Politics
California voters wanted stricter penalties for crime. Can reformers find a new message?
Criminal justice reform advocates spent the summer warning that efforts to oust California’s progressive district attorneys and undo sentencing reforms would undermine a decade of work aimed at reducing mass incarceration, prioritizing rehabilitation and holding police accountable for excessive force.
Come November, voters didn’t listen.
In Los Angeles County, Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and onetime Republican, unseated George Gascón as district attorney. Progressive firebrand Pamela Price was recalled in Alameda County. And Proposition 36, which will lengthen jail and prison sentences for some drug and theft charges, passed by double-digit margins in all but one of the state’s 58 counties.
After those resounding election defeats, some political strategists wonder whether reform-minded candidates need to readjust their messaging. Many reform movement leaders and progressive prosecutors, however, have shown no signs of backing down.
Roy Behr, a longtime consultant to Democratic campaigns in Los Angeles, warned that a perceived failure to find middle ground on criminal justice issues risks further alienating voters who want answers to visible signs of unrest — like smash-and-grab robberies and open-air drug use on city streets.
“The choices have basically been crackdown or it’s time for reform, and there’s been very little nuance in the back-and-forth,” said Behr. “Voters want police to behave fairly and justly. They also want to be able to go to a store and not worry if someone is going to come running through and do a smash and grab.”
In the L.A. County district attorney race, Gascón held tight to his vision of restorative justice and alternatives to prison, standing against Proposition 36 while polls showed broad public support for the measure.
Following his victory, Hochman told The Times he thinks his opponent and other progressives offered the public a false binary between reform and safety.
Although he spent much of his campaign positioning himself as someone who could restore justice in a version of Los Angeles County that he likened to “Gotham City” under Gascón, Hochman rejects the idea that he was a mere “tough on crime” candidate. Criminal justice, he argues, is more complex than that.
“For the first time in a very long time, a centrist running as an independent won a race where the media and my opponent were trying to hyper-politicize the race into different political camps,” Hochman said. “I think what will end up happening is that the idea that you don’t have to choose between prioritizing safety and instituting real and effective criminal justice reform will be proven over the next four years.”
Hochman said he thinks progressives have lost touch with the average California voter. He argued that Gascón excelled at highlighting problems — such as the need to prosecute police officers when they break the law and the over-incarceration of low-level criminals and nonviolent drug users — but did little to effect change in those areas.
“Gascón said it was very progressive not to charge people who were engaged in drug use, use of meth, heroin and fentanyl … but he had no answer for the fact that roughly six homeless people were dying every day from overdoses,” Hochman said.
Gascón declined an interview request. Other California reform advocates, however, rejected the idea that the election results were a repudiation of progressive policies.
Cristine Soto DeBerry — executive director of the Prosecutors Alliance, which advocates for progressive district attorneys in California — argued that frustrations over property crime and homelessness that drove voters to support Proposition 36 represented dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system at large, including the police.
Critics often say prosecutors like Gascón and Price — who often declined to file low-level misdemeanors and sought to keep most defendants out of jail before trial — can cause surges in petty crimes such as shoplifting and car burglaries. But DeBerry and others contend that it is the failure of police to make arrests that emboldens criminals.
According to California Department of Justice records, more than 9 million property crimes were reported in the state between 2014 and 2023. Police statewide solved approximately 711,000 of them, less than 1%, records show.
“These measures passed across the board, and most of the counties in this state are run by very traditional, regressive prosecutors, and their voters said you’re not doing enough,” DeBerry said.
Tinisch Hollins, the executive director of the reform-focused nonprofit Californians for Safety and Justice, said Proposition 36 “disguised itself” as a way to offer treatment for substance use disorders. The measure was presented to voters as rehabilitation-focused by including a tenet that offered defendants a choice between treatment and prison if convicted of an addiction-related felony for a third time.
Hollins said her biggest fear is that those in need of treatment still won’t receive it under the new measure.
“County jail will just become a holding tank for people who desperately need treatment,” she said.
Hollins said the reform movement “doesn’t need a rebrand” and will continue to focus on reducing California’s “reliance on incarceration” even as the state enters a “totally new environment” postelection.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and others have expressed similar concerns over the lack of funding needed in about a third of the 58 counties to carry out Proposition 36, specifically that there are not enough inpatient treatment beds.
