Signature

PLANO, Texas — As it turned out, it would never be enough.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn tried for more than a year to show President Trump and Texas Republicans that he and the president were on the same team.

Cornyn posted a photo of himself reading Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.” He proposed legislation to rename a stretch of interstate in Trump’s honor. Perhaps most glaringly, the Senate institutionalist who long supported the filibuster reversed his position in a failed effort to advance voting restrictions that are a priority for the president.

None of it worked. On Tuesday, Cornyn became the latest in a line of Republicans who lost their primaries after falling out of favor with a president with little tolerance for dissent and a seemingly insatiable appetite for retribution. The four-term senator lost by double digits to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Trump endorsed last week as “a true MAGA Warrior.”

Cornyn, on the other hand, “was VERY disloyal to me,” Trump wrote on social media.

Trump’s intervention in the Texas runoff came after weeks of successfully backing primary challengers in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky as revenge against incumbents who broke with his agenda.

Cornyn’s attempt to avoid the same fate made even some of his supporters wince.

“You look at the positions he took to please the president and the groveling and whatever,” said former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican and Trump critic who didn’t seek reelection during the president’s first midterm in 2018. “It was rather painful to watch.”

Trump took an uncommonly equanimous approach to Tuesday’s results the following morning.

“Congratulations to Ken Paxton on such a tremendous win, and to John Cornyn for having run a strong and powerful race but, more importantly, having had a truly great career,” he wrote on social media. “John will remain my friend for a long time to come, as we both watch Ken become a fantastic, common sense Senator, one who is respected by all.”

Cornyn started early with ad touting pro-Trump voting record

Cornyn’s loss wasn’t for a lack of political gymnastics and astronomical campaign spending.

His campaign began running an advertisement last summer — part of an astounding nearly-$100-million air war by the senator and allied groups — with Cornyn looking into the camera and saying, “I voted with President Trump 99% of the time.”

On Cornyn’s campaign homepage, Trump and Cornyn stand side-by-side with thumbs pointed upward in an image aimed at projecting solidarity. Deeper in the website, the category titled “The Trump-Cornyn Record” notes the senator’s role securing votes for Trump’s signature 2017 tax cut bill.

Cornyn has also been championing provisions in Trump’s signature tax-and-spending legislation to finance work on the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

The senator had dismissed the project as “naive” during Trump’s 2016 campaign. But in January, he stood along a section of completed wall in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley touting the measure’s $11 billion for Texas contractors’ work at “the direction of the president of the United States, to whom I am very grateful.”

Cornyn’s 2023 dismissal of Trump’s return glares in background

Cornyn’s praise for his party’s leader and president were not unusual, but they clash with a statement Cornyn made in May 2023, when Trump was mounting his presidential comeback campaign.

“Trump’s time has passed him by,” he told reporters. “I don’t think President Trump understands that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base.”

Trump would go on to easily win the nomination and carry every battleground state in the general election.

Cornyn would hew closely to the president for the first 16 months of his second administration, hoping at the outside chance of his endorsement or to keeping him from weighing in at all.

But Trump did not forget the past slights.

“John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” he wrote on social media while endorsing Paxton.

Smaller gestures, and one big one

Cornyn has playfully worked to promote Trump fandom, last year posting a picture on social media of himself thoughtfully peering into the pages of Trump’s 1987 memoir and business advice book, “The Art of the Deal.”

In a more obvious gesture, he proposed designating a section of a U.S. highway from the Texas Gulf Coast to Montana as “Interstate 47,” to honor a 47th president with a well-documented love of naming things after himself. In a news release about the proposal, filed just over two weeks before Tuesday’s runoff, Cornyn said it would be known as the “Trump Interstate.”

The more tectonic shift occurred in March, after Trump had teased a possible endorsement of either Cornyn or Paxton in the runoff.

Paxton swiftly said he would consider dropping his candidacy if the Republican-controlled Senate lifted the filibuster and passed the SAVE America Act, a series of voting restrictions that Trump has described as an essential part of his agenda.

The following week, Cornyn wrote an op-ed in the New York Post — Trump’s favorite hometown newspaper — backing away from his previous support of the filibuster. He vowed to “support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary” to get the bill “through the Senate and on the president’s desk for his signature.”

Flake watched with unease.

“I know John and his long-held positions on the filibuster and the Senate’s institutions,” he said. “No office is worth that.”

Beaumont and Bedayn write for the Associated Press. Bedayn reported from San Antonio. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

HAVANA — Cubans hunched over tables this month to sign up for the socialist government’s campaign to support national sovereignty and defy the U.S. as tensions between the countries escalate.

They are endorsing “My signature for the Homeland” movement, which President Miguel Díaz-Canel launched earlier this month.

The initiative is mocked by some who question why people stood in line to sign when hunger and poverty are growing across the island, while supporters say it serves as a warning to the U.S. that civilians want peace but will not back down despite recent threats of invasion.

