This article contains major spoilers for the latest episode of Euphoria.

Euphoria boss Sam Levinson has shared his thoughts on the most recent episode of the hit US drama, which featured the death of a major character.

As you’re reading this, we’re going to assume you know now that in the latest instalment of the award-winning series, Jacob Elordi’s character Nate was killed off.

However, it wasn’t just Nate’s death that left viewers reeling, but also the way he died, being stung by a venomous rattlesnake while buried alive.

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Speaking to Esquire, Euphoria’s creator Sam Levinson shared exactly where the idea for Jacob’s character to die in such a gruesome way came from.

Explaining that it was always his plan for Nate to die in season three, he said that the character’s burial was an homage to The Candy Snatchers.

The rest of it came to him while driving to work with his wife, Ashley Lent, one morning.

“It was one of those gorgeous L.A. days where it was perfect weather,” he recalled.

“We’re listening to Otis Redding. The windows are down and we’re driving to Warner Bros. and I’m looking out the window. I just had this image of a rattlesnake coming toward this pipe. He’s banging and the snake can sense the movement in the ground. And I thought, ‘What if the snake goes into the pipe and then he’s stuck inside the coffin with this rattlesnake?’.”

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He noted that it’s “sort of a funny moment where you realise that not all dark scenes come from a dark place”, adding: “I turned to Ash and I said, ‘I think I got it.’ And I explained how Nate dies in this sequence. She goes, ‘That’s what you’ve been thinking about?’.”

Despite being put through the ringer to shoot the scenes practical effects, Jacob has admitted he had a surprisingly good time filming his character’s death.

In a behind-the-scenes video, the Oscar nominee said: “I had to go into this coffin, my shoulders were touching the sides and I couldn’t move my arms. And then they would drill the lid on, and it would get dark. It was really nice, actually, it was quite peaceful in there.”

“[The snake] was super cute. He was, like, real cuddly,” Jacob then insisted. “He kind of just saddled up next to me, and it was nice. But he was real sleepy – sleepy snake. I had to kind of nudge him to get him to come up [to my face].”

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Euphoria’s season three finale – widely believed to be the last ever episode of the show – will premiere on Sky and Now in the UK on Monday 1 June.

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Perrie Edwards has dismissed the possibility of Little Mix coming together as a four-piece any time soon.

The Think About Us singer first rose to fame as a contestant on The X Factor back in 2011, where she and fellow auditionees Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jesy Nelson were put together in a girl group by the judges.

In the end, the quartet went on to win the show, and stayed together as Little Mix for almost a decade, until Jesy announced that she was leaving the band in December 2020 on mental health grounds.

After that, Little Mix remained together as a trio, before going on an indefinite hiatus in 2022.

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Since then, Jade, Leigh-Anne and Perrie have all been adamant that they’ll reunite one day, which the latter spoke about during a new interview with Attitude magazine.

“I’m ready and raring,” Perrie enthused. “We always message each other and are bantering like, ‘So how long until we do a reunion? Are we going to do one? Where is it?’.”

She added: “I’m like, just give me a ballpark time. Do you know what I mean? Just let me know when.”

However, when pressed on whether it would involve Jesy, Perrie insisted the band would “definitely” be “a three” when they did come together.

Initially, the remaining members of Little Mix maintained that Jesy’s departure from the group was an amicable one, although this appeared not to be the case as time went on.

Reports around the release of Jesy’s debut solo single Boyz suggested that her former bandmates had all unfollowed her on social media, though unverified “leaked” DMs reportedly sent by Leigh-Anne Pinnock to a TikTok user later suggested that Jesy had, in fact, blocked the trio.

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These alleged messages were never verified, nor did Leigh-Anne ever comment on them directly. However, they formed a major part of the conversation during an ill-fated Instagram live-stream Jesy took part in with her Boyz collaborator Nicki Minaj, in which the rapper branded Leigh-Anne a “fucking clown” and accused her of being “jealous” of Jesy.

Just over a year ago, Jesy became a mum to twin girls, Ocean Jade and Story Monroe.

