April 20, 2025

Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell with you this Easter Sunday. My family and I started our day with church, then headed out to a friend’s house for a champagne-fueled brunch and kids scavenger hunt. Don’t worry, I wrote (most of) this before the Veuve. Today, I’m taking you on a deep dive into the Texas Senate race. There is so much more to this story than has been reported, and it’s not pretty. It involves the controversial consultant Jeff Roe and a personal animus between the candidates that could cost Republicans a Senate seat deep in the heart of MAGA country.

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But first…

The battle Trump wants: Donald Trump has made deportations a flashpoint of his presidency, and with good reason. Aside from tariffs (which don’t poll as well), immigration has been the animating, base-stoking focus of Trump’s political agenda since before he launched his 2016 campaign, and the issue has defined the dog-eared playbook he’s been quoting from ever since. Democrats are now attempting to flip the script on what’s been a winning issue for Trump by focusing attention on the deportation of immigrants without criminal convictions to be imprisoned in El Salvador—a policy that polls at 61-26 against the administration.Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran man who was living in Maryland, has become the symbol of the divide—creating an opportunity for Democrats like Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who flew to El Salvador to visit Garcia in prison this week. Politically, the fight isn’t about deportation per se—even though the administration is making it about that—but rather due process, which Garcia was denied. The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must notify migrants before they are being deported and follow the rule of law. The Court had to step in again early Saturday morning to temporarily halt another round of deportation flights, after it seemed there’d been no adjudication of the migrants’ deportation orders.Defending what their own lawyers have conceded was a “mistaken” deportation, the White House has embarked on a political campaign-style attack on Garcia’s character, digging up and exposing his checkered past. The White House believes that their election victory proves that the public is on their side when it comes to expelling migrants, regardless of what the courts say. Despite the optics of defying court orders, they’re happy to keep painting the Democrats as the party of open borders. The early polling suggests they may be overplaying their hand. Trump, of course, will never acknowledge a mistake for inadvertently deporting Garcia, even if it leads to a constitutional crisis. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said on Meet the Press this morning, “The administration won’t admit it, but this was a screw-up.”
Vance meets the pope: Vice President J.D. Vance met with Pope Francis for “a few minutes” on Easter Sunday, following a series of criticisms the two have expressed about each other, implicitly and explicitly, over the past year. Vance, a somewhat newly converted and especially conservative Catholic, argued earlier this year that the concept of ordo amoris justified prioritizing the love of family and neighbors over the needs of foreign citizens.The details of the conversation were not made public. Afterward, however, the pope seemed to offer another rebuke of the Trump administration’s policies in his Easter “Urbi et Orbi” message. “I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear, which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger, and to encourage initiatives that promote development,” Francis wrote in a message delivered by Archbishop Diego Ravelli. “These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death.”

Now, for the main event…

The Jeff Roe Alamo

Roe, the Republican operative who was essentially blacklisted by the Trump White House, has become an unexpected wrinkle in the looming Senate primary between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton—with potential political repercussions bigger than Texas, itself.

Leigh Ann Caldwell

All politics is personal for Donald Trump, and never more so than when it comes to Jeff Roe—the Republican mega-consultant whose once-massively successful political firm, Axiom Strategies, was effectively blacklisted by the president for, among many other things, having the temerity to work on Ron DeSantis’s money job 2024 campaign. After Trump’s triumph in the G.O.P. primary, Roe went radio silent for the remainder of the cycle to protect his clients. In a post-primary conversation with Puck, he acknowledged that it had been “a mistake to run against a four-time indicted former president who was pretty well-liked.” So it was somewhat baffling when Ken Paxton, the controversial right-wing Texas attorney general, hired Roe earlier this month to help launch his Senate primary campaign against John Cornyn, a four-term Republican incumbent. Paxton is a more vociferous Trump ally, and the president has offered kind words in return. But in hiring Roe, Paxton may have jeopardized Trump’s support in what is expected to be a nasty and personal primary, according to multiple people close to the White House. “This certainly has not strengthened Ken Paxton’s hand,” one of them told me. “Jeff Roe’s involvement will hurt Ken Paxton more than help him for numerous reasons,” said another. The tension between Roe and Trump’s team has been growing for years, particularly with Trump’s 2024 campaign manager Chris LaCivita. Since reentering the White House, Trump’s political operation has encouraged Republicans to blacklist Roe and Axiom and has made it clear he will not have access to White House personnel. People close to the president argue that Roe is wasteful with donor money—his DeSantis super PAC spent a record $130 million—and prioritizes payments over party. Even now, more than a year after DeSantis dropped out, Trump is usually made aware when a candidate has hired Roe, a person close to the president told me. “That guy does surgery on candidates’ wallets,” Trump has said, complaining that Roe’s one-stop-shop, multiservice consultancy model is a racket. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

