Three sitting officeholders were rejected by Texas Republican primary voters on Tuesday. A four-term U.S. Senator lost by twenty-eight points. A Galveston state senator who used to be barely known statewide is now the Republican nominee for Attorney General. A sitting Railroad Commissioner who held endorsements from the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, and the Speaker of the Texas House could not deliver his own primary.
This is what the political class in Austin and Washington calls an earthquake. They are not wrong.
For the Texas Nationalist Movement and the broader independence community, Tuesday’s results matter on multiple levels at once. There is the surface story, which is genuinely worth celebrating: anti-establishment Texans showed up, voted hard, and removed three people whose careers had grown comfortable on the wrong side of the fight. There is the medium-range story, which is about how this reshapes the next eighteen months of Texas politics, including the June Republican Party of Texas state convention, the November general election, and the 90th Texas Legislature that convenes in January 2027. And there is the deepest story, the one most of the press misses entirely, which is about what these results tell us about the political consciousness of the Texas voter and the work that still remains in front of the independence movement.
The Cornyn Defeat: A Genuine Win on Multiple Levels
Start with the simplest case. John Cornyn served in the U.S. Senate for twenty-four years. He chaired the Republican Senatorial Committee. He served as Senate Majority Whip. He was the most influential Texan in Washington for the better part of a generation.
He used that influence to vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022, the largest federal gun control bill in three decades. He used that influence to broker deals across the aisle with senators whose values were openly contemptuous of the Texans who sent him there. He used that influence to chair fundraising committees that protected sitting senators against challenges from their own voters. By the time he ran for re-election in 2026, he had become exactly the kind of Texan whose loyalty to the federal arrangement and to its institutional class was indistinguishable from the loyalty of any senator from Connecticut or Pennsylvania.
Texas Republican primary voters fired him by twenty-eight points.
That margin is decisive. According to the Associated Press tally, Paxton drew roughly 64 percent of the vote and Cornyn took the remaining 36, making Cornyn the first Republican senator from Texas ever to lose his party’s nomination for re-election. The Cornyn camp’s resources were not the problem. The Texas Tribune has reported that satellite groups supporting Cornyn spent roughly sixty million dollars on the race. Cornyn himself had raised more than eleven million dollars by mid-February. He had the Senate leadership of his own party behind him, most of the institutional donor money, and a campaign team built by veterans of the federal Republican operation.
He still lost by twenty-eight points.
For the independence movement, this is a real victory worth naming as one. Cornyn was not just a federalist. He was an active obstacle to any sovereignty argument coming out of Texas. His instinct was always to work through the Washington apparatus, to broker, to soften, to assimilate Texas interests to the federal consensus. The Senate seat that opens up because of his defeat is now contested by a different kind of Texas politician, one whose entire public career has been organized around using Texas authority to push back against federal power. Whether Ken Paxton wins in November is a separate question. What matters today is that the Texas voter, given the choice, removed the Texan who was most embedded in the system the independence movement is trying to dismantle.
Paxton: What We Keep, What We Lose
Paxton’s record on Texas sovereignty is the strongest of any sitting attorney general in the United States. He has filed Tenth Amendment-grounded lawsuits against three successive federal administrations. He defended Texas border deployment against the Department of Justice in cases that cited Article I, Section 10 of the federal Constitution and the doctrine of state self-defense against invasion. He used the Texas attorney general’s office to challenge federal mandates on education, energy, immigration, healthcare, and elections. The office became, in the words of the Republican Attorneys General Association’s executive director, the largest legal power in the conservative movement, period.
If Paxton wins the U.S. Senate seat in November, Texas gains a senator whose political instincts cut against the federal arrangement at almost every meaningful pressure point. That is a structural improvement over Cornyn that would have measurable impact on how Texas is represented in Washington for the next six years.
But the Senate is also where Paxton goes to be one of one hundred. The attorney general’s office is where Paxton was one of one. The aggressive use of that office against federal overreach was nearly singular among the fifty states, and Paxton’s departure leaves it open.
The strongest unilateral check on federal overreach that Texas currently possesses, the office Paxton built into a sovereignty litigation engine, is now in transition. Whether the next attorney general continues that posture, deepens it, or quietly retreats from it will determine whether Texas keeps the legal toolkit Paxton constructed.
Middleton Over Roy: The Cost the Movement Should Name
State Senator Mayes Middleton defeated U.S. Representative Chip Roy by 55.7 to 44.3 percent. The Texas Tribune reported that Middleton, a Galveston state senator and oil and gas executive, put nearly seventeen million dollars of his own money into the race.