She later disclosed that her daughters had been diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a genetic condition characterised by weakness and wasting in the skeletal muscles, which can cause severe issues with movement.

Following this, Leigh-Anne confirmed earlier this year that she and the rest of Little Mix had “all reached out” to Jesy in light of the news, praising her as “really brave”.

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Even if the new movie based on the TV series The Mandalorian isn’t likely to be remembered as a high-point for the Star Wars franchise, director Jon Favreau has insisted it won’t be the last we see of its central characters.

Jon helmed the film The Mandalorian And Grogu, having also created the sci-fi TV series in which we first met its central characters.

Since its release on Friday, the latest addition to the Star Wars canon has had the lowest-grossing opening weekend in the saga’s history, and received lukewarm reviews, the most scathing of which described it as a low moment for the beloved franchise.

Despite this, Jon has told Entertainment Weekly that he’s already considering the future for his characters.

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The Emmy winner explained: “I think about it creatively, and so for me it’s like a garden or a greenhouse with all the different storylines and characters.

“I see opportunity in all of them, because these storylines have taken on a life of their own, and I love the progression of these characters, and I like to think forward as to what’s the next step for both of them.”

He went on to describe Din Djarin and Grogu’s futures as a “wide open canvas”, albeit one dependent on decisions made by Lucasfilm president Dave Fioni.

“There’s a lot of higher-order strategic decisions that Dave is making that this will fit into,” Jon added.

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“But from my perspective, I have a lot of notes and ideas as to where I think things might go within this small microcosm within Star Wars.”

As well as the return of Pedro Pascal as the central figure known as the Mandalorian, the first Star Wars movie in almost a decade also featured an appearance from Sigourney Weaver and a voice performance from The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as the descendent of an iconic character.

The Mandalorian And Grogu is in cinemas now.

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WASHINGTON — Americans hoping that President Donald Trump’s third “annual” physical exam over a span of 13 months on Tuesday might offer insights into his increasingly bizarre and incomprehensible statements and social media posts are likely to be disappointed.

Neither Trump nor his White House is under any legal obligation to reveal observations about his mental health that might be made by the team of physicians who examined him at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Bandy Lee, a psychiatrist and former professor at Yale School of Medicine, said those doctors do, though, have an ethical responsibility to the American people to do just that.

“Of course, the White House physician has a duty, and so do we. The public is being shortchanged, and endangered, to the maximum,” said Lee, who in 2017 edited The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, one of the first warnings from mental health professionals about Trump’s behaviour pattern.

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“The incoherence is worrisome, possibly dangerous,” said Allen Dyer, a retired psychiatrist and retired George Washington University professor who recommends a full battery of tests. “The evaluation should include a complete mental status exam as well as imaging studies, lab studies, including amyloid studies that might be indicative of Alzheimer’s, which his father was reported to have had, and a battery of cognitive tests.”

Dyer, in 1973, helped craft the so-called “Goldwater rule” that he says has been misinterpreted to mean that mental health professionals should never offer their analyses of political figures.

Last week, Lee and 19 other doctors and mental health professionals wrote to the White House physician, telling him that “Trump’s judgment, decision-making, and relationship to reality are dangerously impaired” and calling on him to take action because Trump is a danger to himself and others.

Trump’s White House said it would provide information in the next day or two about his Walter Reed visit but would not address HuffPost’s queries about his mental health. Trump himself posted on social media Tuesday afternoon: “Everything checked out PERFECTLY.”

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Trump has, ever since he entered politics 11 years ago, spoken and written in an over-the-top style. In recent years and especially in recent months, though, his tendency to ramble and answer questions with non-sequiturs appears to have worsened, while his posts on social media have grown ever more unhinged.

He has threatened Iran with civilization-ending genocide and hinted at using nuclear weapons as the war he began on February 28 continues even as Trump tries to declare victory and move on. Early Tuesday, he posted an AI-generated image of him wielding a long gun and standing over a dead rhinoceros, with the statement “NO RINOS!” — a reference to the acronym “Republicans in name only,” which in his view means Republicans who are not sufficiently loyal to him.

