Trump Won’t Pick a Side in Texas—And Republicans Are Panicking
A last-minute decision from Ken Paxton could trigger a $100 million GOP runoff—but Trump is holding back, unsure whether John Cornyn can win.
Welcome back to The Red Letter.
Today is a big day in Texas politics and potentially a defining one for President Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party.
I’m waiting on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has just hours to decide whether he’ll drop out of the GOP Senate primary. The deadline is 5 p.m. Central Daylight Time. If he stays in, Republicans are heading into a bruising, expensive runoff that could cost as much as $100 million, according to people close to the race.
Paxton narrowly trailed incumbent Senator John Cornyn by just a point—setting up a high-stakes showdown between two very different versions of the Republican Party.
On one side: Cornyn, the establishment figure, backed by Trump-world operatives like Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio.
On the other: Paxton, a deeply polarizing but undeniably MAGA-aligned figure backed by Trump’s one-time nemesis and recent guest on The Tara Palmeri Show Jeff Roe. Paxton was impeached, investigated for fraud, and whose personal scandals—including a divorce filed on “biblical grounds”—have made him a risky general election candidate.
And hovering over all of it is Trump.
Trump Won’t Pick—Yet
Trump has not endorsed in the race even though he told NBC News that he thinks he’ll endorse this week. And according to my sources, that’s not by accident.
His endorsement would almost certainly decide the primary but he’s holding back because he’s not convinced Cornyn is a winner.
Trump cares deeply about his endorsement record. He doesn’t want to back someone who could lose or even someone who might struggle, which explains why he’s done the double endorsement flick at times. And so far, he hasn’t seen the kind of polling that would give him confidence. The problem is, in a race like this, that kind of polling is hard—if not impossible—to get so soon.
At the same time, Trump has been pulled into a separate but related fight: the push to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voter ID nationwide.
Paxton publicly challenged Trump—saying he would drop out of the race if Cornyn, who is a senior member of the Senate, pushed to eliminate the filibuster to pass it.
Trump, notably, agrees with that position, which has left him in a bind.
A Party on Edge
A senior administration official told me:
“The president has his own sense of timing on political matters… It has nothing to do with polling, and he certainly thinks Cornyn can win.”
That statement raises more questions than it answers.
👉 “What I’m hearing from inside Trump world—and why this moment matters more than it looks—after the paywall.”