The runoff was framed for Texas voters almost entirely as a federal political fight. Middleton’s branding was “MAGA Mayes.” Roy’s vulnerability was his vote to certify the 2020 election and his statement that Trump’s January 6 conduct was “clearly impeachable.” Middleton hammered that single moment of independent judgment for months on Texas airwaves. The federal frame dominated the campaign on both sides.
Chip Roy is not a generic federal Republican. From 2016 to 2018, he served as Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment Action at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the institution that built much of the modern Texas-side intellectual scaffolding for state sovereignty under the federal Constitution. He spent a decade arguing in print and from public office for state sovereignty as a structural constitutional principle, not as a rhetorical hook.
That position has shown up on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in ways that should not be forgotten. On Texas Independence Day 2022, Roy issued a statement that read in part: “Texas is great; America is great; but Washington is broken.” He went on to say that Texans had fought and died for their freedoms long before ever joining the United States. The day before Texas Independence Day in 2023, he challenged his Republican colleagues on the House floor by invoking the original Texian struggle for independence and asking “Why did we fight for independence?” He used Texas Independence Day, in Washington, to argue that the federal government was failing Texas in ways the original Texians would have recognized.
He has pressed Article I, Section 10 of the federal Constitution in House hearings as the doctrinal basis for state self-defense against invasion, which is the same constitutional framework that Ken Paxton has deployed inside the Texas attorney general’s office and that the Texas Legislature has used in formal resolutions declaring a state of invasion. He co-sponsored H.J. Res. 50 in 2021, a joint resolution recognizing that Article I, Section 10 reserves to the States the sovereign power to repel an invasion. He served as First Assistant Attorney General of Texas under Paxton, which made him one of the few candidates in the field with working knowledge of the office from the inside.
In his February 2026 Texas Tribune interview during the AG campaign, Roy described what the office should do. He said the next attorney general must “defend ourselves against the federal government interfering with us, no matter who’s there.” That last clause is what most distinguished him from the candidate who beat him. “No matter who’s there” means the office must fight federal overreach regardless of which party holds the White House. Roy was willing to say it on the record during a Republican primary, knowing it would be used against him. He paid the price for it.
The institutional argument for Middleton remains real. The Texas attorney general’s office is a Texas state office, and Middleton’s record is the record of a Texas legislator. He chaired the Texas House Freedom Caucus during his terms in the lower chamber. As a state senator since 2023, he authored SB 19, the Texas DOGE bill, and worked on measures touching financial regulation, election administration, and energy authority where the federal-state line is contested. Voters who weighed institutional fit had reasons of their own to prefer the candidate with state legislative experience over the candidate with federal legislative experience.
But the independence movement should not pretend Tuesday was a straight upgrade. Texas just lost the loudest voice for constitutional state sovereignty in the U.S. Congress, the man who used Texas Independence Day in Washington to make our case, and the candidate who said on the record during a Republican primary that Texas must defend itself against federal interference regardless of which party holds the White House. Roy’s loss is a real loss. The Texas-sovereignty rhetoric on the floor of the federal House just lost its sharpest practitioner. The legal architecture of state sovereignty just lost the man who built much of its modern Texas-side scaffolding at TPPF.
For the AG office, Tuesday’s result is a holding action. The aggressive posture Paxton built remains structurally available, and Middleton has the Texas-state institutional experience to use it. Whether he uses it to its full potential, whether he expands the use of Article I, Section 10 doctrine that Paxton normalized, and whether he is willing to coordinate with the Texas Legislature on TIRA-related legal preparation in the 90th session, are questions for the next four years. The infrastructure is intact. The will of the officeholder is the variable.
For the Texas voice in Washington, Tuesday’s result removed one of the few sitting members of the U.S. Congress who would speak plainly about Texas sovereignty as a constitutional matter rather than as a rhetorical hook. The next person to fill that role in the federal House has not yet emerged.
French Over Wright: The Establishment Cracks
The least-covered and most-revealing result of the night was Bo French’s narrow upset of incumbent Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright. French finished just over fifty percent. Wright had been first elected in 2020 with the backing of Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and Donald Trump himself. He ran for re-election in 2026 with endorsements from Abbott, Patrick, and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, plus the financial backing of Republican donors including Miriam Adelson and Harlan Crow, plus the support of the oil and gas trade groups whose industry the Railroad Commission regulates.
He lost anyway.
French’s campaign was funded primarily by the Texas Freedom Fund for the Advancement of Justice, a political action committee bankrolled by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. The Texas Tribune reported that the PAC spent about one million dollars supporting French, more than sixty percent of his campaign.
This is the result that matters most to the question of where Republican power in Texas is now located. Three of the most powerful elected officials in the state, plus the legacy donor class that has historically aligned with them, could not deliver a primary for the incumbent they all endorsed. A coalition of insurgent activists, MAGA-adjacent megadonors, and grassroots voters now controls the GOP primary apparatus in races where the establishment used to be untouchable.
