Trump Tries Texas Rescue as GOP Alarm Grows

I’m Jonathan Tamari, senior Washington reporter for Bloomberg Government, and each weekday I’ll be coming to you with inside-the-room reporting and insights that reveal what’s really happening in Washington—and how it impacts you. Email me with feedback and comments here. If this newsletter was forwarded to you sign up here.

Today: The GOP’s Texas panic, candidates’ lobbying ties under attack, and the first likely Atlantic hurricane of 2026 approaches.

Wrangling Votes

Are Democrats really about to win Texas? Republicans are increasingly saying out loud that the once unthinkable could happen.

And in more than perhaps any other state, Donald Trump’s fingerprints are all over a potentially self-created disaster for the GOP.

The president heads to San Antonio today for a rally/rescue mission, but many of his moves so far have hurt more than helped in what’s arguably the national anchor of Republican politics.

Among them:

Backing a scandal-scarred GOP nominee, Ken Paxton over a sitting Republican senator, John Cornyn.Holding a midterm convention in Dallas that put the unpopular president in prime time — an event even Paxton says “dropped our numbers” (per a recording reported by The New York Times).Alienating Latino voters, who make up one third of the state’s electorate.

“The president wants to make all these elections about himself, and, you know, ‘vote like I’m on the ticket’ when his favorability ratings are not what they once were,” Cornyn told reporters last week, per my Bloomberg colleague Erik Wasson. “That’s not a plus. That’s a negative.”

Sure, Cornyn has reason to beef with Trump. But Governor Greg Abbott doesn’t — he’s skipping today’s rally (for a small town visit and a barbecue) as he faces his own surprisingly close Democratic challenge.

“If the elections were held tomorrow, all state wide races would go blue,” staunchly conservative state Representative Briscoe Cain wrote on X Monday.

A Democratic win here would put them one seat closer to a Senate majority. But more than that it could alter the presidential map by offering proof the country’s second-largest state can flip.

Republicans have long argued that in a tight race their big campaign spending would bring GOP voters home and they’d squeak out a win in a place that has many more conservatives than liberals. That’s still the working theory.

But it’s coming into doubt as polls keep showing Democrat James Talarico ahead in the Senate race, despite heavy TV spending.

“The tone has shifted in the last three, four, five weeks,” Brendan Steinhauser, a longtime Texas GOP strategist (and former Cornyn campaign aide) told me. “Money has diminishing returns when public opinion is baked in.”

Talarico was up by 6 points in a Times/Siena poll out last week and 2 points in a Fox News poll released Thursday.

Fox found a vast gap in voter enthusiasm.

That’s where Trump comes in, at least in theory. If he can excite the GOP base, Republicans could erase Talarico’s lead.

“My rallies are saving the Republican party, again!!!” Trump wrote in a signature all-caps post Tuesday.

But while he still draws crowds, his events aren’t as big as they used to be, and they also remind voters of why they’re angry.

The rising cost of living and super-charged immigration enforcement, in particular, have driven away Latinos nationwide (after major gains in 2024), and that’s especially damaging in Texas, according to two Democratic and two Republican strategists I spoke with.

Latino support for Democrats is now in the 60s statewide, close to the numbers in Democrats’ 2018 wave, said Maria Isabel Di Franco Quinonez, senior research director for Equis, a left-leaning group focused on Latinos.

GOP hopes now lie not in elevating Paxton, but convincing Republicans voters they need to stop Talarico.

“There’s probably not enough money to fix Ken Paxton,” Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff during Trump’s first term, told Bloomberg Television. The “real money” is now “to make Talarico look as bad as they possibly can.”

Maybe it works. It only takes a small shift to change the outcome, and Democrats have a string of broken dreams in Texas as long as the Rio Grande.

But Trump has handed them their best shot in memory.

“Everything had to go right for the Democrats in order to have a snowball’s chance to win this race,” Mulvaney told Bloomberg TV, from candidate quality to price increases to war.

“All of those things are happening right now.”

Top News

Trump says he has a call scheduled with Vladimir Putin to discuss a suspected plague case amid growing global health concerns. China says it, too, is cooperating with Russia on the incident.

Maine Senator Susan Collins, locked in a tight reelection race, hedged on whether she’d join Trump if he campaigns in the state, saying during a debate against Democrat Troy Jackson she doubts he’ll come. “I’m not exactly his favorite senator,” she said.

In a moment of deep distrust in politics, candidates’ lobbying ties are fodder for attack ads in critical races, BGOV’s Kate Ackley reports.

Trump’s trade war has given Mark Carney an opening to hit the gas on an industrial agenda that would have been deeply divisive just a few years ago.

The EU is preparing measures that would limit imports of Chinese hybrid vehicles in a bid to reduce the trade deficit.

The Trump administration is reluctant to get more involved in Saudi Arabia’s offensive against the Houthis and has tried to restrain Riyadh from sparking a major new conflict.

Meet Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, the reclusive leader of the Houthi militants aiding Iran and adding to the oil disruptions in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Iran is increasing attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, just as oil shipments through the chokepoint approach prewar levels.

Russia’s military spending is on track to hit nearly $200 billion this year, a record that’s 40% higher than Moscow had planned.

Trump’s new AI task force is packed with people who have deep ties to the tech industry, BGOV’s Cristiano Lima-Strong reports.

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio says AI is a “classic bubble” nearing a bursting point.

The world must address risks from an unbalanced AI boom, energy shock and record debt, the head of the IMF warned.

The Trump administration’s immigrant crackdown has roiled a US lender specializing in loans to international students.

A meat producers group is hitting candidates over the “Save Our Bacon Act,” which seeks to override state-level animal safety and welfare rules.

Don’t look now: The first Atlantic hurricane of the year is likely to hit the US Gulf Coast in the coming days.

Around 1.3 million people have had their personal information exposed after an Arizona court worker clicked a phishing link in an email. (We promise this link is safe and just goes to the story!)

Watch This

Go Deeper With BGOV

A renewed bipartisan bid to streamline tax rules for cryptocurrency users is inching forward on Capitol Hill, but lawmakers’ window for action is tightening with few legislative days left on the calendar, BGOV’s Brandon Lee writes.

The latest bills to make headway would exempt purchases by stablecoin from capital gains reporting rules, among other provisions. The House Ways and Means Committee advanced a bill from Republican Chairman Jason Smith in September, and Senate Finance Committee member Steve Daines introduced a similar bill with fellow GOP Senator Cynthia Lummis and other key lawmakers before leaving Washington until after the election.

But that’s a slimmer provision than Lummis proposed last year, with support from the crypto sector, that would waive those requirements for small purchases using any digital asset, including Bitcoin and Ether. And Lummis was skeptical of any action on a tax bill in the lame duck.

Unlike Lummis’ bill or separate legislation from Republican Representative Max Miller, neither of the new bills would allow tax deferrals on validation earnings from mining and staking activities, spurring reluctance from industry groups still reeling from the collapse of a broader crypto package last month. Read More

On Today’s Agenda

Trump makes an announcement at 1 p.m. at the White House. He then travels to San Antonio for a rally to boost Paxton where he’ll speak at 7 p.m. Eastern.

Fed minutes due for release.

Israel marks the third anniversary of the Hamas terror attack that sparked the Gaza war.

Ashley Hinson and Josh Turek meet in the first debate of Iowa’s critical Senate race tonight.

Josh Shapiro and GOP challenger Stacy Garrity also debate at 8 p.m.

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