Sky DancingWednesday Reads: What a Mess Trump Has Made of Our Beloved Country!
Good Day!!
We’re moving closer to the midterm elections. Yesterday, there were some important primaries in Texas. Another of Trump’s enemies–John Cornyn–went down in flames, and now he’ll join other losers like Bill Cassidy who are now free to criticize his policies. Is it possible that Texas could turn purple in 2026? Here’s the latest:
Shane Goldmacher at The New York Times (gift article): Cornyn Crushed: 7 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Runoffs in Texas.
Ken Paxton, the Trump-endorsed and MAGA-backed insurgent, ousted Senator John Cornyn in a runoff on Tuesday, becoming the second primary challenger to knock out an incumbent Republican senator in less than two weeks in a raw display of President Trump’s powerful hold on the party base.
Texas Senator John Cornyn
The contest was the most expensive primary in American history — and Mr. Paxton prevailed despite being outspent on advertising by pro-Cornyn forces by roughly $80 million.
Now, Republicans are bracing for a potentially competitive general election in Texas, where Democrats have not won statewide in a generation. Democratic donors nationwide have swooned for their nominee, James Talarico, a smooth-talking 37-year-old seminarian and state legislator, in the hopes he will realize their long-dashed dreams of turning Texas blue.
National Republicans have warned for months that Mr. Paxton’s scandal-riddled past could put the Republican-held seat in jeopardy. But G.O.P. primary voters proved on Tuesday that they were in no mood for political guidance from Mr. Cornyn or a much-reviled party establishment.
The scope of his defeat was staggering. Mr. Cornyn, once the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, was trailing in nearly all of Texas’ 254 counties.
Here are Goldmacher’s takeways from the election. You can read more details on each with the gift link above.
— Cornyn’s defeat is another proof point of Trump’s sway.
— An ugly G.O.P. primary could take time to heal.
— The general election is going to have a Texas-size price tag.
— Cornyn’s loss could reverberate on Capitol Hill, too.
— An old-guard Democrat [Rep. Al Green] goes down.
— Crypto spent big and won.
— A sheriff’s deputy prevails over a sex therapist accused of antisemitism.
Read more details at the link.
Commentary on the Texas elections:
Matthew Choi at The Washington Post (gift article): Why some Republicans are worried about Ken Paxton as a Senate nominee.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the Republican Senate primary in his state Tuesday night, ousting incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.
Paxton excited President Trump and his MAGA base. But many Republican leaders and strategists are worried.
Few politicians have garnered as much scandal in Texas as Paxton. He was impeached by the Republican-controlled state House on multiple charges of abuse of office. His own senior staffers reported him to the FBI, alleging he illegally used his position to help a prominent donor. His wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year on “biblical grounds,” citing adultery.
Ken Paxton
And yet, Paxton has repeatedly come out on top. The state Senate acquitted him on all charges, and the FBI dropped its investigation. Paxton won reelection for his current job twice and defeated Cornyn, one of the best-funded Republicans in the country, with a fraction of the resources and institutional support.
Senate Republicans are now nervous they’ll have to pour boatloads of cash into the race to prop up Paxton against state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic candidate in the race. Talarico has blown past fundraising records for a contest that is likely to break spending records.
Why is Paxton so controversial?
The state House impeached Paxton in 2023 on overwhelmingly bipartisan grounds, with 60 Republicans joining 61 Democrats. Only 21 Republicans voted against impeachment charges.
The charges stemmed from his relationship with Nate Paul, a real estate developer and political donor. Paxton allegedly ordered his employees to improperly intervene in Paul’s legal troubles. Paul allegedly provided Paxton free services including a home renovation and a job for a woman with whom Paxton was allegedly having an extramarital affair. Paxton was also charged with retaliating against whistleblowers on his staff who had reported his conduct to the FBI in 2020.
Paxton was tried on 16 charges in the Senate, which acquitted him on all of them. His wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, was part of the Senate jury, though she was not allowed to vote.
The Justice Department continued investigating the allegations made by his senior staff to the FBI but closed its investigation at the end of the Biden administration.
Paxton was also indicted on felony securities fraud charges just after becoming attorney general in 2015. He was charged, as a state senator, with defrauding his fellow lawmakers by encouraging them to invest in Servergy, a tech company where he was secretly making a commission on their investments. He agreed to settle the case in 2024, paying $300,000 in restitution, though he never admitted to any wrongdoing. That case was unrelated to his impeachment.
It’s hard to believe this guy is still in office. But Trump likes him, and I guess that’s enough for Texas Republican voters.
Karen Tumulty at The Washington Post (gift article): Trump is liberating his Republican critics in Congress.
President Donald Trump proved once again that his endorsement is, as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton put it in his primary runoff victory speech Tuesday night, “the most powerful force in politics.”
