AUSTIN, Texas (The Texas Tribune) \u2014 Attorney General Ken Paxton said Thursday he would consider dropping out of the U.S. Senate race if Senate GOP leaders agreed to abolish the filibuster and pass a priority piece of legislation for President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Paxton made the statement in a social media post that also criticized his opponent in Texas\u2019 Senate Republican primary, incumbent John Cornyn, for being against scrapping the filibuster to pass the bill, known as the SAVE America ACT. It would require people to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote and present photo identification at the polls, among other new election-related rules.<\/p>\n
Cornyn is a supporter of the legislation, though he and other Senate Republicans have long bristled at talk of abolishing the filibuster. CNN reported last month that Cornyn would not say whether he backed ending the filibuster to pass the proposal.<\/p>\n
Paxton\u2019s offer to drop out appears designed to make a political point, more than anything else, by drawing attention to Cornyn\u2019s reluctance to get rid of the filibuster. But it marks the first time he has raised the prospect of leaving the race amid intense lobbying by Senate GOP leaders for Trump to endorse Cornyn.<\/p>\n
Paxton forced Cornyn into a runoff after Tuesday\u2019s primary \u2013 and immediately set off a scramble to win the backing of Trump, who was neutral in the first round. Trump said Wednesday he would make an endorsement \u201csoon\u201d and would expect the candidate he did not endorse to drop out, citing \u201cthe good of the Party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then, Cornyn and his allies in Senate leadership have renewed their case to Trump that he should back the incumbent because he is more likely to win the general election than Paxton. Before his social media post about the SAVE America Act, Paxton had insisted he would not drop out even if Trump endorsed Cornyn.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people in Washington can have their own opinion,\u201d Paxton told conservative personality Benny Johnson on Thursday. \u201cThe president can have his own opinion. But I\u2019ve been in this race for almost a year, and we\u2019re going to win this race in the runoff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paxton\u2019s defiance appeared to irk Trump, who told Politico in an interview Thursday, \u201cThat is bad for him. So maybe, maybe that leads me to go the other direction.\u201d The public split was notable given Paxton\u2019s long-running loyalty to the president, displayed most visibly when he waged an unsuccessful legal challenge to Trump\u2019s 2020 election loss.<\/p>\n
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, has been skeptical of finding ways around the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, let alone abolish it. But Trump has kept up the pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Republicans MUST DO, with PASSION, and at the expense of everything else, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT \u2013 And not the watered down version,\u201d Trump wrote Thursday on his Truth Social network. \u201cThis is a Country Defining fight for the Soul of our Nation!\u201d<\/p>\n
Disclosure: Politico has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AUSTIN, Texas (The Texas Tribune) \u2014 Attorney General Ken Paxton said Thursday he would consider dropping out of the U.S. Senate race if Senate GOP leaders agreed to abolish the filibuster and pass a priority piece of legislation for President Donald Trump. Paxton made the statement in a social media post that also criticized his … Continue reading Paxton says he\u2019d consider dropping out of Senate runoff if Republicans pass voter ID bill<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2851],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1486103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news-archive"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 22:25:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1486103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1486366,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486103\/revisions\/1486366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1486103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1486103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1486103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}