While past presidents and presidential candidates have bent over backward to prove they were healthy enough for the job — the late John McCain released more than a thousand pages of medical records when he ran in 2008 — Trump has taken the opposite approach, revealing virtually nothing.

When he first ran in 2016, Trump released no records but did put out a single-page letter under his personal physician’s signature that appeared to have been written by Trump himself. “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Harold Bornstein wrote.

During his first term, the White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, wound up becoming a big Trump supporter — “If he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200,” he told reporters in 2018 — and eventually ran for and won a House seat from Texas with Trump’s backing.

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During this current term, the White House has deflected questions about his health and given at times nonsensical answers. The deep bruising on his right hand, for example, was explained away as resulting from shaking so many hands, even though it was on the back of his hand, which is not touched during a handshake. Eventually the bruises showed up on his left hand, as well.

While Trump’s White House doctors and aides almost certainly will not reveal any information about whether his mental condition was examined, it is possible that Trump may himself do so, the same way he let the world know that his doctors had administered to him a screening test for dementia.

The simple, 30-question Montreal Cognitive Assessment is designed to provide doctors early warning signs of loss of mental acuity. Trump, instead, has repeatedly claimed over the several years since it was first administered to him that it proves his genius.

“I’ve taken it and I’ve aced it all three times, I’ll tell you, because it is a positive thing,” he boasted again on Friday at a political rally.

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Dyer said Trump’s claims about the MoCA test are further evidence of his issues. “His bragging about ‘acing’ the Montreal screening test, being able to distinguish two animals, is suggestive for poor judgment rather than cognitive sharpness,” he said,

Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

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Texas Democrats have wandered in the wilderness for decades. They hope a seminarian-turned-politician will finally lead them out.

Now that Republicans have nominated Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate, Democrats see November as their best opportunity this century to flip Texas blue. They have a favorable political environment, aided by nationwide dissatisfaction with the economy and President Donald Trump’s leadership. They see the Texas GOP fractured after a messy Senate primary that took out Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of the party’s senior statesmen, and a potentially fatally flawed candidate in Paxton with his significant personal baggage.

They think their nominee, state Rep. James Talarico, is the ideal candidate to break through.

“Democrats have been in the desert for three decades,” said Mark McKinnon, a longtime GOP strategist and adviser to former President George W. Bush. “Talarico could be Moses.”

Cliff Walker, a Texas Democratic strategist and principal at Seeker Strategies, echoed the sentiment: “Folks are pretty damn bullish. I think this is the year.”

The pieces are all aligning, Democratic strategists, lawmakers and activists argue: Talarico is a charismatic candidate who has fundraising prowess and boasts a lead in early head-to-head polling.

Still, it’s a target that has long eluded Democrats in one of America’s most conservative, and costliest, battlegrounds. In election cycle after cycle, they’ve raised their hopes and poured money into trying to flip a statewide seat blue. Try as they might, Texas Democrats haven’t elected one of their own to the Senate since 1988.

Paxton won’t make it easy. The Texas attorney general, who defeated Cornyn by a wide margin in Tuesday’s runoff, emerged from the most expensive Senate primary on record with his eyes trained on November. After securing Trump’s endorsement last week, Paxton announced he’d remove all ads attacking Cornyn from the airwaves and instead focus his gaze on Talarico, who he calls a “leftist lunatic” and “Talafreako.”

“My opponent is the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated,” Paxton said in his victory speech Tuesday. “No matter what he says or how much he raises, the reality is that James Talarico is going to be nothing more than a Texas-based puppet for Chuck Schumer and the national Democrats.”

Texas Democrats have been bullish before. In 2014, former state Sen. Wendy Davis elicited hopes of flipping the governor’s mansion, but her campaign spent $36 million only to lose to then-Attorney General Greg Abbott by a whopping 20 points.

In 2018, national Democrats were hesitant to back former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s challenge to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz. O’Rourke eventually caught fire in the race’s final months, smashing fundraising records and running neck-and-neck in the polls, before losing by less than three percentage points — and leaving national Democrats wondering what could’ve happened if they jumped in sooner.