One by one, Trump is putting an end to the political careers of lawmakers in his party that he deems, for reasons more personal than policy-oriented, to be apostates. But in doing so, he may also be liberating them as they serve out their remaining seven months in Congress. They now have nothing to lose if they stand up against him.
By giving belated independence to a handful of incumbents he vanquished at the ballot box or forced into retirement, the president is creating a growingly noxious dynamic between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Thom Tillis
“It’s hard for me to see how the president is going to get his agenda through the Senate in the next seven months if he keeps purging Republican senators who support him,” former senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) told CBS News last week. “… I think Republican senators will find they can say what they think and the country will be better off if they do.”
In his Trump-engineered defeat, Sen. John Cornyn joins a club of two other Republicans in the chamber, where their party holds a 53-47 majority. The other two are already expressing resistance to the president’s dictates.
One is Thom Tillis (North Carolina). Under a barrage of Trump attacks for opposing parts of the president’s agenda — including the sprawling One Big Beautiful Bill that was its domestic centerpiece — Tillis announced his retirement last year rather than making what was deemed to be a hopeless bid for a third term.
Tillis has since become a regular Trump critic. He has criticized the Justice Department’s recently announced “anti-weaponization fund,” which could allow the Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to receive taxpayer dollars, as “stupid on stilts” and said: “These people don’t deserve restitution. Many of them deserve to be in prison.”
Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), who failed to even make the runoff in his party’s May 16 primary, voted for the first time a few days later to advance a resolution to block Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran without congressional authorization.
If you want to read more, you can use the gift link above. I’m using up my gift articles because it’s close to the end of the month.
Paxton will now face Democrat James Talarico in November.
Adam Wren and Irie Sentner at Politico: James Talarico’s theory of victory in Texas.
In the end, James Talarico and Democrats got the matchup they had been salivating over for months.
Within two hours of Ken Paxton’s GOP primary win on Tuesday, Talarico had hauled in $600,000 — the strongest two hours of his entire campaign. Recent internal polling from a pro-Talarico PAC shows the Democrat has a 7-point lead against Paxton. Both figures were shared first with POLITICO.
In an interview, Talarico said he’s confident about his chances.
But Talarico faces a Texas-sized challenge to finally deliver on Democrats’ long-held fantasy of flipping the state, just two years after Trump won it by 14 points….
James Talarico
Talarico said Tuesday night that to win in November, he must convert supporters of Sen. John Cornyn — a conservative by almost any metric, except Trump’s. After Cornyn conceded, Talarico thanked the four-term incumbent for his service and told his supporters “you have a place in our campaign.”
It’s all part of his general election pitch, which Talarico outlined in the interview following Paxton’s primary win.
“I have a legislative record that I think has a lot to offer supporters of Senator Cornyn. Ken Paxton has a criminal record. I have a legislative record,” Talarico told POLITICO (Paxton struck a deal in 2024 where he paid restitution and securities fraud felony charges were dropped). He emphasized his history reaching across the aisle “to cut property taxes and raise teacher pay and lower the cost of housing and child care and prescription drugs,” and touted his willingness to break with Democrats on issues including energy and the border that are important in Texas.
“I’ve called out the extremes in both parties, on the right and left, and as you know, called out President Biden for failing to secure our southern border,” he said. “I’ve pushed back against national Democrats who want to hurt the Texas oil and gas industry and so I think that Texans are looking for a senator who is going to be independent, who’s not going to serve a political party, not going to serve any special interests or megadonors, but who’s going to serve people of Texas.”
We’ll have to wait and see. The dream of Texas going blue again has been with us for a long time, but so far it hasn’t come close to happening.
New York Times elections expert Nate Cohn thinks it could happen (gift article): A Blue Texas May Be More Than a Dream for Democrats.
Could Texas really turn blue in 2026?
While it’s tempting to be skeptical, a blue Texas is increasingly easy to imagine. It’s even easier to imagine after Ken Paxton’s victory over John Cornyn, the incumbent senator, in the Republican primary runoff on Tuesday night.
That’s partly because Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general, has distinct political liabilities. He’s faced investigation, indictment, impeachment and a messy public divorce.
But there’s another reason Democrats might pull off a statewide win for the first time in three decades: demographics. Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country, and national polls show Democrats surging back in support among young and nonwhite voters — and especially Hispanic voters.
On paper, these national demographic trends ought to send Texas racing toward the left and into contention. Add in Mr. Paxton’s nomination and you can start to see how Democrats could flip Texas this fall.
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.
Read more at the gift link.
Let’s face it. Democrats have to take back the House if we are to have any hope of impeaching Trump. They need to take the Senate too, but even if that happens, they won’t have the votes to remove him. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to impeach him. Democrats need to do everything in their power to weaken Trump, because he obviously has no plans to leave the White House unless he is dragged out or carried out on a stretcher.
