Politics
Trump flexes MAGA muscle in Texas Senate runoff clash between Cornyn and Paxton
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AUSTIN, TX – President Donald Trump has a new target this week as he takes aim at Republican critics — longtime GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.
Trump is targeting Cornyn as “VERY disloyal” as he backs Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a major Trump ally and MAGA firebrand, in Tuesday’s combustible and expensive runoff election for the GOP Senate nomination in the right-leaning state. The ballot box showdown serves as the latest tests of Trump’s immense grip over the Republican Party and the strength of his endorsements in GOP nomination races.
The winner of the runoff will face off against rising Democratic Party star state Rep. James Talarico in the general election in a race that is among a handful that may decide if the Republicans hold their slim 53-47 majority in the Senate. Talarico, who topped progressive star Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a vocal Trump critic, in the March primary, is trying to become the first Democrat in nearly four decades to win a Senate election in Texas.
The Senate contest is the most high-profile showdown on a ballot that also includes Democratic and Republican runoffs for Texas Attorney General, as well as key primary battles for four U.S. House seats, including a Democratic Party runoff in the 35th Congressional District where one of the two candidates in a social media post proposed converting an ICE detention center into a prison for American supporters of Israel.
TRUMP BACKS MAGA ALLY PAXTON IN TEXAS SHOWDOWN WITH CORNYN
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, center, campaigns at a meet and greet in Corpus Christi, Texas, on May 22, 2026, days ahead of the runoff election for the GOP Senate nomination. (Luke Travisan/Fox News)
Trump’s targeting of Cornyn comes three weeks after the purging five state senators in Indiana’s primary who had opposed his push for congressional redistricting, a week and a half after helping to oust Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — who five and a half years ago voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial – and one week after defeating vocal GOP critic Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky.
The Texas runoff is also being held one week after Trump endorsed Paxton, after sitting on the sidelines in the race for months.
“Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Trump wrote in a social media post last Tuesday.
The two heated rivals topped a crowded field of contenders in the early March primary, with Cornyn edging Paxton. But since neither cleared the 50% threshold, the nomination race headed into overtime.
Trump, in backing Paxton, said that “John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough.”
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton landed President Donald Trump’s endorsement one week ahead of his runoff election against Republican Sen. John Cornyn for the GOP Senate nomination. (Julio Cortez/AP Photo)
Pointing to the senator’s past criticism of him, Trump added, “John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination, and then, the Presidency.”
Cornyn, in a Fox News Digital interview on the eve of the runoff, emphasized his support for the president and his agenda.
“President Trump has called me a friend and a good man, and we’ve worked with him closely for both terms of office,” the senator said.
Paxton, who grabbed significant national attention the past dozen years by filing lawsuits against the Obama and Biden administrations, disagreed.
“John Cornyn fought Trump on the border. And you can go back over about a decade and see that he was not for the border wall,” Paxton charged in an interview on Fox News’ “The Big Weekend Show.”
CONTENTIOUS REPUBLICAN SENATE PRIMARY IN TEXAS HEADED INTO OVERTIME
Paxton also argued that the senator “fought the president’s reelection. He fought him in 2024, said his time had passed, and he fought him in 2016. So this is not a pro-Trump guy. I don’t know if we could be more different on the Republican issues than John Cornyn and me. So there is a vast difference between the two of us.”
Cornyn pushed back.
“I don’t know how much more with him I could be than 99.3% of the time,” the senator told Fox News Digital.
“I want him to be successful. I want America to be successful, and I want Republicans to be successful. But you know, in the end, as I said, Texans are the only ones going to be able to make a choice, and I think Texans can be pretty independent,” Cornyn added.
Paxton has faced a slew of scandals and legal problems that have battered him over the past decade. In 2023, the Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach Paxton, but he was eventually acquitted of all charges by the state senate.
And Paxton is dealing with a very messy divorce, with his wife citing “biblical grounds” based on “recent discoveries” in filing last year to end their marriage.
Cornyn, who is supported by Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has repeatedly argued that if Paxton is the GOP’s nominee, the party will be forced to spend millions of dollars to keep the seat from flipping and that Republicans down-ballot will suffer.
“He’s gotten more and more emboldened as he’s gotten away with all the scandal and mischief that now is very well known, but were he to be the nominee and be exposed to general election voters, especially independents, I think it’s going to be a very rocky time,” the senator predicted.
TRUMP OWNS THE GOP – BUT WILL REPUBLICANS PAY A PRICE IN THE MIDTERMS?
Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, the Democratic Party’s nominee, speaks at a campaign rally in Houston on March 2, 2026. (Danielle Villasana/Getty Images)
And pointing to Talarico, who hauled in an eye-popping $27 million in fundraising during the first three months of this year, Cornyn said “there will be an incredible tsunami of Democratic funds coming in against Paxton, were he the nominee. Conversely…if I am the nominee…we’ll be able to shoulder the burden pretty much on our own. I won my last general election by 10 points. I think I can do similarly against somebody who’s as far left and radical as James Talarico.”
While Paxton has shifted his ads to target Talarico in the wake of the Trump endorsement, Cornyn and allied groups continue to blast Paxton.
“I don’t think anybody could honestly argue that we haven’t fought hard to make the case here,” Cornyn said of his campaign.
And he emphatically said he’s “worked too long and too hard to help build the Republican Party in Texas, and in the United States Senate, and to keep Texas the envy of the nation when it comes to opportunities and pursuing the American dream, to let that go, to squander it, and let it go without a fight. So I’m still optimistic on the outcome, but obviously it depends on who shows up.”
The other statewide runoff in Texas is for attorney general, in the race to succeed Paxton.
In the expensive GOP showdown, four-term Rep. Chip Roy is battling state Sen. Mayes Middleton, the president of an independent oil and gas company.
State Senator Mayes Middleton, a Republican candidate for Texas Attorney General, speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Grapevine, Texas, on Thursday, March 26, 2026. (Shelby Tauber/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Middleton, who edged Roy in the March primary, has dished out roughly $17 million of his own money to back his campaign. But Roy, a former Texas assistant attorney general and former chief of staff to conservative Sen. Ted Cruz, received a late surge in fundraising from major backers.
“We’ve gotten the financial support necessary to compete with my self-funder opponent, who’s got his inheritance money that he can just spend,” Roy highlighted in a Fox News Digital interview on the eve of the runoff.
Roy has argued that Middleton’s lack of courtroom experience would make him a poor attorney general.
“Having been the first assistant attorney general makes me ready on day one, but it’s also that I’ve been a prosecutor, I’ve been in court, I’ve sat in front of a judge, stood in front of a judge, argued cases, and he has never done any of those things. And we think those things should matter,” Roy emphasized.
Middleton has pushed back, questioning Roy’s conservative credentials and run ads claiming Roy’s “betrayed MAGA” as he’s pointed to the times the congressman has broken with Trump over policy.
“Chip Roy has someone that has spent a decade fighting the president. He actually said President Trump committed impeachable conduct on the House floor,” Middleton told Fox News Digital. “Instead of spending 10 years fighting President Trump, what have I done? I’ve spent 10 years, fighting to defeat the left, which is what matters the most in this race.”
But Roy, responding, said “everyone knows that I’m a longtime defender and supporter of the president’s agenda, of the America First agenda, the MAGA agenda, but I’m also an independent thinker who will stand up and make the case. And pointing to Middleton, Roy charged, “MAGA is not something you just buy. My opponent thinks you can buy the brand.”
Middleton returned fire, arguing “Chip Roy is putting out there that he is a top ally to President Trump when the exact opposite is the case.”
Roy, showcasing his electability, said “I beat Democrats before in a tough race” and that he “knows how to win.”
The winner of the GOP runoff will likely face Democratic state Sen. Nathan Johnson, who came close to clinching his party’s nomination in the primary. Johnson is facing off against former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski.
Also in the spotlight are Democratic and GOP runoffs in the redrawn majority-Latino 35th Congressional District,
Democratic Party leaders are slamming housing activist and sex therapist Maureen Galindo for her Instagram post on imprisoning American Zionists at an ICE detention center. She added that the prison would have a castration facility for pedophiles, which she claimed would likely include “most of the Zionists.
Maureen Galindo speaks at a League of Women Voters meeting in Texas. (Katina Zentz/Getty Images)
She also said that her rival in the runoff, Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Johnny Garcia, should be tried for treason over his support for Israel.
The comments have spurred support for Garcia, who’s running as a moderate. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Texas Democratic Party, Talarico, and even progressive champion Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have backed Garcia.
The winner of the Democratic primary will face off against either Republican state Rep. John Lujan or Carlos De La Cruz, an Air Force veteran and brother of Rep. Monica De La Cruz of Texas.
In the solidly blue, Houston-based 18th Congressional District, 78-year-old Democratic Rep. Al Green will face off with recently-elected 38-year-old Rep. Christian Menefee, for a seat redrawn last year by Republicans as part of their congressional redistricting push.
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Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson is running against former Rep. Colin Allred in the Democratic-dominated, Dallas-based, 33rd Congressional District.
And in the newly drawn 9th Congressional District, a right-tilting seat in the Houston area, Trump-endorsed Army veteran Alex Mealer faces Abbott-endorsed state Rep. Briscoe Cain.
