If you want to know why Donald Trump and the Republican Party are worried about the midterm elections next month, just look at Texas. It’s been more than 30 years since a Democrat won the state. But polls are showing that the party has a slight edge in a crucial Senate race.
Texas is a microcosm of the midterms, in which Democrats hope to win back control of Congress. But it’s also its own wild story. The Democratic candidate, James Talarico, is 37, and deeply religious. His Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, is facing a divorce “on biblical grounds.” The amount of money spent on this race is eye-watering.
Today my colleague, Sam Sifton, who hosts our sister newsletter, The Morning, writes about what’s happening in Texas and why it matters so much.
Choosin’ Texas
By Sam Sifton
There are a number of tight races in the coming midterm elections, but there isn’t a more expensive one than the Senate showdown in Texas.
It pits James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, against Ken Paxton, the state’s conservative attorney general. More than half a billion dollars has been spent on advertising already. It could become the most expensive nonpresidential contest in U.S. history.
Democrats are hopeful, because Talarico has a tiny lead in the polls. But “such optimism stands in defiance of the political axiom that Texas is where idealistic Democrats go to be mugged by reality,” writes my colleague Robert Draper, a three-decade veteran of Texas political reporting. The Democratic Party has not won a statewide race there for 32 years.
Republicans are worried because Democrats are building momentum across the country. But this race may turn on who each man says he — and his opponent — is.
An ugly race
Talarico has introduced himself to Texans as a good Christian, with a record of bipartisanship. At a town hall meeting this week, he spoke about his faith and appealed to undecided voters.
“I’m a proud Texas Democrat, but I already have a religion and I already have a sports team,” he said. “So, I have no problem sharing hard truths with my party if it’s what’s best for Texas.”
His appeal is meant to be broad, with proposals to cap credit card rates, cut middle-class taxes and assist people with their first down payment on a home.
In return, Paxton and other Republicans paint Talarico as a “weird” radical who believes that “God is nonbinary” and that there are more than two biological sexes. (Talarico did say those things but later renounced them.) Vice President JD Vance, stumping in Texas on Wednesday, mocked Talarico (who has a girlfriend) with a gay joke. “I love you too sir,” Vance told a man in the crowd. “In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.”
It gets uglier. Recently, Talarico disappeared from the campaign trail for nine days, saying he had a bad case of the flu. His conservative opponents pounced, spreading a rumor that he had been at a mental health facility in Ohio, a state Talarico said he had never visited.
That story proved false — The Times obtained time-stamped security camera images showing that Talarico spent a week at home — but the episode offered a lesson for the age of misinformation, my colleague Bayliss Wagner reported: “It is politically risky for a candidate, even one too ill to campaign, to disappear for nine days.”
Baggage to spare
There’s a reason Paxton and his allies have clawed at every possible advantage. He’s got baggage to spare. During a quarter-century in Texas politics, he has never lost an election. But as attorney general, he was charged with felony fraud. He cut a deal to drop the charges in exchange for paying restitution and performing community service. Then, a group of his aides accused him of bribery and abuse of office. The lower house of the state legislature impeached him in 2023. (The upper house acquitted him.) And last year, his wife, Angela Paxton, a state senator, filed for divorce on “biblical grounds,” after his impeachment trial revealed that he’d used burner phones, a shared Uber account and secret email address to conduct an affair.
No wonder her appearance in a new ad doesn’t mention Paxton’s name, but simply urges people to vote for the Republican ticket.
And Trump, for his part? His endorsement was strangely backhanded: “He may not dress right. He may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen,” Trump said last month. “But you know what he is? He’s the greatest attorney general in America.”
Jess Bidgood, who writes our On Politics newsletter, had a good line about that: “It’s never great when the two people most crucial to your political survival struggle to simply say nice things about you,” she writes. “It’s worse when one of those people is the president, and the other is your estranged wife.”
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President Vladimir Putin is “real evil,” he added. “How can Trump be friends with him?”
Ukraine is grappling with what it sees as a betrayal, after Trump announced a deal to buy Russian diesel fuel. Ukraine said on Wednesday its forces had lost some critical access to a military-grade version of the Starlink satellite network, which the Pentagon pays for.
David Sanger, our national security and White House correspondent, said Trump’s diesel deal with Russia had resulted in a “pretty confused policy.” Watch his video.
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A painting by Wassily Kandinsky that was once looted by the Nazis sold for nearly $42 million.
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The most clicked link in your newsletter yesterday was about our reporter’s return to China.
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The New Yalu River Bridge
The three-kilometer-long bridge between China and North Korea, which opened yesterday, is expected to expand trade between the two countries, despite international sanctions on key North Korean exports. As North Korea’s relationship with Russia has strengthened, China is trying to maintain its economic influence. The bridge’s opening was delayed for 12 years because Pyongyang was concerned about becoming even more dependent on China.
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A copper mine that led to a civil war in Papua New Guinea is preparing to reopen.
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RECIPE
These buttery shortbread rounds are a riff on the ones sold by Walker’s Shortbread in Scotland. A reader, Mia, suggested adding lemon zest or pistachios. “My dream is to devote several weeks to making many different variations of shortbread, just to see which ones are best.” We hear you, Mia.
WHERE IS THIS?
Where is this river?
BEFORE YOU GO …
In France this week, I did something I rarely do. I went offline. And I spent many hours talking to other humans who were also offline.
There were 30 of us from a dozen different countries, writers and journalists, young and old. We talked about a lot of things. But one recurring theme was artificial intelligence and how it’s affecting our work — and our humanity.
Algorithms have become very good at curating anything from music to news, and giving us what we like. They’re only getting better. If you wanted your own daily newsletter, curated just for you, you could now probably code that in a few hours.
But one thing I took away from my conversations with fellow journalists this week is that our humanity — which we share with our audience — is perhaps our biggest advantage over the machines.
At The World we rely almost entirely on human curation. Every day, my colleagues and I pick what stories to feature and how.
That means sometimes you’ll get something you think you don’t want.
You don’t cook? Tough. We will make you at least scroll past our favorite recipe. We’ll also tell you about Nigerian erotica and a Turkish girl band, because we believe in serendipity; in stumbling upon something you didn’t even know you wanted to read.
Algorithms will always be better at giving you exactly what you like. But human curation gives you those unexpected discoveries.
It also gives you a shared reading experience. A.I. makes you think that that thing on top of your feed is the most important thing in the world — but you’re the only one reading your feed. All the humans reading The World read the same thing.
On that note, I do love my Spotify recommendations. But I love it even more when a friend makes me a playlist. This week’s song is from such a playlist: “The Morning Sun” by The Avener.
Have a great weekend! — Katrin
TIME TO PLAY
Here are today’s Spelling Bee, Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku. Find all our games here.
Sam Sifton was our guest writer today.
We welcome your feedback. Send us your suggestions at [email protected].
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