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Kash Patel and Sen. David McCormick Team Up to Fight Fentanyl in Pennsylvania

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — FBI Director Kash Patel joined a roundtable hosted by Sen. David McCormick (R-Pa.) earlier this month to discuss the work the Trump administration, Congress, local law enforcement, and area prosecutors have done to curb the fentanyl trade in Pennsylvania over the past 13 months. McCormick led the packed event at the Edward N. Chan Federal Building and said that while the state’s death rate due to fentanyl overdoses has significantly decreased over the past year and a half, there was still work to be done. The senator said that fentanyl killed 4,000 Pennsylvanians per year between 2020 and 2023, but preliminary data showed that number fell to approximately 1,500 in 2025. “That is the lowest number in a decade,” McCormick said. Patel credited the disruption of trafficking networks, enhanced enforcement efforts, and the direction of treatment and recovery programs for the substantial progress. Sitting across from Patel and McCormick were the Cullen, Miller, and Ott families, all of whom lost children to fentanyl. They discussed the pain and devastation they experienced, stressing they don’t want to see it happen to another family. In 2024, then-candidate Donald Trump campaigned on a drug-war approach to fentanyl. This included strong border security and enforcement, pressure on foreign nations such as China and Mexico to curtail the flow of fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking, and severe legal penalties to disrupt drug supply chains. Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said that because of the state’s collaborative efforts with both the local and federal partners, his office was able to remove a staggering 56.5 million doses of fentanyl last year alone. In a joint interview with the Washington Examiner after the roundtable, both McCormick and Patel discussed how moved they were by the families’ stories. They said the success of the past year was an inspiration to increase their efforts going forward. Patel discussed his visit with his counterpart in China, which resulted in increased export controls on the 13 precursor chemicals used by Mexican cartels to produce fentanyl. WASHINGTON EXAMINER: You discussed numbers today in the fentanyl crisis, but you also sat across the table of families who were one of those numbers. What is the human element of this crisis like for you when you are face-to-face with the victims? PATEL: It’s two things: It’s heartbreaking, and it’s inspiring. It’s heartbreaking because you have something that’s irreplaceable that they lost that maybe could have been prevented if the prior administration had taken the steps we are taking. It’s also inspiring because you know that you can take their stories, and our agents live and breathe them every day at the FBI, and say, “We’re going to stop the next one.” And how do we learn from what happened to them to save the next life, or the next 10 lives, or a hundred or thousand lives? So for me, getting out of D.C. and meeting the Americans that are impacted by what we do in Washington, and where we came up short, and where we succeeded, is truly some of the best trips I can do. And coming to Pennsylvania is exactly that. WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Do your agents talk to you about the impact it has on them? What do your agents tell you when they talk to you about this? PATEL: My agents, almost 12,000 of them, tell me what my agents told me here today, which is, thanks for taking the shackles off us. Thanks for removing the bureaucracy, and thanks for letting us do what we signed up to do, which is crush violent crime and defend the homeland. And it wasn’t anything that was new or super secret. It was simply letting them do what they signed up to do, the mission. And I hear that in every single state I go to, and that’s how I know we are on the right track. WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Sen. McCormick, you did a lot of events running for office around the fentanyl crisis, including with Sheriff Ott of Blairsville, who lost a son. What have you learned from these relationships? What’s it like for you? McCORMICK: It was probably the most shocking thing I discovered on the campaign trail. The scale, 4,000 Pennsylvanians, 100,000 Americans, and you look at those statistics and people’s eyes glaze over [at] the numbers, but again, that is someone’s family in those numbers. The reference point is how many people died in Vietnam. Remember, 52,000 people died in Vietnam. One hundred thousand died [from] fentanyl in one year. So it’s just so shocking. So you have the shock effect. But then I met, through the campaign, with a number of families that were affected by it. And I did a sheriff’s event where all the sheriffs came out to endorse me, and Sheriff