The race to become the Republican nominee in Texas’ upcoming Senate election is coming to a head.
After failing to secure more than 50 percent of the vote during Tuesday’s primary race, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn will face off against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a May runoff election to determine who will represent the Grand Old Party on the state’s 2026 ticket. While President Trump declined to make an endorsement in the contest prior to this week, it appears the president is now changing his tune.
Trump issued a Truth Social post on Wednesday saying that the primary race “cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer.” He further revealed that he “will be making [his] Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that [he doesn’t] Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”
Reports emerged in the hours that followed indicating that the president is preparing to endorse Cornyn, a move that puts him at odds with a sizeable portion of his base, who generally favor the MAGA-aligned Paxton.
While Cornyn has attempted to posture himself as aligned with Trump and conservative causes throughout his 2026 reelection campaign, a look at the senator’s record indicates that he has often sided with the interests of the GOP establishment.
Selling Out the Second Amendment
When President Biden and his party pushed for a major gun control package in 2022, all Senate Republicans like Cornyn had to do was say, “No.” But Texas’ senior senator had other ideas.
Cornyn not only voted for the bill that was peppered with vague language about “dating partners” and red flag laws; he spearheaded negotiations with Senate Democrats on behalf of the Republican conference. Without Cornyn and Co.’s help, the legislation likely would have never passed.
[READ: Sen. John Cornyn Booed At Texas GOP Convention Over Willingness To Surrender To Democrats On Guns]
Calling Conservatives Terrorists
When a group of Republican representatives voted to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as House Speaker in 2023, Cornyn took his support for the California congressman to the extreme. Echoing rhetoric often used by leftists, the Texas senator labeled these House Republicans as “terrorists.”
“We saw a similar thing happen to [former Republican House Speaker John] Boehner, [Paul] Ryan, and now McCarthy. I’m sure the next speaker is going to be subjected to the same terrorist attacks,” Cornyn said at the time. The Lone Star State’s senior senator later doubled down on X, writing, “A handful House members just want to blow up the institution and themselves in the process. Sad.”
Attacking Efforts to Investigate Anti-Trump Lawfare
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is one among several Democrat prosecutors to weaponize his office to target Trump ahead of the 2024 election. But rather than do everything to fight such outrageous lawfare, Cornyn was busy attacking his Republican colleagues for fighting it.
When then-Speaker McCarthy authorized House committees to probe Bragg’s activities in 2023, Cornyn downplayed the need for such inquiries.
“There’s more than enough to do,” Cornyn reportedly said. “I would hope they would stick to the agenda they ran on when they got elected to the majority.”
Cornyn would later go on to avoid directly condemning Special Counsel Jack Smith’s lawfare against Trump that same year. When asked about potential indictments from Smith of the then-former president, the Texas senator defended the Biden Justice Department’s ability to bring such charges.
“I think that’s entirely within the purview of the Department of Justice and has nothing to do with the United States Senate,” Cornyn said. The Texas Republican also said that he had “no knowledge of anything approaching that” when pressed on whether he believed Smith was a “credible prosecutor.”
Weakness on Immigration
Cornyn recently told Politico that he’s ready to “fix our broken immigration system” after more than 20 years in Congress. While the senator reportedly denounced illegal immigration, he also seemingly voiced support for granting amnesty to illegal immigrants in the United States.
“Remember, [Trump] offered a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million DACA recipients,” Cornyn said in reference to illegal aliens who came to the United States when children. “[Trump’s] a builder, he understands all that.”
Cornyn also recently praised America’s broken legal immigration system in remarks to the Washington Examiner, calling it “one of our great assets.” More notably, however, the Lone Star State Republican previously opposed Trump’s first-term efforts to build new wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and have Mexico pay for it.
Shilling for Ukraine Funding
Cornyn repeatedly voted for bills shipping billions in taxpayer dollars to Ukraine. He also opposed an amendment introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., that sought to appoint an inspector general to oversee how such funds were being distributed to and spent by the Eastern European country.
Trashing Trump
Lambasting Trump’s border wall proposal isn’t the only instance in which Cornyn has gone after the Republican president.
The Texas senator attempted to put space between himself and Trump leading up to the 2020 election. This behavior continued in the years after the contest, in which he claimed that Trump would be unelectable if he were Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee.
“We need to come up with an alternative,” Cornyn reportedly said in 2023. “I think President Trump’s time has passed him by and what’s the most important thing to me is we have a candidate who can actually win.”
It “all boils down to electability” and “there’s no prize for coming in second [place],” he added.
Ignoring Covid Shot Side Effects
Within years of their release to the public, it became clear that the Covid shots were not as “safe” and “effective” as they were marketed to be. At the time, a few Republicans were courageous enough to voice concerns about their potentially harmful side effects.
The same can’t be said for Cornyn when The Federalist pressed him on the matter in 2023.
A Cornyn representative said that the senator would use his position to keep overseeing federal health agencies responsible for their approval and supported “further investigation into how the CDC and FDA make decisions on vaccine recommendations.” The rep stopped short of saying whether Cornyn was worried about the shots’ side effects, however.
Pushing for Critical Race Theory
Helping Democrats pass gun control wasn’t the only legislative activity Cornyn was engaged in throughout 2022. As The Federalist previously reported, he also reintroduced a bill that would “enable the federal government to impose critical race theory (CRT) — that is, state-sanctioned racism and anti-Americanism — on public school civics courses via federal grants.”
Shilling for FISA
America’s intel agencies have long abused provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy on unsuspecting Americans. Most notably the Obama FBI weaponized the program to surveil Trump campaign official Carter Page ahead of the 2016 election as part of the intel apparatus’ infamous Russia collusion hoax.
Yet, despite these abuses, Cornyn has been one of the program’s biggest defenders.
During her Senate confirmation hearing to become director of national intelligence, for example, Tulsi Gabbard faced not-so-subtle bullying from Cornyn and other Senate Republicans to espouse unfettered support for such surveillance tools.
Backing Biden Spending Bombs
While hardly an outlier among congressional Republicans, Cornyn repeatedly helped pass massive Biden-era spending packages that have further blown up the U.S. national debt. He also voted for the 2022 CHIPS Act ($250 billion), which Heritage Action noted “blends corporate welfare with industrial policy.”