A recent report from a nonpartisan research institute found that there was a statewide shortage of treatment beds for those with substance use disorder and that some facilities exclude those with prior involvement in the criminal justice system.
Greg Totten, who heads the California District Attorneys Assn. and was one of the main architects of Proposition 36, said the funding concerns are overblown. He said there are “significant funds” in behavioral health services that are available from Proposition 1, which is a $6.4-billion mental health bond measure voters passed earlier this year. He also said outpatient treatment could be an option if beds in inpatient facilities are full.
Some observers noted that progressive prosecutors elsewhere have had many successes, and said that while there are lessons to be learned from November’s results, ups and downs are also inevitable for long-term political movements.
Anne Irwin — the executive director of Smart Justice, an organization that educates policymakers on criminal justice reform — considers this election only “one step back.”
Irwin pointed to a study from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll from October that found a majority of voters who supported Proposition 36 also said they want to prioritize understanding the root causes of crime.
She also noted that many successful candidates this year ran their campaigns around the economy — a topic that intersected with Proposition 36. Retail chains including Walmart and Target were major donors, whose support largely came from a profit-loss standpoint.
Hochman successfully courted the support of business leaders, including L.A. mall magnate Rick Caruso and small-bakery owners, highlighting the economic effects of property crime. His “hard middle” approach, which focused on prioritizing public safety and working with police to crack down on violent criminals without completely eschewing reform-minded policies, also worked well, Irwin said.
“The newly evolved Nathan Hochman touted support for criminal justice reform,” she said. “We shall see if that pans out in the policies and practices he implements in the district attorney’s office.”
Hochman’s campaign aside, Totten and other proponents of Proposition 36 said that voters simply rejected “bad policy” that hurt public safety.
Voters “didn’t feel safe,” Totten said. “They wanted change. I think the problem was Californians see products locked up, they see thieves coming into stores and stealing.”
The dramatic shift in California voter behavior on criminal justice is borne out by data. A decade ago, 59% of Californians voted yes on Proposition 47, California’s landmark resentencing measure. This year, 68% of voters supported Proposition 36, which in effect repealed the 2014 measure.
Higher turnout also led to a huge increase in raw voter support this year. More than 10 million Californians cast a ballot to pass Proposition 36, as opposed to just 3.7 million who voted in support of the 2014 measure, according to secretary of state records.
The voters may have spoken, but DeBerry said progressive prosecutors’ “values do not change” because of election results. She challenged Californians to keep an eye on crime data in the coming years and hold policies and politicians to account if their methods don’t have an impact.
“After this election cycle, they own it all,” she said. “So if we don’t see drug use subside and we see prison populations exploding and we see crime continue to exist, I hope that voters and the media and everybody will say, ‘You promised this as the solution, and it’s not better.’”
Plaintiff Council for Opportunity in Education
Defendant U.S. Department of Education
Filed in the District of Columbia on Oct. 14, 2025
Injunction
Plaintiff Dallas County, Tex.
Defendant Kennedy
Filed in the District of Columbia on Dec. 5, 2025
Plaintiff Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Defendant Kennedy Jr.
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on July 21, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Colorado
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on April 1, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Housing Authority of the County of San Diego
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Northern District of California on Oct. 15, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff National Alliance to End Homelessness
Defendant Department of Housing and Urban Development
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on Dec. 1, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Washington
Defendant Federal Emergency Management Agency
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on July 16, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Arizona
Defendant Environmental Protection Agency
Filed in the Western District of Washington on Oct. 16, 2025
Plaintiff Open Technology Fund
Defendant Lake
Filed in the District of Columbia on March 20, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff National Public Radio
Defendant Trump
Filed in the District of Columbia on May 27, 2025
Plaintiff San Francisco Unified School District
Defendant AmeriCorps
Filed in the Northern District of California on March 10, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Maine
Defendant National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Filed in the District of Maine on June 17, 2025
Plaintiff Rhode Island Latino Arts
Defendant National Endowment for the Arts
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on March 6, 2025
lost
President Trump has tried to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding to coerce states, punish opponents, remake programs and impose his views. His targets have repeatedly sued to stop him, and the courts have repeatedly rebuked him — only for the president to try again and again.
