House Dem who repeatedly tried to impeach Trump toppled in heated Texas race
House Dem who repeatedly tried to impeach Trump toppled in heated Texas race
Al Green has been a longtime critic of President Trump, repeatedly interrupting his State of the Union speeches
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, said shortly after being removed from President Donald Trump's State of the Union address that he would "do it again," and that at some point, "You have to confront him face-to-face."
Texas redistricting claimed a longtime Democratic incumbent Tuesday, as Rep. Christian Menefee defeated Rep. Al Green in a Houston-area runoff that forced two sitting House Democrats into the same race.
Rep. Al Green, one of Congress’ most vocal Trump antagonists, lost his Democratic runoff Tuesday to fellow Texas Rep. Christian Menefee after redistricting scrambled Houston-area congressional lines.
The race for Texas’ solidly Democratic 18th Congressional District was an incumbent-on-incumbent Democratic clash, with Green and Menefee both trying to preserve their places in Congress after redistricting altered the congressional districts around Houston.
In Texas, it is mandated by law that if no candidate has captured a majority of the vote during a primary, the race will head to a runoff election. Menefee received 46% of votes and Green 44.2% following the early-March primary.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee was endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus Political Action Committee. (Office of the Harris County Attorney official website)
Green has been among President Donald Trump's fiercest critics in Congress, pursuing impeachment charges on multiple occasions against him during both of Trump's terms. Green has been kicked out of Trump's State of the Union addresses multiple times as well for standing up and protesting amid the speech.
Following the close March primary, Fox News Digital caught up with Green on Capitol Hill, during which the longtime congressman cited $1.5 million in spending against his campaign by the crypto-industry as a major driver behind the closeness of his race.
At the same time, Green slammed Menefee, over his alleged lack of experience and failure to show up for votes early in his congressional career following his tenure as an attorney.
Meneffee is a fresher face in Washington who ran on bringing a new face to Congress to combat Trump and Republicans.
"A former commercial litigation lawyer from a military family, Mr. Menefee had been mentioned as a potential statewide candidate. His decision to run for Congress instead underscored what many Democrats have acknowledged: that the prospects for breaking the Republican hold on state politics in Texas appeared dim for Democrats in the short term," Menefee said in a post to his website last March.
Rep. Christian Menefee (D-TX) speaks onstage during DJ Michael 5000 Watts King's Day at The Bell Tower on 34th on February 16, 2026 in Houston, Texas. (Marcus Ingram/Getty Images)
Menefee will take on Republican Ronald Whitfield in the November general election, though Menefee is strongly favored in the heavily-Democratic Houston-area district.
Trump’s purge of the GOP claims its biggest scalp yet
John Cornyn advertised that he voted with the president “99%” of the time. On Tuesday, Trump ended his Senate career anyway.
US President Donald Trump delivers a speech about the economy at Rockland Community College Fieldhouse in Suffern, New York, on May 22, 2026.
Telling Republicans you vote with President Donald Trump 99 percent of the time, it turns out, is not enough.
John Cornyn, the four-term Republican senator who rose to become one of the most powerful figures in the chamber, lost his primary runoff on Tuesday to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — a man Cornyn has called corrupt and a liability for his own party. Trump endorsed Paxton just one week before the election ended.
The result is the latest signpost in a spring that has exposed just how completely Trump has remade the Republican Party in his image. In the last month alone, Trump has purged Republican elected officials up and down the ballot for insufficient loyalty: five Indiana state senators who defied him on congressional redistricting, the U.S. senator from Louisiana who voted to convict Trump in the post Jan. 6 impeachment trial, the Kenucky congressman who challenged him on foreign policy, the Epstein files and fiscal matters. Now, one of Washington’s most seasoned Republican dealmakers has been added to the list.
What happened Tuesday in Texas may prove to be the most striking of the bunch, as Trump made a late gambit supporting the much-maligned Paxton. Trump’s case against Cornyn wasn’t as clear cut as the other people his political allies have targeted this primary season. Aside from his major role on a bipartisan gun safety law after the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, one would be hard pressed to find a damning vote where Cornyn defied the president in a way that could actually resonate with large swaths of voters. And yet, Paxton not only won handily, he may have been able to win without the president picking a side, having run a base-friendly campaign that repelled the fortune of money and support pro-Cornyn forces marshalled to tout the incumbent’s record at a time when a lengthy career as an elected official is no longer the electoral asset it once was.
