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Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Heather Diehl\/Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images, and Heather Diehl\/Getty Images.<\/p>\n
Sign up for the Surge<\/a>, the newsletter that covers most important political nonsense of the week, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.<\/p>\n Welcome to this week\u2019s edition of the Surge, which beat the spike in gas prices by loadin\u2019 up dozens of trash bags<\/a> with sweet, sweet unleaded a week ago. It\u2019s a thing of beauty, seeing them all lined up here in front of us by the fireplace.<\/p>\n There were three politics stories this week: the Iran war, the Texas primaries, and Homeland Security drama. That\u2019s it. The Iran war was (and is) the biggest of all of these, but we\u2019re not leading the newsletter with it. Needs a little seasoning. OK, one other thing happened in politics this week\u2014the Montanans all went nuts\u2014but that\u2019s it. There were four politics stories this week.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s begin with the peculiar set of events that led to the firing of a Cabinet official.<\/p>\n \n 1.\n <\/p>\n John Kennedy<\/p>\n The moment that finally pushed Kristi Noem out.<\/p>\n Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had been on thin ice<\/a> within the administration for some time. The precipitating event that led to her ouster<\/a>, though\u2014the first such axing of a department head in Donald Trump\u2019s second term\u2014was the way she answered questions from Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy in a Tuesday hearing. Kennedy, who possesses degrees from Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia, and Oxford, can perform an effective I\u2019m just a simple country lawyer routine when he wants to. And in this case, Kennedy, while probing Noem about an expensive DHS marketing campaign that filtered money (on no-bid deals) back to consultants in her orbit, got Noem to say that Trump greenlit the expenditure. This, as Kennedy later told reporters<\/a>, made the president \u201cmad as a murder hornet\u201d when the two spoke later that day. Trump fired Noem on Thursday.<\/p>\n This is not the response you\u2019d expect when a Republican senator goes after a Trump administration official during a hearing. You\u2019d expect Trump to yell at that senator, and trash him on social media, for daring to so publicly call a member of the Greatest Cabinet Ever Assembled corrupt. Kennedy told a reporter<\/a> separately that he had given the White House a heads-up days before the hearing that he was going to grill Noem, and we know that Noem has made a lot of enemies in the administration. Perhaps the White House wasn\u2019t just understanding but encouraging of Kennedy\u2019s plan when he reached out.<\/p>\n \n 2.\n <\/p>\n Markwayne Mullin<\/p>\n Good luck, new guy!<\/p>\n We never thought we\u2019d be sentimental for the first Trump term. But the president\u2019s firing of Noem via social media as she was giving a press conference\u2014while conferring on her the title of \u201cspecial envoy for the Shield of the Americas\u201d as a goody bag on the way out\u2014takes us back to sunnier days of 2017\u201318 messiness. Similarly, the Senate GOP found out when Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt read Trump\u2019s post, in which he announced that Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin would be replacing Noem, during lunch. It used to be slapstick gags like this all the way around. We choose to forget the bad parts.<\/p>\n Why Mullin? Not because Mullin, a wealthy plumbing baron from Oklahoma who\u2019s served in Washington since 2013, has a distinguished legislative record. Not because he is on the relevant committees or has been involved in major border and immigration enforcement decisions. We\u2019re not aware of his having any special affinity for the TSA, FEMA, or the Coast Guard. The important thing is that Mullin, who\u2019s had a number of interesting episodes<\/a> over the years, has been doing a lot of cable news hits since Trump returned to office, and Trump has enjoyed watching them. Here\u2019s an idea for when (it\u2019s probably when, not if) Mullin assumes the job: Since Trump likes watching Mullin on TV, how about an advertising campaign starring himself that costs hundreds of millions of dollars?<\/p>\n \n 3.\n <\/p>\n Marco Rubio<\/p>\n Why did we go to war with Iran?<\/p>\n The United States has been participating in a rather large war with Iran for a week. Why? What was the imminent threat that required the United States to strike? The administration has cycled through a variety of answers. The most notable may have been from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. At a press conference, he told reporters<\/a>: \u201cThere absolutely was an imminent threat, and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believe they would be attacked\u201d\u2014by Israel\u2014\u201cthey would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.\u201d<\/p>\n These remarks set off a firestorm and, regrettably, sent the sensitive receptors of antisemites abuzz. Trump, when asked whether Israel had forced his hand into attacking, said, \u201cNo, I might have forced their hand.\u201d Rubio cleaned up his remarks the following day by saying, \u201cThe bottom line is this: The president determined we were not going to get hit first.\u201d It\u2019s all kind of a silly conversation. Did Israel\u2019s timing affect Trump\u2019s? Perhaps. But at the end of the day, Trump attacked Iran because there are a lot of people (hello, Lindsey Graham<\/a>!) in his orbit who\u2019ve wanted to take out Iran for a long time, and they successfully convinced Trump that this would be a moment of glory for him. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n \n 4.\n <\/p>\n John Cornyn<\/p>\n The Texas Republican Senate primary somehow just got more interesting.