Take just these seven cases, all of them tied to the administration’s efforts to block funds from “sanctuary” communities, those that restrict cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Last February, a coalition of cities and counties sued over executive orders directing agencies to shut off such funds.
Plaintiff City and County of San Francisco
Defendant Trump
Filed in the Northern District of California on Feb. 7, 2025
injunction
A judge issued a preliminary injunction, halting those directives while the case proceeded.
The same day, the Department of Transportation told communities they must cooperate with immigration enforcement to get federal transportation dollars.
Twenty states, led by California, soon sued …
Plaintiff California
Defendant Department of Transportation
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on May 13, 2025
lost
… and the administration lost in district court.
The Department of Homeland Security tried to withhold emergency management funds. Another lawsuit followed …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant FEMA
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on May 13, 2025
lost
… and the administration lost.
Then D.H.S. tried reducing counterterrorism grants to sanctuary states instead …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant Noem
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on Sept. 29, 2025
lost
… and again, the administration lost.
In the past year, funds for housing, transit, health and public safety have all been conditioned on cooperation with immigration.
Plaintiff King County
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Western District of Washington on May 2, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Fresno
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Northern District of California on Aug. 20, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Chicago
Defendant Department of Justice
Filed in the Northern District of Illinois on Nov. 12, 2025
injunction
Injunctions regularly followed.
These are among 198 lawsuits in the past year identified by The New York Times that challenge how Mr. Trump has leveraged federal funding to carry out his agenda without the consent of Congress. And they reflect one remarkable feature of the campaign: It has proceeded undeterred by losses in court.
With that persistence, the administration has been hammering away at a new kind of reality in Washington, one where the president wields far more control over spending, and where his opponents aren’t entitled to the services of their federal government.
“Anyone in the country who relies on federal dollars is depending on the president to get that money,” said Matthew Lawrence, a law professor at Emory University. “And that’s a new thing.”
The president has threatened money to states that don’t adopt his policies, universities that don’t bend to his will, hospitals that don’t alter their services, school districts that don’t abandon diversity efforts, nonprofits that don’t embrace his gender views, and researchers who study the wrong subjects.
These moves have tested whether Congress, granted the “power of the purse,” still holds the ultimate authority over spending. And they have challenged the courts with a flood of cases — 37 separate suits from the state of California; four from the Association of American Universities on virtually the same question; one from King County, Wash., that has grown to include as plaintiffs 75 communities and agencies.
“You would think there would be some conditioning here: You do an action, you get sued, you lose, maybe you don’t do that action anymore,” said Rob Bonta, who as California’s attorney general has brought many of those suits. “He’s continued to repeat offend. And repeat lose.”
The administration’s approach has amounted to “a game of three-card monte” in the courts, said Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan. Each injunction covers the parties suing and the specific programs at issue, but doesn’t necessarily stop the administration from blocking funds to other groups it disfavors. The result, Mr. Bagenstos said: “‘Oh, well, you think I can’t do this thing over there? Well I’m going to do it over here.’”
Presidents have long sought to steer funding to advance their priorities, designing programs with Congress or awarding competitive grants to communities that emphasize certain ideas. But the Trump administration has gone much further: terminating en masse funds that were already awarded; imposing new conditions on future grants that flout federal rule making; and blocking money to whole programs and agencies created by Congress.
The groups that have sued represent a fraction of everyone affected; many have lacked the means or the will to go to court. But these 198 cases, as of the beginning of March, have pried open a public view into the breadth of the administration’s tactics. And one year in, they have produced a lopsided record of rulings.
When plaintiffs have sought immediate relief, district court judges have temporarily blocked the administration’s actions 79 percent of the time, signaling plaintiffs’ likely success on the merits. In the 26 instances where district judges have issued partial or final rulings, the administration lost 23.
