.After the DNC posted a photo of Talarico — a cisgender man — declaring it was "time to take back Texas," Miller fired back with a false claim: "The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate." The DNC's response was five words: "shut up you ugly f—."Miller's post was no accident. It's the latest escalation in a coordinated Republican effort to paint the Democratic nominee as outside the mainstream — and it comes as the GOP appears increasingly rattled by the state of the race.Polling shows Talarico leading Paxton by as much as 8 points, while Paxton's net favorability sits 9 points underwater compared to Talarico's +10. Talarico has raised more than $27 million in the first three months of 2026, dwarfing Paxton's $2.2 million haul during the same period.Republicans have responded with a kitchen-sink assault. The NRSC launched a deepfake attack ad depicting an AI-generated version of Talarico reading his own social media posts, with the committee branding him "the most radical, woke Democrat Texas voters have ever seen." Paxton debuted a string of nicknames at a victory rally — "Tofu Talarico," "Six-gender James," and "Tala-freak-o" — seizing on a resurfaced 2021 legislative statement in which Talarico argued that modern science recognizes more than two biological sexes.Political journalist David Weigel noted the subtext of the GOP attacks has rapidly become text — that Republican messaging has consistently sought to cast Talarico as effeminate or queer.Talarico has pushed back, accusing Paxton of "intentionally clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption." Even Karl Rove has warned that with Paxton as the nominee, Democrats have a real shot.Miller's post drew immediate corrections across social media, including from Rowan Fornow, a digital organizer for a Utah congressional campaign, who noted that the first transgender Senate candidate was actually Misty Snow of Utah, who ran in 2016.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) struck a bipartisan deal in a new bill that they hope will be enough to end the regulatory chaos surrounding college sports in recent years. Cruz and Cantwell announced on Wednesday that they struck a bipartisan agreement to bring a new “Protect College Sports Act” to Congress […]
Donald Trump threatened to bomb a key US ally in the Middle East if they don't 'behave' while responding to a question about who will control the Strait of Hormuz.
Americans already grappling with elevated gas prices face another inflation squeeze as severe weather, trade policy and geopolitical conflict could send consumer costs surging just before November's midterm elections.Grocery prices rose in April by the most in nearly four years, and experts warn the pressures will only worsen through 2027, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects a 3.2 percent increase in grocery prices and other experts warn that could rise even higher, reported Bloomberg.“It’s going to be a challenging year,” said Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University who expects grocery costs to soar by 4 percent to 4.5 percent. “Food is going to become less affordable, and consumers should be prepared for it.”The U.S. experienced its warmest start to any year on record, with temperatures running about 6 degrees Fahrenheit above average through April. The early heat prompted crops to begin blossoming prematurely instead of remaining dormant through winter, leaving them vulnerable to subsequent frosts. Meanwhile, drought has devastated agricultural regions nationwide — 70 percent of U.S. winter wheat production sits in drought areas as of mid-May, along with 25 percent of corn production.Beef prices hit record highs in April due to the smallest cattle herd in 75 years, squeezed by drought and elevated production costs. Tomato prices surged 33 percent over two months following winter storms that damaged Florida's growing season combined with declining shipments from Mexico due to Trump administration tariffs on Mexican imports.California, which supplies nearly half of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of fruit and nut receipts, faces severe irrigation challenges after Sierra Nevada snowpack fell to just 23 percent of typical levels.The Iran war has disrupted global fertilizer markets, with North American fertilizer prices up 20 percent since fighting began, and El Niño is forecast to emerge by August with potential for unusual strength persisting into 2027, threatening additional drought in major international growing regions for rice, coffee and cocoa.The impact is already visible in household budgets, according to the report. James Giese, a 62-year-old from Madison, Wisconsin, reports cutting back on prepared foods and meat while growing potatoes in his backyard to stretch his budget. "I'm probably considered middle-income, but it's starting to pinch," he said.Consumers face additional headwinds, with household debt rising and savings rates are falling, and real average hourly earnings declined for the first time in three years through April.Food insecurity measures showed meaningful increases between October 2025 and February 2026, according to Federal Reserve data."As I've been saying: Inflation is just getting started. I think this is going to be a major theme of the next few years," commented Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims. "It is not going to be pleasant, even for people with money. For people without, it's going to be (and is already) devastating."
Stephen Miller claimed this week that the federal budget could be balanced simply by cutting payments to ineligible recipients — and experts, economists, and legal analysts wasted no time calling it out as fantasy."Based on what I've heard, we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them," Miller said.The response was swift and brutal.New York Times columnist David French called it "wildly false" and warned it "breeds a dangerous level of ignorance and wishful thinking in the American public."Immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick was more blunt: "Stephen Miller thinks Americans are idiots. That's the only explanation for this kind of contemptuous lie."The numbers don't come close to supporting Miller's claim. Trump's own Office of Management and Budget calculated that all potentially erroneous individual payments totaled $186 billion in 2025 — about 10 percent of the current budget deficit, according to budget analyst Jessica Riedl. The deficit itself runs nearly $2 trillion."'Based on what I've heard' means 'according to my baseless fantasies,'" wrote financial journalist James Surowiecki. "The claim that there's $1.8 trillion in fraudulent payments is the same kind of delusion that explains why DOGE was such a failure."Reason magazine's Billy Binion put it simply: "We will never balance the budget if powerful people keep peddling wild falsehoods like this."Our deficit is roughly $2 trillion. The largest share of spending goes to entitlements for American citizens. It really isn't hard to understand. We will never balance the budget if powerful people keep peddling wild falsehoods like this. https://t.co/DeGgvuXzvZ— Billy Binion (@billybinion) May 26, 2026
President Donald Trump's disgraced former attorney general, Pam Bondi, is coming back to the Trump administration — only this time, she's working in a very different role.According to Axios, "Bondi, whom Trump ousted as AG last month, will be on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The panel is chaired by former White House AI adviser David Sacks and White House science adviser Michael Kratsios. It also includes more than a dozen tech executives, including Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison."Per the report, Bondi's role on the panel will be to mediate between the White House and the tech billionaires serving on it.Announcing the move, Vice President JD Vance proclaimed, "Pam has been an enormously valuable asset to the president's team, and I'm thrilled for her and for all of us that she's going to remain involved in confronting some of the most important issues the administration faces."This comes despite the fact that Bondi was unceremoniously fired by Trump earlier this year.Sources at the time indicated Trump had a long list of frustrations with Bondi, including her failure to manage the public furor over the Jeffrey Epstein trafficking case files, and the fact that under her watch, several politically-motivated prosecutions of Trump's enemies ended in failure and sometimes even the removal of prosecutors.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the decision.