Homicides in Los Angeles are down to levels not seen since the 1960s. Neighborhoods once awash in gang violence now sometimes go weeks, even months, without a shooting. And the follow-home robberies and street takeovers that captured the public’s attention in recent years have largely subsided.
By many measures, the city is safer than it has been in generations — and yet voters following L.A.’s hotly contested mayoral race might think the opposite.
The challengers to Mayor Karen Bass have zeroed in on homelessness and public drug use to argue she hasn’t delivered on public safety, while also criticizing how the Police Department has operated and been funded during her tenure.
Mike Bonin, a former L.A. City Council member, said the fact that Spencer Pratt — the former reality TV star who has been attacking Bass from the right — has gained so much traction in the race is proof of how Bass and other candidates to the left have failed to change “prevailing narratives that the city is unsafe.”
Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt hosts a campaign block party on 10th Avenue in Los Angeles on May 20, 2026.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Pratt has been particularly active on social media, where he has shared artificial-intelligence videos created by fans depicting him as various superheroes coming to the rescue of a city that, under Democratic rule, has turned into a dystopian hellscape.
In a March 26 post on Substack, Pratt railed against the thousands of drug-related calls that emergency officials respond to every month. He has said that if elected mayor, he would order the police and fire chiefs and the county health director to “treat every encampment as a grave-disability zone.”
“No new laws needed,” he wrote. “No endless task forces.”
Flanking Bass on the left is Nithya Raman, a progressive City Council member who was once the mayor’s political ally.
Raman has argued that Bass has thrown too much money at the LAPD, with raises for police officers coming at the expense of other basic services such as park maintenance and street paving. Raman said the LAPD pay increases have “bankrupted” the city, depriving other services of much-needed funding. In campaign ads, Raman has cast herself as a more sensible alternative to Bass. Raman has said she would work to reduce traffic deaths and prioritize safety on the city’s buses and trains.
When she first ran for office in 2020, Raman called for defunding the police, saying the Los Angeles Police Department should be a “much smaller, specialized armed force.” Since then, however, she has voted for some budgets that increased spending on law enforcement.
In response to questions from The Times, Raman said she would work to find ways to overhaul public safety.
“I’ll propose budgets that expand unarmed response, work with LAPD to improve 911 response to more quickly answer calls for help that don’t require armed officers, and will appoint leadership at the Police Commission who will actively partner with the City Council to work on reform,” she said.
Representatives for Pratt and Bass didn’t respond to requests for interviews with the candidates.
Bonin said Bass — who supported various police reform measures while Congress — has shocked some of her supporters with how “aggressively pro-police she has been.”
When she ran for mayor in 2022, Bass vowed to retool the recruitment and hiring process in order to restore LAPD staffing to 9,500 officers. That hasn’t happened. The number of sworn officers recently fell below 8,600, despite Bass striking a deal with the police union to offer higher starting salaries and new retention bonuses.
Mayor Karen Bass takes part in a candidate forum on May 5, 2026, in Sherman Oaks.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
On Thursday, the City Council approved a $15-billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which included funds to hire 510 new officers — just enough to offset turnover and maintain current staffing levels.
Raman has said the LAPD should not shrink any further because there aren’t enough officers to respond to 911 calls “in a timely fashion.”
Samantha Stevens, a Los Angeles political consultant and former legislative staffer, said people seem willing to back Pratt because he acknowledges that their sense of safety has been shaken — even if he has offered few concrete details about how to tackle crime beyond cracking down on homelessness.
Pratt’s critics say that his plan relies on funneling homeless people into a shelter system that doesn’t have the capacity to handle them all. Others have noted that the aggressive tactics he has proposed would probably face legal challenges.
L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor, makes a campaign stop at the site of a home burned in the Palisades fire.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
“He’s kind of a case study in somebody who has a lot of opinions but has no idea of how the city is run,” Stevens said.
Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said Pratt seems to have tapped into a deep well of discontent among Angelenos who believe that crime and homeless have spiraled out of control. The challenge for Bass, he added, is that although the numbers suggest that crime has decreased, many people associate the sight of encampments spilling onto public sidewalks as “a breakdown” that indicates the city is becoming less safe.
“You want to go back to the days of Daryl Gates, you’ve got Pratt,” he said, referencing the former LAPD chief whose controversial police sweeps in the late 1980s yielded thousands of arrests while alienating large segments of South L.A.
“If you want more of the same from the past 20 years, you’ve got Bass,” Guerra added. “And if you want something new, then you’ve got Raman, but she has to explain what exactly she wants to do.”
