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Republican John Cornyn, the four-term senior senator from Texas, is suddenly fighting for his political life to hold the seat he’s occupied for more than two decades. Party operatives have practically begged Donald Trump to jump into the primary runoff race and endorse Cornyn over his scandal-plagued but scrappy opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And yet, Trump has held off—perhaps because he views the dangling sword over Cornyn’s head as leverage, or he sees a bit of himself in Paxton. Either way, it’s hardly clear whether a belated Trump nod would drag Cornyn over the finish line.

That’s a problem for national Republicans, who are betting the house—to the tune of at least $70 million so far—to keep Paxton off the ballot in the general. Paxton, after all, has generated perhaps the fattest oppo file in politics: He’s been impeached, acquitted, accused of stealing a Montblanc pen, and divorced “on biblical grounds.” Most strategists argue Cornyn is the only Republican who can beat Democrat James Talarico, at least without having to siphon millions of dollars from other Senate races.

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The party had some reason to hope after the March 3 primary, when Cornyn narrowly placed first, advancing to a May runoff with the wind at his back. Cornyn’s allies hoped this would signal to Trump that their guy was a winner—albeit barely—and were ebullient when reports surfaced over a week ago that Trump’s imprimatur was imminent. But one Cornyn donor I spoke to at the time remained concerned, telling me that Trump needed to endorse within the following week to capitalize on the momentum.

That was 10 days ago. And instead of putting the issue to rest, Trump continues to dangle his endorsement over not just Cornyn, but the entire Senate Republican conference, as leverage to get them to blow up the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act. Last week, Paxton goaded the president, even offering to drop out if it did pass. So as much as Republicans have dreaded this runoff, it’s proving yet more excruciating than anyone had anticipated only weeks ago.

Sure, not everyone is worried. Some Texas Republicans cannot see any scenario in which either Republican nominee loses the general election. The first wave of opposition research on Talarico, the seminarian Democratic nominee with a long history of liberal statehouse speeches and social media activity, heartened Republicans everywhere. “Anybody who says ‘Jesus is nonbinary’ and ‘There are six sexes’”—references to remarks Talarico made in the state House—“that ain’t gonna happen in the state of Texas,” insisted a Texas Republican consultant.

Even so, a good night for Texas Republicans in November could mean spending a fortune to hold on to a Senate seat that’s otherwise been reliably safe for the party. Meanwhile, there are all kinds of wildfires breaking out downballot, thanks to the G.O.P.’s own redistricting project, the national political environment, and one hell of a congressional scandal. One Dallas Republican source has taken to casually referring to the political affairs in his state as “a meltdown.” In other words, the party may be on track for a Pyrrhic victory in the Senate, but a great deal of damage has already been done.

Texas used to be where national Republicans went to fix their political problems in other states. Does a candidate need more money for the Raleigh media market? Go to Dallas and Houston to fundraise. Worried about losing the House? Call Austin, and Texas will pony up more seats in redistricting. (The most recent gerrymandering go-round was, after all, the second time in 25 years that national Republicans deployed this tactic outside the normal redistricting cycle.) This time, though, Texas Republicans are consumed with their own dramas and just about tapped out for everyone else’s. As the Texas consultant put it, “The state of Texas is on fire, dammit.”

In many ways, Cornyn’s dilemma is a microcosm of the state’s—and the party’s—larger spiritual problem. As a vestige of the pre-Trump G.O.P. and a former two-term chairman of the N.R.S.C., Cornyn lived through the turbulent 2010-2012 era, when the Republican establishment saw its incumbents and favored candidates fall to fatally flawed Tea Party candidates who twice cost them the Senate majority. Cornyn helped write the playbook for dealing with this threat, and now he’s deploying it himself: Run your primary campaign like your life depends on it. Of course, the guns-blazing approach comes at a cost—about $70 million has been spent on reelecting Cornyn so far, out of the $95 million spent on the Republican primary in total. “That’s the G.D.P. of small countries,” said a Washington-based Republican consultant. “That’s crazy.”

But the deeper concern is what the mess in Texas means for Republican efforts beyond the state. If Cornyn’s reelection were a gimme, the senator would be inviting Republican incumbents and challengers to meet his Texas donors, traveling the country fundraising for colleagues as a bold-faced Senate headliner; and raising ungodly amounts of money for the N.R.S.C. But Republican infighting in the state, and the looming threat of a genuinely competitive general election, means most of that money and energy is staying at home. And every dollar spent in Texas is money not going out to House and Senate races elsewhere.

Republicans also anticipate that the Texas donor set will prioritize local candidates over vulnerable out-of-state Republican members or challengers. “Everyone just assumes they can go through River Oaks and Highland Park and pick up a couple hundred thousand dollars and head home,” said a Dallas-based Republican consultant. “With the donor fatigue that is sure to set in after the runoff, and with several open congressional seats in Texas, the donors are going to face the races they have here.” National Republican sources say the message has been received, and few federal candidates are bothering to book Texas fundraising junkets in the near term. “Texas, [which] has long been the kingmaker in Republican politics, has decided to shut down its Strait of Hormuz,” said the Washington-based Republican consultant.

Among all the worst-case scenarios running through distressed Republican minds at the moment, the notion that Talarico could actually win is perhaps the least likely. But the problems also run downstream, thanks in part to the party’s own redistricting efforts. Most national Republicans maintain confidence they will gain a handful of Texas seats, partly based on fielding mostly strong nominees and weak fundraising among Democratic candidates. But some anxious Texas Republicans are starting to ponder the possibility they could wind up with a net loss of Texas House seats this cycle, even with redistricting.

Most Republicans, in fact, now concede that it’s unlikely they’ll pick up the full five seats they expected when they drew the map in the summer. They did so in part based on how Trump performed with Hispanics in 2024, assuming that those voters had permanently realigned toward the G.O.P. But that bet may prove ill-timed, especially given the scale of Hispanic alienation over ICE brutality and the ongoing impact of tariffs—not to mention suddenly surging gas prices amid the war in Iran. “We’ve lost that fragile coalition,” said a Houston Republican.

Texas Republicans now argue that caution is merited and that even money may not solve these problems. “The intensity, geez Louise, you can’t manufacture that,” the Houston Republican told me after watching the organic Hispanic surge in the Democratic primary earlier this month. “There aren’t enough mailers for that.”

Even worse for them, some Republican-held seats are also possibly up for grabs—or will at least cost money to hold. Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales withdrew from his race thanks to an extramarital scandal. The de facto Republican nominee in his district is now a YouTube gun enthusiast who has posted videos with Nazi references and touted Confederate heritage. And just like many other Republican problems in Texas, this one was entirely self-inflicted.

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