Ott said, “Can I speak with you privately?” And he had heard me talking about fentanyl. He said, “I think I can help you on this.” He said, “I lost my son.” And he and I sort of bonded from that point forward, and he became my biggest advocate. Every time you hear these parents’ stories, it’s so excruciating. And as a father of six daughters, just to imagine it. And two of these cases, the kids didn’t even know they were ingesting fentanyl. It’s a poison that was integrated in other things. WASHINGTON EXAMINER: What did you do once you were sworn in? McCORMICK: Once I got to Washington, I was like, “What can we do?” And of course, the president was all over this, secure the border, China. And I tried to do my part in legislation. So I’m involved. I’m a cosponsor of five or six bills that are focused specifically on fentanyl or synthetics, the next generation, nitazene, and things like that. We have leadership [with] the president, we have leadership with the director, we have it in Congress, the U.S. attorney, these districts, everybody, you can feel it. They are focused. You didn’t see one person in this roundtable try to sort of bigfoot anybody else and take credit. Of course, the resources are a critical part of it, but I think the focus and the team at that ethos, “We’re going to crush this thing,” is what’s making a difference. WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Director Patel, can you please discuss the root causes of the fentanyl crisis? And is that why [you visited] China last November, where the components are made, then shipped to countries south of our border? PATEL: We needed a couple of things to happen. We needed a commander-in-chief who was willing to engage on the global stage with efficacy. And that’s what we have with President Trump. He met with President Xi [Jinping] … and they set up the framework for fentanyl, specifically for the scourge and crisis of fentanyl in America. And then, my trip to Beijing for the first time in over a decade as FBI director would show up and engage with my counterparts for the first time. And thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we were able to come to an agreement to shut off the 13 precursors that the Mexican drug traffickers were using to make the fentanyl. That was a critical point of it. Reaching that historic agreement was attacking it at the source in terms of origination materials. President Trump didn’t stop there. We are still going with ferocity after the drug traffickers in Mexico, and he was the one that designated them foreign terrorist organizations, giving us law enforcement more tools that we can use, like we used to do to manhunt al-Qaeda and ISIS. We’re now doing it against the Gulf Cartel, CGNC, and every cartel down there. So when you set up on both sets of the spectrum, you’re able to really attack this problem. And that’s why you saw the historic results. I mean, we say these numbers, and I didn’t get to say this earlier, these are truly historic numbers for law enforcement and for President Trump, who backed law enforcement. We have saved hundreds of thousands of lives under this commander-in-chief. We have taken enough fentanyl [off the] streets to [kill] 178 million Americans in one year. That’s a 31 percent increase. Murder rate’s down 20 percent. Opioid deaths are down 20 percent. I mean, the list goes on. Any one of those for just the FBI would have been a banner a year. And thanks to President Trump, we’ve done it all in 13, 14 months. And we’re not stopping … until we completely annihilate the problem. So starting the precursors and then meeting the problem head-on in Mexico. WASHINGTON EXAMINER: What was your reception like in China? PATEL: They were more than receptive. If they weren’t receptive, we wouldn’t have walked out of there with an agreement with President Trump and the Chinese government to shut off the precursors. They got it. And that’s because he set the stage and led that effort and made fentanyl, made attacking the fentanyl crisis a priority for law enforcement. That’s what we did. And I mean, that in and of itself, getting an agreement with modern-day China and the United States of America to attack drug trafficking is in itself history. READ MORE from Salena Zito: Faith Among Young People Surges, Providing a Missing Anchor Pittsburgh Public Schools Earns Poor Marks for NFL Draft Closure Our Civilian-Military Bond Is Cracked Salena Zito is a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM

Apr 15, 202615 votes

The Democrats’ Swalwell Follies

