August 12, 2025
THE TOP
Inside the big-dollar John Cornyn rescue mission
Happy Tuesday morning.
News: Senate Republicans are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars over the next few months to rescue Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, hoping to reintroduce him to Lone Star State conservatives and save his flagging primary prospects.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the top GOP super PAC focused on Senate races, urged donors last week to open their wallets to help Cornyn beat back a challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguing the race could become a costly disaster without immediate intervention.
Their message, as laid out in an SLF slideshow obtained by Punchbowl News, is stark — invest in Cornyn now or go broke trying to elect Paxton next fall.
SLF projected it would cost between $25 million to $70 million to help Cornyn win the GOP nomination — or require $200 million to $250 million to save Paxton in the general election.
We got our hands on a portion of SLF’s Texas presentation and reviewed the rest.
The SLF presentation shows that Cornyn trails Paxton by 17 points in an average of 13 public and private polls taken during the first six months of 2025.
More surprisingly, according to the SLF presentation, 58% of Republican primary voters don’t believe Cornyn is conservative. That leaves Cornyn in a tough position to win a primary against the fire breathing — and scandal-ridden — Paxton.
Here’s what stood out to us.
The stakes. This race has become an ordeal for Republicans. Senate GOP leaders firmly believe that Paxton will put the seat at risk if he’s the Republican nominee in a general election. See Paxton’s recent high-profile divorce as evidence of some of his electoral baggage.
One of the slides hammers that point home. It shows Cornyn beating a possible Democratic nominee, former Rep. Colin Allred, by six points. Meanwhile, Paxton is losing by one point.
But, as we’ve written repeatedly, no polling has shown that Cornyn can beat Paxton in a primary — or is even competitive against him.
Republicans believe they can change that by throwing money at the problem, and they’ve already begun.
Ideology. SLF described the fact that “primary voters don’t view Cornyn as conservative” as the “[m]ost pressing problem.”
Nearly 40% of primary voters view Cornyn as “moderate” while another 19% view him as “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal.” Only 12% view him as “very conservative.” Meanwhile, 47% of primary voters viewed Paxton as “very conservative.”
Cornyn’s allies are eager to change these numbers. But the longtime GOP incumbent has fallen out of favor with conservatives in recent years.
Cornyn, who’s been in the Senate since 2002, has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years and helped deliver many of President Donald Trump’s biggest accomplishments. Cornyn was the Senate GOP whip during the initial two years of Trump’s first term.
But Cornyn has since drawn the ire of Texas conservatives, especially after partnering with Democrats on a bipartisan gun safety law in 2022 as a response to the murder of 19 children and two teachers in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
As the 2024 election drew nearer, Cornyn was among a handful of Republican senators who stated publicly that the GOP should move on from Trump, arguing he couldn’t defeat then-President Joe Biden in a general election.
Timing. It’s worth noting that all of the polls mentioned in the presentation are from January to June 2025.
July was a big month for this race. Paxton’s wife announced she was filing for divorce “on biblical grounds” and One Nation, a nonprofit aligned with SLF, and Cornyn’s super PAC began spending big on ads, casting Cornyn as a pro-Trump conservative. Since mid-July they have collectively spent more than $7 million.
One SLF slide shows the many media markets in Texas and stresses the scope and cost of their effort. The state’s filing deadline is in December and the primary in March.
“The not great news: this is an expensive state with an early timeline. Resources will need to be committed starting this August.”
The responses. Chris Gustafson, SLF’s spokesperson, said the group strongly supports Cornyn and “will continue to educate voters on his conservative record,” while noting that “Ken Paxton’s toxic record only takes resources away from growing the Senate majority.”
Cornyn’s senior adviser Matt Mackowiak sent us this statement:
— Ally Mutnick, Andrew Desiderio and John Bresnahan
The Vault: A super chill, low-stakes inflation report!
It’s inflation report day. The politics are already in full force, August recess notwithstanding. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is set to release July’s edition of the consumer price index at 8:30 a.m.
The stakes of this report are significant for Washington’s economic policymakers. Forecasters currently expect price data to tick upward again this month. The 12-month average of inflation has been increasing since May.
Inflation was in a gradual retreat for months before the Trump administration kicked off its trade war. Prices have also been boosted by increasing energy costs across the United States.
This slow climb upward has renewed the Federal Reserve’s deep-seated fears of inflation — or worse, stagflation — and prompted the central bank to keep rates unchanged for the length of President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump hasn’t liked that very much.
Speaking of things Trump doesn’t like: It’s already been a tough couple of weeks for the BLS. This will be the first major data release from the bureau since Trump fired former Commissioner Erika McEntarfer over regular revisions that wiped out a summer of job gains.
Trump announced McEntarfer’s replacement Monday night: E.J. Antoni, who currently serves as chief economist at the Heritage Foundation.
Hill watching: The great unanswered question of Trump’s economic policy has been how tariffs will manifest in consumer prices in the longer-term. The effects so far have been limited, as some Senate Republicans have loved to tell us.
“Tariffs have had no meaningful impact on inflation, despite the chicken littles walking around this place,” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) said late last month.
And it’s possible that will remain the case. It’s also distinctly possible hotter prices will endure into the fall.
