President Trump endorsed Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, for Senate on Tuesday, embracing a MAGA ally over Senator John Cornyn in the final days before their key primary race.
Mr. Trump’s decision to oppose a respected veteran senator comes as he has sought to consolidate power over his party in primaries ahead of the fall midterm elections. But national Republican leaders have warned Mr. Trump — both in private and in public — that nominating the scandal-tarred Mr. Paxton could put the Texas Senate seat in play.
Mr. Trump had initially considered backing Mr. Cornyn after the first primary vote in early March — a pro-Cornyn statement had even been drafted — but in the end, he went with Mr. Paxton, who has been an unswerving Trump loyalist.
“Ken Paxton has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next United States Senator from the Great State of Texas,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, specifically hailing his “loyalty.”
Senate leaders, national Republicans and many Democrats see Mr. Paxton as the weaker candidate in a general election, given his history of indictment, impeachment and accusations of marital infidelity. Democrats have nominated James Talarico, a state legislator and seminarian who has emerged as one of the party’s best fund-raisers. Mr. Talarico has made outreach to independent voters a central part of his pitch.
Mr. Trump made the Paxton endorsement as he has increasingly expressed frustration with the Republican-led Senate, including over the body’s inability to advance his legislation that would impose stricter voting requirements. Mr. Trump cited Mr. Paxton’s support for “terminating the filibuster” to pass that bill, which is known as the SAVE America Act.
On Monday, Mr. Trump spoke on Monday with Senator John Thune, the Republican majority leader, about his displeasure that the Senate’s parliamentarian had ruled against including $1 billion in security funding related to the White House ballroom in a bill that could not be filibustered. The call was previously reported by Semafor and confirmed by a person briefed on the conversation.
Mr. Trump appears visibly emboldened in the wake of recent victories by his allies in key Republican primaries, including the defeat of Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana over the weekend. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump was rallying opposition to another critic inside the party: Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
“There are those that say whoever I endorse is going to win,” Mr. Trump said as he toured the White House ballroom construction site on Tuesday. “I don’t know if that’s true. But historically that’s absolutely true. I just don’t like to say it because I don’t like to brag.”
Mr. Trump revealed that he would be making his Texas endorsement during a tour of the construction site.
Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the Senate. Democrats would need to flip four of those to claim a majority this fall, in addition to defending two vulnerable seats of their own. Democrats are chiefly targeting North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska as their best chances for pickups. But Mr. Trump’s drooping poll numbers have some Democrats believing that Texas and Iowa could also be competitive.
Mr. Cornyn ran heavily on an electability argument. But in the final stretch, he pulled out all the stops to woo Mr. Trump, including introducing legislation last week proposing to rename a highway Interstate 47 in honor of Mr. Trump. “1,800 miles of open road to forever be known as the Trump Interstate,” Mr. Cornyn wrote on social media, adding an American flag emoji.
It proved all for naught. Still, Mr. Cornyn has waged a well-financed campaign for months, and his advisers have argued that he has a path to victory even without the president’s backing.
“It is now time for Texas Republican voters to decide if they want a strong nominee to help our GOP,” Mr. Cornyn wrote on social media on Tuesday after the endorsement, noting that Mr. Trump had “consistently called me a friend” and that the senator had voted with the president 99 percent of the time.
Mr. Trump, in his lengthy post on Truth Social, called Mr. Cornyn a “good man” but said he “was not supportive of me when times were tough” and criticized him for being “very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination” in 2024. Mr. Cornyn had expressed doubts about Mr. Trump’s viability during his third presidential run.
The news of Mr. Paxton’s endorsement was not celebrated by Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said she was “supremely disappointed” in Mr. Trump’s decision. “I think that this puts that seat in jeopardy,” she said, adding, “And how does that help strengthen the president’s hand when we lose a state like Texas?”
