Cornyn, Paxton trade attacks early in closely watched Texas GOP Senate primary
'We're going to end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars potentially on this race in Texas because we can't lose the seat in Texas, and that is money that can't be used in places like Michigan, New Hampshire and Georgia," Cornyn told reporters Wednesday.
He went on to call Paxton a 'conman and a fraud" in remarks that set the stage for a bitter campaign in the months ahead. The feud is not new: Cornyn, who lost a bid for Senate majority leader last year, is among the few prominent Republicans who has criticized Paxton over legal troubles that once threatened the career of Texas' top law enforcement official.
Paxton, a close ally of President Donald Trump who was first elected to the Texas statehouse in 2002, is starting his campaign by framing himself an outsider and telling voters on his website that he will take on 'career politicians' in Washington. Among Paxton's recurring criticisms of Cornyn — who has served in Congress since 2002 — was the senator's support of a bipartisan gun control bill after the 2022 elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.
Looming over the race is if Trump will make an endorsement. Paxton said Wednesday he doesn't expect the president to weigh in until closer to election day.
'I would certainly love to have President Trump's endorsement. I think I would be the death knell to John Cornyn,' he said in an interview on The Mark Davis Show.
Paxton has built a loyal following within the Texas GOP's hard right that supported him during a historic Republican-led impeachment in 2023 over accusations of corruption and bribery. Trump at the time slammed the proceedings and Paxton was later acquitted in the Texas Senate.
Statewide campaigns in Texas are already among the most expensive in the country. Last year, Republicans spent $87 million helping defend Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in his race against Democrat Colin Allred, including $75 million from a super PAC supporting Cruz, according to Federal Elections Commission filings.
Allred, who lost by more than 8 percentage points, has not ruled out another Senate run after Democrats spent more than $130 million last year trying to elect him. Among Cornyn allies, there is concern that Paxton would be vulnerable and require millions more dollars in advertising that GOP donors otherwise could apply to those other races, instead of to defend a seat in a Republican-leaning state like Texas.
Nationally, Republicans see an opportunity next year to expand their 53-47 majority in the Senate. They see pickup opportunities in three swing states where Democrats have announced retirements: New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Michigan Sen. Gary Peters and Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith. The GOP is also optimistic about the party's chances in Georgia, where Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff is up for reelection.
No Democrat has yet entered the Senate race in Texas.
Paxton's entry into the race underscores his political resiliency after being shadowed by his impeachment, an FBI corruption investigation and securities fraud charges in recent years. He reached a deal to end the securities fraud case last year and the Biden administration declined to prosecute Paxton.
During Paxton's last campaign run for attorney general in 2022, George P. Bush, the son of former presidential candidate Jeb Bush, also drew attention to Paxton's legal troubles. Paxton wound up defeating Bush by nearly 40 points in a runoff.
___
Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. ___ Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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Los Angeles Times
10 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Social Security turns 90 this week. Republicans are trying to keep it from reaching 100
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a clear mind about the value of Social Security on Aug. 14, 1935, the day he signed it into law. 'The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure,' he said in the Oval Office. 'We can never insure 100 per cent of the population against 100 per cent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against ... poverty-ridden old age.' He called it a 'cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete.' FDR envisioned further programs to bring relief to the needy and healthcare for all Americans. Some of that happened during the following nine decades, but the structure is still incomplete. And now, as Social Security observes the 90th anniversary of that day, the program faces a crisis. If there are doubts about whether Social Security will survive long enough to observe its centennial, those have less to do with its fiscal challenges, the solutions of which are certainly within the economic reach of the richest nation on Earth. They have more to do with partisan politics, specifically the culmination of a decades-long GOP project to dismantle the most successful, and the most popular, government assistance program in American history. From a distance, the raids on the program's customer service infrastructure and the security of its data mounted by Elon Musk's DOGE earlier this year looked somewhat random. Fueled by abject ignorance about how the program worked and what its data meant, DOGE set in place plans to cut the program's staff by 7,000, or 12 percent, and to close dozens of field offices serving Social Security applicants and beneficiaries. This at a time when the Social Security case load is higher than ever and staffing had already approached a 50-year low. This might have been billed as an effort to impose 'efficiency' on the system. But 'a more accurate description,' writes Monique Morrissey of the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, 'is sabotage.' That has been conservatives' long-term plan — make interactions with Social Security more involved, more difficult and more time-consuming in order to make it seem ever less relevant to average Americans' lives. Once that happened, the public would be softened up to accept a privatized retirement system. Get the inefficient government off the backs of the people, the idea goes, so Wall Street can saddle up. George W. Bush's privatization plan, indeed, was conceived and promoted by Wall Street bankers, who thirsted for access to the trillions of dollars passing through the system's hands. This was never much of a secret, but it simmered beneath the surface. