NEW YEAR SALE: 3 Months for 25¢Get a strong start with digital access. Sale Ends Jan. 19 |
President Donald Trump still isn't ready to endorse U.S. Sen. John Cornyn for reelection.
The Republican, locked in a competitive March 3 primary, said Friday that he talked to Trump earlier this week and brought up the topic again.
"I said, 'Mr. President, this race would be over if you decided to endorse,'" Conryn said in an interview with me. "He said, 'I know, I know.' He's obviously not ready to do that. And I think he wants to see how the race develops."
There's not a lot of time until voting starts. The first overseas ballots for the primary go out in just over a week, and in-person early voting begins in six weeks.
And Cornyn has struggled in the polls. At one point early in 2025, he was tracking way behind Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Houston Republican and a more recent entry to the race, has been close to catching him according to some polling.
All three candidates have been running heavily ontheir support for Trump and promises to back his agenda. The president has repeatedly said he likes the candidates, but isn't ready to weigh in on the race like he has in other statewide contests. Trump endorsed Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick early in the cycle, helping to stop major primary opponents from challenging them.
Though Trump isn't ready to commit, Cornyn said he still likes his chances heading into the primary, even if it means facing a runoff election later. If no candidate in the primary wins at least 50% of the vote, the top two finisherswould go to a May runoff election.
"We've come a long way, and I'm optimistic," Cornyn said.
It's new territory for Cornyn. Since his first election to the U.S. Senate in 2002, he's never really had much opposition in primaries or general elections.
But Senate Republicans are trying to help him out. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has firmly supported Cornyn's re-election and on Friday, appeared alongside Cornyn in McAllen, where he praised Cornyn's work on border security issues as Paxton and Hunt have both questioned Cornyn's support for building the border wall.
"He has been such an advocate through the years on the issue of border security," Thune said at a press conference. "He is the foremost expert on it. Most of us have learned what we know about the border from him."
Paxton just the day before put out a statement that said Cornyn has spent years "standing in the way of building the wall."
Cornyn says that is not true. In 2016, Cornyn called the idea of a border wall "naive," but he said that was because Texas has a 1,200-mile border and there are some sections where walls are almost impossible to build. He said he has always supported walls in places where they made sense and cameras and sensors along other sections.
"I've always supported what I would call a smart wall," Cornyn said in an interview on the latest episode of the Texas Take Podcast. "So the suggestion that I don't support infrastructure, which is necessary, which is an important piece of that puzzle, is just ridiculous."
 | Jeremy Wallace, Texas politics reporter |
Who's Up, Who's Down
A daily stock market-style report on key players in Texas politics.
Up: Oil Companies.
The Trump administration invited a selection of oil and gas companies to the White House on Friday to discuss their potential roles in restoring the dilapidated and isolated Venezuelan oil industry. Leaders from more than a dozen energy companies with major operations in Houston – including Exxon Mobil, Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton – were among those invited to discuss "investment opportunities that will restore Venezuelan oil infrastructure," according to a White House spokesperson.
Down: NASA workers.
After months on administrative leave, most NASA civil servants who participated in a second round of buyouts saw their pay and benefits end Friday. Nearly 4,000 people participated in two deferred resignation programs offered last year by the Trump administration as they slashed the federal workforce. These individuals stopped working long ago. But for many who accepted the second offer – about 3,000 people across the nation – Friday marked their official end as NASA civil servants. NASA did not say how many people from the Johnson Space Center accepted the buyouts, but the facility employs thousands of civil servants and contractors, managing human spaceflight, including astronaut training, Mission Control and the International Space Station.
What do you think? Hit reply and let me know.
What else is going on in Texas
|
|
|
|
|
Pick of the day
Photo by: Susan Barber
A double podcast week? Yup. Earlier this week we published an episode where I sat down with U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw to talk about Venezuela and its impacts on Texas and Mexico. Check it out on YouTube and let me know if you like the new visual edition. Now, we have our regular episode of the Texas Take dropping today that includes more from my interview with Sen. John Cornyn and Crenshaw. Plus, with help from our team of reporters, I'll explain how the action in Venezuela impacts Texas oil and border crossing in South Texas. Finally Express-News reporter Bayliss Wagner joins the program to talk about how Democrats have struggled to respond to the ouster of Nicolas Maduro.
What else I'm reading
President Donald Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night that after months of hitting alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, the U.S. is ready to attack drug cartels in Mexico. "We've knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water, and we are going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels," Trump said. "The cartels are running Mexico; it's very sad to watch and see what's happened to that country."
|
Unsubscribe | Manage Preferences
Houston Chronicle
4747 Southwest Freeway, Houston, TX 77027
© 2026 Hearst Newspapers, LLC
No comments:
Post a Comment