President Donald Trump's endorsement machine delivered a brutal message to the Republican establishment in May: fall in line or fall out of office. Over the course of the month, Trump backed challengers against 10 incumbent GOP lawmakers in their primaries, and the results left little doubt about where power in the party now resides.
The latest blow came in Texas, where state Attorney General Ken Paxton demolished longtime Sen. John Cornyn with a 64%-36% victory in a primary runoff. Trump's endorsement arrived just one week before the vote, despite Cornyn finishing narrowly ahead in the initial March primary. The shift proved decisive. One longtime Cornyn donor and friend, George Seay, conceded the obvious: "Clearly the president has an impact on the base that has not been seen in our lifetime."
Cornyn had tried everything to placate Trump on the campaign trail. His Senate voting record tracked with the president on nearly every major issue. Yet a track record of establishment instincts and private skepticism about Trump's most controversial actions proved fatal. He wasn't the only Republican to learn that loyalty isn't loyalty without total surrender.
Earlier in May, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana lost his renomination fight after voting to convict Trump in the 2021 impeachment trial. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky fell to a Trump-backed challenger, his sin being consistent resistance to the president on numerous fronts. In Indiana, Trump targeted seven state senators who voted against his redistricting plan. Five went down. Greg Goode survived his primary, while Spencer Deery faces a recount separated by just 3 votes.
The tallies tell the story. Trump ousted all but two of the GOP lawmakers who had crossed him, with one race still too close to call. The message is unmistakable: this is Trump's party now.
Paxton now advances to a general election matchup with Democratic state Rep. James Talarico that could have outsized implications for Senate control. In a traditional Republican stronghold, Paxton's extensive record of legal controversies has given Democrats genuine hope that the seat could flip. Paxton wasted no time going on offense in his victory speech, unleashing a barrage of insults at his new opponent: "Tofu Talarico," "six-gender Jimmy," "James Tala-freako," and "low-T Talarico." He attacked Talarico's positions on gender-affirming care, immigration, energy, and religion.
Talarico fired back in an NBC News interview, acknowledging that past comments on cultural issues "missed the mark" but casting Paxton's attacks as a distraction. "What Ken Paxton is doing is clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption," he said.
The broader primary picture speaks to a historic disruption in American politics. Six members of Congress have lost renomination bids in 2025 alone, already exceeding the total from the entire 2024 cycle. Two House Democrats from Texas fell in the same May primary: veteran Rep. Al Green lost to Rep. Christian Menefee in a member-versus-member race, while former Rep. Colin Allred toppled first-term Rep. Julie Johnson. The pattern suggests more incumbents from both parties are vulnerable than at any point in recent memory.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Trump has weaponized the primary process with surgical precision, and the Republican Party is simply accepting the new rules of the game."
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