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, speaking at a July 30 event sponsored by Breitbart News, said the quiet part out loud. Referring to a private savings account program enacted as part of the GOP budget reconciliation bill Trump signed July 4, Bessent said, 'In a way, it is a back door for privatizing Social Security.' The private accounts are to be jump-started with $1,000 deposits for children born this year through 2028, to be invested in stock index mutual funds; families can add up to $5,000 annually in after-tax income, with withdrawals beginning when the child reaches 18, though in some cases incurring a stiff penalty. I asked the Treasury Department for a clarification of Bessent's remark, but didn't receive a reply. Bessent, however, did try to walk the statement back via a post on X in which he stated that the Trump accounts are 'an additive benefit for future generations, which will supplement the sanctity of Social Security's guaranteed payments.' Sorry, Mr. Secretary, no sale. You're the one who talked about 'privatizing Social Security' at the Breitbart event. You're stuck with it. Plainly, an 'additive' benefit would have nothing to do with Social Security. How it would 'supplement the sanctity' of Social Security benefits isn't apparent from Bessent's statement, or the law. Still, we can parse out the implications based on the long history of conservative attacks on the program. In 1983, the libertarian Cato Journal published a paper by Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, two policy analysts at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, titled 'Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy—i.e., for privatizing Social Security. From Lenin they drew the idea of mobilizing the working class to undermine existing capitalist structures. Cato's 'Leninist' strategy paper explicitly advocated encouraging workers to opt out of Social Security by promising them a payroll tax reduction if they put the money in a private account. IRAs, the authors asserted, would acclimate Americans to entrusting their retirements to a privatized system. They advocated an increase in the maximum annual contribution and its tax deductibility. 'The public would gradually become more familiar with the private option,' they wrote. 'If that did happen, it would be far easier than it is now to adopt the private plan as their principal source of old-age insurance and retirement income.' In other words, it would provide a backdoor for privatizing Social Security. (Germanis has since emerged as a cogent critic of conservative economics. Butler served at Heritage until 2014 and is currently a scholar in residence at the Brookings Institution; he told me in March that he still believes in parallel systems of private retirement savings as we have today, but as 'add on' savings rather than a substitute for Social Security.) Cato, a think tank co-founded by Charles Koch, has never relinquished its quest to privatize Social Security; the notion still occupies pride of place on the institution's web page devoted to the program. In 2005, when I attended a two-day conference on the topic at Cato's Washington headquarters, Michael D. Tanner, then the chair of Cato's Social Security task force, explained that Cato wasn't concerned so much with the system's fiscal and economic issues as with its politics. Its goal, he stated frankly, was to unmake FDR's New Deal. 'This is about whether we redefine a relationship between individuals and government that we've had since 1935,' he told me. 'We say that what was done was wrong then, and it's wrong now. Our position is that people need to be responsible for their own lives.' Yet forcing dramatic change on a program so widely trusted and appreciated is a heavy lift. That's why Republicans have tried to downplay their intentions. Back in 2019, for instance, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) talked about the need to hold discussions about Social Security's future 'behind closed doors.' Secrecy was essential, Ernst said, 'so we're not being scrutinized by this group or the other, and just have an open and honest conversation about what are some of the ideas that we have for maintaining Social Security in the future.' As I observed at the time, that was a giveaway: The only time politicians take actions behind closed doors is when they know the results will be massively unpopular. Raising taxes on the rich to pay for Social Security benefits? That discussion can be held in the open, because the option is decisively favored in opinion polls. Cut benefits? That needs to be done in secret, because Americans overwhelmingly oppose it. Curiously, Trump and his fellow Republicans seem to think that attacking Social Security is an electoral winner. Possibly they've lost sight of the program's importance to the average American. Among Social Security beneficiaries age 65 and older, 39% of men and 44% of women receive half their income or more from Social Security. In the same cohort, 12% of men and 15% of women rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income. Notwithstanding that reality, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently asserted that delays in sending out Social Security checks or bank deposits would be no big deal. 'Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month,' Lutnick said. 