Will Trump bail out Texas Republicans?

With the retirement of North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, the Republican with the heaviest Senate primary burden in 2026 becomes John Cornyn. The Texas incumbent faces off in a contest against MAGA favorite Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Paxton is relying on backlash against some of Cornyn’s more centrist moves in recent years and a range of financial backers who poured nearly $3 million into his campaign coffers in the first quarter, a number Cornyn exceeded – but not by a lot. It’s too close for comfort for some Republicans, who are concerned the clash puts Texas at risk of a rare turn from red to blue.

The overall anticipation for this contest is that it is likely to be the most expensive primary of the cycle, featuring an insurgent challenger in Paxton whose numbers among Texas Republicans put him as the likely primary winner, but whose toxic history – including impeachment, ethics investigations, and now a divorce announced by his wife last week “on biblical grounds” – would put him in the category of failures like Alabama’s Roy Moore for the general.

That’s one reason why talk in Texas circles has grown around the idea that Donald Trump will parachute Paxton out of the race entirely by giving him a role in Washington – talk that has only grown as the fallout surrounding the Department of Justice’s unsatisfying leveling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation has created speculation around the future employment of Dan Bongino, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. While Trump has defended their work and rejected the idea there’s any cover-up related to Epstein, decrying it as a Democratic hoax, the possibility of a shakeup has become top of mind for some Texas political observers who see it as an opportunity to get rid of their Ken Paxton problem.

“If Trump decided to give him a job and get him out of here, it’d make it a whole lot easier to hold that seat,” one Texas insider told The Spectator. “It just needs to be big enough that Ken would take it, but if Trump asks him to join his DoJ, he would.”

There has been no particular animosity between Trump and Cornyn, despite the fact that he hasn’t endorsed yet in the race. But given the narrow nature of the GOP hold on the Senate, risking a candidate like Paxton botching a general election in a state that should be easy to keep in Republican hands (after some initial concerns, Ted Cruz won his re-election last year by almost a million votes) may be something worth a DC appointment to avoid.