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Still, the Texas A.G. has his own history with Roe, whose firm helped Paxton during his previous campaigns, including a rough stretch in 2023 when he was impeached for bribery and abuse of office. (He was later acquitted by the Texas Senate.) His seemingly rushed announcement, which came earlier than party leaders expected, fueled speculation that Axiom had accelerated the timeline to secure the business. Axiom is also working for John Bash, who announced his candidacy for Paxton’s seat as attorney general on the same day that Paxton announced his run for Senate. (A representative of Axiom declined to comment on whether Bash is a client.) Roe, for his part, has assured people that he received an indulgence from the White House to take the Paxton job because of Paxton’s relationship with chief of staff Susie Wiles, according to two people familiar with his comments. But a person close to the White House rebuffed the claim. It’s “a classic Jeff statement,” but it’s “not true,” this person said. “It’s a flat-out lie.” (A representative for Axiom denied that Roe has said any such thing.) In any event, when Paxton went to the White House to notify the political team that he was going to challenge Cornyn, he didn’t bring any representatives from Axiom, as would be customary for a candidate in that situation. Perhaps that’s because Roe or other Axiom strategists wouldn’t have been let into the building, people close to the White House told me. “They wouldn’t even take the call,” one said.

An Ugly Primary

So far, Roe’s engagement has not impacted Trump’s endorsement decisions, a person close to Axiom told me, noting that the firm represented 41 of the 51 candidates that the president endorsed last cycle. But the Trump decree has impacted Axiom’s business. In recent months, Axiom has laid off more than 10 percent of its staff—more than 30 people—and scrapped an employee stock option program that the firm had been working on. The Texas primary is sure to be bitter, personal, and expensive, costing up to $100 million, according to some estimates. If Paxton wins, a general election could cost double that. It would be a significant payday for Axiom either way. “They need that race,” one Republican said of Axiom. Naturally, the firm is trying to handle its comeback as delicately as possible. Though a source told me Roe won’t be personally involved in Paxton’s race, others familiar with Axiom’s business say it’s impossible that Roe would not have a hand in such an important contest. Either way, the acknowledgment that Roe must distance himself from the race suggests that he remains somewhat toxic in Trump’s Washington. In an attempt to hedge his political bets, Paxton has started talking to other firms, two people familiar with the outreach said. But it’s hard to see another firm getting involved in the drama surrounding the Axiom/Paxton–Cornyn showdown to come. The Texas Senate primary, after all, promises to be costly in more ways than one. Trump has called both Paxton and Cornyn “friends of mine,” and commented that the field isn’t set. That’s kept the door open for a number of candidates who are seriously considering a run, including Rep. Wesley Hunt, a military veteran who represents the Houston suburbs. (A supporter of Hunt said that he is “the solution to a really big problem in Texas” because of the Paxton-Cornyn-Roe kerfuffle. But many Republicans say that it’s hard to see how he has a path if both Cornyn and Paxton stay in the race.)

Trump’s endorsement would obviously be crucial here. Paxton, despite his impeachment, has proved to be uncompromising as the state’s top cop, and an aggressive defender of conservative policies on the border and school vouchers. Indeed, he is more natural fit for a Trump endorsement than Cornyn, a mild-mannered deal-maker who’s worked hard to build a relationship with Trump. But the involvement of Roe is a real complexifier. “I think hiring Axiom exponentially increases the odds that the president not only stays neutral, but perhaps endorses somebody else in the race,” one Republican strategist told me. A representative of Axiom called the chatter “consultant fever dreams.” The primary race is expected to get ugly, in part, because the candidates can’t stand each other. Paxton dislikes Cornyn so much that forcing him out of his seat might just be satisfaction enough. Likewise, I’m told that Cornyn’s primary motivation for seeking a fifth term is his loathing of Paxton, a man he can’t countenance as his successor. It’s a race that few people want, or think is necessary.

The Franz Ferdinand Effect

None of this is deterring Roe, who is more interested in saving his business than in saving a G.O.P. majority in the Senate. And according to the Republican operatives I spoke to, that’s the essence of what’s fueling anger toward him. Paxton and his red-meat brand of politics can beat Cornyn in a primary—a poll leaked in early April, in fact, showed Paxton ahead of Cornyn by 25 points in the primary. But Republican Senate leadership worries that he’ll have a hard time winning the general election. There’s a second part to that same poll, conducted by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, that hasn’t been reported until now. It showed Paxton polling basically even (or within the margin of error) against a generic Democrat, according to three people who have seen the poll—not great for a Republican in Texas. The domino effect on fundraising and the Senate map could be devastating if Republican donors and political committees have to spend enormous sums to defend Texas, a state that should be a shoo-in. “Every dollar that we might have to spend in Texas, that’s one dollar we’re having to take out of Georgia or Michigan,” one Senate Republican operative said. Another operative, albeit hyperbolically, compared it to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand before World War I: an unnecessary event that had a long tail of consequences. Plus, Paxton is already having trouble raising money, multiple Republicans say. Donors (and Trump) bailed him out during his impeachment because they believed his role as attorney general would protect conservative causes in one of the most important judicial jurisdictions. But few party leaders are excited by the prospect of funding a primary challenge that will only balloon in cost if they have to expend enormous sums to save red Texas.

Have a great night, Leigh Ann

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