Welcome to Washington: John Cornyn Is Capitol Hill’s Newest Question Mark

Senator John Cornyn is likely to be the most sought-after man at Washington starting this week, as Texas’s senior senator coasts toward a forced retirement. He could prove the most important member of the emerging “YOLO caucus.” Please see below.And Welcome to Washington, where the mood among Republicans on Capitol Hill is — to put it mildly — dour. Usually, when lawmakers return to the nation’s capital after a week-long recess, members will return with more of a skip in their step having spent time with family or among supporters. This time, Republicans are not feeling as cheery. Last week, Mr. Cornyn lost his Republican primary to Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, by nearly 30 points — the worst primary blowout loss for a senator this century. Speaking to reporters after his defeat, he quoted President Theodore Roosevelt’s line about being the “man in the arena” and did not answer the question about whether he would support Mr. Paxton in the fall. Days later, he raised eyebrows when he shared a version of the story of the scorpion and the frog — a fable which he called “apt.” In the story, a scorpion promises to not sting a frog while the frog carries it across a river, arguing that stinging the frog would result in both of their deaths. When the scorpion stings the frog as they are crossing, the scorpion says, “I am sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my character.”One of the major selling points Mr. Cornyn had during his primary campaign was that he would be the only person able to stave off Democratic victories up and down the ballot in his state this year. He talked constantly about how he had spent decades building the modern Texas Republican Party, and how he would not sit aside and watch Mr. Paxton squander those efforts. Mr. Trump’s decision to endorse Mr. Paxton, however, likely makes Mr. Cornyn feel like that hapless frog. As the Senate returns to work this week, there are multiple critical legislative issues before the body. The greatest matter time-wise for senators, however, could be the funding proposed for the president’s ballroom project, which has met with skepticism on Capitol Hill, via the GOP’s immigration enforcement spending bill.For evidence of an increasingly assertive Senate, too, feature the White House’s abandonment of Mr. Trump’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. On May 21, the Senate was forced to go into an early recess when a critical mass of Republican senators stood up to say that they could not stomach the idea of violent criminals involved in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 receiving payouts from the federal government. “People were, the entire meeting — they were screaming at the acting attorney general,” Senator Ted Cruz said on an episode of his podcast after a meeting with the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche. “It was angry, it was hot.”Mr. Cornyn was not present for that meeting because he was campaigning at the time, but some of his fellow soon-to-be ex-senators made their feelings clear. Senator Thom Tillis, who announced his retirement after Mr. Trump started looking for a candidate to run against him in the GOP primary, says he cannot support the anti-weaponization fund. Senator Bill Cassidy, another lawmaker who recently fell in a primary to a Trump-backed challenger, agreed. Senator Susan Collins is locked in a tight re-election battle and doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about handing Mr. Trump money to pay off those convicted of crimes. Senator Lisa Murkowski has also been a singular figure, saying she would only vote for the interests of Alaskans as opposed to the interests of Republicans. The loose group of moderates, retiring lawmakers, and scorned senators Mr. Trump targeted is now being referred to as the “YOLO caucus,” as in, “You Only Live Once.”Mr. Cornyn is a prime candidate to join the small club. He has always been a poor fit for the Republican Party of the last 10 years, having worked with Democrats on a host of issues, declining to embrace nativist rhetoric or policy, and saying out loud back in 2023 that Mr. Trump’s time had “passed.”On one of my first days as a reporter on Capitol Hill, I ran into Mr. Cornyn in a hallway and asked him some questions. One of those posers must have been inapt, considering that it led Mr. Cornyn to ask me, “Are you new here?”I don’t remember what I had asked the senator, but I remember telling him that, yes, I was new. “Ninety percent of the work around here gets done by ten percent of the people. Figure out who that 10 percent is,” he said slyly. More than ever in the next seven months, Mr. Cornyn will be a part of that 10 percent.

Welcome to Washington: John Cornyn Is Capitol Hill’s Newest Question Mark

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