Republicans Are Panicking Over Texas Senate Race

The Texas Senate race is making Republicans nervous.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary, and the race is so close that an expensive runoff election is possible. A runoff could draw resources away from other close elections around the country and aid Democratic efforts to flip the seat.

Republican donors have poured over $60 million into the state to defeat Paxton, who is also running against Representative Wesley Hunt. But Paxton is still the front-runner in the race despite the fact that he didn’t even air any TV ads until the middle of February, with the election on March 3. If none of the candidates get more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff would take place 10 weeks later.

Paxton has been hammered by attack ads airing his many scandals since he was first elected attorney general in 2014. In 2015, he was indicted by a grand jury on securities fraud and faced civil action from the Securities and Exchange Commission over it. Paxton also faced a whistleblower lawsuit in 2020 from seven aides in his office accusing him of abuse of office, bribery, and other crimes. He escaped trial in both cases, though he was ordered to pay a hefty settlement to his aides.

The Texas House still impeached him in 2023, only for the state Senate to acquit him of any wrongdoing. Last year, his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on “biblical grounds,” referring to her husband’s extramarital affair. Many Republicans feel that all of this would be easy fodder for the Democratic challenger, whether that’s Representative Jasmine Crockett or state Representative James Talarico.

“Honestly, if you look at the polling in a general election setting, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that the seat [flips], depending on who the Democrats nominate,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Politico. Paxton, meanwhile, enjoys strong support from the MAGA right over his efforts to fight the results of the 2020 election and sue Pfizer over the Covid-19 vaccine, among other conservative credentials.

Internal polling from the National Republican Senatorial Committee has Paxton losing to Talarico by three points and Cornyn defeating Paxton by the same margin. If Crockett is the Democratic nominee, she would lose to Cornyn by seven points and Paxton by one, according to the poll.

Neither fear nor polling has helped Cornyn’s standing, and President Trump hasn’t offered his help, either, saying earlier this month of the Republican candidates that “I’m friendly with all of them. I like all of them, all three.” One thing is for certain: The Republican primary is going to be close, and the winner will have a tall order: Democrats are turning out in their own Senate primary in record numbers.

Just one day after Republicans invited Nick Shirley to join them at the State of the Union address, the right-wing YouTuber endorsed a copycat of his work warning against a “Jewish invasion.”

“EXPOSE IT ALL,” Shirley wrote on X, sharing a post from fellow right-wing content creator Tyler Oliveira announcing his recent 73-minute “documentary on New Jersey’s Jewish Invasion.”

Oliveira’s portfolio includes clips titled “I Deported ILLEGAL Immigrants with ICE!” and dozens of videos dehumanizing Black people. In 2024, he published and amplified unverified (and since debunked) claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were causing “constant car crashes” and were capturing and eating local pets.

But somehow, blatantly targeting the Jewish community was a step too far for Oliveira’s far-right audience.

“The replies to this tweet show the double standards and hypocrisy of half of the ‘republican influencer’ space,” Oliveira wrote, defending his work against droves of online critics. “Does welfare abuse/fraud only suck when it’s a Somali? Ask your local ‘MAGA Republican influencer’ where he draws the line.”

Oliveira was also banned from Patreon over the video, though it wasn’t the first time he released a controversial piece about Jewish communities. In January, the 26-year-old posted a video to YouTube titled “Inside the New York Town Invaded by Welfare-Addicted Jews …”

But in a testament to the genre’s political affiliations, known white supremacist Nick Fuentes defended Oliveira’s latest doc, claiming that “when it comes to African Somali Muslims, everything is tolerated.… When another guy does the exact same thing to the Jews, ‘This is another holocaust.’”

Shirley clearly feels similarly.

Shirley gained national notoriety last year after he published a video that inspired the conservative caucus to politically scapegoat Somali immigrants. Vice President JD Vance circulated the video, positing that Shirley had “done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes.”

In his widely circulated “investigation,” Shirley door-knocked a slew of Somali-run day care centers in Minnesota, arguing that sites that did not respond or allow him—an unannounced, unknown white man—entrance into a center filled with children had fraudulently accepted federal funding.

It would later emerge that elements of Shirley’s report were incorrect or inadequately reported: At least two of the centers featured in his video had been closed for several years, according to Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families. The government had already investigated federal fraud in Minnesota—during the Biden administration, more than 90 Minnesotans were charged, with at least 60 cases resulting in convictions.

Nonetheless, the report resulted in the suspension of $185 million intended for Minnesota from the Department of Health and Human Services.

It also stirred a national services controversy, in which predominantly blue states were accused of abusing federal funds for programs focused on childcare and local poverty. In truth, states of all stripes across the nation have participated in benefits abuse, but not everyone suffered the federal cuts. Instead, Donald Trump axed $10 billion from five Democratic states, including Minnesota.

The Department of Homeland Security has kidnapped yet another Columbia University student—and lied to campus public safety officers to get into her building.

Columbia neuroscience undergraduate student Ellie Aghayeva posted “Dhs illegally arrested me. Please help,” on her Instagram story early Thursday morning.