'My mother-in-law, who's 94 — she wouldn't call and complain.... She'd think something got messed up, and she'll get it next month.' He claimed that only 'fraudsters' would complain. I had a different take. Mine was that even a 24-hour delay in benefit payments would have a cataclysmic fallout for the Republican Party. It would be front-page news coast to coast. There would be nowhere for them to hide. While bringing misery to millions of Americans, a delay — which would be unprecedented since the first checks went out in 1940 — would be a gift for Democrats, if they knew how to use it. Where will we go from here? The current administration has already done damage to this critically-important program. An acting commissioner Trump installed briefly interfered with the enrollment process for infants born in Maine—an important procedure to ensure that government benefits continue to flow to their families—because the state's governor had pushed back against Trump in public. In July, the newly-appointed Social Security commissioner, Frank Bisignano, allowed a false and flagrantly political email to go out to beneficiaries and to be posted on the program's website implying that the budget reconciliation bill relieved most seniors of federal income taxes on their benefits. It did nothing of the kind. To the extent that Social Security may face a fiscal reckoning in the next decade, the most effective fix is well-understood by those familiar with the program's structure. It's removing the income cap on the payroll tax, which tops out this year at $176,100 in wage income. Up to that point, wages are taxed at 12.4%, split evenly between workers and their employers. Above the ceiling, the tax is zero. Remove the cap, and make capital gains, dividends and interest income subject to the tax, and Social Security will remain fully solvent into the foreseeable future. Trump and his fellow Republicans don't seem to understand how most Americans view Social Security: as an 'entitlement,' not because they think they're getting something for nothing, but because they know they've paid for it all their working lives. As much as the system's foes would like it to go away, as long as the rest of us remain vigilant against efforts to 'redefine a relationship between individuals and government' established in 1935, we will be able to celebrate its 100th anniversary 10 years from now, in 2035.
Business Journals
10 minutes ago
- Business Journals
Opportunity Zone tracts that could be in play across Los Angeles
Story Highlights New Opportunity Zone program reduces eligible areas by 26%. Governors must select zones by July 1, 2026. Intense lobbying is expected for limited Opportunity Zone designations. The second iteration of the federal Opportunity Zone program is expected to have fewer zones than its predecessor, potentially sparking intense lobbying efforts to determine which census tracts qualify for the high-stakes designation. The sweeping tax-and-spend legislation enacted last month — President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill — changed the criteria of the previous version of the Opportunity Zone program in a way that ultimately will shrink the number of eligible areas. The program by definition is intended to "spur economic growth and job creation in low-income communities while providing tax benefits to investors." GET TO KNOW YOUR CITY Find Local Events Near You Connect with a community of local professionals. Explore All Events In the original program, passed during President Trump's first term as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, 42,176 census tracts were eligible to become designated Opportunity Zones. Ultimately, governors in each state and territory picked 8,764 of those locations to receive the tax-advantaged investments made possible by the program. In the new version of the Opportunity Zone program, Congress narrowed the definition of "low-income community" to census tracts with a median household income that does not exceed 70% of an area's median income, down from an 80% threshold previously. A census tract also would be eligible if it has a poverty rate above 20%. Congress also removed the ability of governors to nominate census tracts that would not otherwise be eligible but were allowed in the previous edition of the program because they were 'contiguous' to an eligible tract. Eliminating those tracts in the program's new version shrinks the eligibility pool even further. The federal government has not yet published an official list of eligible tracts under the new law. But, according to an analysis of census tracts and the most recently available poverty data by The Business Journals, about 26,000 tracts appear to meet the eligibility criteria for an Opportunity Zone designation under the parameters of the revamped program. If governors were to then pick the maximum-allowed 25% of those sites to be Opportunity Zones, that would mean about 6,500 zones in the program — a nearly 26% drop from the number of available sites in the program's first iteration. That figure is in line with other estimates that have found the number of eligible Opportunity Zones could fall by more than 20% under the new law. To determine the estimated number of zones that could be available locally under the new version of the program, The Business Journals analyzed the 2025 Census Bureau list of all tracts and applied the new eligibility rules to those tracts. The analysis included poverty rate data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. In and around Los Angeles, more than 1,300 census tracts appear to qualify under the new criteria. Here's a look at the number of eligible tracts by county, according to The Business Journals' analysis: Los Angeles County: 846 tracts San Bernardino County: 159 Orange County: 138 Riverside County: 131 Ventura County: 44 New rules expected to fuel fights For Jacob Naig, a real estate agent, contractor and Opportunity Zone investor in Des Moines, Iowa, having fewer tracts means every mayor, chamber of commerce official and developers' coalition is going to have to fight harder to ensure their areas are included in the program. 