One big primary day down! Last night, Texas state Rep. James Talarico overcame U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett in Texas’s Democratic Senate primary, bringing an end to a primary fight that had become a bit of a circus. On the Republican side, Sen. John Cornyn made a stronger-than-expected showing against state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a rising MAGA star—but since neither candidate broke 50 percent of the vote, the two will face off again in a runoff election on May 26.

For Democrats who see Texas as key to their moonshot bid to retake the Senate, it was about the best possible outcome. Republicans had pretty nakedly hoped to see Crockett, a liberal firebrand with a rinky-dink campaign operation and a habit of picking bizarre fights, take the Democratic nomination. They didn’t get that, and they didn’t get what they wanted on the Republican side either: a runoff means two more months of Paxton and Cornyn throwing haymakers at each other before the victor can turn to focus fire on Talarico. Happy Wednesday.

Everybody Hates Kristi

by Andrew Egger

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been feeling the heat. After one year running point for Donald Trump’s mass-deportation regime—a year marked by personal scandal, inexplicable management decisions, baroque internal feuds, and a management philosophy of theatrical cruelty that titillated the MAGA base while horrifying the rest of the country, culminating in the disastrous occupation of Minneapolis and the deaths of two U.S. citizens—Noem suddenly seemed to realize weeks ago that Republicans might be looking for a scapegoat for their immigration failures, and that she was a strong candidate. Suddenly, she was fleeing the spotlight she’d sought so aggressively all year and looking for others to take the blame.

It’s hard to imagine Noem’s appearance yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee reassured her.

Unsurprisingly, the secretary had no good answers for a barrage of withering questions from Democrats about her indefensible conduct in recent months. A few of these soundbites may leave her still more battered than before, particularly her stony refusal to apologize for accusing Renee Good and Alex Pretti of domestic terrorism. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) quoted Pretti’s parents. “One of the most hurtful things they could ever imagine was said by you about their son,” Klobuchar said, asking if Noem had anything to say to them.

“I did not call him a domestic terrorist,” Noem said. “I said it appeared to be an incident of . . .” she trailed off rather than finish the sentence with domestic terrorism.

But it was the questioning from a pair of Republican senators that really broke through yesterday. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis—who is retiring next year—uncorked a whole Festivus’s worth of grievances on Noem, berating her on everything from her failures in Minneapolis to the fact that she infamously once shot her own dog. “What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem,” Tillis said.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) took what seemed to be a more calculated line of attack. His pointed questioning seemed designed to exacerbate tensions between Noem and the White House, as he accused her of sending department funds to political allies, using her perch to burnish her personal brand, and—most hilariously—trying to throw Trump adviser Stephen Miller under the bus for the failures in Minnesota.

“To me,” he said at one point, “it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot.”

It’s plain the, ahem, ice under Noem is getting thinner. And yet it doesn’t matter much how fed up congressional Republicans get with Noem’s leadership, so long as she can retain the backing of the only Republican who matters: Donald Trump, who has continued to give Noem regular votes of confidence.

But there’s something else going on here, too. Democrats actually have a bit of leverage over Noem at the moment: DHS remains unfunded, and they are so far holding firm to demand real reforms to ICE and Border Patrol before they’ll consent to release the money. And as we noted yesterday, there is chatter in Democratic circles of a Republican-floated deal: What if, instead of these reforms the White House doesn’t want to agree to, we just made a deal to get rid of Noem?

If those rumors are true, they cast Kennedy’s remarks in an interesting new light. Maybe there is a coalition of Republican senators who have an interest in driving as hard a wedge between Noem and Trump as they can.

Still, Democrats would be crazy to entertain any such possibility. And, indeed, two Democrats we talked to said there is little chance the party would agree to this.

The reforms they’re seeking from DHS—that immigration-enforcement officials wear badges and uniforms and body cameras, that they lose their masks, that they be transparently investigated for misconduct, and so on—are utterly reasonable asks with broad public appeal. They point to the fact that, for all Noem’s horrible leadership, the problems with the people under her supervision don’t stem from her. They’re systemic, and systemic changes are needed.

Americans don’t like what DHS has been up to, full stop. Democrats should aim a lot higher than just getting a scalp from Noem.

—Sam Stein contributed reporting.