Planned Parenthood of Greater New York v. Department of Health and Human Services
Just because a pronouncement comes from the president does not make it true, even if expressed in the form of an executive order, and even then, does not supersede the law.
lost
American Federation of Teachers v. U.S. Department of Education
By leapfrogging important procedural requirements, the government has unwittingly run headfirst into serious constitutional problems.
lost
Michigan v. Noem
None of this appears consistent with Congressional intent or FEMA’s mission.
lost
The administration declined to comment on the record. But a White House official authorized to describe the strategy said the Trump administration is restoring power to the presidency that previous presidents have shied away from, while tapping that power to prevent fraud and steward taxpayer dollars. The groups bringing all these lawsuits, that person said, are the ones using the courts in a hostile campaign to hamstring the president.
The administration has notably walked away from some defeats without appealing them. But it is counting on a better record before appeals court judges, as has been the case more broadly. Among cases it has appealed, appellate courts have reversed or paused orders against the administration in about 40 percent of their rulings, often with judges appointed by Mr. Trump in his favor.
But even when it is losing in court, plaintiffs’ attorneys and legal scholars said, the administration may still find it is winning on its own terms.
‘Undeserving recipients’
Alongside that first sanctuary cities directive, early executive orders outlining the president’s core agenda aimed to end all “diversity, equity and inclusion” in the government, to eradicate “gender ideology,” to reverse the “green new deal,” and to enforce “election integrity.” All of them proposed leveraging federal funds to do it.
These cases show the administration pulling that lever in numerous ways.
It has tried to set conditions with no clear relationship to program goals (like immigration requirements for highway funds). It has threatened funding to force states to share information (voter rolls, food aid lists). It has told grantees they must pledge to comply with orders the president hasn’t issued yet. And it has invoked criminal and financial penalties if they break those pledges.
It has terminated even small sums, targeting with laser precision opponents of the president (who then sued):
The American Bar Association lost $3.2 million in domestic violence training grants after the administration attacked the group.
Plaintiff American Bar Association
Defendant Department of Justice
Filed in the District of Columbia on April 23, 2025
injunction
The American Academy of Pediatrics lost nearly $12 million in grants in apparent retaliation for its advocacy of vaccines and gender-affirming care.
Plaintiff American Academy of Pediatrics
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Columbia on Dec. 24, 2025
injunction
Maine lost access to support for school meals as Gov. Janet Mills was fighting with the president over transgender athletes.
Plaintiff Maine
Defendant Department of Agriculture
Filed in the District of Maine on April 7, 2025
injunction
The government backed down with the American Bar Association and Maine after judges issued initial rulings, only to turn its focus elsewhere.
“You can see that the government’s posture is essentially: Do the thing that’s going to make the White House happy, or get the press release about sticking it to trans people,” said Kevin Love Hubbard, a former D.O.J. attorney who represented the government before leaving in August. Agencies are doing that, he said, “without thinking about then having to go into court.”
Today, he is suing the government in several funding cases with the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island.
Most of these nearly 200 cases are about disfavored categories of recipients like sanctuary jurisdictions, Harvard researchers or organizations serving transgender people.
“We are the undeserving recipients, at least in the mind of our current administration,” said Leesa Manion, the prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., which encompasses Seattle. “The goal all along was to ensure that we — the undesirables — do not get our fair share. Whether it works or doesn’t work, if that’s your overarching goal, you just keep evolving your technique.”
The administration is now increasingly targeting blue states as such a category, too.
That began during the government shutdown last October, when the White House budget director Russell Vought announced the administration would cancel nearly $8 billion in energy projects in 16 states — all where voters had supported Kamala Harris in 2024.
A small group of grantees, including the city of St. Paul, Minn., sued in response.
Plaintiff St. Paul, Minnesota
Defendant Wright
Filed in the District of Columbia on Nov. 10, 2025
lost
In January, the administration lost in district court, where a judge said it had violated the Constitution.
But officials were already preparing other cuts to blue states. H.H.S. froze $10 billion in child care and family assistance funds to five states. The states sued …
Plaintiff New York
Defendant Administration for Children and Families
Filed in the Southern District of New York on Jan. 8, 2026
injunction
… and a judge issued an injunction.
The D.O.T. suspended funding to the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel project connecting New Jersey and New York. Both states sued …
Plaintiff New Jersey
Defendant Department of Transportation
Filed in the Southern District of New York on Feb. 3, 2026
injunction
… and secured another injunction.