Although Pratt and Raman appear to be the strongest challengers to Bass, several long-shot candidates have also made public safety a key issue in their campaigns. Some have gone after Bass for her support of LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell. Hired by Bass in 2024, McDonnell has touted the impressive drop in crime under his leadership, but also faced criticism over an uptick in shootings by police and aggressive crowd control tactics during protests against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Police Chief Jim McDonnell attends a news conference at LAPD headquarters on May 21, 2026.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Rae Huang, a minister and housing rights advocate, said if elected mayor she would immediately replace McDonnell with someone who has the “ability to really reimagine what public safety really looks like.”
“I’m the only one with the guts to say that out loud,” Huang told The Times during a recent campaign stop at a bookstore in the West Adams neighborhood.
In social media posts and interviews, Huang has frequently referred to the LAPD as “one of the biggest legal gangs in the world,” and said she would work on diverting money from the police budget to scale up programs that have shown promise in sending unarmed specialists to deal with emergencies that involve people experiencing mental health crises.
The city is already running two such pilot programs, but under Bass they have remained underfunded, Huang said. Last week, the City Council signed off on expanding one of the programs.
Huang said she would also invest more heavily in addressing the city’s lack of affordable housing, which she said is an underlying cause of crime and homelessness.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into attack ads against Huang and Raman.
Adam Miller, a tech entrepreneur, has tried to strike a balance in his mayoral campaign, advocating for changes while acknowledging that many people still feel unsafe despite the historic drop in violent crime.
He criticized a recent vote by the L.A. City Council to limit so-called pretextual stops, in which officers pull people over for minor traffic infractions in order to investigate more serious offenses. The stops have been blamed for enabling racial discrimination.
Miller said that “constraining the Police Department is the opposite of what we should be doing.” He called for “leveraging” AI and modernizing the department’s archaic computer systems, which he said could allow the LAPD to catch up to other agencies that have embraced new technology.
Miller told The Times that he recently went on a ride-along with officers from the Rampart Division, which he said was eye-opening.
“At the highest level I think Angelenos don’t feel safe anymore,” he said. “They don’t feel safe in their neighborhoods, but more recently they don’t feel safe even in their own homes.”
Statistically speaking, the city might be safer than it’s been in decades, he said — but that doesn’t necessarily matter to voters.
“I don’t think it’s just perception,” he said. “I think it’s reality that crime has spread.”
The cabinet has historically advised the president on a variety of matters, but in President Trump’s second term, it appears to have taken on a new mandate: flattery.
Marathon cabinet meetings, lasting one to three hours, have become a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s second presidency. Often televised, they provide an opportunity for cabinet officials to credit him for their department’s accomplishments while still trying to claim some of the spotlight for themselves.
“He is willing to take a bullet for all of you tuning in at home because he believes in this flag, our freedom, our liberties and to save the greatest country in the history of the world.”
“The country owes you a great debt of gratitude — and the world, really — because I mean, you’re the only leader in the planet that can bring the two sides together to bring an end to this conflict.”
“What you have assembled in your vision is a turning point and an inflection point in American history.”
“I’ve gone across the country this month, 10 different states, and we saw it when we were together in Iowa: hard-working families, farmers, small businesses expressing gratitude, lined up to thank you.” “What happened in Afghanistan, what happened in Ukraine — a war that never would have occurred — what happened on Oct. 7 in Israel, never would have happened under President Trump.”
“A year ago today, I was working on transition with President Trump, to build the greatest cabinet ever for the greatest president ever. And I, as I sit here today, I can’t be more proud of how you did it, sir.”
Cabinet members flatter Trump
The New York Times reviewed over a dozen hours of cabinet meeting footage to analyze how his administration spoke to him. On average, at least one of every six sentences either flattered Mr. Trump, gave him credit or criticized his political opponents.
Allison Schuster, a White House spokeswoman, said in an email that Mr. Trump’s cabinet used these meetings to “highlight the exhaustive list of accomplishments they have delivered on behalf of the American people.”
Some, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, packed their speaking time with praise, while others, like Vice President JD Vance, focused on attacking Democrats. Many of these statements are exaggerated or not factually accurate.
Flatters him Criticizes opponents Gives him credit
Mr. Rubio both spoke and flattered the president the most.
Mr. Bessent said Mr. Trump “saved this country by making it the best place in the world to do business again.”
Mr. Hegseth said three times that Mr. Trump would have prevented conflicts from occurring.
Mr. Vance insulted political opponents the most. On average, one of six sentences was an insult.
Ms. Loeffler emphasized five times how people she has met across the country are grateful for President Trump. Mr. Lutnick said Mr. Trump achieved what nobody believed was possible five times.
Mr. Zeldin repeatedly said Mr. Trump was “willing to take a bullet for this country.”
Mr. Ratcliffe frequently credited department accomplishments to Mr. Trump’s leadership.