But hotter inflation data, including last month’s personal consumption expenditures index, hasn’t done much to stop the Republican trend of calling for Fed Chair Jay Powell to resign in lieu of lowered rates. “We should just have rates that are in line with the rest of the world,” Moreno said.
Powell still has some friends on the Hill. Or at least, folks who will defend his independence from the White House. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told us before the Senate left town that the chamber had a role to play in protecting the Fed.
“This is a tug and pull between two co-equal branches, and we absolutely have a role to play. That’s how you do the counterbalance and make it less subject to losing its independence, just purely out of de facto pressure from the executive,” Tillis said.
– Brendan Pedersen
THE CAMPAIGN
Doggett sparks war with Casar over Austin seat
Rep. Lloyd Doggett has all but declared war against Rep. Greg Casar after the new proposed Texas congressional map looped the two Democrats into one district.
Doggett’s message: I’m running in Texas’ 37th District and Casar better not.
Doggett has said he plans to run in the 37th, a safe blue seat anchored in Austin that has a large portion of his current voters. But Doggett has irked fellow Democrats by calling for Casar to run in the new 35th District, a San Antonio-area seat that President Donald Trump won by 10 points in 2024.
In a not-so-subtle email to supporters, Doggett wrote: “I remain hopeful that Congressman Casar will not abandon his reconfigured CD35, in which he is the only incumbent.”
Doggett notes that the new 35th District is more Hispanic than the current 35th District, which Casar represents. “Your support is a way of indicating that you agree that two seats are better than fighting over one,” he wrote.
But the new 35th District has very little of Casar’s current turf. Casar, a former Austin City Council member, is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and is not a particularly natural fit for a red district near San Antonio.
And many Democrats are privately surprised that the 78-year-old Doggett is attempting to box out a 36-year-old Casar, according to sources tracking the race. Doggett was the first House Democrat to urge then-President Joe Biden not to run for reelection last year.
Don’t forget, this is all happening while dozens of Texas Democratic legislators have fled the state to deny quorum to Republicans looking to pass this map.
Casar has said he plans to run in Austin. After Doggett’s email, Casar posted on X: “I love you Austin Texas.”
When we posted about Doggett’s email, the incumbent doubled down in a post on X, writing that a decision by Casar to run in Austin “helps Trump, divides progressives.”
Then he said as much again in a local TV interview.
Also … Ad news: Liberal group Unrig Our Economy is launching a $300,000 ad buy attacking Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.). The spot features a Scranton, Pa., resident criticizing Bresnahan “for putting billionaires over us” and backing tax breaks for wealthy Americans. The ad is the latest in the group’s effort to tie vulnerable House Republicans to the One Big Beautiful Bill.
And recruitment news: Emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman is launching a run against Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.).
— Ally Mutnick and Max Cohen
BUCKEYE STATE
New NRSC memo projects confidence in Ohio
New: The NRSC is already going after former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) — even though he hasn’t officially entered the Ohio Senate race.
In a new memo obtained by Punchbowl News, the Senate GOP campaign arm says Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) is in a strong spot to win in 2026.
“As Ohio reddens and conservative momentum grows, Sherrod Brown’s waning legacy will be that of a two-time loser — and Husted is well positioned to defeat him again,” the NRSC memo reads.
Brown consistently outperformed national Democrats in his Senate races, but he lost in November to now-Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio). National Democratic figures like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer see Brown as their best bet to flip the Senate seat.
The NRSC is touting that Husted — appointed by GOP Gov. Mike DeWine to fill JD Vance’s vacancy in January — is consolidating Republican support and has consistently won statewide elections in Ohio.
President Donald Trump has also endorsed Husted, ending any chatter of a primary challenge from the right.
In a cycle where Democrats need to flip four seats to claim the majority, the party will be eyeing stretch opportunities like Ohio.
— Max Cohen
THE AGENDA
CBO: Rich get biggest OBBB boost
The One Big Beautiful Bill will shrink resources for the poorest Americans while giving a boost to middle-income and wealthy households, per CBO.
The Congressional Budget Office’s latest assessment of the OBBB underscores the GOP’s political challenge. People see a bump from the law’s tax cuts, which helped unite Republicans behind the bill. But deep spending cuts leave the lowest-income people with less.
Democrats requested the new data from the non-partisan CBO, and they’ve been quick to seize on it. Democrats have been hammering the GOP over Medicaid cuts and tax cuts for the wealthy, making that contrast the core of their political message on the law.
The numbers. CBO found that Americans’ resources will increase on average over the next decade thanks to the law, but the impacts vary at different income levels.
Households in the lowest 10% of income earners will see their resources decline by about $1,200 per year under the OBBB. That’s mainly due to Medicaid and SNAP cuts, CBO says.
Middle-income households will see their resources grow by an average of $800 to $1,200. But it’s the wealthiest 10% that get the biggest benefit. Those households will see resources rise by about $13,600, largely thanks to tax cuts.
CBO also said new work requirements for SNAP will lead 2.4 million fewer people to get benefits in an average month.
— Laura Weiss and John Bresnahan
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Our new weekly show, Fly Out Day, brings you inside the most consequential decisions shaping Congress with the people at the center of the story. From Hill leadership to Washington’s most-plugged in reporters, join us straight from our townhouse each Thursday evening. Watch the latest episode now.