The Texas Nationalist Movement has spent two decades pressing against an Austin establishment that has blocked TIRA in successive legislative sessions, rejected the 139,456-signature TEXIT petition that would have placed the question on the 2024 primary ballot, and used its power at every level to protect the political class against challenge. Tuesday’s Railroad Commission result is the strongest single piece of evidence yet that the establishment’s grip is breaking and the break is structural, not cyclical. The legacy power structure of Texas Republican politics is no longer the operative power structure.
The Texas First Infrastructure: What Didn’t Change Tuesday
Most of the major Texas First Pledge races on the 2026 ballot were decided in the March 3 primary, not the May 26 runoff. The runoff featured a relatively narrow slate of statewide and federal contests, with fewer of the down-ballot Texas legislative seats where the Texas First Pledge has its largest footprint.
Don Huffines, a Texas First Pledge signer, won the Republican primary for Comptroller in March with 57.4 percent of the vote and 1,174,599 ballots cast in his favor. In a state where the Republican primary effectively decides statewide office, Huffines’s arrival in January 2027 carries forward the Pledge presence at the statewide constitutional level that Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller first established. What makes the Comptroller’s seat analytically distinct is the office itself: Huffines takes the oath with three thousand employees and the constitutional authority to commission a full economic analysis of Texas independence. No bill required. No committee permission needed.
State Representative Steve Toth, a Pledge signer, defeated four-term incumbent U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw in March, becoming the first member of Congress to lose renomination in the 2026 cycle. Eight Pledge-signing county chairs went eight for eight. Nine Pledge-signing Texas House incumbents held their seats against challenges. Roughly 1.6 million Republican primary voters cast a ballot for at least one Texas First Pledge signer, or about three out of every four Republicans who voted in March.
The Republican Party of Texas itself is now led by Pledge signers at the top of the org chart. Chairman Abraham George signed the Pledge. Vice-Chair D’rinda Randall signed the Pledge. The party platform has included TEXIT planks at ninety percent or higher delegate support across three consecutive conventions. TIRA, the Texas Independence Referendum Act, has committed sponsors lined up for the 90th Legislature.
Tuesday’s runoff did not directly add to those numbers. But it did clear three high-profile obstacles. The Texas establishment that has historically resisted independence-aligned legislation, that has run interference on platform ratification, that has used its committee-referral power to kill TIRA in the 87th and 88th legislatures, is now visibly losing its grip on the primary process. The Pledge-signer infrastructure TNM has spent twenty-one years building is positioned to harvest what the establishment failure has left exposed.
The Honest Assessment: The Federal Frame Still Dominates
Every winning candidate on Tuesday ran on a federal political identity. Paxton’s case was that he would be a more loyal soldier for the federal president than Cornyn. Middleton’s case was that he would be a more loyal soldier than Roy. French’s case was that he would be more MAGA than Wright. The substantive Texas sovereignty record that some of these candidates actually possess was buried under a federal political brand that the candidates themselves chose to deploy.
This matters. The Texas voter is, by every available metric, restless and angry and ready to break with the established political authorities of this state. But the political imagination Texas voters are currently working with is still calibrated to federal politics. The fights they are most willing to fund and turn out for are the fights the federal media has primed them to care about. Voters see Ken Paxton as a Trump ally first and a sovereignty litigator second. They see Mayes Middleton as a MAGA enforcer first and a Texas state senator second. The candidates encourage that ordering. The political class encourages it. The press reinforces it.
The independence movement’s work over the next eighteen months is the work of changing that frame. Tuesday’s results are evidence of the energy. They are not yet evidence that the energy has been claimed for Texas-rooted ends.
The voter who fires John Cornyn because he is too federal is one conversation away from understanding why the federal arrangement itself, not just the worst Texans inside it, is the underlying problem. The voter who chose Middleton over Roy on the basis of who would fight harder for the federal president is one conversation away from understanding that both candidates had records of pushing back against federal overreach, that the choice between them was institutional rather than ideological, and that the deeper question is why Texas has to spend its top legal officer’s time fighting in federal courts at all. The voter who knocks out Jim Wright because the Texas establishment endorsed him is one conversation away from understanding that the Texas establishment that endorsed him is the same establishment that has spent twenty years blocking TIRA.
Those are short conversations. They are not impossible conversations. They are exactly the conversations the Texas Nationalist Movement is built to have. The Tuesday results clear the conversational space. They do not, by themselves, fill it.
