President Trump had spent months getting squeezed by top Senate Republicans to endorse the embattled Senator John Cornyn of Texas in order to avert a costly and prolonged primary fight in Texas against Ken Paxton, the state’s hard-line attorney general.
Suddenly it’s Mr. Trump doing the squeezing.
Just a week ago, he had seemed on the verge of endorsing Mr. Cornyn after Republicans spent more than $70 million on pro-Cornyn ads in the first round of the Texas primary, which ended with him and Mr. Paxton heading to a May runoff. Mr. Trump said on social media that he would make an endorsement “soon” — and that the candidate who did not get his nod should drop out.
Then Mr. Paxton made a bold play.
In a post on X, he said he would consider dropping out — but only if Senate Republicans circumvented the filibuster to pass Mr. Trump’s top legislative priority, a bill that would impose strict voter ID requirements. The gambit quickly went viral, with some of the most influential voices on the right amplifying it, including the president’s son.
Mr. Paxton did not leave it to chance that Mr. Trump himself would see his message, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. He texted it to the president himself.
Now Mr. Trump is leveraging his potential endorsement — which Senate Republicans long for — to ratchet up the pressure on them to change the Senate’s rules and pass the bill. Mr. Cornyn, still pursuing the president’s blessing, reversed his long-held position that the filibuster should be protected in an opinion piece for The New York Post on Wednesday.
What began as a fight over a single seat in Texas has since spilled into halls of Congress, with potential implications for voting access nationwide.
The episode offers a window into how Mr. Trump is wielding power in his second term, as well as his relationship with congressional Republicans and his MAGA base. This account is based on interviews with a dozen Republican officials involved in the ongoing battle, many of whom were granted anonymity to describe private discussions.
Here’s how it unfolded:
Why did Trump finally edge toward an endorsement?
National Republicans have warned for months that nominating the scandal-plagued Mr. Paxton — he has survived impeachment and his wife is divorcing him “on biblical grounds” — might put the seat, and ultimately their control of the Senate, in jeopardy.
Last week Mr. Cornyn edged ahead of Mr. Paxton in the primary with the help of a record-breaking $70 million rescue mission, and the two men advanced to a May runoff that promises to extend an expensive and often ugly intraparty battle. Democratic voters nominated James Talarico, a state legislator with an explicit message of reaching out to independent voters, which seemed to add urgency to the cause of uniting the G.O.P.
It seemed that Mr. Trump had finally seen and heard enough.
He posted last Wednesday that the primary “cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer.” Some news outlets, starting with The Atlantic, wrote that the president was expected to endorse Mr. Cornyn. One person familiar with the matter said that aides to Mr. Trump had prepared language for the president to consider for a potential Cornyn endorsement, which is standard procedure.
But Mr. Trump paused, igniting a fierce public and private lobbying blitz.
Republican senators have been asked by their leadership to call Mr. Trump to ask him to back Mr. Cornyn to put an end to an increasingly acrimonious primary, according to three Republican officials with knowledge of the requests. Mr. Paxton’s team has pushed its allies to be in touch with the president, as well.
The Paxton and Cornyn campaigns declined to comment.
How did Paxton’s gambit rally the MAGA base?
After reports of a coming Cornyn endorsement, the Trump base — and MAGA-aligned news outlets — erupted to try to stop it.
“John Cornyn Chose Jack Smith, Joe Biden, Illegal Aliens Over Trump, Texas,” blared Breitbart. “The Top 6 Times Senator Cornyn Has Backstabbed Trump and MAGA,” read a headline in The National Pulse. Right-wing influencers revived old clips of Mr. Cornyn speaking ill of Mr. Trump.
Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist for Mr. Trump and the host of an influential streaming show, The War Room, called Mr. Cornyn “reptilian” for his shifting stances on Mr. Trump. He said that Mr. Paxton had been a true loyalist: showing up at Mr. Trump’s 2024 federal trial, his 2022 re-election kickoff and in the courts fighting to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Bannon argued that the base’s animus toward Mr. Cornyn actually made him less electable. Democrats generally see Mr. Paxton as the weaker candidate, but they circulated private polls this week showing Mr. Talarico competitive with both Republicans.
One of the surveys could have almost been designed to give pause to Mr. Trump, who relishes the power of his endorsements. It suggested that his endorsement wouldn’t give Mr. Cornyn a decisive lead.
But the biggest development was Mr. Paxton’s announcement that he “would consider dropping out of this race” if Senate Republicans bypassed the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, which would impose strict ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements on voting.
“Wow!!!!” Donald Trump Jr. responded. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the biggest donor in Republican politics, replied with an American flag emoji. The pro-Trump provocateur Laura Loomer called Mr. Paxton “the best man for the job” and wrote, “I hope President Trump sees his post.”
Cornyn allies strained to point out that Mr. Paxton had said only that he would “consider” leaving the race, but in private, they grudgingly gave him credit for a savvy maneuver.
How did Trump turn the tables on Senate Republicans?
Mr. Trump issued a seeming ultimatum over the weekend: He wouldn’t sign any legislation until the SAVE America Act has passed, and now he is using the potential Cornyn endorsement as leverage over Senate Republicans, in a move first reported by Politico.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, has said there are not enough votes in the Senate to circumvent the filibuster to push the measure through. “That is just a function of math, and there isn’t anything I can do about that,” Mr. Thune said on Tuesday.
Mr. Paxton’s move served to highlight the limits of the current Senate Republican majority — which have been a source of frustration to both the president and his base.
Mr. Cornyn’s flip — “I support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary,” he wrote in The Post — seemed to show that Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign was having an effect.
The president’s endorsement has loomed over the race from the start.
Mr. Cornyn and his allies installed two of Mr. Trump’s top 2024 advisers, Tony Fabrizio and Chris LaCivita, at his campaign and super PAC. And Mr. Cornyn, who had questioned Mr. Trump’s electability during the 2024 campaign, has gone out of his way to try to demonstrate his support, perhaps most memorably when he posted a photo of himself pensively reading Mr. Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal” a year ago with a one-word caption: “Recommended.”
Mr. Paxton seemed to relish the latest turn, taking a victory lap of his own on Wednesday. “In one week,” he wrote of his rival, “I’ve made him more conservative than in the past 24 years.”
Shane Goldmacher is a Times national political correspondent.
The post How Trump Turned a Republican Battle Over a Texas Senate Seat Into Leverage appeared first on New York Times.
