A new poll on the Texas Senate primaries reveals incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is facing tough Republican competition, and Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s path to a nomination will not be easy, either. The Senate race, which pits recognized Washington politicians against Austin-based rivals, could determine the ideological direction of both political parties. A Tight Republican Race Cornyn, who has represented the Lone Star State in the Senate since 2003, faces primary challenges from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas. The Emerson College survey shows Cornyn trailing Paxton by one point, with Paxton at 27% support among likely Republican voters, and Cornyn at 26%. This gap is well within the margin of error of four percentage points. Trailing in third place is Hunt, who entered the race in October. A plurality of voters, however, remain “undecided,” with 29% of respondents unsure of whom they support. Paxton and Cornyn have both been elected Texas politicians for decades. Early voting for the March 3 primary begins Feb. 17. If no candidate receives over 50% of the vote in their respective primary election, that would trigger a May 26 runoff election between the top two primary candidates.  NEW: TEXAS POLL Democratic Senate PrimaryJames Talarico 47%Jasmine Crockett 38%15% undecidedRepublican Senate PrimaryKen Paxton 27%John Cornyn 26%Wesley Hunt 16%29% undecided@PPowerRanker analysis: https://t.co/5bJUNDp6hAFull results: https://t.co/wxpd9dIOdU pic.twitter.com/uTAqmRbZs3— Emerson College Polling (@EmersonPolling) January 15, 2026 President Donald Trump has not yet endorsed a candidate in the primary.  A Hunt spokesman sent The Daily Signal a statement which defended his standing in the race. “With nearly 30 percent of the electorate still undecided, Wesley Hunt stands out as the strongest general-election candidate in this race,” said the spokesman. “Multiple polls, including one conducted by President Trump’s 2024 pollster, show Hunt in second place or locked in a three-way tie, confirming his momentum and broad appeal.” The Hunt spokesman added that “Unlike Senator Cornyn, Wesley Hunt is taking his message directly to the voters, traveling the state, answering tough questions, and earning the support of Texans the hard way: face to face.” Cornyn campaign senior adviser Matt Mackowiak declined comment on the poll but told The Daily Signal in response to the Hunt campaign’s comment, “Wesley Hunt has now missed 26 of 29 votes this year, when President Trump has a razor thin majority in the US House.” Mackowiak added, “Wesley Hunt claims to support the Trump agenda, but he refuses to show up for work, while being paid $174,000 annually by taxpayers.” Paxton’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Crockett Launch? The Emerson poll shows Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, has established herself among voters since launching her campaign in early December but still trails state Rep. James Talarico in the Democrat primary. Talarico leads the primary field with 47% support. Despite being a state-level politician, Talarico, has amassed a large social media following as a critic of Trump and Republican leadership in Texas. Crockett trails with 38% support, beyond the survey’s 4.8% margin of error. NEW: TEXAS POLL Democratic Senate PrimaryJames Talarico 47%Jasmine Crockett 38%15% undecidedRepublican Senate PrimaryKen Paxton 27%John Cornyn 26%Wesley Hunt 16%29% undecided@PPowerRanker analysis: https://t.co/5bJUNDp6hAFull results: https://t.co/wxpd9dIOdU pic.twitter.com/uTAqmRbZs3— Emerson College Polling (@EmersonPolling) January 15, 2026 Similar Republican primary voters, there are also plenty of Democrats who are undecided. 15% of respondents were unsure of which candidate to support. Former Rep. Colin Allred, who lost to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in 2024, dropped out of the primary race in December in favor of a run for Texas’ 33rd Congressional District. The Democrat primary will be held the same day as the Republican primary and is subject to the same run-off rules. Talarico and Crockett’s campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The post Texas Poll Shows Tough Primary for Cornyn and Crockett appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump threatened to deploy the U.S. military in Minnesota following attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the state. “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial Thursday morning. The Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy the military to states in certain cases of unrest or to enforce federal law. Republican lawmakers had previously called on Trump to invoke the law and arrest Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat. Invoke the Insurrection Act.Arrest Tim Walz. https://t.co/r7i7MnlWrT— Rep. Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) January 8, 2026 Protests over a second ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis erupted on Wednesday evening, with protesters throwing rocks and ice and shooting fireworks at law enforcement, who in turn deployed tear gas, Reuters reported. Protests first broke out last week after the shooting of Renee Good, 37, by an ICE agent on Jan. 7. Following the shooting of Good, Walz threatened to deploy the Minnesota National Guard to protect Minnesotans, including from “rogue” ICE agents. In a Wednesday video address, he appeared to praise resistance to federal immigration operations in the state. “All across Minnesota, people are learning about opportunities not just to resist, but to help people who are in danger, Walz said. “Thousands upon thousands of our fellow Minnesotans are going to be relying on mutual aid in the days and weeks to come and they need our support.”   