Columbia University President Claire Shipman said federal agents told campus officials that they were looking for a missing person in order to gain access to the building.

“All law enforcement agents must have a judicial warrant or judicial subpoena to access non-public areas of the University, including housing, classrooms, and areas requiring CUID swipe access,” Shipman wrote in a statement. “If law enforcement agents seek entry to non-public areas of the University, ask the agents to wait.… Do not allow them to enter or accept service of a warrant or subpoena.”

DHS claimed that Aghayeva is an “illegal alien from Azerbaijan, whose student visa was terminated in 2016 under the Obama administration for failing to attend classes.”

“The building manager and her roommate let officers into the apartment. She has no pending appeals or applications with DHS,” they continued, ignoring the reports that the officers lied about why they were there.

This comes less than a year after DHS agents abducted Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil. And their methods—lying—are also similar to how they detained Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi. Both Khalil and Mahdawi are Palestinian.

“ICE has no place in our schools and universities. These activities do not make our city or country safer, but rather drive mistrust and danger,” New York City Council members Julie Menin and Shaun Abreu wrote in a joint statement. “As Columbia College alumni, our hearts are with the community there, and we have been in contact with the University to offer our assistance.”

This story has been updated.

Trump administration officials just can’t seem to decide whether Iran is actually enriching uranium, as the president threatens to launch a major military strike there.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed that Iran was not currently enriching uranium, while speaking to reporters Wednesday at St. Kitts and Nevis.

“They are in possession—first and foremost, after their nuclear program was obliterated, they were told not to try to restart it, and here they are. You can see them always trying to rebuild elements of it,” he said. “They’re not enriching right now, but they’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can.”

Rubio’s statement directly contradicted the Trump administration’s main justification to attack Iran—and statements from other U.S. officials.

U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff claimed on Fox News Saturday that Iran’s enrichment level had reached “60 percent.”

“They’re probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material,” Witkoff warned.

Most nuclear reactors that produce electricity only require uranium that is enriched to between 3 percent and 5 percent. Highly enriched uranium is anything above 20 percent, and weapons-grade uranium is enriched above 90 percent, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

After Donald Trump launched a massive bombing campaign on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the White House insisted that the United States had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear capabilities. Nine months later, and even MAGA Republicans are struggling to sell the administration’s story that Iran was once again a threat.

Top U.S. military officials, meanwhile, have reportedly warned the White House against dragging the country into war with Iran, arguing that it could entangle America in a prolonged conflict.

It seems that a key provision in the 2008 sweetheart plea deal that gave Jeffrey Epstein his light sentence was proposed by a former federal prosecutor who later regularly corresponded with the sexual predator.

Among the revelations in an extensive report by The Miami Herald is that while insisting on a minimum two-year sentence and a felony conviction for Epstein as part of a plea agreement, former chief federal criminal prosecutor Matthew Menchel also reportedly proposed that Epstein be allowed to enter a plea in state rather than federal court. The ultimate entry of Epstein’s highly favorable plea in state court enabled Epstein to obtain the work release that got him out of jail for periods at a time. 

According to the Herald, Menchel initially discussed this matter not with the lead prosecutor on the case, Marie Villafana, but rather with Epstein’s defense lawyer Lily Ann Sanchez (whom Menchel had once dated). A 2020 report from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility stated that Menchel failed to tell his supervisors about his prior relationship with Sanchez, but the OPR concluded that there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct by Menchel or any of the federal prosecutors. 

“I told Lily [sic] that a state plea with jail time and sex offender status may satisfy the USA,” Menchel wrote to Villafana in July 2007.

Villafana was incensed, as she had already prepared an 82-page prosecution memo directed to U.S. attorney Alex Acosta and Menchel that suggested a 60-count federal indictment for Epstein, the Herald reported. 

“[I]t is inappropriate for you to enter into plea negotiations without consulting with me or the investigative agencies, and it is more inappropriate to make a plea offer that you know is completely unacceptable to the FBI, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], the victims and me,” she wrote to Menchel. 

Menchel wrote back: “If the U.S. Attorney [Acosta] or the First Assistant [Sloman] desire to meet with you, they will let you know. Nor will I direct Epstein’s lawyers to communicate only with you. If you want to work major cases in the district you must understand and accept the fact that there is a chain of command — something you disregard with great regularity.”

Menchel left the Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office in August 2007, one month before Epstein’s non-prosecution deal was finished, and was not involved in final negotiations. A few years later, and just months after Epstein had completed his state sentence, he and Menchel began to correspond regularly and “met often for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners,” according to the Herald. Menchel’s lawyers asserted to the Herald that their correspondence was only “​​in the context of potential representation and referrals, none of which ever materialized into any business.” 

The full report reveals just how powerful—and how insidious—Epstein was, and how the system lacked the collective will to mete out a punishment commensurate to his despicable crimes.

UPDATE: Menchel’s attorney, Erica Wolff, wrote to The New Republic to clarify that: Menchel was not responsible for the plea deal; the eventual plea deal agreed to by Acosta was more lenient than the one Menchel recommended; and Menchel did not insist on a state plea.