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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a newsletter that sees the cage-match construction at the White House and wonders how long it will be before President Donald Trump announces the America 250 pole-dancing contest on the Washington Monument.

This week, we’ve got a lot of Texas, where the filthy tricks and locker-room slurs have only just begun. Markwayne Mullin has a brilliantly dumb idea he’s workshopping. The DOJ is reportedly going after a woman who sought legal recourse against Trump years ago. So that’s cooool …

First: Trump’s sicko takedown of a senator who once looked at him funny.

The Texas senator, who only 18 months ago fell a handful of votes short of becoming Senate Republican leader, was officially put out to pasture in the Texas Senate runoff this week. Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general and personification of the shit-eating grin, defeated John Cornyn 64–36 after receiving Trump’s endorsement the previous week. A few weeks ago, no incumbent senator, period, had lost a primary since Alabama’s Luther Strange (who was kind of a fake senator anyway) in 2017. Now two—Cornyn and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy—have lost theirs.

Trump’s treatment of Cornyn was crueler than that of Cassidy. At least Trump had a reason to seek revenge against Cassidy, over his impeachment conviction vote in 2021. He didn’t have much reason to despise Cornyn, beyond a stray comment here or there. Cornyn had been a conservative soldier in the Senate: raising gobs of money from his Texas network; never once voting against Trump’s or leaders’ wishes. He wasn’t naturally MAGA, sure, and, as do most of the old-guard GOP senators, maybe thought Trump was completely and incurably insane. But he kept this to himself. Cornyn was caught in the crossfire of an ongoing feud between Trump and Senate leaders for the latter’s lack of interest in tossing aside the filibuster, firing the meddlesome parliamentarian, or giving the president his ballroom money. Senate Republicans were forgetting, in Trump’s view, that their role is to serve as his doormat. And so he reminded them.

Republicans’ attack plan: Call him a girl.

Well! At least Texas Republicans now have a nominee and can pivot toward the necessary work of othering the Democratic nominee, James Talarico. They were hot out of the gate this week, playing the most cringeworthy—at least if you’re trying to win the political middle in Texas—hits of Talarico’s career, while also making up a few. Talarico did, for example, call God “nonbinary,” he did say that there are six biological sexes, he did say that “white skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus” of racism. But he is not a vegan, as Republicans all week have been claiming he is. He did, however, recently order potato-egg-and-cheese breakfast tacos—no meat, and no side order of........

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