Even after those setbacks, in early February the administration told Congress it would cut more than $600 million in public health grants to four blue states. They sued …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant Vought
Filed in the Northern District of Illinois on Feb. 11, 2026
injunction
… and the next day, a judge issued another injunction in the form of a temporary restraining order.
Still, last week, the administration said it would withhold about $250 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota (prompting another lawsuit).
These moves, citing a mix of fraud and immigration policies, follow the president’s vow to block all funding to sanctuary jurisdictions — a group, under the D.O.J.’s definition, that could encompass one-third of the U.S. population.
“They can sue us and maybe they’ll win,” the president said in January. “But we’re not giving money to sanctuary cities anymore.”
Arbitrary and capricious
At stake in many cases are weighty constitutional principles: the separation of powers; the right to due process when the government says grantees have done something wrong; the First Amendment protections for organizations to advocate their views without government retaliation.
In the St. Paul suit, a district judge, Amit P. Mehta, ruled in January for the first time in one of these cases that the administration had violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause by singling out states for their partisan lean. During the litigation, the government didn’t deny doing that. Rather, it argued it was allowed to.
St. Paul, Minnesota v. Wright
Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024. There is no rational relationship between that classification and defendants’ stated governmental interest.
lost
But that ruling covered only seven canceled grants worth about $27.5 million out of the nearly $8 billion total terminated. Now a coalition of 13 states is suing with the same constitutional argument in a new case about the same cuts.
The constant that is running through most of these cases, however, is the more mundane-sounding Administrative Procedure Act. That 1946 law says that the federal government must be reasoned and document its thinking according to transparent rules — in short, that it shouldn’t be slapdash and secretive.
These cases are full of examples of it doing just that. When the Department of Homeland Security tried last year to reduce counterterrorism grants to sanctuary states, the agency appeared to arrive at the lower award sums by simply lopping digits off the original values.
Illinois v. Noem
Neither a law degree nor a degree in mathematics is required to deduce that no plausible, rational formula could produce this result.
lost
Officials have sent out directives with copy-and-pasted typos, termination letters without agency letterhead and bare explanations with boilerplate rationale.
“You had literally grants for millions of dollars being canceled in a single vague paragraph: ‘This no longer comports with administration priorities, thank you very much,’” said Claudia Polsky, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who has led a class-action lawsuit among University of California researchers that has restored, for now, at least a thousand grants worth about a billion dollars.
The administration has given grantees new mandates — and prohibitions — so vague that they haven’t known how to comply.
“‘Promote gender ideology’ — what does that mean?” said Maria Corona, the head of the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which has challenged new conditions on grants. “When you’re talking about ‘violence against women,’ in the language itself we’re already talking about a gender issue.”
Last February, the National Institutes of Health issued a seismic policy change on a Friday night, to take effect the following Monday, slashing payments to universities for research overhead, drawing several lawsuits.
Plaintiff Massachusetts
Defendant National Institutes of Health
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Medical Colleges
Defendant National Institutes of Health
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
In April, the administration lost these cases, consolidated under one judge (an appeals court upheld the decision this year).
But after the district court ruling, the Department of Energy, followed by the National Science Foundation and then the Department of Defense, each rolled out an identical policy.
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Energy
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on April 14, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant National Science Foundation
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on May 5, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Defense
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on June 16, 2025
lost
As these cases accumulated, so did the judges’ irritation.
Association of American Universities v. Department of Defense
The Court does not write upon a blank slate but instead follows three other courts in this district who have come to similar conclusions with respect to different federal agencies’ attempts to enact virtually identical policies. Notably, defendants ignored these obviously relevant — and at least reasonable — analyses before adopting this policy.
lost
Success for the administration has seldom involved winning on the merits. Rather, the administration has argued in most of these cases that district judges have no business hearing them at all. Cases seeking money, it says, belong instead in the Court of Federal Claims, a specialized court dedicated to financial contract disputes with the government.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett breathed life into that argument, concurring in a preliminary ruling last summer that surprised some legal experts. Her opinion — suggesting policies should be litigated in district court, while payouts resulting from them belong in the Court of Federal Claims — has further complicated these cases. So has the Supreme Court’s ruling last year ending nationwide injunctions.