Friday’s Five Quick Things column had four other entries, all of which I thought were more interesting, but the one which got me the most feedback was Thing #4 about Eric Swalwell, the noxious, oafish California congressman who, over the weekend, “suspended” his bid to become that state’s governor amid a tsunami of allegations of sexual abuse in his past. Here’s what I said about Swalwell (in part; feel free to read the whole thing here)… Eric Swalwell is a political beta male. He might be a sexual alpha predator, if only in a hookup sense, but it’s the lack of moral standing that makes it impossible for him to wield any real power within that party. He’s compromised. If you look around, you will see that’s true of the vast majority of the higher-profile male Democrat politicians around the country. My theory, which I’ll confess is pretty new, and I’ve not fully tested it, is that this is a major — if not THE major — factor in the Dems’ hard matriarchal turn of late. That party has been feminized, and its moderating forces stripped away, because it no longer can produce male politicians with traditional convictions. I mean, how can you when you want to turn boys into girls and Trump Derangement Syndrome is your sole political currency? What self-respecting male would be willing to lead a party like that? It’s probably worthy of a little further examination, because I did get a few questions about what I meant in that passage. First, though, boy… this really escalated quickly, didn’t it? “I am suspending my campaign for Governor,” Swalwell wrote on X on Sunday. “To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.” He wrote, “I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s.” The Democratic congressman’s exit completed a stunningly swift collapse for a candidate who had shown signs in recent weeks of pulling ahead of a crowded Democratic field, with prominent interest groups and elected officials beginning to coalesce behind him. But an ex-staffer’s allegation that Swalwell had sexually assaulted her, detailed in a San Francisco Chronicle report and followed by more misconduct allegations in a CNN report, led those allies to abandon Swalwell en masse as high-level staffers departed his campaign. Swalwell started last week vehemently denying accusations against him as nakedly political attacks on the race’s frontrunner. He ended it politically isolated, his top campaign surrogates and prominent endorsers withdrawing their support or urging him to exit the race. By Friday afternoon, Swalwell’s two campaign co-chairs, Reps. Jimmy Gomez and Adam Gray, called on Swalwell to drop out, as did Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement saying the accusations “must be appropriately investigated with full transparency and accountability,” and that, “As I discussed with Congressman Swalwell, it is clear that is best done outside of a gubernatorial campaign.” Swalwell had come under enormous pressure not only in the governor’s race, but in the House, too, where he now is facing calls for his expulsion. Meanwhile, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer in a New York City hotel room in April 2024. And then, as the Swalwell Outrage Frenzy entered its critical stage… I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past. I will fight the serious, false allegation made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make. I am aware of efforts to bring an immediate expulsion vote against me and other members. Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made, is wrong. But it’s also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties. Therefore, I plan to resign my seat in Congress. I will work with my staff in the coming days to ensure they are able, in my absence, to serve the needs of the good people of the 14th congressional district. That’s from the honorable Sir Fartsalot himself, when he realized this wasn’t just about his future as Gavin Newsom’s successor but his personal freedom. I had a quite good — and quite prescient — column already written about this on Monday afternoon, just before the Swalwell feeding frenzy consumed him. Because it was being floated, apparently not just among the denizens of the Democrat hackosphere, that Republicans in the House would consider a grand bargain in which Swalwell would be expelled from Congress along with Texas GOP cretin Tony Gonzales in some sort of idiotic prisoner exchange-type arrangement. I’m pretty sure our regular readers can predict what I had to say about that. Thankfully, the Swalwell follies became a far larger production than could be contained within the bounds of such ecumenical dumbassery, and his party shortly recognized there was no further monetization possible of Swalwell as a political entity. I noted that striking at Swalwell, and Swalwell alone, would isolate him in a way which would either force the Democrats to back him — as they have done for a decade when they knew damned well how toxic he was — or to run away from him and in so doing, break their morale in a way that can be weaponized against others who should also be expelled from Congress. Like Ilhan Omar. Or Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who ripped off $5 million in FEMA funds in a case almost nobody seems to know about. That’s still good advice for dealing with the other smelly