Tomorrow's the Day

Tomorrow is the runoff in Texas between Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Texas AG Ken Paxton (R). It could determine control of the Senate next year. We think it is likely (and polling supports that) Democrats will flip Maine (Susan Collins is very concerned) and North Carolina (Michael Whatley doesn't understand why he was told to run). If Republicans nominate Paxton tomorrow, the Democrats have their best shot in 40 years to elect a senator from Texas. If the Democratic candidate, James Talarico, wins in the general, then the Democrats need only hold their own seats and win one of the competitive races in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, Montana, and Nebraska. The latter two feature independents, but they are almost certainly going to caucus with the Democrats if they win.

Donald Trump has endorsed Paxton, most likely because his gut tells him Paxton is going to win the primary and Trump loves to endorse a winner and hates to endorse a loser. With Trump's endorsement, Paxton is now the favorite. Here are all the polls that extended into May:

Pollster	Dates	Paxton	Cornyn	Net
SoCal Strategies	May 20-21	57%	35%	Paxton +21
Global Strategy Group (D)	May 6-11	52%	40%	Paxton +12
Peak Insights (R)	May 2-5	46%	47%	Cornyn +1
Remington (R)	May 3-5	47%	36%	Paxton +11
Univ. of Houston	April 28 - May 5	48%	45%	Paxton +3

Cornyn really wants to win this one and the race has gotten really, really nasty. We are talking Texas nasty. Here is a typical recent Cornyn ad:

In the ad, the narrator accuses Paxton of supporting gender-affirming surgery for minors. Most of the ad is about that. It is an out-and-out lie. Paxton is wildly against such surgery or other gender-related treatments for minors and has issued legal opinions banning medical providers from providing it. Cornyn is simply desperate and is accusing Paxton of the worst thing he can think of, without regard to whether it is at all tethered to reality. We don't know why Cornyn is even running. He is 74 and has served Texas well for decades and could just take a well-deserved retirement. But it isn't only Democrats who can't bear the thought of giving up all their power.

Meanwhile, Paxton is so sure of winning that he has switched strategies and is running positive ads the past few days. He says he wants to end on a positive note, so the final days will not have any ads attacking Cornyn. This could also possibly get some low-information independents to vote for Paxton tomorrow.

For the Democrats, Paxton is a made-to-order opponent. His corruption would make Albert Fall blush. He has been indicted but got away in a plea deal, and he was impeached by the Texas House but escaped conviction. His wife is divorcing him on "Biblical grounds." Maybe she caught him eating a cheeseburger or a pork chop, or wearing eyeglasses in church. She didn't say. Paxton is an oppo researcher's mother lode.

If Paxton wins the nomination, the shock waves will be felt as far away as Brooklyn. Republicans have said they are prepared to spend $300 million to get Paxton over the finish line first in November. What will the pro-Paxton super PACs say in their ads? They could say Paxton is very MAGA, but that will be counterproductive with the independents they need. They could talk about Paxton's great track record as AG, but that also won't appeal to independents either. What then?

Our expectation is that Republicans will run against Talarico as they would have against Jasmine Crockett, had she won the primary. They will accuse Talarico of being far to the left of Karl Marx and more woke than Crockett and former representative Cori Bush combined and squared. Every sentence in every ad will contain the word "woke" at least once. Texans don't even know what that means, but they know it is bad. It will be woke woke woke woke woke every woke day, all the woke-long day.

How will Talarico handle this? He hasn't let on what his strategy will be yet, but he has a boatload of money and will get a lot more if Paxton wins his primary, so we will find out soon enough. He could focus on telling people that he is from the Christian wing of Christianity—you know, those people who actually know what Jesus said and believe it (Hint: the Sermon on the Mount was not about boys playing on girls soccer teams or how best to punish gay people for the sin of being gay). He will quote the Bible a lot, and as a seminary student, knows what is actually in there and can probably find choice lines to talk about, like Jesus' attitude toward poor people.