Winning while losing
By the time grantees have gone to court, they have already lost much. Researchers have halted studies. Nonprofits have laid off staff. The core expectation that the government is a reliable partner has already been undercut.
“The result is a corrosive uncertainty that undermines the basic functioning of government,” said Jacob Leibenluft, a former official in the Biden White House budget office.
That uncertainty sets in the moment money isn’t on time, or when grantees start to think it won’t be in the future. Other changes take root, too: Grantees rethink what’s in their mission statements; professors shift what they teach.
American Association of University Professors v. Trump
Numerous U.C. faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the U.C. system.
injunction
The administration is advancing these changes even when it’s losing particular funding cases in court. And it has successfully blocked money to groups who haven’t sued, further entrenching the president’s expanded power over spending.
Whether this dynamic sticks depends as much on Congress as on the courts. If legislators were more actively guarding programs they had funded themselves, many of these lawsuits likely wouldn’t exist.
New York v. Trump
The interaction of the three co-equal branches of government is an intricate, delicate and sophisticated balance — but it is crucial to our form of constitutional governance. Here, the Executive put itself above Congress.
injunction
In rare cases, Republicans in Congress have pushed back against the administration and been able to reverse billions in cuts far more quickly than courts could, including from after-school programs and mental health and addiction treatment.
For most programs targeted by the administration, however, Republicans have publicly said little, and that’s unlikely to change as the president now targets blue states more explicitly. Republican and Democratic appropriators have together quietly tucked some new guardrails into spending bills this year. But it is Democrats, primarily, who have spoken up for the larger principle that lawmakers set the terms of federal spending — not the president.
“We have to guard that with our lives,” said Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic appropriator in the House. The alternative, she said, is that funding becomes a tool to silence dissent. “‘Don’t speak out — or I’ll cancel your grant.’”
Absent bipartisan clamor in Congress, cases like King County v. Turner grind on. The case was brought last May by eight local governments challenging new conditions on housing and transportation grants. Then they added H.H.S. as a defendant. And 23 more local governments and transit and housing agencies joined as plaintiffs. Then another 29 came on board. Then 15 more. Each one has had to explain the harms it has faced. The judge has had to review each claim, alongside the details of dozens of grant programs, while crafting what are now four successive injunctions. All that is just one lawsuit.
“Should we have to do that 200 times, 300 times?” said Erin Overbey, the general counsel with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “What’s the number where we reach critical mass?”
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AUSTIN, TEXAS – The expensive and contentious battle for the Republican Senate nomination in Texas is headed to a May runoff, after none of the three major candidates in the crowded field of contenders topped 50% of the vote in Tuesday’s primary election.
Longtime incumbent Sen. John Cornyn will face off with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after they finished in the top two in the primary, with Rep. Wesley Hunt in third place, according to unofficial primary election results.
The winner will face off with either progressive firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a vocal critic and foil of President Donald Trump, or rising star state Rep. James Talarcio, who were vying for the Democratic Senate nomination. Both were trying to become the first Democrat in nearly four decades to win a Senate election in right-leaning Texas.
This year’s Senate showdown in Texas is one of a handful across the country that could determine if Republicans hold their majority in the chamber in the midterm elections. The GOP currently controls the chamber 53-47.
The Cornyn campaign and aligned super PACs spent nearly $100 million to run ads attacking Paxton and Hunt, with the senator charging in the closing weeks of the primary campaign that Democrats will flip the seat in the general election if Paxton’s the GOP’s nominee.
Cornyn, his allies, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, repeatedly pointed to the slew of scandals and legal problems that have battered Paxton over the past decade, as well as his ongoing messy divorce.
TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKE ROCKS SENATE PRIMARIES IN TEXAS
“If I’m the nominee, I’ll help President Trump by making sure that we carry the five new congressional seats as well as maintain this Senate seat and will help him continue his agenda through the last two years of his term of office,” Cornyn touted in a Fox News Digital interview on Sunday.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign stop in The Woodlands, Texas, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Annie Mulligan/AP Photo)
And, he argued, “If the Democrats win, because we nominate a flawed candidate with incredible baggage like the attorney general, then that last two years of [Trump’s] agenda is jeopardized, as well as everybody down ballot that we need to continue to elect as Republicans.”
