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WASHINGTON — President Trump just can’t seem to choose among friends in the Texas Senate Republican primary.

So when he travels to the state on Friday for his first post-State of the Union trip, where he plans to promote his energy and economic policies, Trump will have all three candidates in the competitive race join him — just days before his party casts ballots in the primary race.

Sen. John Cornyn is battling for his fifth term and is being challenged by state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt in a primary fight that has become viciously personal. And all three men, missing the coveted endorsement from Trump, have been trying to highlight their ties to him as they ramp up their campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

For his part, Trump will be seeking to ride the message of his State of the Union address from Tuesday, where he declared a return to economic prosperity and a more secure America — two centerpiece arguments for Republicans as they campaign to keep their congressional majorities this fall.

Trump’s hesitation to endorse in the Texas Senate primary speaks to the tricky dynamics of the race.

Cornyn is unpopular with a segment of Texas’ GOP base, in part for his early dismissiveness of Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign and for his role in authoring tougher restrictions on guns after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. But Senate GOP leadership and allied groups see Cornyn as the stronger general election candidate, in light of a series of troubles that have shadowed Paxton.

Paxtonbeat impeachment on fraud charges in 2023, and has faced allegations of marital infidelity by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have urged Trump to endorse Cornyn. They and allied campaign groups argue that the seat would cost the party hundreds of millions more to defend with Paxton as the candidate.

“It is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee,” Scott told Fox News on Wednesday.

Hunt, a second-term Houston-area representative, was a later entry to the race, but claims a kinship with Trump, having endorsed him early in the 2024 race. Hunt campaigned regularly for Trump and earned a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

If no candidate reaches 50% in Tuesday’s primary, the top two finishers will advance to a May 26 runoff.

Cornyn’s campaign and a half-dozen allied groups have poured more than $63 million into the race since last fall, chiefly trying to slow Paxton but recently attacking Hunt in an effort to keep him from making it to the runoff.

Earlier this month, Trump feinted toward weighing in on the race when he said he was taking “a serious look” at endorsing in the Texas primary. He has since reaffirmed his neutrality.

Still, you wouldn’t know it from watching TV in Texas. Cornyn has been airing ads since last year touting his support for Trump’s agenda, even though his relationship with the president has been cool at times. Paxton and Hunt both have ads airing now featuring them standing with Trump.

“I like all three of them, actually. Those are the toughest races. They’ve all supported me. They’re all good. You’re supposed to pick one, so we’ll see what happens. But I support all three,” Trump said earlier this month.

The GOP battle comes as Democrats have a contested primary of their own in Texas between state Rep. James Talarico, a self-described policy wonk who regularly quotes the Bible, and progressive favorite U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

Trump hasn’t been shy about wading into other contested Republican primaries in the state. Parts of Corpus Christi fall within Texas’ 34th congressional district, where former Rep. Mayra Flores is fighting to reclaim her seat against the Trump-endorsed Eric Flores. (The two are not related.) The winner of the primary will face off against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, long a target of the GOP, whose district was redrawn to make it easier for a Republican to win.

Eric Flores will be at the Trump event at the Port of Corpus Christi, which technically is located in a neighboring district.

Elsewhere in the state, the president has also endorsed Rep. Tony Gonzales, who is fighting calls from his own party to resign from Congress after reports of an alleged affair with a former staffer who later died after she set herself on fire. Gonzales is refusing to step down and has said that there will be “opportunities for all of the details and facts to come out” and that the stories about the situation do not represent “all the facts.”

Gonzales is facing a primary challenge from Brandon Herrera, a gun manufacturer and gun rights influencer who Gonzales defeated by fewer than 400 votes in their 2024 runoff. The White House did not return a request for comment on Thursday on whether Trump stands by his endorsement of Gonzales.

Kim and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Ia. AP writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.

It was the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club’s potluck party for President Trump’s State of the Union address, but there was a problem:

Not many Hispanics showed up. Or people, period.

About half of the the 20-some folks who trudged into the club’s Woodland Hills offices were Latino. Four of them were chairman David Hernandez and his family.

“People are sick, hurt, or fed up with politics,” the soft-spoken 77-year-old told me with a laugh before the speech began.

It was a dramatic turn from three years ago, when Trump reclaimed the White House with 48% of the Latino vote, the highest percentage ever captured by a Republican presidential candidate. A record number of California Latinos won legislative seats. The Hispanic Republican Club opened chapters in Ventura and Orange counties. Rodriguez now sits on the California Republican Party board of directors along with former Cudahy mayor and fellow club member Jack Guerrero.

How the quesadillas have flipped. CNN poll released earlier this week showed Latino support for Trump went from 41% last February to just 22% right now.

“It’s the visuals of those raids,” Hernandez acknowledged with a sigh. “It only makes sense that people will feel afraid. Some of our supporters and friends, they’re suffering.”

He turned to his vice chair, Tony Barragan, who reviews restaurants for the club’s weekly radio show. Near them, a table hosted three clipboards fat with paperwork for new members to fill. It had a total of one name. “How many of the places you’ve visited are feeling the crunch?”

“Half,” Barragan replied. His father came to the United States from Mexico illegally then became a pioneering Mexican restaurateur in Los Angeles.

“We gotta win the Hispanic vote. I hope that he [Trump] changes his approach and remembers that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Fat chance of that, Tony.