There haven't been a lot of general election polls yet. We can assure you that the drought will end this week. Here are the polls since April:

Pollster	Dates	Talarico	Paxton	Net
Texas Southern University	April 22-May 6	45%	45%	EVEN
YouGov	April 10-20	42%	34%	Talarico +8
Slingshot Strategies	April 17-20	46%	41%	Talarico +5

Early polls probably don't mean much because a massive wave of television ads will be forthcoming. Nevertheless, it could be a real horse race, with a lot at stake. (V)

Thank Goodness Cassidy and Massie Lost

Many Democrats are moaning that Donald Trump was able to defeat Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and likely John Cornyn. The Contrarian takes a different view. After all, they are contrarians. What they see is that from now on, all Republicans will slavishly do whatever Trump orders them to do. The Contrarians see that as good. Huh? Yes, that is their view. What Trump wants is generally unpopular with most of the voters and having all House and Senate Republicans do things the voters don't like is just going to give the Democrats more ammo in November. It allows Democrats to say: "My opponent is Trump's puppet. If you want to be represented by Trump's puppet, vote for him. If you want somebody to represent YOU, vote for me."

Jennifer Rubin knocked the legacy media for constantly writing about how Trump has an iron grip on the Republican Party. She wrote: "However, the underlying assumption of these stories—that Trump remains a powerhouse in American politics—defies reality. Instead of a colossus, he has become a big fish in a shrinking, fetid pond of MAGA loyalists."

It is a good point. By focusing only on the primaries—which is where all his leverage is—Trump is ignoring the bigger picture, namely winning general elections. Primaries in deep red districts and states where no Republican could possibly lose are perhaps safe, but if Ken Paxton wins the GOP nomination in the Texas Senate race and then goes on to lose the general election to James Talarico, Trump's power suddenly looks a lot less. If Roy Cooper is elected senator in North Carolina because Trump forced Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) out, Rubin's point is even stronger. The more Trump attacks, villifies, and defeats normie Republicans in order to replace them with crazy loyalists, the better it is for the Democrats.

And even if Paxton wins the general election, Trump is not out of the woods. Starting on Jan. 3, 2027, every time Paxton says some crazy thing (i.e., every day), Democrats are going to record that to make him the face of the Republican Party in 2028. This is just of the reverse of the Republicans making former representative Cori "Defund the Police" Bush the face of the Democratic Party.

An additional problem for the Republican Party that Trump is creating by trying to stuff it with loyalists is that Trump will not be on the ballot in 2028. But if the party is full of Trumpists, they will support other Trumpists for offices up and down the line. People like J.D. Vance and Don Jr. lack Trump's charisma, so if the Republican Party is full of Trumpists, it will be difficult for the party to move beyond Trump when he has exited stage right. Trumpism without Trump is not going to sell well. (V)

Trump May Have a Solution to His Iran Problem

Donald Trump's "Iran problem," of course, is that everyone sees that the Iranians have boxed him into a corner and he can't get out. The solution: Start a war with Cuba. After all, Trump's strategy is always to pick on someone weaker than himself. Then he can win easily. It worked in Venezuela, and Cuba is even weaker than Venezuela. He thought Iran was weak, too, but it turns out Iran was willing to absorb much more punishment than he thought and didn't capitulate. Worse yet, Iran turned the Strait of Hormuz into a nuclear weapon—with no radioactive fallout, but plenty of economic fallout. Trump thinks Cuba will be a pushover.

The upshot here is that to distract from Epstein, Trump went after Iran. To distract from Iran, he is seriously thinking of going after Cuba. If that goes south, he could go after Greenland to distract from Cuba. Last week, the DoJ indicted Raúl Castro on murder charges resulting from downing two planes 30 years ago. It would be simple if the 94-year-old Castro flew to Miami to stand trial, but what if he decides he'd rather not? Send in the Marines to go fetch him? It could work, but Castro has been forewarned and so have the Russian and Chinese intelligence people on the island who will do their best to protect him. The Cuban people have been warned to expect an invasion and instructed to resist it. An attempt to extradite Castro could lead to Marines being killed or, perhaps worse, captured.

Suppose Trump is successful and captures Castro. Is that it? Castro is not running Cuba now. The leader is President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Would he remain in place? If he is captured, too, who would run Cuba? There is no vice president.

What Trump is good at is thinking of outcomes (like arresting Castro). What Trump is bad at is figuring out how to achieve those outcomes, what the likely consequences of trying are, and how to deal with them. For example, if Trump attempts a full-blown military invasion to capture Castro and fighting breaks out, that could prompt a flood of refugees, which will put Trump in a bind. He doesn't like immigrants. If he accepts these, much of his anti-immigrant base will be furious. But if he doesn't accept them, many of the Cubans in Florida will be furious. If the extraction is completely successful and Cuba instantly turns into a shining example of a capitalist democracy, many Cuban-Americans in Florida may go back, thus reducing Trump's base. The only scenario Trump can think about is a clean surgical extraction of Castro with no side effects, but that might not be so easy if Castro is hiding. Do the Marines search every house in case he is there? What if Castro is hiding—in Moscow?