kids in the class (though nobody is as smelly, on a number of levels, as Swalwell has been). It’s hardly a surprise that Eric Swalwell is politically radioactive now. The Democrats have known that he was politically radioactive — or that he would eventually reach that status — since Barack Obama was president. They knew he was screwing a Chinese spy, and they still put him on the Intelligence Committee. And Nancy Pelosi pretended there were “no concerns” over that indefensible decision. Why? Here’s why… Swalwell’s political career should have been over after he slept with a Chinese spy. It wasn’t. Instead, Pelosi put him on the Intelligence Committee so he could tell ridiculous lies about Trump and Russia. Democrats enabled this monster.pic.twitter.com/lVzF21r0lJ — MAZE (@mazemoore) April 11, 2026 Swalwell was weaponized by his party to attack Donald Trump on the basis of an indefensible, obvious, malicious lie — that Trump was compromised by the Russians and acting on their behalf as some sort of Manchurian (Siberian?) Candidate. (RELATED: ‘Accountability’ for RussiaGate? Don’t Bet on It) Which gets me back to the statement I made in the 5QT on Friday. They knew Swalwell had no moral standing to judge Trump or his loyalty to the country. Swalwell was banging a Chinese spy, plus he was repeatedly leaking sensitive information as a member of that committee. Eric Swalwell: Allegations of sexual misconduct, leaking sensitive information and more. According to this 2017 FBI report, “(Redacted) noted Swalwell has been the source of a lot of leaked information and had to be counseled to be more careful.” This week’s subscriber Article… https://t.co/BCdkPSW9se pic.twitter.com/a6wEBSXtK5 — Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) April 13, 2026 You’d say it’s insane to use Swalwell in the role of Trump accuser, but if you do, it shows you don’t understand the Democrats at all. The fact that Swalwell was guilty — and everybody knew it — of that which he was falsely accusing Trump is a feature, not a bug. If you’re today’s Democrats, you don’t burn somebody with a good reputation in order to spread a lie like the Trump-Russia hoax. You burn a Swalwell, because you know it’s only a matter of time before Swalwell goes up in smoke. When he does, you touch off the frenzy, and you let the fire consume him, and you forget he ever existed, which is what they’re doing now — while at the same time, dangling his ouster from Congress to the Republicans as a consideration for getting rid of Gonzales. If the GOP is dumb enough to take that deal, you wash your hands of Swalwell and snicker that you suffered no net political loss from his demise. After using him for a decade to smear the man atop the GOP. This is how they play this game. And it almost worked for them, except that the dirt was simply piling up too fast to contain it. They were never going to let somebody like Swalwell have an actual leadership position within their party. They were never going to let somebody like Swalwell have an actual leadership position within their party. It’s not that they respect any notion of moral standing; it’s that a compromised white guy is a tool to be used, not a leader to be followed. Look at Joe Biden and that pattern, which established itself right around the time Obama took that party over, becomes obvious. A strong, uncompromised, straight male leader within that party — especially if he’s white — would likely rein in the worst of their Hard Left political, economic, and cultural excesses, both because they’re horrific politics and because nobody can govern effectively while saddled with those. This is a party run by the Liz Warrens, Kamala Harrises, and Abigail Spanbergers of the world. They don’t take orders from alpha males. (RELATED: I Miss the NYC Democrats I Used to Work With) And as I said, Swalwell was never an alpha male. Not politically, and not on the national scene. Swalwell was a step-n-fetch-it for the Democrat machine, because they all knew who and what he was. They weaponized him against Trump because he was a political suicide bomber; my guess is that most of the top brass at the DNC are utterly amazed he’s lasted this long before being taken out. Is it a smart strategy? Well, with Swalwell leaving the California governor’s race, the Democrats’ top candidate is Katie Porter, who is even less palatable than Swalwell. I haven’t seen the polls to back up this contention, but based on how she’s performed so far and her own bizarre persona, I don’t think Porter could beat Steve Hilton without “help” in that race. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: The Glorious Return of the 5QT) (And our regular readers, I’m sure, know what I mean by “help.”) So maybe it’s too smart by half. On the other hand, these are the strategies you employ when you don’t have other strategies available. There are very, very few non-compromised straight white male politicians in the Democrat Party. Probably even fewer non-compromised straight non-white male politicians, for that matter. And none, or virtually none, of either stripe are competent enough to carry either a policy or political agenda over the long haul. And so you have a collection of Eric Swalwells being inflicted on the public in order to carry out the various pieces of the Democrats’ action plan. (RELATED: The Spectator P.M. Ep. 205: The Impending Collapse of Eric Swalwell) Chuck Schumer. Chris Murphy. Chris Coons. Dick Blumenthal. Adam Schiff. Hakeem Jeffries. Robert Garcia. They’re all the same. They’re all expendable. When any of them seek to actually run anything, like going for the presidential nomination or even running for governor, they find out how expendable they are. Swalwell is going to get the Brett Kavanaugh treatment — though with mostly true allegations in Swalwell’s case — until he goes away entirely. Because he’s all used up now. A smart GOP would recognize this dynamic and prolong it as long as possible for maximum collateral damage. But the Swalwell Follies doesn’t appear to have a long run in the big theater. That’s a pity. Hopefully it’ll last a while as a sideshow on the judicial stage, though, because the consequences of what he’s done – on multiple levels – need to be sufficient to give pause to the other Swalwells out there. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Five Quick Things: Finally, an Iran-Free 5QT! It May Not Be a Ceasefire. It Might Be a Strategic Pause. The ‘Real’ Must Triumph Over the Fake — In Iran and Elsewhere Image licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Apr 14, 202620 votes

Leftists Like Mamdani Use Inequality Hustles to Hurt Your Retirement Account

“Affordability” may have been the buzzword, but really, Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayor’s race running on a simple message: the rich are stealing from you, and only the government can make it right by taking from others. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) spent 40 years on the same soapbox. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) made an academic career of it (that and exploiting her infinitesimal Native American heritage). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) turned it into a social media empire. Inequality, they tell us, is America’s pervasive sin — and only higher taxes, more regulation, and bigger government can fix it. (RELATED: ‘Snowcialism’: Where a Nor’easter Becomes a State of Emergency) There’s just one problem. The numbers don’t back them up. According to Federal Reserve data, the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent barely budged this century — sitting at 29 percent in 2025, compared with 28 percent back in 2000. One percent. That’s the inequality crisis these politicians spend billions of your tax dollars and endless congressional oxygen obsessing over. (RELATED: The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Comes to New York) But here’s what they don’t say: while they’ve been busy stoking class warfare for votes, leftists ignore a real and fixable inequality hiding in your 401(k) — one union allies and government-employee pension funds have quietly exploited for years. Wealthy investors and pension funds covering government employees — including ones that pay leftist congressional staffers and New York City bureaucrats working under Mamdani — have long been able to invest in private equity, private credit, real estate, and infrastructure investments. These asset classes have outperformed the stock market over 5-, 10-, 15-, and 20-year periods. They offer diversification, steady income, and downside protection that public stocks simply can’t match. And your 401(k)? Locked out. Rules governing 401(k) plans used by 60 million Americans actively participating in a 401(k) kept private sector workers from investing in the private market opportunities that public sector pensions and high net worth individuals do. The American economy is increasingly private, and Washington has kept ordinary workers locked out of it. The same politicians who give emotional speeches about leveling the playing field have done nothing to change this. While they chase headlines with wealth tax proposals that will never pass, millions of hardworking Americans are restricted to a shrinking pool of publicly traded stocks — a pool that has nearly been cut in half over the past 30 years. The number of public companies has dropped by nearly half since the 1990s. More than 80 percent of companies with more than $100 million in annual revenue aren’t listed on any exchange. The American economy is increasingly private, and Washington has kept ordinary workers locked out of it. Meanwhile, public pension funds — the ones covering government employees who enjoy job security and benefits most private-sector workers can only dream about — have been happily investing in private markets for decades. They’re