Mr. Greer referred to Labor Day as “Trump Trade Policy Day.”
How each cabinet member speaks to Trump
Compared with his first term, when some of his top aides pushed back against the president’s impulses, Mr. Trump has emphasized the importance of loyalty this time around. Administration officials have complimented the president far more in cabinet meetings than in his first term, according to The Times’s review of footage.
One of the most striking features of Mr. Trump’s cabinet meetings this term is the extent to which his leadership has been praised as unparalleled.
Officials have declared on camera that he is singlehandedly ending global conflicts, winning the race for artificial intelligence, motivating troops to enlist and lowering gas prices, among a number of other claimed accomplishments.
Russia-Ukraine war Rubio: And there’s only one leader in the world that’s capable of bringing the two sides to a table, and that’s our president, the president of the United States, President Trump.Russia-Ukraine war Rubio: And — and I think that the country owes you a great debt of gratitude and the world, really, because I mean you’re the only leader in the planet that can bring the two sides together to bring an end to this conflict, and that’s what you’ve done, and you’ve done it despite, you know, impediments from other countries and others who maybe have different opinions about how this should go.
But ultimately, I think that the only chance we have for peace is through the president’s leadership, and you’ve shown that.Cambodia-Thailand conflict Rubio: The president just picks up the phone and tells them to stop fighting. And within 72 hours, the fighting had stopped. There’s no other leader in the world that could have done it.Israel-Gaza conflict Rubio: But suffice it to say, it’s not an exaggeration that none of it would have been possible without the president of the United States being involved.Israel-Gaza conflict Rubio: And because of the work you put in — and honestly there is no — not only is there no other leader in the world that could have put this together, Mr. President.Israel-Gaza conflict Rubio: No other leader in the world could have pulled off what happened in Gaza. But this war is going on, and the president is trying to end it not because — listen, we’ve got a million things to focus on in the world as a country, but he’s the only leader in the world that can help end it.Sudan civil war Rubio: The president’s taken on this issue of Sudan personally, not send out deputies to do it. Again, far away from the United States because he’s the only leader in the world that can bring it about to an end.Leadership Burgum: And it’s your fearlessness to take on the issues that other presidents would not touch, whether it’s the work that we’re doing with successfully streamlining and right-sizing government or whether it’s taking on the issues at the border or whether it’s embracing the power we need to win the arms race, you’re fearlessly doing that.Energy Burgum: You’re perhaps one of the only leaders in the world that understood the connection between peace abroad and prosperity at home was directly connected to energy policy.Israel-Gaza conflict Burgum: It’s such a remarkable accomplishment — agree that no other president could have done this.Immigration Hegseth: It only happens with President Trump leading, and we’re proud to be a part of what’s going on at the border, sir, with now a fourth national defense area where we’re helping get to that number zero in securing the border.Military recruitment Hegseth: In fact, re-enlistment is already met its yearlong goal in the Marine Corps in 2026. You can’t — there’s no other way to create that kind of love and enthusiasm than with your leadership, sir.Venezuela operation Hegseth: No other president would have been willing to empower those warriors that way to be that effective.Healthcare Kennedy: M.F.N. is one of our greatest accomplishments. It would not have happened without you.Job creation Lutnick: And this is all driven by your tariff policies. No chance this’d be happening without you.Trade deals Lutnick: We invented the lightbulb, the transistor, the G.P.U., so they keep buying us. And the only president to ever to understand it, and you understood it in the ’80s and the ’90s.Job creation Lutnick: We’ve got $165 billion for TSMC, but you’re going to watch the whole ecosystem come home because Donald Trump is the only president who understands.Artificial Intelligence Wright: If you had not won the election, we would not have won the A.I. race.Energy Wright: There are a number of stations in the heartland of America with $1.99 signs flying today. That’s simply impossible without the leadership and changes you’ve brought.War Zeldin: And we have never had a president so deeply committed towards ending foreign wars instead of starting new ones.Economy Zeldin: What we are accomplishing now, again, wouldn’t be possible if not for your leadership.Trade deals Greer: That’s who’s coming in to talk to you and to your advisers about how to have reciprocal trade, how to have fair trade. It wouldn’t have happened without you.Trade deals Greer: Now we have the tariffs, and they have lowered their nontariff barriers. We couldn’t have done it without you and the leverage you’ve created.
Notably, some of these talking points are traceable to Mr. Trump himself.
For instance, he has repeatedly claimed that Russia’s war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Gaza “would not have happened” if he had been president. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Mr. Rubio have echoed this in cabinet meetings.
In a meeting on Jan. 26, Kelly Loeffler, the small business administrator, said Mr. Trump had “ended at least eight wars,” and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Mr. Trump’s tariffs were bringing in “tens of trillions of investments.” Mr. Trump has also espoused some version of both claims, even though they are misleading.
