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Texas Senator John Carnon lost a primary against Ken Paxton, the candidate backed by President Trump. Republicans see a demonstration of Trump's power Democrats see a weaker candidate.
They hope to beat this fall. I'm Steven Skip with A Martinez. And this is a first from
NPR News. South Carolina Republicans rejected the president's push to redraw congressional maps before the midterms. They wanted to backfire helping Democrats. You energize them to come out and vote against you because people will vote when they're angry. And I think what we're seeing today across the state with the record turnout that we're seeing is that we've made some people mad. And at least half a dozen times, the president has said the
war with Iran is almost over, but still no deal. Will his push for Gulf countries to normalize
“ties with Israel, complicating negotiations? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.”
Every episode of It's been a minute. NPR is what's happening in culture podcasts. Starts by asking three questions. Who? How? Why now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow it's been a minute wherever you get your podcasts and we'll break down the zeitgeist topics that are filling your feed. A pair of Republican senators have lost their seats in
less than two weeks. Yeah, one of them is John Cornean. Texas-Chern general Ken Paxton defeated Cornean on Tuesday. He's been a senator for four terms. Paxton outpold Cornean by a margin of nearly two to one. President Trump supported Paxton, endorsing him late after Paxton was leading in many polls. Trump also recently supported this successful primary challenge to Louisiana Republican senator Bill Cassidy. You send public media's Andrew Schneider has been
following all of this, so Andrew, help us understand the scope of Paxton's victory over Cornean. Like many elections across Texas and around the country, the contest is very much about a potential changing of the guard. Cornean is in his mid-70s. He's a staunch conservative, but he represents the establishment wing of the Texas Republican Party. The parties moved considerably
to the right since he was first elected senator when George W Bush was in the White House.
Paxton's younger, he's long been a favorite with what has been developed into the Mago wing of the party. He made the case over the course of the past year plus that Cornean's time was passed, and particularly that Cornean wasn't enough of the supporter of President Trump. And Cornean repeatedly counted that he's voted for Trump's agenda more than 99% of the time, but that's a message he wasn't able to get through to a majority of Republican primary voters.
Yeah, early voting was already happening when President's endorsement came.
“How much of a role did you think that played in Paxton's win?”
Well, Paxton gave Trump a lot of credit for pushing him over the top. Here's Paxton giving his victory speech in Plano, Texas. President Trump is a leader of our
party, and his endorsement in this most powerful force in politics.
And I'm honored to have his support, and I look forward to working with him in the Senate to deliver forward Texas. Last month, Texas, public opinion research released a poll that suggested a Trump endorsement would propel Paxton to a double the convictory of Cornean, and that's exactly what happened. Okay, now Paxton is the Republican candidate against the Democratic nominee, and that's State Representative James Talereco. Did Paxton give any indication at all
how he plans to campaign against Talereco? Paxton's already arguing that Talereco is too far left to represent the state. He pointed to Talereco's previous statements on issues ranging from immigration to the economy to transgender rights. Now, traditionally, that line of attack has been very effective for Republicans running statewide in Texas. The last time a Democrat one statewide office here was more than 30 years ago, but it's not clear how it will work this time. One of
the ways Talereco became the Democratic nominee was by pointing to his record of flipping a state house district that previously went for Trump by double digits. Talereco's already launched his own campaign focusing on the corruption allegations that have done Paxton's succeed took the Attorney General's office. In fact, today marks the third anniversary of Paxton's impeachment by the Republican-led Texas House on some of those charges. That's an impeachment that ended
In his acquittal-wide the Texas Senate.
of the other major developments that you saw in Tuesday's elections? That changing of the
“guard phenomenon wasn't just limited to Republicans. Another race we saw called early in”
by a wide margin was in the Democratic primary runoff of the 18th congressional district. Thanks to last year's mid-decade redistricting Congressman Christian Manify was forced into a race against Congressman Al Green, Manify won that face off. Republicans targeted Green as part of
the redistricting, and this was their first real victory out of that. Manify is in his late 30s,
and Green is in his late 70s, and while Green had seniority on his side, this is a district that hasn't had steady representation for a few years, and that was very fresh in voters' minds. That's Houston Public Media's Andrew Schneider. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. lawmakers in South Carolina have rejected President Trump's efforts to reshape voting maps before the midterm election. A new map in South Carolina could have flipped the states
only how seed held by a Democrat Congressman James Clybert. On the same day, an Alabama court blocked a Republican-backed congressional map ahead of the midterms because it wasn't their words intentional, race-based discrimination. Still, Republicans have redrawn more districts in their favor across the country than Democrats have. Joining us is Gavin Jackson of South
“Carolina Public Radio, so Gavin, how did this play out in the state capital of Columbia?”
Yeah, well on a procedural vote over a third of the Republicans in the Senate, 14 of them
voted with the Democrats to effectively kill a bill that would have changed the maps. It's been a whirlwind three weeks here with redistricting going from not being on anyone's radar to dominating the final days of the legislative session. The push was briefly stopped in the Senate, which prompted Governor Henry McMaster to call a special session to take up a new map. And he's been saying that Trump needs to keep a
Republican Congress to carry out his agenda. Now a handful of prominent Senate Republicans continue to push back against this process that went into Memorial Day weekend, so it's been busy. And this all came to a head yesterday. That was the first day of early voting for the primaries and Democrats were urging people to go to the polls. And more than 30,000 votes have
been cast already as lawmakers were meeting, so some of them were even getting updates during
that debate. And around that time lawmakers faced a couple of procedural votes in the Senate to get the redistricting bill to a vote and it lost. Yeah, it's been a little different in each state in every state. So what's the push back about there? Yeah, again, they talked about the time crunch with the primary starting Senate Majorly Leader Shane Massey or Republican was outspoken against this from the beginning. And he raised constitutional concerns and said that the plan
could backfire on Republicans by motivating Democrats and independent voters. Here he is Tuesday. You energized them to come out and vote against you because people will vote when they're angry.
