Well, my my my. Primaries can make a difference after all.
Senator John Cornyn faces a runoff election in May against Texas AG Ken Paxton, who has refused to withdraw even if Donald Trump endorses the incumbent for a clean shot against Democrat James Talarico in November. The only way Paxton would withdraw from the runoff, he declared, would be if the Senate passed the SAVE Act regardless of the filibuster. Cornyn had defended the filibuster as a necessary check for the next time Democrats hold both Congress and the White House.
Today, however, Cornyn announced that he has changed his mind. Democrats will end the filibuster under those circumstances anyway, he argues in a New York Post op-ed, so why not get it over with and pass the SAVE Act?
When 48 Democrats nearly killed the filibuster, it was to pass radical legislation designed to increase election fraud.
They tried to ban voter ID requirements, to decriminalize ballot harvesting, and even to send taxpayer dollars into Democrats’ own campaign funds.
The SAVE America Act, which I’ve cosponsored, would do the opposite.
It would make it easy to vote but harder to cheat, by requiring proof of citizenship and voter ID.
These basic, commonsense protections are massively popular with the American people — and the fact that the radical left apparently sees them as such a threat to their chances in November truly gives their game away.
Cornyn argued that the current war necessitated a change to get funding restored to the Department of Homeland Security as well:
Americans are being forced to wait in line for three hours at airport security checkpoints because the Democrats are blocking funding for homeland security and immigration law enforcement.
Bad enough that Democrats’ political tantrum is ruining travelers’ days — but at this time of hostilities with Iran, their financial siege of DHS is not just inconvenient, it’s dangerous.
That’s certainly true enough. However, the sudden change seems more motivated by politics in Texas than in Washington, too. Paxton wasted no time in pointing that out, and also wondered whether Senate Republicans could pass the SAVE Act even without the filibuster:
John Cornyn did exactly what I predicted. In one week, I’ve made him more conservative than in the past 24 years.
The historic flip-flop’s great and all, but why aren’t you calling out your buddies like McConnell opposing the bill?
Tell the American people who’s opposing this. pic.twitter.com/kVjqUxkuL5
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) March 11, 2026
That certainly demonstrates the value of primaries. I don’t mean that cynically, either. Cornyn got himself crosswise with Texas Republicans over his vote on a gun-control bill that Joe Biden or his regents pushed, and has become seen as part of an establishment that only pays lip service to voters as a result. The pressure of a challenger has forced Cornyn to become more responsive to voters in his constituency, which is how this is supposed to work.
The irony here is in the minimal stakes involved in the runoff. The actual difference in Senate votes over the next six years between Cornyn and Paxton would probably be minimal at worst, which is why Trump appeared to be leaning in Cornyn’s direction when he announced that he would issue an endorsement in the runoff – and expected the other candidate to get out. However, Trump then seemed to drop it, or at least put it off, while demanding passage of the SAVE Act. Paxton issued his demand and waited to see whether Cornyn would crack. It didn’t take long for Cornyn to figure out that Trump was waiting for an answer … and so he provided it today.
Of course, this isn’t up to John Cornyn alone. He would need to convince 50 other Senate Republicans out of the 52 in the caucus, most especially Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Presumably, Mitch McConnell would oppose an end to the legislative filibuster that he spent several years defending, and on this vote, Cornyn can’t depend on John Fetterman to cross the aisle. That leaves the odds of ending the filibuster somewhere between slim and none. And Thune doesn’t seem inclined to push it anyway:
President Donald Trump declared the bill his “No. 1 priority” going into the midterms Monday, and House Republicans are vowing to gum up their own chamber in a bid to squeeze the Senate GOP. An intense online campaign reached a crescendo this week with tech mogul Elon Musk joining online calls to remove Thune as leader.
Thune, confident of his support from fellow Republican senators, brushed off the criticism in an interview Tuesday.
“It just kind of comes with the territory,” he said. “You just roll with it, you know. It’s the times in which we live.”
Thune spoke just hours after announcing plans to call up the bill next week in a bid to bring an unusually acrimonious stretch for his conference to an end. It will not include a talking filibuster gambit that would skirt the usual 60-vote threshold by instead forcing Democrats to hold the floor if they want to block the bill.
The pressure has frustrated GOP senators who believe the increasingly public infighting has transformed an issue that polls well for them — preventing noncitizens from voting in federal elections — into a messy internal brawl.
It may not matter to Cornyn whether the filibuster actually ends, or if the GOP forces Democrats into a talking filibuster that they can outlast and get the SAVE Act passed. Cornyn can claim – accurately – that he has done all he can do by calling to end the filibuster and pass both bills. If the rest of the Senate refuses to follow, that’s not his fault, or so he will argue. Paxton won’t withdraw, as he pledged only to withdraw if the SAVE Act passed, but Trump might endorse Cornyn now regardless of that outcome. He still wants an easy win over Talarico, and Cornyn carries a lot less baggage into that fight than Paxton would, plus Cornyn won’t need nearly as much help from the national party and outside donors, either.
Editor’s Note: The Democrats are doing everything in their power to undermine the integrity of our elections.
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