What could possibly go wrong?

On the other hand, maybe Trump thought of a different solution: Just give up, give Iran everything it wants, get the Strait of Hormuz open, and proclaim victory. His base will eat it up and he doesn't care what anyone else thinks. In fact, yesterday, a story was floated that a deal to open the Strait was imminent. All that was needed was agreement on Iran's nuclear program. Of course, Iran has no plans to abandon its program, so the agreement may not be forthcoming. Well, unless Trump agrees to accept a vague and unenforceable promise from Iran not to build a nuclear bomb.

Many Republican hawks are scared to death that is precisely the plan: Give Iran everything it wants, get nothing, and call it a victory. Call it the TACO plan. The hawks don't trust Iran for a second and are afraid Trump will just fall for some vague and meaningless promise because the war is costing him too much approval rating.

Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Roger Wicker (R-MS) put out a statement that begins as follows: "We are at a moment that will define President Trump's legacy. His instincts have been to finish the job he started in Iran, but he is being ill-advised to pursue a deal that would not be worth the paper it is written on." Wicker knows what time it is and is smart enough not to blame Trump, but instead his advisers. Still, clearly Wicker is afraid Trump will sell out the United States to get is approval rating back on track. It will be clearer if Wicker is right when the details are published. Given the recent willingness of Senate Republicans to push back on the ballroom and slushgate, Wicker and others might be willing to push back on a crummy deal. Wicker is not up again until 2030, and as chairman of Armed Services, he has the cover to lead the pushing. Wicker is also a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, which gives him some extra credibility. (V)

Immigrants Will Now Have to Leave the Country to Apply for a Green Card

A new administration policy requires almost every foreign national in the U.S. who wants a green card to go back to his or her home country and apply at the U.S. embassy or consulate there. This certainly applies to everyone illegally in the country, but also to people legally in the country, in some cases for years. This includes folks on H-1B or other visas, the spouses of U.S. citizens, foreign students, and pretty much everyone else applying for a green card unless there are extenuating circumstances.

If someone has been in the U.S. for years and has a job and family, going overseas to apply for a green card and possibly waiting for years for a decision (maybe a rejection, because the consular officer was in a foul mood that day) is life changing, to say the least. And if someone is rejected, there is no appeal from that decision. Once the applicant has left the country, he or she may not be able to come back. In the old system, people who were legally in the U.S. could apply for a green card while in the U.S. and could continue working until a decision was made.

The new system will not only be a disaster for the immigrant, but also in many cases for the company the immigrant works for. People with specialized skills on H-1B visas may not be easy to replace. That is why the H-1B was granted in the first place.

Leon Fresco, a former DoJ immigration official, said Trump sees this as a fallback position in case the Supreme Court rejects his XO ending birthright citizenship. In other words, Trump may be changing his focus from stopping illegal immigration to stopping all immigration, including legal immigration. This isn't his first action in that direction; he already imposed a $100,000 fee for companies to apply for an H-1B visa. (V)

Epstein Wasn't the Only Perpetrator

On Thursday, Jeffrey Epstein's long-time assistant, Sarah Kellen, told the House Oversight Committee that Epstein wasn't the only one in his circle who preyed upon young girls. She named three new men not previously in the spotlight.

Kellen is herself controversial. Some people believe that she helped recruit girls for Epstein. However, she describes herself as one of Epstein's victims. She told the Committee in graphic detail what Epstein did to her. She said: "He groomed me, sexually and psychologically abused me, controlled me, manipulated me, dominated me, and gaslit me until I could no longer tell which thoughts were mine and which were his." She said he also violently raped her. It is possible, of course, that she was both a victim and a recruiter, possibly recruiting more girls to avoid more violence from Epstein. She didn't leave Epstein, however, because she had no money, no family, no education and nowhere else to go. She noted that some of Epstein's abuse occurred at his ranch in New Mexico. That could open some new leads by trying to see who else went there.

The three names of the three men Kellen named have now leaked. They are Frederic Fekkai, a French celebrity hair stylist; Patrick Demarchelier, a French fashion photographer and Philip Levine, the former mayor of Miami Beach. Kellen said that Fekkai and Levine sexually assaulted her. Demarchelier exposed himself to her. Needless to say, all three men categorically deny everything. Kellen testified that Demarchilier was the one who introduced her to Epstein, who he described as a scout for Victoria's Secret models.