“I just want to replace Cornyn,” said Tom Myers, a voter who supported Paxton.
In a red state like Texas, and in today’s Republican party, Cornyn was never going to win by trying to separate himself from the president. As voters made their choices Tuesday, Cornyn’s campaign website continued to show a photo of the senator side by side with Trump, both giving a thumbs up and smiling, next to a claim in large type that “Sen. John Cornyn Votes with President Trump 99% of the Time.”
Instead Trump’s political case against Cornyn seemed to rest more on the perception of the Texan as someone willing to legislate in Washington, a task in a typically tradition bound Senate that means sometimes working with one’s political opponents.
Between Trump’s first term as president and his second one, not much has changed about Cornyn. In 2019, Cornyn was touted by the president on social media as having “done an outstanding job for the people of Texas” and rewarded with his endorsement.
Come 2023, an out of office Trump labeled Cornyn “hopeless,” And in a hesitation that may have meant a lot or nothing much at all, Cornyn waited to embrace Trump’s ambitions to try and return to the White House until after GOP presidential nominating contests started in January of 2024.
Trump’s intervention in Cornyn’s fate this year took awhile to come to fruition. The initial March primary Cornyn and Paxton advanced from happened without the president making a solid show of support, and despite his raising the prospect of picking a side soon after, his endorsement of Paxton didn’t come until a week before Tuesday’s runoff.
Since then, Trump’s tenor towards Cornyn has grown more aggressive. A few days before the runoff ended, Trump leveled the claim that “Ken’s opponent was VERY disloyal to me, as President.”
In his runoff victory speech, Paxton underlined what the race showed about today’s GOP.
“President Trump is the leader of our party and his endorsement is the most powerful force in politics,” Paxton said.
Before this year, Cornyn had routinely turned away challenges to his seat, both within his own party and against Democrats. Running for re-election in 2020, he even got more Texas votes in the November general election than Trump himself.
Standing in defeat Tuesday night, Cornyn told reporters, “I’ve always supported the Republican ticket, and I intend to do so again in this general election.”
Paxton was impeached by the Texas House, and then acquitted by the state Senate, in 2023 over a series of articles that included allegations of bribery, violating the duties of his office as well as misusing his official power and public resources. His political survival was Trump-like. And while Cornyn’s style was more in the mold of the traditional politician, Paxton resonated in ways much less traveled but more in vogue to today’s base voter.
“He’s fighting for Texans more so than Cornyn has been,” Paxton voter Steve Belies told MS NOW.
Back in the March primary, Democratic voters picked State Rep. James Talarico to run for the Senate seat. While Republicans sticking with Cornyn would have made a difficult race even harder for Democrats, Paxton being the Republican to beat instead is expected to make the race more winnable for the left given the controversies of the state’s attorney general.
Talarico was quick to offer Cornyn’s voters an alternative on Tuesday night, saying in a social media post “to Senator Cornyn’s supporters: you have a place in our campaign.”
But in Texas, Democrats have suffered years of false momentum and misplaced hope. After a close loss in the 2018 U.S. Senate race and momentum in 2020, the party lost ground in the last presidential election and reinforced skepticism that a statewide losing streak stretching back to the 1990s could realistically be broken soon.
One senior Senate Republican strategist said “it’s going to cost the party a ton of resources. I do think Ken will probably pull it off … but I also think we’ll have implications for down ballot races too.”
Cornyn’s message of integrity against Paxton did resonate with its share of people in Texas. And the tone that the soon to be former senator relied on may come to be copied by Paxton’s opponents as well before too long.
Joe Phillips, a Republican who supported Cornyn, called Paxton “a slime,” before polls closed Tuesday.
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“It amazes me that people continue to vote for him,” Phillips said.
Jake Traylor, Soorin Kim, Rosa Flores and Sara Weisfeldt contributed reporting to this article.
