May 27, 2026 12:14 PM UTC

Burned (Again) by Donald Trump's One-Way Loyalty

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• by: Colorado Pols

Senate Republicans last week offered a rare rebuke to President Trump, punting on his demands to use the reconciliation process to ram through funding for the Department of Homeland Security over concerns about Trump’s $1.8 billion insurrectionist slush fund; his $1 billion request for money for a new White House ballroom; and his retribution campaign against popular incumbent Republicans.

Tuesday’s election results in Texas will almost certainly exacerbate those tensions. Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, a popular incumbent within the GOP caucus who was just five votes shy of becoming Senate Majority Leader in 2024, will not be returning to the Senate in 2027 after being humiliated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in Tuesday’s Primary Election runoff. Cornyn edged out Paxton for first place in the March 3 Primary Election but lost to Paxton on Tuesday by 28 points; last week Trump endorsed Paxton, which all but sealed Cornyn’s fate.

As The Associated Press explains, Cornyn is the latest Republican to learn that loyalty to Trump is rarely reciprocated:

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn tried for more than a year to show Donald Trump and Texas Republicans that he and the president were on the same team.

Cornyn posted a photo of himself reading Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.” He proposed legislation to rename a stretch of interstate in Trump’s honor. Perhaps most glaringly, the Senate institutionalist who long supported the filibuster reversed his position in a failed effort to advance voting restrictions that are a priority for the president.

None of it worked. On Tuesday, Cornyn became the latest in a line of Republicans who lost their primaries after falling out of favor with a president with little tolerance for dissent and a seemingly insatiable appetite for retribution. The four-term senator lost by double digits to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Trump endorsed last week as “a true MAGA Warrior.”

Cornyn, on the other hand, “was VERY disloyal to me,” Trump wrote on social media.

Cornyn, in fact, went out of his way to support Trump at the cost of his own principles, though it was never enough to overcome a 2023 statement in which he declared that “Trump’s time had passed him by.” Cornyn voted with Trump 99% of the time and changed his long-held positions on opposing a border wall and eliminating the filibuster — all for naught. Cornyn instead became just the latest example of how debasing yourself for Trump doesn’t guarantee anything in return from the President (something Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert is also learning).

It remains to be seen whether Congressional Republicans will learn a lesson that they should have figured out a long time ago, but as The New York Times reports, there is real anger in Washington D.C.:

“It is very sad and unsettling, and not good for the Senate,” said Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican facing her own difficult re-election race who worked closely with Mr. Cornyn when he was the No. 2 Republican for six years ending in 2019…

…[Cornyn’s] situation adds to the ranks of G.O.P. incumbents done in by their own president with little remaining incentive to give him the benefit of the doubt. And it could influence how other Senate Republicans operate in the critical coming months before the midterm elections. Already, it has become clear that they are questioning why they should bend constantly to Mr. Trump on issues on which they might think differently given the political choices he has made.

The other Texas Senator, Ted Cruz, recently warned on his podcast that Trump’s retribution campaign creates a numerical problem:

“Bill Cassidy, Thom Tillis, John Cornyn, Rand Paul,” Cruz said, counting the Kentucky senator who is also sometimes critical of Trump. “Those are four senators. We have a 53-47 majority. If you lose four senators, you’re below 50 and you can’t get anything done. That is going to be a complicating factor for the rest of the year.”

It is incredibly rare for incumbent Senators to lose in a Primary Election; this is the first year since 2010 that more than one incumbent Senator failed to advance to a General Election. Cornyn is understandably not cool with any of this:

Cornyn’s defeat also changes the election landscape nationwide. Cornyn would have been a strong favorite in November over Democrat James Talarico, but the scandal-plagued Paxton means Republicans will need to spend massive amounts of money to hold a Senate seat in a red state. Paxton has trailed Talarico in General Election polls since January, and as Nate Cohn explains for The New York Times, demographic shifts in Texas could create a perfect storm for Democrats:

After a decade of big talk from Democrats about Texas, it’s understandable that people could harbor some doubt about flipping the nation’s largest red state. Judging by presidential election results, Democrats barely made any progress at all: President Trump won Texas by almost 14 percentage points in 2024.

But beneath the state’s stable Republican voting record, extraordinary demographic shifts have put Texas Republicans in a much more vulnerable position. To an extent few would have imagined a decade ago, Texas’ status as a reliably Republican state now depends on elevated levels of support among Hispanic voters.

In the latest national polls, Mr. Trump’s gains among Hispanic voters have vanished — and the Republican grip on Texas is in danger as a result. The latest New York Times/Siena poll is representative: It shows Democrats ahead by 30 points, 54 percent to 24 percent, among Hispanic registered voters nationwide. That’s better than Joe Biden’s margin in 2020 and getting close to Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016.

The Cook Political Report has already shifted the Texas Senate race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican” following Tuesday’s election. Even if Paxton wins in November, Republicans estimate it could cost in the neighborhood of — wait for it — $250 million to save this seat. That’s a staggering sum that will undoubtedly take resources away from other Republican incumbents — such as Dan Sullivan in Alaska (who has been trailing in polls to Democrat Mary Peltola) and Susan Collins in Maine (who is lagging behind Democrat Graham Platner).

Trump doesn’t appear to care about any of this or the impact his endorsements might have on deliberations in the Senate. Why Republicans continue to worship at the altar of a vengeful orange god continues to be a mystery.