Trump floated the Insurrection Act Wednesday shortly after the second ICE-involved shooting in the city in a week. According to the Department of Homeland Security account of the shooting, the federal officer was making a traffic stop when the subject, a Venezuelan man who was an illegal immigrant, fled the stop in his vehicle. When he crashed, he fled the scene on foot and then violently resisted arrest. The agent making the arrest was then attacked by two other individuals who emerged from a nearby residence, and the Venezuelan subject assailed the agent with a snow shovel or broom handle, the agency said. The agent fired his gun in self-defense, striking the Venezuelan man in the leg. The subject and two alleged assailants fled and barricaded themselves inside a residence, where they were ultimately arrested. The post Trump Threatens to Invoke Insurrection Act in Minnesota appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Democrats like to say, for a lack of a better term, that Republicans hate sick people. I have cystic ?brosis: a chronic, life-threatening genetic disease, and I’m sick and tired of Democrats lying and fear mongering to people who are already sick and tired. The A?ordable Care Act was fundamentally ?awed from the start, and was never designed to function without massive, unsustainable subsidies. It ultimately was doomed to fail. The ACA drove up costs, narrowed provider networks, and reduced access to care. In fact, the ACA is one of the main reasons I kept working even when my doctors told me I was too sick to do so. I had to maintain my private insurance. Without it, I would have lost my doctors, faced longer wait times, lost the ?exibility to complete treatments outside the hospital, and been cut o? from the quality care I needed, not just to stay alive, but to remain a functioning member of society. And somehow, Democrats are now pushing something even worse than the A?ordable Care Act: universal health care. On paper, universal health care sounds great. Everyone has access. It’s “free.” But I’m a ?rst-generation American from Cuba, and I know exactly what happens when the government takes over essential systems. When bureaucrats are inserted into systems best managed by the private sector, quality inevitably declines. Health care is no exception. Here’s what happens with universal health care. You can once again forget about keeping or choosing your doctor. That choice is critical for anyone with a pre-existing, life-threatening condition, and it’s a right every American should have, whether sick or healthy. A doctor is a doctor, right? It’s not that simple. For complex conditions like cystic ?brosis, you don’t just need a doctor, you need a team that’s willing to work with both your treatment schedule and your life. Maintaining quality of life matters. Many physicians aren’t willing to do that and will see you as just another name on a chart. Choice allows you to ?nd a doctor or care team that values your quality of life as much as you do. That choice is what truly allows patients to not just survive with a chronic illness, but to fully live with it. You can forget about that choice with universal health care. Taxes go up because nothing is free. Someone always pays. Hospitals, physicians, nurses, medical sta?, equipment, and supplies are already ?nite resources. When the government takes control, those limited resources are stretched even thinner. Universal health care also means longer wait times. Not days or weeks, but months or even years. Patients are placed on waitlists for specialists and, in many cases, even primary care. For someone like me with cystic ?brosis, those delays can be fatal. These waitlists extend to life-or-death care, including organ transplants. In countries like Canada, where universal health care exists, transplant wait times can stretch for years, and many patients don’t survive long enough to receive one. That’s why so many Canadians come to the United States for transplants and advanced care. Yet, Democrats continue to push for these policies under the false claim that they “save lives,” while lying to and fear mongering sick people into believing Republicans want to take their care away. I’ve seen it happen countless times. That narrative is ?at out false and morally wrong. Scaring chronically and terminally ill patients for political gain is evil. The truth is the opposite. Republicans understand the lasting damage the ACA has already done, and the far greater harm universal health care would bring. These systems don’t save lives; they delay care, ration treatment, and drive up costs by inserting government bureaucrats between patients and survival. It’s time someone with real skin in the game calls out Democrats for their bogus healthcare policies. It’s time Democrats stop politicizing people’s lives. It’s time for Republicans to take the lead on health care by advancing serious, sustainable policies that prioritize patient choice, access to care, long-term system stability, a?ordability, and address the fundamental shortcomings of government-driven systems. Patients deserve truth, choice, and timely care. Not fear-driven government control where life depends on it. The post I’m Terminally Ill. I Don’t Have Time for Government Health Care appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The U.S. has “no idea” of the possible threat posed by some Afghan nationals admitted to the U.S. during the Biden administration, according to Sen. Josh Hawley.   About 200,000 Afghans were allowed into the U.S. during and after the U.S. withdrawal from the country in 2021 under President Joe Biden. Among those paroled, “we have no idea of their potential terrorist connections, and in many cases, we now have no idea where they are or what they’re doing, who they’re connected with, or what they’re capable of,” Hawley, R-Mo., said Wednesday at a Senate hearing on iden’s Afghan parolee program.   “Sadly, we’ve seen what some of them are capable of,” Hawley said, referring to Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the 29 year-old Afghan male charged with the shooting of two National Guard members in D.C. in November that killed one and seriously injured the other.   The Biden administration’s parolee program for Afghans was “hastily arranged,” Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, told members of the Senate subcommittees on Border Security and Immigration and Crime and Counterterrorism at the hearing.  Among the “200,000 Afghans brought here under programs hastily arranged by the Biden administration since 2021, there are hundreds who should be deported,” Hankinson said. He added that gratitude to Afghans who served alongside the U.S. military during the nearly 20-year war does not automatically entail bringing them to the U.S..   “The U.S. had other options,” he told the senators, including the creation of a “safe zone in Afghanistan” in a region run by “warlords who oppose the central government.”   “Or instead of paying billions to bring Afghans to an alien country far from home, we could have paid neighboring countries, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, or even India to take them in,” Hankinson added.  “These places have more in common with the Afghan culture, religion and way of life than any Western country.”   In the case of the Afghans resettled in the U.S. after the 2021 withdrawal, vetting lacked sufficient safeguards, often due to nonexistent information or the Taliban’s refusal to share information, Hankinson explained.   Lawmakers, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., argued for the importance of both vetting all foreign nationals paroled into the U.S. and honoring the service of those who assisted U.S. troops in Afghanistan–a sentiment shared by retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Perry Blackburn.   The case against Lakanwal “does not represent the Afghan people I fought beside,” Blackburn told members of Congress.   Blackburn is the founder of AFGfree, a nonprofit seeing to “evacuate US Citizens, our partners and their families by land, sea or air” from Afghanistan, according to the group’s mission statement.   The Afghans “fought beside us, and they translated not just language, but culture. They helped us understand tribal dynamics, honor, and consequence,” Blackburn said, adding, “they bled, they died, they lived, [and] hey became like us.”   Nadim Yousify, a former Platoon Sergeant in the U.S. Marines, served as an interpreter for the U.S. in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2015.   “I committed myself to serving alongside Americans,” Yousify said, adding that because of his work with the U.S. military, he “became a target” of the Taliban in Afghanistan. After years of screening and vetting, Yousify was permitted to come to the U.S. through the Special Immigration Visa program.   Today, Yousify is a nursing student in the U.S. and says he wants to continue serving the country.   “I understand the concern raised in this hearing. National security matters. Public safety matters. No one who served alongside Americans, like I did, would ever dispute that,” Yousify said. He added, “one person’s crime should never erase the sacrifice of 10,000 who stood with the American service members under fire.”   Lakanwal worked under CIA direction in Afghanistan. Like thousands of other Afghans, he entered the U.S. in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome.  Since the tragic shooting that left Beckstrom dead, President Donald Trump has paused the issuance of visas for Afghan nationals.    While witnesses and senators found consensus on the need for thorough vetting of foreign nationals entering the U.S., “successful vetting cannot predict future radicalization or action,” Hankinson said. “Admitting foreign nationals, however well screened, has inherent risk.”   The post ‘No Idea’ of Threat Posed by Afghan Parole Program, Senator Warns   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On Wednesday’s night’s episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said elected officials, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz should “be afraid” of the Treasury Department’s investigation into recently reported fraud in Minnesota. During her interview, Mace added that she “is deeply frustrated” over the “lack of contempt charges” and “prosecutions” to those who participated in defrauding the government. “Here we have a sitting member of Congress, who’s allegedly done some pretty egregious things, a governor in Minnesota, who again, was alleged to have done some pretty egregious things, and his attorney general,” Mace said about officials who have yet to face charges. “Billions of dollars have been lost and defrauded of the American government,” Mace added. “You’ve got people implicated in this, including elected officials, and nobody ever goes to jail. That’s what’s wrong with the system, it’s a complete failure of the justice system all the way through, federal state and local.” Mace told Kinnett that Walz needs to be held accountable, even though Walz is not seeking another term as governor. “He is squeaking out at the end,” Mace said. “And we as the federal government have allowed him to do that.” However, while Mace stated that she has “lost a lot of hope in the federal government” for its inaction, she affirmed that she still has faith in the investigative abilities of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Last week, Bessent announced that the Treasury Department would investigate the fraud in Minnesota. “When he says he’s going to do something,” Mace said of Bessent, “I really truly do believe he’s going to do that.” “[Bessent is] the last great hope that we have in this kind of scenario. He’s a very serious guy and Tim Walz and Ilhan Omar should be afraid of Scott Bessent,” Mace said. Mace also claimed that around 10% of the federal government’s budget could be tainted with “fraud, waste and abuse.” “If you could just take that away financially, imagine how much we can get in tax returns every year for hardworking middle-class Americans” Mace added. Ultimately, Kinnett asked the congresswoman if any safety rails could be put in place to prevent fraudsters from taking further advantage of American taxpayers, adding that there has been a “whole lot of nothing” happening in Congress. Mace said Congress should pass legislation that would stop all federal payments to fraudsters. “We should codify refusing payments. If you’re caught in this level of fraudulent abuse, payments should just cease,” Mace said. “You shouldn’t be allowed to have an activist judge, a woke leftist judge, to make decisions for Congress on the purse strings. We’ve allowed this to happen.” Walz and Omar did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on Mace’s statements. The post Mace Warns Walz and Omar To ‘Be Afraid’ of MN Fraud Probe appeared first on The Daily Signal.