The cheers were muted as the State of the Union pageantry kicked off. When Trump claimed early on that “inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before,” only one club member offered a golf clap.

Maybe the audience knew that was just too big of a whopper.

No one seemed particularly animated in the beginning except Rolando Salmerón. He sat in the front cheering and fist-pumping and chanting “USA! USA!” every time Republicans gave Trump a standing ovation.

Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club chairman David Hernandez hosts a political radio talk show at the studios of AM Radio 870 in Glendale in 2022.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

The electrical engineer, who gave his age as “over 1,000,” came to the United States from El Salvador illegally in 1975 but was now a citizen. He told me during dinner that Trump had done “more good in one year than Democrats ever did in 30” and especially supported his deportation deluge because MS-13 members assaulted and bullied his son during his high school years.

“Trump deported three million people — Obama deported way more,” said Salmerón. He wore a hat emblazoned with “FIGHT” over the famous photo of a bloodied Trump raising his fist just after a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear. On the bill was an embroidered version of the president’s signature. “Unfortunately, the media that we have — including the L.A. Times — doesn’t say the truth.”

I mean, I think the truth is Trump’s deportation machine might not hesitate to hassle Señor Salmerón over here, like it has other Latinos, if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We watched Trump’s speech on Fox News, which kept cutting to unflattering shots of conservative scapegoats like Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Those prompts uncorked snide comments from members — “Traitor!” someone yelled when the television flashed an image of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — that turned the atmosphere in the room from reserved to suddenly rollicking.

Hernandez, however, stayed silent.

While Trump bloviated about tariffs, the Hispanic Republican Club chair nibbled on dessert. As the triumphant U.S. men’s hockey team made a cameo, Hernandez was looking at his smartphone. Taxes, illegal immigration, foreign policy — nothing seemed to move Hernandez even as his fellow members got rowdier and rowdier. When Rep. Brad Sherman appeared on the screen, Hernandez finally said something: “There’s our congressman!”

But once Trump began to attack his enemies, Hernandez began to whisper comments with a smile to his daughter, who sat at the lonely check-in table. He laughed after the president gestured to the Democrats sitting glumly before him in the House of Representatives chambers and growled, “These people are crazy.” When Trump announced the awarding of Medals of Honors to a Korean War fighter pilot and a Marine who helped to capture former Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro, Hernandez — a Navy veteran — finally applauded.

I thought Trump’s speech, the longest State of the Union address ever, was a giant, xenophobic bore. So did viewers — a CNN survey found it was his worst-received State of the Union address ever and ranked even lower than any of Joe Biden’s attempts. But at the Hispanic Republic Club bash, we skeptics might as well been living in a different dimension.

“I liked the personal touch,” Hernandez told me after. “We need more of that. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

“It was beautiful,” said 68-year-old Ricardo Benitez, who’s running for a state assembly seat in the San Fernando Valley and greeted Salmerón with a “¿Entonces, cipote? [What’s up, man?] — the only Spanish I heard all night. The Salvadoran immigrant was impressed by “how our president acknowledged victims of crime and how he freed Venezuela…He’s doing a good job regardless of what his enemies are saying.”

Benitez scoffed when I asked if he thought Trump’s immigration raids would cost Republicans Latino support in this year’s midterms.

“Democrats don’t know anything. They think the immigration raids will stop people from voting. That’s not true. Deportations have always happened. Obama deported more people.”

Various political flyers for various republican candidates sit on a table at the offices of L.A. Hispanic Republican Club on Tuesday in Woodland Hills.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

Nearby, Lani Kane helped to clear tables. “I like that [Trump] honored civilians and our military,” said the 50-year-old, whose T-shirt identified her as a daughter of a World War II veteran. “But in a way, I understand why Democrats don’t like him. The speech was all ‘I, I, I.’”

The Sylmar resident stayed quiet when I asked if she thought Latinos would stay with the GOP for the midterms and beyond.

“If Republicans can continue to promote our values and protect our youth and lower taxes, I hope they do,” Kane finally said.

But did she think they would? This time, Kane nodded vigorously.

“I think Hispanics are starting to wake up.”

Well, I agree with her there. But I don’t think they’re waking up the way Kane thinks.

When myself and a Times photographer thanked the group and left, the number of Latinos at the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club State of the Union potluck, already small, dropped by a quarter.

Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa were left on the bench – just a few months after Howe spent £124m on the forwards.

That told its own story as the visitors lined up without a recognised striker for the second away league game in a row.

Anthony Gordon was instead tasked with leading the line on the road again after Howe took heart from the opening half an hour of his side’s 4-1 defeat against Liverpool.

Gordon put Newcastle in front at Anfield that night, but it was still a bold call.

However, Gordon, Elanga and Harvey Barnes aggressively led the press out of possession as they hunted down Spurs’ defenders and broke forward quickly with the ball.

There were still occasions where Newcastle were crying out for a poacher in the box to get on the end of a number of teasing crosses from Elanga.

However, the speed of Newcastle‘s front line caused Spurs problems and Gordon’s dancing feet set up Ramsey’s winner.

Remarkably, it was just travel-sick Newcastle‘s third away league victory of the season.

Newcastle have too often been soft, throwing away more points (19) than any other side in the division.

But this was an evening where they “really did inspire each other” following a difficult few days.

“If anything they used it in a positive way and reinforced relationships,” Howe added.

“It made us all look inward and look at what we’re doing and how we can do it better.”