<\/p>\n There was a small but critical surprise in Tuesday\u2019s Texas Republican Senate primary results. After narrowly trailing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton heading into primary day, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn ended up leading with 42\u00a0percent after votes were counted. The race now heads to a runoff on May\u00a026. Cornyn\u2019s showing provided his supporters with the best argument they\u2019d had yet<\/a> to persuade Trump to back Cornyn: that he was showing momentum and just needed another little push, and that it would save Republicans a lot of money in the fall if Cornyn won. While it\u2019s not official yet, the argument seems to be working. The Atlantic reported that the president is preparing to endorse<\/a> Cornyn, the stronger general-election candidate.<\/p>\n Trump confirmed in a post that an endorsement was imminent, adding a twist: The candidate he didn\u2019t endorse needed to \u201cimmediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!\u201d This, aside from saving the GOP money and drama ahead of the runoff, would prevent Trump from being humiliated in case his candidate lost. Paxton at first said there was no chance he\u2019d get out of the race should he lose the endorsement. Then, on Thursday<\/a>, he said he would \u201cconsider\u201d it if the Senate agreed to \u201clift the filibuster\u201d to pass the SAVE America Act, the GOP\u2019s voter-ID and voter-verification law. But as the Surge has explained, time<\/a> and again<\/a>, that\u2019s not going to happen. Listen, Ken: Just go for it if Trump endorses Cornyn. A lot of MAGA voters will be upset if Trump does that, and Paxton should harness their rage. Newsletter writers love this primary, and we want it to last forever. STAY IN, KEN! FIGHT!<\/p>\n \n 5.\n <\/p>\n James Talarico<\/p>\n Now comes the real test.<\/p>\n In a rare jump ball of a competitive Texas Democratic Senate primary, state Rep. James Talarico, the fancy-talkin\u2019 seminarian, defeated #Resistance fighter Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the nomination. This all worked out pretty well for Democrats. Talarico showed particular strength among Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley, an area where the party suffered catastrophic losses during the Biden years. And though the primary was frequently ugly, Crockett was gracious enough to quickly concede and endorse Talarico.<\/p>\n Talarico\u2019s next 24 hours showed the daunting path ahead, though. First and foremost were Trump\u2019s apparent efforts to negotiate Paxton\u2019s quick exit from the race. But the Surge also couldn\u2019t help but notice old tweets and statements of Talarico\u2019s suddenly resurfacing on Republican accounts the day after the primary, ones in which he, like many liberals, got a bit carried away around 2020. There are some cringe quotes<\/a> about how \u201cwhite skin\u201d gives him \u201cimmunity\u201d from the \u201cvirus\u201d of racism, which all white people carry. Generally, his interpretation of Christianity<\/a>, in which there\u2019s a nonbinary God who supports abortion, will be a tough sell to Christians who aren\u2019t already solid liberals. But he\u2019s got eight months to figure it out.<\/p>\n \n 6.\n <\/p>\n Steve Daines<\/p>\n Something in the water in Montana?<\/p>\n Two minutes before the candidate filing deadline in Montana on Wednesday afternoon, two-term Republican Sen. Steve Daines withdrew the reelection bid<\/a> he had filed a few weeks ago. Right around the same time, Montana U.S. attorney and former state budget official Kurt Alme filed for his candidacy and promptly received the endorsement of Daines, Trump, Gov. Greg Gianforte, and Sen. Tim Sheehy. What we have here is a sleazeball situation. Daines appears to have been staying in the race on paper to keep the primary field clear for his chosen successor, and to prevent Democrats from landing a top-tier recruit for an open seat. (Though it\u2019s Dems\u2019 fault, ultimately, for not being prepared.) When Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia pulled a similar maneuver<\/a> last year, the House voted to rebuke him<\/a> for actions that are \u201cbeneath the dignity of his office and incompatible with the spirit of the United States Constitution.\u201d No similar rebukes against Daines are expected in the Senate.<\/p>\n There were two other newsworthy events in the Montana delegation this week, allowing us to make this a Montana Trend Entry. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a former interior secretary in Trump\u2019s first term, announced that he wouldn\u2019t run<\/a> for reelection, opening up a you-never-know situation for Democrats in the less red of Montana\u2019s two districts. And in a surreal scene<\/a>, Sheehy joined Capitol Police to help forcibly eject<\/a> a protester who was disrupting an Armed Services Committee hearing. The protester\u2014a Marine veteran running as a Green Party Senate candidate in North Carolina\u2014said he suffered a broken bone in the process. Why all these Montana men decided to have life crises this week is beyond us.<\/p>\n \n 7.\n <\/p>\n Tony Gonzales<\/p>\n He will leave Congress (later).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s Greatest Promise Is Looking More Disastrous for Him by the Day <\/p>\n Trump\u2019s Real Plan for Iran Might Be Coming Into View The embattled Texas representative secured 42\u00a0percent of the vote against his primary opponent, Brandon Herrera, on Tuesday. (When you think about it, getting 42\u00a0percent of the vote while engulfed in a scandal over an affair with a staffer who later took her own life by self-immolation is more than you might expect.) And the day after the primary\u2014with those pesky voters out of the equation for a couple of months\u2014Gonzales finally gave an interview in which he admitted to the affair<\/a>.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s no runoff with Herrera in Gonzales\u2019 future after all. On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other House Republican leaders asked Gonzales<\/a> to withdraw from the race, and he did so shortly thereafter. Note, however, that these leaders didn\u2019t also ask Gonzales to resign, for the very obvious reason that the House GOP majority is thin to the point of collapsible. \u201cGod has a plan for all of us,\u201d Gonzales wrote on Twitter<\/a>. And God\u2019s plan for Gonzales is to exploit a narrow House margin to continue collecting a salary through the rest of the year.<\/p>\n
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