Officials have also frequently criticized former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party, copying Mr. Trump’s pattern of assigning blame to Mr. Biden.
Flattery of Mr. Trump is not enough to keep the job, however. Four of Mr. Trump’s cabinet officials have been fired or resigned this year, and he may be considering removing more.
Below, explore other things cabinet officials have said to Mr. Trump during their meetings.
Americans are grateful for Trump
Bessent: In the diner, the staff there was thanking you for the no tax on tips, and they’re expecting big refunds from that.Burgum: Everybody I’ve met, whether it’s in a coal mine or at the border, law enforcement, the one thing they say on those trips is please thank President Trump from all of us, the change that you’re making.Burgum: They all wanted to say thank you to you.Burgum: But on behalf of all law enforcement, we say thank you.Loeffler: I’m out on a made-in-America manufacturing tour and, as I go across the country, people are grateful to have a president who’s not just fighting on the tariff fronts, but to get inflation down, to create jobs.Loeffler: So, the American worker is grateful.Loeffler: Main Street is grateful for you and, at the agency level, we’re making sure that manufacturers have access to the capital they need.Loeffler: And then finally, I have walked factory floors from Alaska to Maine, and the workers, the small businesses — most manufacturers in this country are small businesses, 600,000 of them — they are so grateful to your fair-trade, low-inflation, deregulation agenda that is creating national security and economic security in this country like never before.Loeffler: Hard-working families, farmers, small businesses expressing gratitude, lined up to thank you.Loeffler: And as I walk through the factory floors, they all ask me to thank you for fighting for their jobs, for these industries and for the people who are creating things from pharmaceuticals to aerospace to food and all these essentials that this nation needs to be independent and strong.Hegseth: So, from the troops directly, which they ask me to say all the time, thank you for your leadership, for your boldness, for your clarity, for common sense, for providing a shield for the rest of us to put America first and to apply peace through strength.Rollins: And I think they are really, really excited and so grateful for your leadership. Everything possible under his leadership
Rubio: And again, it’s under your leadership, it’s actually under your executive order.Rubio: But you think about it, under your leadership, we prevented an end to the war between India and Pakistan.Rubio: And obviously, it’s under your leadership.Bessent: We are — America under your leadership is on the verge of becoming an A.I. superpower that our economy had become barbelled.Bessent: Trade, taxes and deregulation, the One Big Beautiful Bill under your leadership, Speaker Johnson and Leader Thune have done a great job.Burgum: So, we have an opportunity under your leadership to come back.Loeffler: I have to tell you, under your leadership, Main Street is open for business again.Loeffler: And we’ve already seen under your leadership, the jobs economy is back, manufacturing jobs are back.Loeffler: And so I want to also finally thank you for bringing faith back to the White House, to this administration. I want to thank Brooke for hosting the cabinet Bible study and invite everyone tomorrow to Bible study and making this country something that we can be so proud of under your leadership.Kennedy: Two weeks ago, we ended, under your leadership, a 20-year war on women by removing the black box warnings from hormone replacement therapy.Rollins: At U.S. Department of Agriculture, the people’s department — Abraham Lincoln launched this department in 1862. But under your leadership we have finally again put farmers and ranchers and rural America first.Wright: Under your leadership, what we’ve seen in the United States is just a steady drop in the price of gasoline, a huge consumer cost for Americans.Wright: We hope the blue states will come along with us, but your policies are going to start the decline of electricity prices nationwide under your leadership, by just bringing back common sense.Duffy: And so under your leadership and direction, we are making those investments.Turner: And I believe that we are, under your leadership, sir, changing that conversation in America to where working is an honorable thing.Ratcliffe: But under your leadership and your direction, we have been focused back on the core mission of what C.I.A. is supposed to be doing, which is to provide you and this entire incredible team around the table with a decisive, strategic advantage in accomplishing your goals.