PAXTON DEMANDS STRICTER VETTING AFTER DEADLY TEXAS RAMPAGE
Paxton, a MAGA firebrand who grabbed significant national attention by filing lawsuits against the Obama and Biden administrations, pushed back, telling Fox News Digital on the eve of the primary that “I’m 3-0. I’ve won three statewide races.”
Pointing to public opinion polls suggesting he has the edge over Cornyn, Paxton argued, “it’s really easy for him to say that when he’s losing a primary, because he’s not delivered for the people of Texas, and he’s going to find out tomorrow what that means. He’s going to end up losing.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican Senate candidate, speaks to supporters at a campaign event on primary eve, in Waco, Texas, on March 2, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
“This idea that I can’t win a race is not true… there’s no evidence of what he’s saying is being true. As a matter of fact, the evidence is just the opposite,” Paxton added.
Paxton was boosted a few weeks ago by an endorsement from the political wing of Turning Point USA, the powerful grassroots conservative organization that was long steered by the late Charlie Kirk.
The GOP nomination battle was a two-person race until Hunt, a West Point graduate and military veteran who flew helicopters during his service and who represents a solidly red district in suburban Houston, announced his candidacy last autumn.
“I think there’s going to be a runoff, no matter what happens,” Cornyn predicted on Sunday.
Paxton, speaking to supporters on primary eve, touted that “if we go to a runoff, the odds get better for me,” as he pointed to what will likely be a smaller electorate for the May 26 runoff.
Republican Senate candidate Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas, at a primary eve campaign event, in Houston, Texas on March 2, 2026 (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
Hunt, in a Fox News Digital interview on the eve of the primary, argued that he’s “the best candidate to win the primary and win the general.”
TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKE ROCKS TEXAS SENATE RACE AS DEMS DEMAND ‘WAR POWERS,’ GOP APPLAUDS PRESIDENT
And pointing to the negative ads from Cornyn and his allies that have targeted him the past couple of weeks, Hunt said, “They have spent tens of millions of dollars against me in the state of Texas, which means that I must be doing the right thing, and I must be a threat. DC will not decide who will be the next senator from Texas. Texans will and that’s why I got in this race.”
But Hunt fell short, coming in third place.
Trump, whose clout over the GOP remains immense, stayed neutral to date in the Republican primary. All three candidates, who sought the president’s endorsement, were in attendance Friday as Trump held an event in Corpus Christi, Texas.
“They’re in a little race together,” Trump said of Cornyn and Paxton. “You know that, right? A little bit of a race. It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people, too.”
Trump also complimented Hunt, and said that all three contenders were engaged in an “interesting election.”
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in a Whataburger restaurant in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Feb. 27, 2026. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
While Trump stayed neutral, his top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, helped the Cornyn campaign. And veteran Republican strategist Chris LaCivita, who served as co-campaign manager of Trump’s 2024 White House bid, consulted for a top Cornyn-aligned super PAC.
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The big questions going forward as the runoff campaign gets underway are whether Trump will make an endorsement, and whether the major outside groups that supported Cornyn will continue to throw resources into the extended nomination battle.
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NEW YORK — U.S. and Israeli officials are privately casting doubt on projections from the Trump administration that the war with Iran could end within a matter of weeks — instead warning that a months-long campaign may be required to destroy the country’s ballistic missile capabilities and install a pliant government, multiple sources told The Times.
The prospect of extended combat creates political risks and uncertainties for President Trump, whose penchant for dramatic, short-term military operations has suddenly given way to a full-scale assault on the Islamic Republic, shocking a MAGA base that for years supported his calls to end forever wars in the Middle East.
One Israeli official told The Times — despite internal guidance among Israeli officials to adhere to the U.S. president’s stated time frame — that the war “definitely could be longer” than the four-week window that Trump repeatedly offered to reporters.
A U.S. official said that in private conversations, top administration officials presume the campaign will require a longer runway now that remnants of Iran’s government have chosen to resist rather than acquiesce to Washington.
Protracted war was always a possibility. Trump was presented with U.S. intelligence assessments gaming out the potential conflict that emphasized how highly unpredictable the results of an attack would be — an analysis the intelligence community believes has borne out on the ground in the chaotic early days of the conflict.