“And I think what we're seeing today across the state with the record turnout early voting”
turnout that we're seeing is that we've made some people mad at just just having the debate. Yeah, senators here really pride themselves on being deliberative and not letting Washington tell them what to do. And you factor in expected lawsuits, costs of delaying the primaries and some of them said it wasn't so much a rebuked to Trump as a reality check. Yeah, but the president usually gets his way on this kind of thing. And in the end, he helped defeat some Republicans in primaries
after they voted against redistricting. So aren't they worried about that there? There was definitely an undertone in the house where all 124 members wrote for reelection. But that was different in the Senate because they're not up for another two years. So they're not too concerned about that. Now, some Republicans said that they were worried that redistricting could have made these seats that are safe now more competitive. And the governor said that he was disappointed but that he
would not be calling lawmakers back again. Now, we mentioned the setback for Republicans in Alabama as well. What happened there? Yeah, that's another state that took up redistricting after the Supreme Court week in the voting rights act in April. And they're going for one seat like they did in South Carolina. And now a federal court temporarily blocked that yesterday, but it's expected to go to the Supreme Court, which has approved that redistricting once already. Now around the
country, like in Florida, in Texas, Republicans have redistricted about eight or nine seats in their way in more so than Democrats have. So the Louisiana Republicans are also working on one seat this week. And primaries are underway in the field made pretty much be set except for some of these court battles right now. All right, that's Gavin Jackson of South Carolina, public radio, Gavin Thanks. Thanks.
Rodriguez has noticed a pattern in how President Trump talks about Iran. Trump says the war is over or almost over, then clearly it is not over the weekend. The president said a ground-breaking deal with Iran was, quote, largely negotiated. A day later, he said there was no rush, while his AIDS indicated the deal was not done. And then on Monday, U.S. forces attacked a running in speedboats that they said were attempting to lay minds. So Franco Rodriguez is here
with us now. How many times have you seen this happen? Yeah, it's happened at least a half dozen times, dating back to late March. I mean, he's repeated several variations that a deal is
Close, that an agreement was largely negotiated, that a framework exists.
it just doesn't happen. I mean, take this weekend after almost three months of war,
“Trump was talking about an almost finalized deal that would include reopening the straight-of-form”
news. He was almost actually taking a victory lap, thanking intermediaries for their help with negotiations. And then, of course, he had to blow back from Republicans in Israel. I would say that this was the most emphatic he's been about an upcoming deal, but it's happened before. I mean, last month, Trump said they were very close to a deal, and that the two sides agreed to even
dig up Iran's enriched uranium. The reality is, while the president has repeatedly projected
this kind of optimism, there is yet to be anything really concrete or durable toward a resolution. And now he's trying to add more things to the deal. He's pressing on more countries to join the Abraham Accords. That's the regional agreement that seeks to unnormalize relations with Israel,
“but asking for that could make reaching a deal a lot more difficult.”
Yeah, it really could as Iran sees the Abraham Accords as anti-Iran. I mean, I was talking with Matthew Cronig, who had the Iran portfolio at the Pentagon and the Obama administration. He also served under a George W. Bush and Trump. You know, he says the deal is already complicated enough. It would make more sense to be used as a kind of carrot and stick approach, or you tell Iran, you'd better make this deal, or else we're going to make dynamics in the
region much more difficult for you by expanding the Accords. But he said this actually may be more about sending a message to Israel. One way it might make sentences if you're dealing with different audiences in the Abraham Accords is actually aimed at Israel and Netanyahu and saying,
"I know you're not happy that we're on the third Jamaican piece with the Islamic Republic,
but please stand down for now. There's something else in it for you." And that, of course, would be a better security environment overall for Israel.
“Okay, so if it's a better security environment, then why is it a hard sell to get other countries to join?”
Well, the biggest obstacle is the lack of a Palestinian state, many Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, have maintained a position that they will not normalize ties with Israel without a clear path towards creating one, and it's something that the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
of Israel has said will never happen. So how much are political pressures playing into all this?
I mean, I'd say quite a bit, Trump is facing growing pressure from various fronts to take action to reopen the state of Hormuz to get a handle on gas prices. They actually gas prices hit a new high of a memorial date weekend, and polls show that the war is unpopular with many Americans, and Trump's approval ratings are also dropping, and Republicans worry that they could lose the majority's in the midterms, both in the House and the Senate. That's White House correspondent,
Franco or Donuts, thanks a lot. Thank you. That's a first for Wednesday May 27th of the May Martinez. And I'm Steven Sceap. Today's our first was edited by Megan Pratt, Larry Kappel, Rebecca Metzler, Momanova, D.C. and Taylor Haney. It was produced by Zia D'Buch, and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Zo van Gönhoven,
and our technical director is Carly Strange, good morning, Carly. Our supervising producer is Michael Lipkin, join us again tomorrow. Brazil used to have one of the fastest growing economies in the world. People called it the country of the future. Because it seems like we have it all, man. But then, the music stopped. On the planet Money Podcast, a lot of countries these days aren't rich,
they aren't poor, they're just kind of stuck in the middle. Why is that? Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