One top Senate Republican strategist said the president’s super PAC should now be on the hook to pay the estimated $100 million it could cost to elect Mr. Paxton. Mr. Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., has a nearly $350 million war chest but has yet to make any ad reservations for the summer or fall.
After the defeat of Mr. Cassidy and his opposition to Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Trump could face a turbulent next seven months of governance in Washington as he alienates key Republicans whose votes he still needs. As an example, the retiring Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina recently held up Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve.
On Tuesday, Mr. Talarico said in a statement that regardless of whom Republican voters nominate next week as his opponent, he was running against “the billionaire megadonors and their corrupt political system.”
Mr. Trump has been dismissive of Mr. Talarico’s chances, seizing on viral videos of old comments that the Democratic nominee made in support of liberal positions.
“I think the Democrats have a weird, a weird candidate,” Mr. Trump said recently on Air Force One. “Six genders, a real hit on Jesus.” He referred to an old remark in which Mr. Talarico said a previous campaign had been “vegan.”
“Texas doesn’t like vegans,” Mr. Trump added, mispronouncing the word. (Mr. Talarico is not vegan.)
One person close to Mr. Trump said the president’s belief that Mr. Talarico was a weaker candidate had given him more freedom to consider backing Mr. Paxton, despite the warnings of other Republican leaders.
Mr. Cornyn, who is seeking a fifth term, finished narrowly ahead of Mr. Paxton in the first round of the primary on March 3. The senator and his allies spent more than $70 million on ads to ensure that he made the runoff. He had 42 percent of the vote to Mr. Paxton’s 40.5 percent, and because no candidate earned a majority, a runoff was set for May 26.
Another $15 million has been spent by super PACs in the two months since the first round of the primary, federal records show.
Mr. Trump had hinted on social media the day after the primary that an endorsement was coming — and called for the other candidate to drop out. The presumption at the time had been that he was sending a warning to Mr. Paxton.
But the endorsement did not arrive immediately.
Instead, Mr. Paxton executed a bold gambit. He said he would “consider dropping out” — but only if Senate Republicans circumvented the filibuster to pass Mr. Trump’s top priority, a bill that would impose strict voter identification requirements.
Mr. Paxton even texted Mr. Trump his statement himself, ensuring that the president saw it, and he later spoke with the president at Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the episodes. His allies warned that the MAGA base would object — and that Mr. Cornyn might still lose, even with Mr. Trump’s support. Democrats circulated polls showing that the endorsement wouldn’t guarantee Mr. Cornyn victory in the Republican primary.
Meanwhile, Mr. Paxton hammered Mr. Cornyn over his long-held position that the filibuster should be protected, calling him a “coward.” Mr. Cornyn eventually relented, embracing the rule change.
But it was not enough to secure Mr. Trump’s support. Mr. Trump specifically mentioned both the filibuster and the Save America Act that Mr. Paxton had embraced.
Mr. Paxton has long demonstrated his loyalty to Mr. Trump. He filed a lawsuit to invalidate the results in swing states that Mr. Trump lost in the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Cornyn, in contrast, was a skeptic not just of those efforts but also of Mr. Trump’s comeback attempt in 2024.
Mr. Trump’s support had always been seen as crucial for Mr. Cornyn. He hired a top Trump pollster, Tony Fabrizio, for his own team, and one of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign managers, Chris LaCivita, is the top strategist for a pro-Cornyn super PAC.
But in the end, Mr. Trump endorsed the candidate he felt closer to. “I’ve had my mind made up for a long time,” he said shortly before backing Mr. Paxton.
For his part, the attorney general seemed to believe the president’s backing would wrap up the race in his favor.
“We all know that Donald Trump’s endorsement is the most significant endorsement in the country,” he said in an interview on “The Charlie Kirk Show” shortly before the news broke, “and maybe the most significant endorsement in my lifetime.”
Megan Mineiro, Tim Balk and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
Shane Goldmacher is a Times national political correspondent.
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