Reading the Tea Leaves: The Path to January 2027
The first landmark is the June 2026 Republican Party of Texas State Convention. With the Austin establishment visibly weakened by Tuesday’s results and with Pledge signers in both the chair and vice-chair seats, the convention is positioned to ratify or strengthen the TEXIT-related planks at delegate support levels that may exceed the ninety percent floor of the last three conventions. The platform language matters. The presence of TEXIT planks in the official platform of the Republican Party of Texas is what gives Pledge-signing legislators ideological cover to file TIRA, vote it out of committee, and pass it on the floor of the 90th Legislature. Watch the floor votes carefully. Watch the rules committee. Watch which SREC members are challenged and which incumbents come back stronger.
The second landmark is November 3, 2026. The general election produces four outcomes that matter for the independence project. The Senate race tells us whether Texas Republicans can still elect the most aggressive federal-challenging candidate in the field, or whether the Cornyn campaign’s spent ammunition against Paxton transfers cleanly into Democratic hands and turns the seat. The Attorney General race tells us whether Middleton holds the office Paxton built. The Lieutenant Governor race, in which Dan Patrick faces State Representative Vikki Goodwin, decides whether the Texas Senate will let TIRA reach a floor vote, since most of the position’s authority comes from chamber rules passed at the beginning of each legislative session. The Comptroller race brings Huffines, a Pledge signer, into the office with the constitutional authority to commission an economic analysis of Texas independence.
The third landmark is January 12, 2027. That is when the 90th Texas Legislature convenes. That is when TIRA gets refiled by its committed sponsors. That is when the question of whether Texans will vote on independence stops being a movement aspiration and becomes a procedural question with a definite answer. The infrastructure that gets us to that vote is now visibly in place: Pledge signers in the Texas House, Pledge signers chairing the party, a Pledge signer in the comptroller’s office, and a wounded establishment whose ability to block has been demonstrably reduced.
Tuesday did not, by itself, deliver any of this. But Tuesday made the runway visible.
What You Do Next
Pay attention to the June Republican Party of Texas State Convention. If you are a delegate or alternate, the TEXIT-related planks will be on the floor and your vote matters more than usual this year. If you are not a delegate, your county’s delegates are knowable people. Contact them. Tell them the planks matter. The platform language is what gives the TIRA sponsors the cover to file and move the bill in January.
Vote in November, and bring Texans with you. The general election is the next test of whether the energy you saw Tuesday is durable. Make a plan for yourself, your family, your neighbors. Take the people in your life who have stopped voting because they don’t believe it matters and show them what just happened on Tuesday. The Texas voter who thinks nothing changes is the Texas voter who did not see Cornyn lose by twenty-eight points.
Pressure the statewide nominees on your November ballot to sign the Texas First Pledge. Paxton, Middleton, French, and the rest of the Republican statewide field have all benefited from Texas voters who want something more than what the federal Republican Party is offering. The Pledge is the simplest available test of whether they will act on that mandate or treat their voters as instruments for federal causes. Email them. Call them. Ask the question on the record at every event you attend. Refusal to sign is now an exposable position in a way it was not five years ago.
Talk to the people you know about what Tuesday actually meant. The press will tell them this was about Trump. That framing is incomplete. Take the conversation Tuesday cleared into your church, your workplace, your dinner table, your group chats. The Texans in your life who are one conversation away from a Texas-rooted understanding are who close the gap between the energy and the destination.
If you have not yet signed the Texian Declaration in the Texian app at texian.app, sign it. If you have but you are not active in your county TNM group, change that. The Declared Texian framework and the county branch network are how individual conviction translates into the organized pressure that moves a legislature. The TIRA sponsors in the 90th Lege will need that pressure visible in their districts.
What’s Next
The press will spend the next two weeks telling Texans that Tuesday was about Trump, about the federal political brand, about the future of the Republican Party in Washington. None of that framing is wrong, but all of it is incomplete.
What happened in Texas on May 26 was that the political class that has spent decades subordinating Texas interests to the federal arrangement lost three of its most prominent members in a single night. The voters who fired them did not articulate the deeper reason for their anger. The movement’s work is to articulate it for them and to give them somewhere to put it.
Don Huffines takes office in January 2027 as a Pledge signer in the Comptroller’s seat, with the constitutional authority to commission the economic case for independence. TIRA returns to the floor of the 90th Legislature on a runway cleared, in part, by Tuesday’s results. The Republican Party of Texas gathers in convention next month under leadership that has signed the Pledge. The energy that knocked out John Cornyn, Chip Roy, and Jim Wright is the same energy that, properly directed, will deliver Texas independence.
That direction is the work in front of us. Tuesday was a strong night for everyone in Texas who is tired of being represented by people who serve other priorities first. November will be a harder test. January is the destination.
The earthquake is real. The aftershocks are ours to shape.