“Anything for the revolution,” said Rodolfo Ruiz, 64, who sells sunglasses and other items out of his home in Havana. He said he signed last week because of President Trump’s ongoing comments over Cuba, “so that he may hear and know that we are willing to defend our sovereignty.”

“Watch out, Trump. Think before you invade Cuba, think carefully. The people are prepared,” Ruiz said.

In January, Trump signed an executive order asserting that the “policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat,” something Cuban officials have repeatedly scoffed at.

Trump has referred to the island as a “failing nation” and suggested a “friendly takeover.”

“We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” he said in mid-April, referring to the war in Iran.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — the son of Cuban immigrants who fled before the revolution — has called for “new people in charge” of Cuba.

“It is absurd for the State Department to claim that Cuba — a relatively small, developing country subjected to a brutal economic war — could pose a threat to the world’s greatest military, technological, and economic power,” Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodríguez wrote in a post on X on Wednesday.

Díaz-Canel has said he does not want military aggression, but noted that Cuba has a duty to prepare to avoid it, and if necessary, defeat it.

Havana resident Delfina Hernández said she would stand shoulder to shoulder with Cubans to fight a U.S. energy blockade, a sharpening of longtime U.S. sanctions and what many refer to as the “imperialist threat.”

For three days last week, the community center she runs in Havana with her husband received sheets of paper and opened its doors so people over age 16 could sign them. Hernández was the first to do so.

“Cuba is something very sacred to us,” she said. “We are well-armed, and the people of Cuba will fight to the very end. We are going to hit them — and with everything we’ve got.”

Criticism was swift on social media, though, with opponents of the campaign asserting that the “homeland” has not provided them with anything. Some said the government should allow people to sign in favor of things like the ability to choose their president.

The homeland initiative began on April 19 and comes as Cuba celebrates the 65th anniversary of its April 1961 Bay of Pigs victory over some 1,500 Cuban exiles backed by the CIA who failed in their attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s newly formed Communist government.

Alberto Olivera, a visual artist and Hernández’s husband, questioned how Cuba poses a threat to the U.S.

“If it’s a failed revolution, then leave us alone,” he said. “What do they care?” Hernández added.

Olivera recognized that Cubans have unmet needs, adding that he has been hungry at times, but asserted that the “pressure cooker” tactic by the U.S. would not work.

“If I’m a failed state, why are you seeking me out?” he asked.

The Trump administration has demanded that Cuba release political prisoners, implement major economic reforms and change its way of governance — all things Cuba has rejected, saying it’s open to dialogue and cooperation in certain areas as it pushes for the end of a U.S. energy blockade that has deepened the island’s crises.

Both countries have confirmed recent talks, although details remain secret.

As tensions persist, Cuba’s government is gathering signatures at workplaces and neighborhoods across the island of nearly 10 million people, remaining mum on how many it has collected.

It said in a statement that the signatures are meant to condemn “the U.S. blockade and economic war against Cuba,” which it called a “genocidal act,” and to repudiate threats of military aggression while upholding “the inalienable right of Cubans to live in peace.”

Coto writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The State Department said that it is preparing a limited release of commemorative U.S. passports celebrating America’s 250th birthday that feature a picture of President Trump, who would be the first living president to be featured in the travel document.

The concept for the special passport, including a rendering of Trump’s stern-looking visage, had been under consideration for months before finally being approved late Monday and publicly announced Tuesday. Between 25,000 and 30,000 of the new passports will be available to applicants at the Washington passport office beginning shortly before July 4.

It’s the latest instance of Trump having his name and likeness added to buildings, documents and other highly visible tributes. There are efforts to put Trump’s signature on all new U.S. paper currency, also a first for a sitting president, as well as to include his image on a gold commemorative coin to celebrate the country’s founding.

The commemorative passport will be the default document for people applying in person at the Washington office, although those who want a standard passport will be able to get one by applying online or outside Washington, officials said.

“As the United States celebrates America’s 250th anniversary in July, the State Department is preparing to release a limited number of specially designed U.S. passports to commemorate this historic occasion,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.

“These passports will feature customized artwork and enhanced imagery while maintaining the same security features that make the U.S. passport the most secure documents in the world,” he said.

The limited release passport will feature Trump’s picture over a gold imprimatur of his signature to an interior page, while the cover will feature the words “United States of America” in bold gold print at the top and “Passport” at the bottom — a reversal of the standard cover.

In addition, a small gold laminate American flag, with the number 250 encircled by stars, will be at the bottom of the back cover.

The Bulwark reported earlier on the commemorative passports.

The only presidents featured in current U.S. passports are in a double-page depiction of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Other depictions include the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and scenes of the Great Plains, mountains and islands. Current passports also contain quotations from Martin Luther King Jr. as well as Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower.

The addition of Trump’s picture and signature to the passport book is the newest step his aides have taken to increase the president’s visibility, including adding his name to the U.S. Institute of Peace building and the Kennedy Center performing arts venue.

Trump also has made waves with his plans for a new White House ballroom and a massive arch to be built at one of the entrances to Washington from Virginia.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.