Attacks on Biden
Rubio: For some of us who served in Congress, recognize that about a year and a half ago, we had a meltdown under Biden.Bessent: The average budget deficit during this term is 26 percent less than the last 12 months under Biden.Bessent: Sir, when we came in, the Biden administration had destroyed the American people with the three I’s: immigration, inflation and interest rates.Burgum: There’s 500 million acres of surface, 700 million acres of subsurface and 2.5 billion acres of offshore, and the Biden administration was trying to restrict this so that you couldn’t get a timber lease, you couldn’t cut a tree, you couldn’t graze a cow.Burgum: And this was essential because it was the signal that we’re going to go 180 degrees from the disastrous and dangerous Biden policies that were based on a climate ideology that was the root cause of the inflation in this country.Burgum: This is a plant that would have been in a mining operation that would have been shut down under the Biden administration.Burgum: The Biden administration put us in a real predicament right now, the whole trade team, the whole cabinet.Burgum: Biden wasn’t enforcing the border laws.Loeffler: After Biden destroyed 110,000 manufacturing jobs in just his last year, you’ve already brought back thousands and thousands of manufacturing jobs.Loeffler: So, we’ve modified our loan applications to have citizenship verification, to make sure we have birth dates, common-sense principles around lending that the Biden administration had waived.Loeffler: So on Main Street, the economy is coming back, thanks to your leadership, thanks to getting Biden inflation under control.Loeffler: But probably the most important and underreported war that this president ended was Joe Biden and the Democrats’ war on Main Street and hard-working families.Hegseth: You saw the debacle of what Biden allowed to happen in Afghanistan and what that did to our image.Hegseth: If you look at what happened, we deal with every day the outcome of what happened in Afghanistan, the debacle under Joe Biden.Hegseth: And Joe Biden tried to approach it with kid gloves and allowed them to come across the border, cartels take over community, 20 million people, hundreds of thousands of Americans poisoned.Kennedy: And during the Biden administration, H.H.S. became a collaborator in child trafficking and for sex and for — for slavery.Kennedy: That’s 300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration.Kennedy: It never got implemented because the Biden administration never enforced it.Rollins: I think the first thing that’s really remarkable to note is that the prices of eggs under the four years of Joe Biden increased 237 percent.Rollins: Under the four years of Joe Biden, we had the cost of input go up 30 percent for all of our agriculture products.Rollins: And then under Joe Biden, we sold $49 billion less of our ag products around the world.Rollins: Under the Joe Biden administration, there was a 30 percent increase in the cost of inputs.Rollins: After four years of Biden, that hit $ 50 billion because they just didn’t make an effort.Rollins: This family was indicted, prosecuted, threatened with jail time, told to find guardians for their children over a fence line dispute that the Biden D.O.J. pushed forward.Rollins: All of this came about under Joe Biden, a 47 percent increase in the cost of labor that now Secretary Chavez-DeRemer and Noem and I are working on.Rollins: But under the Biden administration and the destruction of our economy and the cost of inflation, interest rates for farmers and ranchers went up 73 percent, labor went up 47 percent, fertilizer went up 36 percent, fuel went up 28 percent.Rollins: As Joe Biden was working to buy an election a year ago, he increased food stamp program funding by 40 percent.Rollins: Having said that, we do have a bridge payment we’ll be announcing with you next week as we’re still trying to recover from the Biden years.Vance: Just on that topic, if you think about what happened with the Abraham Accords, one of the great diplomatic breakthroughs under the first Trump administration really in the last 30 or 40 years of American history in the Middle East, and the Biden administration did absolutely nothing with it.Vance: Purely out of political spite, the Biden administration, I think, hurt the United States and really hurt the project of world peace.Vance: You heard, I think, Kristi talk about this, that all of the net job growth under the Biden administration had gone to the foreign-born.Vance: And of course, Mr. President, you yourself talked about the inflation mess that we inherited under the Biden administration.Vance: Maybe the most striking and even shocking statistic of the Biden administration is that housing costs have gone up by 100 percent over the four years of the Biden administration, literally doubled, making the American dream of homeownership unaffordable.Vance: I think the most important statistic for the American people is that under the Biden administration, the average American family lost over $3,000 of household income and under the first 10 months of this Trump administration, they have gained over $1,000 of household income.Vance: What that says very clearly is that we are fixing the problem that Joe Biden and the Democrats created in the last administration.Vance: If you look at every affordability crisis that’s confronting the American people today, it is traceable directly to a problem caused by Joe Biden and congressional Democrats.Vance: I think that we’ve done incredibly good, but what I see over the next year, and you heard Brooke talk about joy and gratitude, what I really think this season represents for me and I think for the entire administration, is that we have now done incredible work to fix what Joe Biden broke, and I think the next year in American growth and American prosperity could be the best year that we’ve had in the United States of America.Lutnick: The Biden CHIPS Act was a $60 billion giveaway, right?Wright: The Biden administration grew my department, the Department of Energy, by 20 percent and expenditure much more than that, all in an effort to reduce the production of energy in the United States and to make energy more expensive.Wright: Under your leadership, we’re unleashing consumer products that Americans wanted to buy that Biden was making illegal.Wright: Unfortunately, Biden brought all of us a lot of inflation.Wright: Secretary Burgum at the Interior Department has taken in more money on oil and gas lease sales in the first year of this administration than the entire four years of the Biden administration.Wright: Over 200 people died in a smaller cold snap during the Biden administration.Wright: If we’d continued the Biden era policies for one more year, continued to shut down coal plants, continued these crazy climate restrictions that wouldn’t even let power plants run at maximum — at maximum demand time.Wright: We would have had significant blackouts at these peak cold times and, extrapolating from the last storm during the Biden administration, I think at least hundreds of deaths.Zeldin: They received only $100 in 2023, and then the Biden administration gave them $2 billion.Zeldin: Mr. President, at the Biden E.P.A., the Green New Deal was raging. At the Biden E.P.A., we saw billions of tax dollars burning. At the Biden E.P.A., we saw industries suffocating.Zeldin: We’re going to be giving our director of the O.M.B. a whole lot of work because we inherited a big mess from the Biden E.P.A.Zeldin: The Biden E.P.A. gave $50 million to a group that says climate justice runs through a free Palestine.Zeldin: We consolidated real estate, canceled expensive media subscriptions and closed the Biden E.P.A. museum that none of you knew even existed. I’m sure none of you actually visited.Zeldin: To put it another way, in 2024, the Biden E.P.A. obligated and spent over $60 billion in one year, an agency with an operational budget of about $10 billion a year.Zeldin: In their own words, caught on camera, they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, wasting precious tax dollars to pay off well-connected Obama and Biden officials.Zeldin: The Biden E.P.A., in fact, was amending grant agreements just days before you came into office to reduce agency oversight.Greer: You came into an emergency situation where President Biden left us with a $1.2 trillion trade deficit.Greer: When you look at President Biden, in the last quarter of 2024, median weekly earnings fell 2.1 percent.Duffy: Biden had the social cost of credit when we build infrastructure, roads and bridges, adding 3 to 5 percent on infrastructure costs.Duffy: By the way, we shouldn’t have dealt with this because Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg had moved the center from New York to Philadelphia.Turner: And at HUD, we want to make sure that the resources that we have now, which is American taxpayer dollars and the Biden administration, they prioritize illegal aliens over the American people.Vought: When you came into office, you basically stopped $200 billion in cost to American families just by stopping the Biden regulatory agenda.
Trump deserves credit Rubio: Mr. President, you deserve tremendous credit for that.Rubio: And frankly, I think countries around the world, even those that are out there complaining about this a little bit, should actually be grateful that the United States has a president that’s willing to confront a threat like this and not allow it to continue to persist, because these people will kill as many Americans as they have a chance to do.Rubio: Mr. President, I think you deserve a lot of credit for two things.Rubio: And so, on all these things, Mr. President, I think you deserve tremendous credit for the transformational aspect of our foreign policy.Rubio: First of all, this is a very talented team, as you’ve seen and as you know because you picked every single one that’s on. You deserve tremendous credit for doing that.Kennedy: You should also get bipartisan accolades on the M.F.N. agreement.Kennedy: It will affect every American for 100 years, and you should be getting bipartisan accolades on that.Vance: Completely aside from the fact that I think it’s a good thing or I think that President Trump deserves political credit for it, why did we go from a military where people didn’t want to serve to now all of a sudden they do want to serve?Greer: And I think you should be commended for it, and we look forward to seeing what comes in the next few years.
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President Donald Trump is pressuring Muslim-majority nations to join the Abraham Accords if they want to participate in a developing Iran agreement, according to multiple reports.
The Abraham Accords are a series of agreements aimed at normalizing diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab and Muslim-majority nations.
PRESIDENT TRUMP SAYS DEAL WITH IRAN IS ‘LARGELY NEGOTIATED’
President Donald Trump attends and claps during the signing ceremony of the Peace Charter for Gaza at the 56th World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2026. (Harun Ozalp/Anadolu)
Trump said Saturday that he urged Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and Jordan to normalize relations with Israel during a phone call with regional leaders.
“I stated that, after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
TRUMP SAYS MORE NATIONS LINING UP TO JOIN ABRAHAM ACCORDS AFTER KAZAKHSTAN
President Donald Trump holds a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Dec. 29, 2025. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The president also said he planned to speak with the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The UAE and Bahrain became the first two nations to sign the accords in 2020.
Trump also floated the idea that Iran could eventually become part of the Abraham Accords.
US MILITARY IS ‘IRON SHIELD’ PROTECTING AMERICAN BASES, LIVES FROM IRAN PROXIES: HEGSETH
President Donald Trump and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia pause for photographs along the West Wing Colonnade at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 18, 2025. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“In speaking to numerous of the Great Leaders mentioned above, they would be honored, as soon as our Document is signed, to have the Islamic Republic of Iran as part of the Abraham Accords. Wow, now that would be something special,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
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U.S. and Israeli officials do not expect the UAE to move forward on the issue until after Israel’s elections in September.
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