A longer conflict could create diplomatic space between Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has advocated for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic for over 30 years.
The Israeli leader has succeeded in convincing Trump to take military actions in Iran that American presidents have rejected for decades, from bombing its nuclear facilities to assassinating its leadership, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an opening strike over the weekend.
Goal of a change of government fades
Yet, mere days into the war, White House officials have all but ceased references to a democratic spring that could sweep Iran’s government aside.
A set of four U.S. goals for the mission no longer calls for changing the regime itself. Still, Netanyahu’s government remains keen on replacing the government, and the nation’s longest-serving premier sees the current war as his best opportunity to do so, one official said.
Speaking with reporters Tuesday, Trump rejected reports that the Israelis had convinced him to launch the attack.
“No, I might have forced their hand,” Trump said. “Based on the way the negotiations were going, I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand, but Israel was ready, and we were ready, and we’ve had a very, very powerful impact because virtually everything they have has been knocked out.”
In a series of interviews this week, Trump said he had been given projections of a four- or five-week war, while noting he is prepared to go longer if necessary.
Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official who is Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said that projecting a deadline to the conflict at its start would be a strategic mistake for the Trump administration, as it would in effect give Iran’s remaining leadership an end date to wait out the fighting.
“Successive presidents have shown that America has strategic attention deficit disorder,” Rubin said. “If that was the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s especially true under Trump. He imposed a ceasefire on Gaza that let Hamas survive to fight another day; they still haven’t disarmed.”
The duration of the war will depend, in part, on Iran’s ability to resist and defend its remaining capabilities — but also on the president’s willingness to accept an outcome that leaves the Islamic Republic in place.
That decision has not yet been made by Trump, who has vacillated between calls for a democratic uprising across Iran — and U.S. military options to support resistance groups inside the country — as opposed to a shorter campaign that cripples Iran’s political leadership and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians, ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding,’” Trump told Axios.
One of Israel’s primary goals is to effectively eliminate the country’s ballistic missile program, and progress on that score is ahead of schedule, another source familiar with the operation said. “Things are going very well at the moment,” the source added. “Great pace.”
An Israeli military source noted to The Times that the stated goal of the mission is to significantly degrade, but not necessarily destroy, Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, a goal the source said could be accomplished within Trump’s preferred time frame.
“Israel was quite unhappy Trump ordered the [June 2025] 12-day war ended when it did,” said Patrick Clawson, director of the Iran program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He said he expected the current war would “take time” to comprehensively set back Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, after a series of Israeli missions in 2024 against the missile program failed to set them back by more than a matter of months.
“Some Israelis think before the recent strikes, Iranian production was fully restored,” Clawson said. “So a really comprehensive attack on Iranian missiles is an important Israeli objective.”
The Maduro model
But no one inside the Islamic Republic system has emerged so far to serve in a supplicant role to Trump in the way that Delcy Rodríguez has stepped in as acting president of Venezuela, after U.S. forces captured that country’s strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, in an audacious overnight raid in January.
Since then, the Stars and Stripes have flown alongside the Venezuelan tricolor at government buildings in Caracas, where senior Trump administration officials have been welcomed to discuss lucrative opportunities in Venezuela’s oil industry.
Trump is now looking for an Iranian counterpart to Rodríguez, he said Tuesday, suggesting he is willing to keep the Islamic Republic in place despite encouraging its citizens to rise up against their government.
“Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We had some in mind from that group that is dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also…. Pretty soon we’re not gonna know anybody.”
“I mean, Venezuela was so incredible because we did the attack and we kept the government totally intact,” he added.
Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations, expressed doubt that Trump would be willing to proceed with a months-long campaign, regardless of Israel’s aspirational objectives.
“I believe President Trump doesn’t define clear objectives so he can decide to end the war at a time of his choosing, and declare the objective at that point, announcing we have achieved what we sought to do,” said Ross, noting that finding a figurehead in Iran as he did in Venezuela was always “a long shot.”
“Unilaterally, he could declare we made the regime pay a price for killing its citizens, and we have weakened Iran to the point that it is not any longer a threat to its neighbors,” Ross added. “He could then say, if Iran continues the war, we will hit them even harder.”
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