CNN reviewed the Epstein files that have been released and saw that Fekkai and Levine had ties to Epstein. Demarchelier does not appear in the files. The files reveal that Epstein spent thousands of dollars at Fekkai's salon for himself and others. This is backed up by invoices and credit card statements. The files also show that Fekkai repeatedly asked Epstein for use of one of his apartments and Epstein agreed. Last year, Ghislaine Maxwell told now Acting AG Todd Blanche that Epstein and Fekkai were "friendly, very friendly."

At the very least now, the Oversight Committee (and a possible future Oversight Committee chaired by a Democrat next year) has a number of leads to follow as the scandal grows bigger by the day. Who else might be ensnared? (V)

The House Is Discharging Its Duties Well

The House has an until-now fairly obscure rule called the discharge petition. If a majority of the House signs one for a certain bill tied up in a committee, that forces the bill out of the committee onto the floor for a vote of the full House. Using it is a clear rebuke to the speaker, who normally controls the flow of legislation. In this session of Congress, members are using discharge petitions like never before. It has now been used eight times in this session of Congress. It was also used successfully twice in 2024. This represents 20% of all successful discharge petitions in the past 90 years, going back to when the rule was created. This high number shows how weak Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is.

The most recent successful discharge petition got its 218th signature last Wednesday. It will force a vote on a law that would speed up unionization negotiations. It was signed by 211 of the 212 Democrats and seven Republicans. Johnson is not a big fan of unions and would have preferred for this bill to die in committee.

Discharge petitions have a mixed record, other than embarrassing the speaker 100% of the time. Often they pass the House because it would be odd for 218 members to sign up to force it out of committee and then have some of them vote against it. If a member does not like some bill, usually he or she is content to have it die in committee. However, many of them die in the Senate. The Senate also has a discharge rule, but to get a bill out of committee, a senator must introduce a motion to free the bill. That motion can be fillibustered, so successful discharges are very rare in the Senate. One recent example of a House discharge petition that made it all the way to a law is the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

One recent discharge petition that failed is one from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) that would allow limited proxy voting for members with newborn children. When the House rules were written, no one was thinking that there could be pregnant members who could give birth when the House was in session and who were in no condition to come to the floor of the House to vote. Johnson has no interest in changing the rules, so Luna tried to make an end run around him. She had a baby in August 2023 and she wanted to vote on bills after her son was born but before she could get back to work. The Freedom Caucus opposed the petition and it didn't get 218 signatures. Luna responded by resigning from the Freedom Caucus. Proxy voting is still not allowed. (V)

Is Trump an Asset or a Liability in House Races?

The conventional wisdom says that unpopular presidents are a drag on their party in midterms. The smart ones try to keep a low profile, showing up only in places where they are still popular. But Donald Trump does not do conventional wisdom. On Friday he showed up to campaign for Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in NY-17, in the Hudson Valley, a D+1 district Kamala Harris carried by 6.4 points. Lawler is acting like he was happy to have Trump there, but who knows if he really was. On the whole, since Trump is unpopular in the district, Lawler allowing himself to be linked to Trump is iffy at best.

Trump's pitch was that Lawler was the driving force in making him raise the highly unpopular SALT tax limit. In other words, Lawler made more of your state and local taxes deductible on your federal tax form, so vote for him.

This doesn't feel quite right. Trump spoke in the village of Suffern, which is bisected by the New York-New Jersey border, so probably half the people who came to hear him can't even vote in NY-17. The surrounding Rockland County town of Ramapo has a very heavy concentration of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, with a number of kosher supermarkets. In contrast to the wealthy suburbanites elsewhere in the district, the Ramapoans (Ramaponians?) voted very heavily for Trump in 2024 because nearly all of them are one-issue voters, with the issue being unquestioned support of Israel.

The town has substantial pockets of poverty due to the very large Hasidic families and lack of economic opportunities nearby. A voter with 7 or 8 children and a low-income job is probably not so interested in whether the SALT deduction is up to $10,000 or up to $40,000 because property values in the town are low, so property taxes are also low. In other words, Trump either had the right town but the wrong message or the right message but the wrong town. If he wanted to talk about taxes somewhere in NY-17, Briarcliff Manor would have been a better choice. There the median household income is $230,000 and the average is $320,000. Those folks care about local taxes much more than the folks in Ramapo. But Trump probably knew his stance on Israel would go over well with Hasidic voters, so he apparently decided to go to a place where he would be cheered, rather than one where Lawler's great achievement would be valued. Once again, it is all about him. (V)

NATO vs. E.U.?

