Trump heads to San Antonio today to campaign for Ken Paxton in a Senate race that NBC News rates a toss-up — and the most powerful Republican in Texas won't be standing on that stage.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who's up for reelection himself in a race NBC rates "likely GOP," cited a scheduling conflict rather than appear alongside Trump and Paxton. That absence is the tell. Paxton, as attorney general, built his brand suing the Biden administration and going after corruption the consultant class preferred to ignore. The establishment fears accountability; the grassroots demand it. Now Paxton is locked in a tight race against Democrat James Talarico, and Democrats see Texas as a potential pickup on their path to flipping the Senate.
The stakes extend well beyond Texas. Senate Republican leaders are already mapping contingency plans for a Supreme Court vacancy — a scenario Politico describes as a "nightmare" for the GOP if they lose the majority. The two oldest justices, Clarence Thomas, 78, and Samuel Alito, 76, are both Republican appointees. A Democratic Senate could, as Raw Story reported, "shut down confirmations" of Trump's favored nominees entirely.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Republicans "would proceed quickly with such a vacancy." Sen. Thom Tillis — a frequent Trump critic who could, as Politico notes, "single-handedly bottle up a nominee" in the Judiciary Committee — said he would "absolutely" support filling an end-of-year vacancy. "You've got to use your majority position to take that vote," Tillis told reporters, though he added he "doubted" a seat would open and said he "can't think of anything other than health" that would cause a sudden retirement.
Alito told Bloomberg he intends to "stick around through this term," which ends early next summer. Thomas hasn't publicly addressed retirement plans in years. Thune was blunt: if a justice planned to retire, "They would have done it already."
Schumer is pitching the court as a rallying cry for Senate control: "One of the reasons we need to make sure that we do everything we can to take back the Senate is [to] not let Trump put such horrible justices, MAGA justices, on the Supreme Court and the lower courts." Republicans would have just five scheduled session weeks to find 50 votes if a vacancy opened.
NBC framed today's rally as part of Trump's multi-state midterm blitz — at least 17 states before the election. What they buried: the significance of who's not showing up. Abbott's scheduling conflict is the whole story. The people who benefit from the current arrangement don't want to stand next to the people who'd upend it.
The question neither party wants to answer honestly: what happens when the vacancy clock starts and the majority is already gone?