getting the returns. You’re getting the leftovers. Georgetown’s Center for Retirement Initiatives did the math: adding just a 10 percent private market allocation across 401(k) plans would generate $35 billion in additional retirement savings annually. Thirty-five billion dollars going to American workers — not hedge funds, not government bureaucracies, not campaign donors. The good news is that President Trump’s Department of Labor (DOL) is doing something about it. A new rule proposal just clarified and expanded access to private market investments within 401(k) plans. It’s a straightforward, pro-worker, pro-growth reform — exactly what actually helps the middle class instead of just talking about helping it. Independent Women’s Voice is gathering voices to support this DOL rule, and we hope you’ll join us by adding your voice here. Predictably, the Left is already opposed. “Private investments are too risky,” they say. “Workers can’t handle it. You need to be protected” — by them, of course. Ignore it. The National Association of State Retirement Administrators reports public pensions with higher allocations to alternative investments have achieved stronger returns, not weaker ones. The International Monetary Fund’s 2024 Global Financial Stability Report found that private investment-backed companies showed lower default rates during economic downturns. And private investments already operate under rigorous disclosure requirements, mandatory audits, and fiduciary oversight. Americans support this; polling shows strong majorities of the public believe expanding access to private investments will help workers build wealth. The Left’s inequality crusade has always been about political power, not economic justice. If Mamdani, Warren, Sanders, and AOC actually cared about working people, they’d be demanding every American worker get access to the same investments that pad the pensions of government employees and portfolios of the donor class. Instead, they keep the grievance machine running. Real economic empowerment doesn’t come from a government program. It comes from giving American workers every tool available to build their own financial future. Open up the 401(k). Let workers invest like the wealthy. That’s not a radical idea — it’s freedom. Carrie Sheffield is director of the Center for AI and Technology at Independent Women. READ MORE: Stock Market Wisdom, and Its Limits Fact vs. Fiction on Medicaid and the Wealth Tax Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Apr 11, 202612 votes

Leftists Like Mamdani Use Inequality Hustles to Hurt Your Retirement Account

Apr 11, 202617 votes

Leftists Like Mamdani Use Inequality Hustles to Hurt Your Retirement Account

Apr 11, 202614 votes

The Incredibly, Unacceptably Weird James Talarico

Watching from next-door Louisiana, I’ll confess to a certain amount of heartbreak at the implosion of Jasmine Crockett in Texas’ U.S. Senate Democrat primary race. We don’t give poor Jasmine the due amount of love and credit for the true treasure she is. There may not be a more perfect specimen for the entitled fraudulence the modern Democrat Party is built on, other than perhaps Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib. But Tuesday night, following weeks and months of disqualifying statements cheered on by the “Yass, Queen” chorus among the Hard Left, Crockett’s political career ended with a thud. As the votes were being counted and the seven-point loss to the pasty white James Talarico mounted, this was poor Jasmine: Jasmine Crockett: Election fraud is real and of course it’s the Republicans doing it! pic.twitter.com/w2UdASrhwC — LiberalDreams45 (Parody) (@LiberalDreams46) March 4, 2026 The race was called almost immediately after she left the podium. It’s hard to imagine somebody so virtuous and brimming with character could be finding herself professionally nugatory, but then again: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), who just lost her Democrat primary and is a lame duck, thumps her chest about her law degree. Crockett got her degree from one of the worst law schools in the country. She’s a DEI moron who nobody likes. That’s why she lost.pic.twitter.com/fjc1IEsCcw — Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) March 4, 2026 Gosh, we’ll miss her. So the narrative on the right is now that with Talarico, who outspent Crockett something like $25 million to $5 million in order to win by seven points, as the Democrats’ nominee laying in wait for the survivor of the John Cornyn–Ken Paxton GOP primary runoff cage match, that Texas Senate seat is in real jeopardy. I’m not here to tell you that’s impossible. Ted Cruz only beat Beto O’Rourke by a 51–48 margin in 2018, which was the last midterm cycle with a Republican in the White House and the GOP in control of both the House and Senate. I could argue that this cycle is a little different, an argument that would be substantially premature because we