'Look for polished census tract pitch decks, not only letters from governors' offices," Naig said in an email. "In Iowa, I can already see Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and who knows where else jockeying for a limited pool of urban tracts, while rural counties protest that they were forgotten last time and need a carve‑out.' Naig said there also are upsides to fewer Opportunity Zones. The changes should ensure that capital can go to truly distressed regions and not so-called 'tourist' areas as in the previous version of the program — places where no subsidy was truly needed to get developers to build. He also thinks states will devise clearer, more-transparent scoring rubrics, such as highlighting jobs or vacancy rates, to protect Opportunity Zone nominations from political blowback. He anticipates cities and states will pile on additional benefits such as facade grants, expedited permitting or special taxation zones, as well. 'States will codify what was previously ad hoc, and locals will create packages of incentives to sweeten tracts that appear scary on paper,' Naig said. Where Opportunity Zones could be located Some states will have many more eligible census tracts than others, according to The Business Journals' analysis. California tops all states in our estimate, with 2,738 census tracts that appear to be eligible, followed by Texas with 2,492 and New York with 1,649. Vermont, on the other hand, has just 19 such census tracts, according to our estimate, followed by Wyoming with 29 and Arkansas with 30. At a more-local level, the most-populous counties are at the top of the list for eligible number of census tracts, according to The Business Journals' analysis. That means Los Angeles County, with 846 tracts that appear to be eligible, followed by Chicago's Cook County, with 528. Harris County (Houston) in Texas has 526 eligible tracts, followed by New York's Kings County (Brooklyn) and Wayne County (Detroit) in Michigan. What will change for the program The new Opportunity Zone program calls for governors to identify their targeted sites by July 1, 2026, and for the program to officially open for investment on Jan. 1, 2027. That might seem like a lengthy timeline, but experts say business owners, landowners, investors and local-government officials should be taking action now — especially since the sun-up to designating new zones is likely to be a time of intense lobbying. Blake Christian, CEO at builder MIT Modular and an Opportunity Zone expert, said lobbying during the first round of the Opportunity Zone program was not pronounced because people were less aware of the full scope of the program and its potential. Governors ended up picking tracts that were already developed or were poorly suited to attract investment. Not this time, Christian said. 'Local lobbying has already begun, and with rural census tracts now more directly competing with urban areas, governors will be getting more public input than they may want,' Christian said. The original Opportunity Zones program saw about $89 billion in qualifying equity investments across 5,600 census tracts through the end of 2022, according to a working paper by the Economic Innovation Group — with expectations those investments will eventually total more than $100 billion. The group additionally noted that Opportunity Zones ultimately were responsible for a net increase of 313,000 housing units over a five-year period. Ahmed Whitt, director of the Center for Wealth Equity at Living Cities, said the new limitations on eligibility will likely discourage some real estate projects that contributed to the issues of gentrification and oversupply that plagued the program previously. 'We'll see more-intense lobbying, especially for select urban neighborhoods,' Whitt said. 'Still overall, the changes in 2.0 are likely to create a more-effective program by focusing on areas that truly need both investment and have growth potential.' Stay on top of the latest real estate news by signing up for The National Observer: Real Estate Edition.
The Hill
10 minutes ago
- The Hill
Progressives make inroads in key mayor's races
Progressives are making inroads in big-city mayoral races, giving the left flank a new shot in the arm as the Democratic Party faces an internal struggle over its future. Seattle community activist Katie Wilson surprised some political observers last week in finishing ahead of incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell (D) in a nonpartisan blanket primary. Though Harrell, who is more moderate, will have the opportunity to win reelection to a second term in November, Wilson is currently almost 10 points ahead of him in the primary results, as of the latest vote count. Coming in the aftermath of Zohran Mamdani's upset win in the New York City Democratic primary and as a left-wing challenger hopes to oust the current Minneapolis mayor, progressives are hoping it's a sign of the tide turning in their favor. 'Our hope is that there's a real moment for progressives, for folks who want to see change or are upset with the status quo,' said Alex Gallo-Brown, Wilson's campaign manager in an interview. The Democratic Party has spent months reevaluating its future in the aftermath of its losses last November and figuring out its direction ahead of the midterms. The party has experienced a battle for at least the past decade between its progressive and moderate wings for control of the party and the message pitched to voters. Finger-pointing followed former Vice President Harris's loss in 2024, with progressives getting blame from more moderate Democrats for contributing to a perception of the party as too far left. Coupled with some high-profile defeats for progressive candidates in key congressional and local races in 2024, the progressive wing didn't appear to be in a strong position entering this year. But progressives are much more optimistic now following results in some of the mayoral elections taking place this year in large cities. The first and biggest victory yet came with the surprise win from Mamdani, a New York State Assembly member backed by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), in the primary over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who touted progressive accomplishments while in office but ran as a moderate. Most public and even Mamdani-aligned polling didn't show him leading ahead of the primary, but he outperformed expectations to win comfortably by double digits in the final round of the city's ranked-choice tabulation. Meanwhile, another DSA-backed candidate is seeking to gain momentum in Minneapolis after winning the city party's endorsement. Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh (D) won the endorsement last month over Mayor Jacob Frey (D), who is seeking his third term in office. Though Frey is filing an appeal to the decision over what he argues was a flawed process, after significant technological issues, the development nonetheless underscores the proxy battle taking place in the city's election. 'This endorsement is a message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes, and politics as usual,' Fateh said in a post on X at the time. 'It's a mandate to build a city that works for all of us.' Most recently, Wilson took observers by surprise by finishing ahead of Harrell in the Seattle mayoral primary with about 51 percent of the vote to 41.4 percent for the incumbent mayor. The candidates will face off again in the November general election. Issues of affordability and public safety are playing key roles in the contest, as is the case for other large cities. Harrell has touted declining violent crime rates during his time as mayor and has pushed for increased hiring for the city's police force. Wilson, who previously expressed sympathy for the 'defund the police' movement but hasn't called for it during her campaign, has criticized Harrell over rising costs of living and housing affordability, while arguing that armed officers aren't needed to respond to mental health and other non-crime calls they receive. Gallo-Brown cast doubt on how much the public cares about 'labels' as opposed to who will find solutions to their problems. 'A lot of people, they kind of look at the Democratic Party or certain parts of it, and it's just business as usual,' he said. 'And so I think people like Katie, like Zohran, like other mayoral candidates around the country are showing people that another world is possible.' Harrell told The Hill in an interview that he wasn't surprised by the results given the 'angst' that voters expressed while his campaign conducted field work. He said he needs to remind voters that he's been a 'change agent' and helped turn the city around from the place it was in when he first took office, a time when the city was still coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and facing much higher levels of crime. 'You don't want to sacrifice a proven leader, just because there's impressive-sounding rhetoric that seems to excite people,' he said. 'The rhetoric will not get change done. It's people who are capable and have done the work.' Some Democrats tempered expectations for the progressive challengers and argued that Minneapolis and Seattle's races aren't as directly comparable to New York City's. Corey Day, a former executive director of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, pointed to the controversy surrounding the process that resulted in Fateh's endorsement and Frey's appeal, which could change the city party's decision. He also said he doesn't believe the endorsement will be as critical to determining the winner as it would be for some city council races. Day called Fateh's candidacy a 'significant challenge' to Frey but said he expects the incumbent to make clear their differences ahead of November. The election will be conducted by a ranked-choice process in which all candidates for the office compete on the same ballot. The race doesn't have a primary, so no results on where voters stand will be available until the election happens. Frey also doesn't have the controversies that Mamdani's chief opponent, Cuomo, had to overcome in the New York race. 'Once both of these candidates are spotlighted, and I think when they start talking about their policies and their records, it's going to be pretty clear for voters that Jacob Frey is their choice,' Day said, arguing that Frey has also established his progressive bona fides. Ashik Siddique, a DSA co-chair, said voters are excited from candidates who show they're willing to fight for working class voters, and these types of candidates can win even outside these cities if they hone their message and have discipline. 'People are very motivated to see people like Zohran and Omar and others all over the country really standing up for clear economic demands that will address the ways people feel their day to day lives are getting worse, but also being able to confront the [Trump] administration when it's scapegoating people,' he said. DSA enthusiasm was on full display at its national convention this month following Mamdani's win. DSA isn't involved in the Seattle mayor's race, and Wilson hasn't run as a democratic socialist, but the race is still another example of progressives feeling bullish. Washington state Democratic strategist Ron Dotzauer said he expects the general election turnout to be much higher than that of the primary was, changing the electorate. He said the low turnout favored Wilson's constituency and other more liberal candidates. Dotzauer said Wilson's constituency is 'ironclad,' so the onus will be on Harrell to capitalize on the increased voter turnout. 2024 Election Coverage 'There's a scenario for each of them to win, and I think it's going to be very, very close,' he said. Harrell also argued that he has shown his progressive values in fighting to raise the minimum wage, setting an 'aggressive' climate policy and raising taxes on the largest businesses. He also pointed to a key endorsement he received from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. 'When people start calling people names or labeling them, they're not really looking at the hard work that's been achieved,' he said. 'And again, I'll that story during the general, but I think that should resonate in the minds of most voters.'
