It was a big night for President Donald Trump in Texas on Tuesday… and a very bad one for his enemies.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton crushed incumbent Sen. John Cornyn Tuesday in the Republican Senate runoff, handing Trump his most significant primary victory yet in what became the most expensive Senate primary in American history.
Meanwhile, Houston Rep. Al Green, the Democrat who has made it his personal mission to impeach Trump at every opportunity, was thrown out of Congress by his own party.
Trump dropped his endorsement on Paxton just one week before Tuesday’s vote, calling Cornyn “VERY disloyal” and branding Paxton “a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas.”
The gamble paid off decisively, and Paxton won easily.
It is the latest in a string of Trump-engineered purges of Republican critics and insufficiently loyal incumbents. In recent weeks alone, Trump helped oust five Indiana state senators who had crossed him on redistricting, pushed Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana ( who voted to convict him in his second impeachment trial) into a primary loss, and sent Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky down to defeat.
Cornyn had argued until the end that his voting record with the president spoke for itself.
“I don’t know how much more with him I could be than 99.3% of the time,” he told Fox News the day before the vote.
Trump didn’t buy it, pointing to Cornyn’s 2016 and 2024 obstructions of various bills and his criticism during the Trump 2024 election.
Paxton kept the focus on the policy divides.
“John Cornyn fought Trump on the border,” Paxton said. “He was not for the border wall. He fought the president’s re-election.”
Cornyn had warned that nominating Paxton would put the Republican seat in danger in November. — Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 before being acquitted by the state Senate, and is currently embroiled in a divorce after his wife cited “biblical grounds” based on “recent discoveries.”
His opponent, Democrat James Talarico, hauled in a staggering $27 million in fundraising in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
The general election matchup between Paxton and Talarico is now among a handful of 2026 Senate races that could decide whether Republicans hold onto their slim 53-47 majority. Talarico is trying to become the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat in nearly four decades.
Down in Houston, redistricting handed Trump a gift he didn’t even have to ask for.
Rep. Al Green, one of Congress’ most relentless Trump antagonist who has been physically removed from the House chamber during Trump’s State of the Union addresses multiple times for standing up and shouting in protest, lost his Democratic runoff Tuesday to fellow Texas Rep. Christian Menefee.
Redistricting had forced the two sitting incumbents into the same Houston-area district after new congressional lines scrambled the region.
In the March primary, Menefee edged Green 46% to 44.2%, sending the race to a runoff.
Green blamed his vulnerability on the crypto industry, and claimed $1.5 million had been spent against him. Menefee, a former Harris County Attorney from a military family, was endorsed by the far-Left Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.
Menefee will now face Republican Ronald Whitfield in November’s general election, though he is heavily favored in the solidly Democratic district.
Green once compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks after being ejected from a Trump speech. Now, he’s unemployed.