don’t know what the facts on the ground will be this fall. Cruz had a lot of Trump voters miffed at him that year because of the bitterness of the 2016 GOP primary and his reticence to get on the Trump bandwagon. He’s recovered politically from that; when he ran for reelection in 2024, he beat Collin Allred by a comfortable 53–45 margin. In both races a ghastly amount of money was spent against Cruz. It’s eminently predictable that the avalanche of out-of-state campaign money behind Talarico will dwarf anything Texas has ever seen. It’ll easily top $100 million. And Cornyn and Paxton are both more vulnerable, at least arguably, than Cruz was in 2018. For Cornyn, the problem is a lack of faith among base voters. He’s been in the Senate since 2002, making him one of those long-standing GOP senators whose record of legislative underperformance actually created the Trump phenomenon in the first place, and now he’s a leadership figure in the bosom of the grossly underperforming John Thune. No GOP incumbent in a contested primary is likely to survive the failure of the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, and the rumor in D.C. this week is that the GOP establishment has floated a deal to Trump that goes like this: He endorses Cornyn for reelection, and in return they’ll push the SAVE America Act through to his desk. Of course, the current military operation against Iran, if it can turn over the Iranian regime, probably reaps a windfall for Republicans, taking Texas, and lots of other states, off the board. If it can’t, well… Trump put out a statement on the race Wednesday: The Republican Primary Race for the United States Senate in the Great State of Texas, a State I LOVE and won 3 times in Record Numbers (the HIGHEST vote ever recorded, by far!!!), cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW! We have an easy to beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively! Both John and Ken ran great races, but not good enough. Now, this one, must be PERFECT! My Endorsements within the Republican Party have been virtually insurmountable! It is such an honor to realize and say that almost everyone I Endorse WINS, and wins by a lot, especially in Texas! I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP There are people parsing that statement to predict Cornyn will get the endorsement because Paxton can’t win. On that? Not so fast. Remember, Paxton has been under continuous fire as Texas’ attorney general from both the Left and the “establishment” GOP for most of the last decade and he nevertheless keeps winning elections. In 2022, amid a cloud of accusations about corruption and abuse of power, he crushed George P. Bush by a 68–32 margin in the GOP primary runoff and then won reelection by a comfortable 53-44 margin. This would be a tougher race than that one was, and for that reason you will hear lots of arguments that Cornyn must be the nominee because Paxton is too risky against Talarico. Are those convincing? Well, first, let’s understand that Cornyn, the incumbent, only managed 41.9 percent of the vote in the Republican primary Tuesday night (Paxton was just behind at 40.7 percent; Wesley Hunt came in third with 13.5 percent and several others got traces of votes). That’s a fairly poor showing for a four-term incumbent with unlimited resources and 100 percent name recognition, and it’s an indication Paxton probably has enough of a base vote to win convincingly if he turns it out. An incumbent needing to find more than eight percent of the undecideds is an incumbent the voters want to fire. This is not to say Cornyn can’t win — it is to say he’s got a heavy lift in front of him to get the nomination. But will Paxton have too heavy a lift if he’s in a head-to-head with Talarico? I could argue he’s no worse off than Cornyn. Cornyn, after all, could very well struggle to turn out Republican votes in the general election given how many of them turned out Tuesday to reject him. At this point it’s probably a wash between the two as to electability, regardless of what Team Cornyn might have you believe. And whether it’s Cornyn’s establishment-RINO brand or Paxton’s closet full of skeletons (there’s old dirt from those corruption allegations and fresher dirt from his recent divorce), either way the race might well turn on Talarico’s electability. Which, despite what you will hear ad nauseam, is not all that great. He’s been described as a more buttoned-down version of O’Rourke, which is to say he’s more boring than the outrageously fraudulent Beto was. But James Talarico is, to put it as succinctly as I can manage, a thoroughgoing nutbag. Here’s one of the least offensive things he says. I’m including a full clip here, because what you’ve probably seen or heard is his statement that the border ought to be a welcome mat. It isn’t quite as terrible as that, as you’ll see: It’s almost reasonable, right up to the point where Talarico spews out the tired “comprehensive immigration reform” line. Nobody in Texas who isn’t a hardcore Democrat is fooled by that anymore. Trump proved by shutting down the border that the system wasn’t broken — it was the deliberate sabotage of the system by his predecessors that left the border wide open to an invasion by the Third World. And while he might not like the optics of ICE’s actions in Minnesota, he’s awfully out of touch with what’s happening locally in Texas. Namely, that in San Antonio and Dallas, ICE officers literally came under fire from left-wing terrorists. ICE doesn’t have the problem of local jurisdictions failing to honor detainers for criminal aliens in that state that it does in some of the northern sanctuary cities. But there’s far worse than his answers on immigration and the border. Here’s just a taste: “Our trans community needs abortion care too…so when I use the word ‘woman’ it should not be understood as an exhaustive term, but rather as a lens through which to understand, examine and interrogate patriarchy.” Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico preaching at his church. pic.twitter.com/Ss9R2tOzGM — Protestia (@Protestia) March 4, 2026 Wait, what? In Texas he says this? And… We must confront racism and misogyny everywhere — from the school house to the White House. I’m proud to sign Rep. @GeneforTexas’s resolution condemning anti-Asian hate speech like “Kung Flu” and “China Virus.” Words have consequences. Dehumanization always leads to violence. — James Talarico (@jamestalarico) March 18, 2021 Gene Wu is a communist Texas state legislator who might well be the most active anti-white racist in American politics, as he proved recently. There’s more… I’m co-authoring legislation to explicitly teach “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in our schools. I’ve also filed House Bill 4111 which would require school districts over a certain size to hire a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer. — James Talarico (@jamestalarico) March 18, 2021 Black Americans in a church. Mexican Americans in a store. Asian Americans in a spa. Radicalized white men are the greatest domestic terrorist threat in our country. — James Talarico (@jamestalarico) March 18, 2021 And after a Senegalese Muslim immigrant wearing an Iranian flag undershirt and a “Property of Allah” hoodie shot up a bar in Austin, here was Talarico: America is praying for Austin. But there is something profoundly cynical about asking God to solve a problem we’re not willing to solve ourselves. God moves and works through us. God has no other hands but our hands. We must act. pic.twitter.com/H2bbjjCZmz — James Talarico (@jamestalarico) March 1, 2026 Yes, Texas, that’s Talarico coming for your guns to punish you because the radicalized Third World Islamist that Joe Biden naturalized decided to harvest a few infidels on a Saturday night on Seventh Street. Oh — and America isn’t a Christian nation, says the gay Presbyterian preacher: Boebert: The separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. We are a Christian nation@JamesTalarico: America is not a Christian nation. It is a nation where you are free to be a Christian — or any other faith, or no faith at all. The religious right would probably… pic.twitter.com/wQo3TaJtwP — Team Talarico (@TeamTalaricoHQ) February 21, 2026 This isn’t exactly the old-time religion: .@JamesTalarico: For 50 years, the religious right convinced our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage—two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Jesus tells us exactly how we’re going to be judged: by feeding the hungry, by healing… pic.twitter.com/FapsoUzZwB — Team Talarico (@TeamTalaricoHQ) February 17, 2026 Is it controversial to say you probably won’t find God in this guy’s church? I could go on and on, and over the course of this campaign I won’t be the only one rehashing the outright batty comments and stances Talarico has committed himself to. They’re going to try to sell him as a “moderate,” which will seem plausible in comparison to poor Jasmine. But there is nothing moderate about Boring Beto Talarico. If Trump thinks he has to endorse Cornyn to save that seat, then he’d better extract a treasure trove of considerations from Thune and the rest of the GOP caucus in the Senate, few of whom have earned reelection for their performance over the past year. Because fear of Talarico winning in Texas is, based on the sumptuous banquet of political delicacies his record presents, utterly irrational. Ken Paxton can beat Talarico. So can Cornyn. The question isn’t who can win, it’s who can move the agenda forward. READ MORE by Scott McKay: Americans Are Skeptical of the Iran Strikes. That’s a Good Thing. Ten Thoughts on Operation Epic Fury and Its Aftermath Five Quick Things: John Thune Is Blowing It Image licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Mar 5, 202614 votes

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