Iran war news:
The Trump administration and the Iran government disagree about what is in their supposed peace agreement.
Erika Solomon, Sanam Mahoozi, and Leo Sands: What Iranian State Media Says Is in Outline of ‘Unofficial’ Deal With U.S.
Iranian state television on Wednesday released what it said were details of “an initial, unofficial document” outlining the framework for an agreement between Iran and the United States that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic.
The White House immediately dismissed the report as a “complete fabrication,” and it was not clear whether the United States and Iran were any closer to an agreement.
Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB, said that under the framework, Iran would allow shipping to resume through the strait in return for an end to the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports. For days, the two sides have been alternating between renewing hostilities and issuing positive signals.
In its framing of the draft, the broadcaster presented it as a broad victory for Iran while cautioning that it was not final.
The report said that, under the agreement, commercial marine traffic would return to prewar levels within a month of the framework’s implementation. It also said that Iran would handle the strait’s management in cooperation with the Gulf state of Oman, a U.S. ally.
A bit more:
The reopening of the strait was the only one of the five main sticking points in negotiations that was mentioned in the brief report. The waterway is a crucial route for the world’s oil and gas that Iran has effectively closed since March. There was no reference to the future of Iran’s nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium
The report said the framework included a U.S. pledge to “withdraw its military forces from the areas surrounding Iran” without specifying the geographic area included. The United States has a number of military sites in neighboring Iraq and nearby Gulf countries.
“Whether this includes forces newly deployed to the region or only permanent base personnel remains subject to negotiation,” the report said.
Trump called a cabinet meeting to discuss the situation.
The New York Times: Iran War Live Updates: White House Denies Iranian State Media’s Outline of ‘Unofficial’ Deal
Iranian state television said Wednesday that it had obtained a draft of a preliminary deal with the United States, which the White House quickly dismissed as untrue, calling the described memorandum a “complete fabrication” amid tense negotiations.
Trump speaks at cabinet meeting he called to discuss the Iran a proposed agreement with Iran.
According to the reported draft, Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial marine traffic in return for the United States lifting its naval blockade. Iran’s broadcaster projected the “initial, unofficial” 14-point agreement as one in which Iran “cemented its power in the Strait,” while laying out a potential path to peace with the United States.
President Trump dismissed the idea of letting Russia or China take control of Iran’s nuclear stockpiles.
“No, that would not make me comfortable,” he said, when asked if he could accept that step….
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sitting next to the president at the cabinet meeting, also did not offer details on the negotiations with Iran. “I think there’s been some progress and some interest, and we’ll see over the next few hours and days whether progress could be made,” he said. Rubio said that diplomacy was the administration’s preference but added, “You have other options available to you if that doesn’t work.”
What a mess Trump has created!
Some of the current messes:
AP: ICE detainees are dying by suicide at an ‘alarming’ rate, an AP investigation finds.
Brayan Rayo Garzon was distraught. Detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was on his fourth day of isolation in a Missouri jail as he battled the fevers and chills of COVID-19.
His request for mental health treatment had been put off, records show, and staff had forbidden Rayo from making his nightly call to his mother as a precaution intended to prevent the spread of illness.
This photo provided by the Missouri State Highway Patrol shows a note written in Spanish by Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee Brayan Rayo Garzon asking for a phone call with his mother before he committed suicide.
He pleaded with his jailers in handwritten notes to arrange a conversation with her. “I feel in my heart that she’s very worried about me,” he wrote in Spanish.
A guard collected the note and walked away. Within an hour, jail records show, he was found unconscious in his cell. An autopsy determined he killed himself.
Rayo’s April 2025 death was the first suicide in a spike among ICE detainees that has alarmed public health officials and jail experts. They said the unprecedented number of suicide deaths is an indication that authorities are failing to properly oversee the detention of tens of thousands of immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy.
An Associated Press investigation found that at least 10 detainees, all men, have died by suicide since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, a pace that far exceeds the growth in the detainee population, according to a review of ICE data, autopsy reports, coroners’ rulings and police records. Since October, seven deaths have been classified as suicides, a number that is already the most for any fiscal year in the agency’s history. ICE has usually recorded one or no such deaths annually. “Something is going profoundly wrong from any kind of public health or mental health perspective,” said Dr. Sanjay Basu, a University of California-San Francisco epidemiologist who cowrote a study documenting the increase in mortality and suicide rates among ICE detainees. “This is one of those alarming, sudden increases.”The Daily Beast: Snubbed Trump’s Petty Revenge Plot Is Revealed.
Donald Trump is pulling out bombers and warships set aside to help NATO, according to a report.