Donald Trump's foreign policy is causing allies to tie themselves in knots to deal with it. The E.U. has gotten the message. With threats to seize a piece of E.U. land (Greenland, which is part of Denmark), withdrawals of U.S. troops in Germany, and frequent statements about how Europe is not contributing to its own defense, the E.U. and its members understand they cannot count on the U.S. to defend it from Russian aggression anymore. Fortunately for the E.U., Russia is currently tied down in Ukraine and is not in any position to attack any other European countries, at least for the time being.

The E.U. is planning to loan Ukraine about $106 billion, two-thirds of which is earmarked for defense, especially for further developing Ukraine industry, especially drone production. The first disbursement should be on the way as soon as the Ukrainian parliament approves the deal. About $53 billion will be disbursed this year and $53 billion next year. Although this is technically a loan, no one really expects Ukraine to pay it back any time soon, if ever. The E.U. understands that and sees this as $106 billion to fight Russia. It is just a defense expenditure in a slightly unusual packaging. Ukraine is likely to buy various weapons and ammunition from European defense companies as well as building up its own defense industry.

One of the consequences of Trump dissing Europe is that the E.U. is actively working on building up a European defense industry, which means buying fewer weapons from the U.S. Defense companies in the U.S. will feel that, of course, and complain to Trump, but it is unlikely to have much effect. In the long term, losing good customers will hurt the U.S. defense industry and the pain is entirely self inflicted—by Trump. If Trump had merely told NATO members they had to spend more on defense, but that's all he did, they would have simply bought more U.S. equipment. But by making it clear that the U.S. was no longer a reliable partner, that caused the E.U. to start rebuilding its own defense industry.

Now here is the complication. Secretary General Mark Rutte of NATO has a different challenge: He wants to keep the U.S. in NATO, despite Trump's frequent threat to withdraw from it. He knows that all Trump cares about is money, so he has a plan. The plan is to promise new defense spending in the U.S. by NATO members. Trump has ordered NATO countries to increase their defense spending to 3.5% of GDP and Rutte is dangling the proposition of them spending those extra euros in the U.S., creating jobs for blue-collar workers and profits for defense companies.

The obvious problem is that there is a conflict here. If the E.U. wants to build up a local defense industry (because it doesn't trust the U.S.) it can't also offer Trump the carrot of spending all the new defense funding in the U.S. Either the money will be spent in the U.S. or in Europe. It can't be both. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Rutte are going to have some interesting discussions about this.

Maybe the real plan is take advantage of Trump's lack of math skills and short attention span. The E.U. could place a flashy order for some piece of military equipment that it can't produce and doesn't want to produce, say Trump-class battleships (that will probably never be produced) to distract Trump. Simultaneously, it could spend the bulk of the new defense money on homegrown equipment—for example, German Leopard tanks, Swedish Gripen fighter jets, and Ukrainian drones. If Trump gets a nice photo op when the contract for the battleships is signed, he might forget everything else, not withdraw from NATO, and move on. It is a strange way to conduct diplomacy, but this is the world we are in.

There will be a NATO summit in July in Ankara. By then, European leaders will have to decide what their top priority is. Is it to get weapons right now, which means buying them from the U.S., or is it building up the European defense industry? Right now, all the noses are not pointed in the same direction. Germany, a manufacturing powerhouse, supports creating a strong European defense industry, since much of the weapons manufacturing would likely be done in Germany. Sweden, which feels threatened by Russia, wants weapons now and is willing to buy them from the U.S. At the summit, all this will have to be thrashed out, with the U.S. contingent strongly rooting for members to buy their weapons from the U.S. (V)

It's Memorial Day

Today is the day that the United States has set aside to honor its war dead. If you're American, and maybe even if you're not, consider pausing a second to reflect on those who paid the ultimate price. And, to us, that includes not only service members killed in combat, but also civilians who were unlucky to end up in the line of fire, and also folks who "survived" their war (or wars), but were left with injuries—physical, mental or emotional—that unnaturally shortened their lifespans.

Last June, we ran roughly 20 "Never Forget" items telling the stories of people who participated in one of America's wars. This year, we're going to do it again. So, if you have a friend or relative who participate in one of America's many wars, as military or as a civilian, please consider sending their story along to us at comments@electoral-vote.com. We will start running these stories on Monday of next week. (V & Z)

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