The president is also planning to withdraw fighter jets and refueling aircraft, after becoming incensed by European allies’ refusal to back his war in Iran, Der Spiegel reported.
An envoy of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Alexander Velez-Green, informed senior officials from NATO member states of the withdrawal at a meeting last week in Brussels, Belgium, according to the German outlet.
The number of fighter jets will reduced by a third and the number of strategic bombers halved, Der Spiegel reported.
All submarines will be pulled out, and the destroyer count will also be reduced.
Putin must be thrilled.
The New York Times: Trump Administration to Send Americans Exposed to Ebola to Kenya.
The Trump administration plans to send to Kenya U.S. citizens exposed to the Ebola virus rather than bring them home for observation and treatment, according to three people with knowledge of the plans.
The approach is a stark contrast to the way previous administrations responded to outbreaks, during which health care workers and other U.S. citizens exposed to the virus were brought home to be treated at specialized medical units. The administration this month flew an American doctor who developed symptoms to a hospital in Germany, and transported six other Americans for monitoring in Germany and the Czech Republic.
Ebola virus
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is estimated to have ballooned to more than 1,000 cases and more than 200 deaths in just the 11 days since it was first announced, making it the third largest on record already. Aid cuts by the Trump administration shut down crucial disease surveillance networks and medical supply chains that might have detected and contained the epidemic sooner.
Last week, the Trump administration invoked a public health law known as Title 42 to bar immigrants and legal permanent residents who had been in Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the previous 21 days from entering the United States.
The administration’s new plan would also keep U.S. citizens who might have been exposed to Ebola out of the country, according to two of the people with knowledge of the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
A few dozen Public Health Service officers are now being trained to deploy to Kenya to provide medical care to Americans who are deemed at high risk of developing Ebola. The initial plan was to monitor those Americans in Kenya, but to move anyone who started to show symptoms for treatment in Europe.
Because we no longer have a real CDC, and Trump, Musk, and RFK, Jr. fired all the disease experts.
The administration is looking for volunteers (!) to screen for Ebola cases at airports. Reuters: US CDC seeks staff for Ebola screening as outbreak response expands.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has asked staff to volunteer for urgent deployment to support Ebola screening at the country’s entry points, according to an email seen by Reuters on Tuesday.
CDC Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya said in the email that the agency had activated a Level 2 emergency response on May 18 to an outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and was expanding recruitment beyond its usual emergency responder pool as screening of selected international arrivals ramps up.
Level 2 is an intermediate level of emergency response. It indicates a need for substantial additional staffing to meet response demands, according to the CDC’s website.
The CDC said enhanced screening operations are already under way at several port health stations and will require additional personnel. Staff across roles, including public health advisers, emergency specialists and licensed medical providers, are being asked to support the effort, subject to supervisor approval.
Volunteers could be tasked with monitoring incoming travelers for signs of illness, checking temperatures and referring suspected cases for further assessment, according to the email.
Unbelievable. Ebola remains dormant for weeks after exposure. What if people don’t report exposures or don’t realize they’ve been exposed? We’re going to have a lot of Ebola cases here, aren’t we?
One more from The Guardian: UFC arena under construction on White House lawn to mark Trump’s 80th birthday.
Construction is under way on the White House lawn for an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) arena that will host a cage match next month to mark the US’s 250th anniversary and Donald Trump’s 80th birthday.
The mixed martial arts fight is planned for 14 June.
Photos of cranes and other construction equipment on the White House lawn on Tuesday showed the beginnings of the temporary construction. Trump has said that the finished project will feature “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House”.
Online renderings depict what the completed, wire-mesh-fence-ringed fight space is expected to look like. The octagon-shaped cage will be ringed by a red, white and blue stage under a towering arch featuring stars and stripes patterns and two large screens carrying the action live.
The cage and stage will themselves be surrounded by thousands of temporary seats, including ringside space for a full marching band that can set the entire scene to blaring music.
In December, Trump said the White House event would host “eight or nine championship fights – the biggest fights they’ve ever had”. But like the size of the crowd, the number of fights expected to be held on the White House
lawn has shrunk. The fight card includes two title fights: a lightweight championship fight between Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje in the main event, and an interim heavyweight title fight between Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane.
This is beyond disgusting. I feel like I’m going to throw up.
I’ll end there, even though there are plenty more Trump messes that someone will have to clean up. Hang in there everyone. We can and will survive!
#BillCassidy #CDC #DonaldTrump #ebola #ICE #IranWar #JamesTallarico #JohnCornyn #KenPaxton #NATO #StraitOfHormuz #suicidesInICEDetentionCenters #TexasPrimaries #ThomTillis #TrumpCabinetMeetingOnIran #UFCAreaOnWhiteHouseLawn
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