In 2020, Cornyn defeated Democratic nominee MJ Hegar by nearly 10 points; in 2024, Cruz toppled former Rep. Colin Allred by eight.

This cycle could be different, Texas Democrats say. Talarico is polling and fundraising ahead of where O’Rourke was at this point in 2018. And Talarico benefits from a Democratic political operation in the state — much of it built by O’Rourke — that was nonexistent when his predecessor ran.

“It’s the best chance Texas Democrats will have to win a statewide race in the entirety of my career,” said Democratic strategist Jeff Rotkoff, who has advised campaigns in Texas for 25 years.

The national headwinds facing Republicans — as voters’ patience for the Iran war and its effect on energy prices has eroded — are blowing especially hard in Texas, said Matt Angle, founder of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic-aligned group.

“At the voter level, what you’ve got is just an overwhelming dissatisfaction with Republicans in a way that you just haven’t seen in Texas in the past,” Angle said.

Some point to Texas’ 9th Senate District as evidence, which Trump won by 17 points in 2024 and a Democrat flipped in January. When the Democratic-aligned Texas Majority PAC surveyed voters there, they found that 90 percent of Republican-leaning voters who backed the Democrat in the race said they did it because “they just would not support any MAGA candidate,” said Katherine Fischer, the group’s director.

“It was tough for us last cycle to run in an environment where our president was deeply unpopular,” Fischer said. “Now it’s on them.”

Democrats believe Cornyn’s closing argument: That Paxton and his long trail of controversies will create a drag on the Republican ticket.

“Ken Paxton will be an albatross,” Cornyn said during a Fox News appearance Tuesday. “He could well lose, but even if he doesn’t lose, he will win by such a razor-thin margin that it’s likely to have a negative drag on the down ballot races in Texas.”

It’s a message that has some national Republicans wringing their hands. “The national mood is not great for Republicans right now, and Texas feels even worse,” said one Washington GOP operative close to Cornyn, granted anonymity to speak openly. “We already know we’re heading into a headwind in the state, up and down the ticket, and we just put up the worst possible top-of-the-ticket person.

“I can’t think of a worse person to put on the top of the ticket than Ken Paxton,” he added. “It’s laughable. All I can do is laugh.”

Still, it may be Paxton who gets the last laugh. Although his impeachment, the securities fraud investigation and ethics complaints against him, and his ongoing divorce were played up in the many attack ads Cornyn ran, the attorney general still managed to garner support from a large majority of GOP runoff voters.

“I think Talarico is the only opponent Paxton can beat,” said Tim Edson, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s former political director. “Democrats are going to wish they had Beto again. … Talarico is a Marxist creep who will make Paxton seem normal after this race is litigated.”

The NRSC backed Cornyn in the primary. In a post-election statement the group blasted Talarico, but didn’t mention Paxton.

“A state President Trump won by nearly 14 points isn’t going to elect James Talarico — a radical leftist who thinks God is nonbinary and that Texas should be a welcome mat for illegals,” said NRSC spokesperson Samantha Cantrell. “He is the most dangerous flank of the far left. Texas isn’t swapping brisket for open borders.”

Paxton is already laser-focused on attacking Talarico as too progressive: A Paxton-aligned super PAC spent the past week running an ad that labeled Talarico as “weird,” clipping the state representative’s statements on gender, race, meat consumption and patriotism.

Those culture war issues are seen as Talarico’s largest liability as he seeks to win over a wide umbrella of progressive and moderate Democrats, independents and Republicans dissatisfied with Trump. Talarico has claimed there are “more than two” biological sexes and said he’s had to “reckon” with his own whiteness and masculinity.

Some of his allies want him to avoid those issues altogether.

“Stay away from it,” said state Sen. Royce West, a Democrat who represents Dallas. “I’m pretty sure he’ll have a strategy to do that, but he’s got to be able to get centrists.”

The same goes for downballot Democrats, who may be hoping to ride the energy of Talarico’s campaign to victory in their own races. The stakes are high: Future control of Congress could run through the Lone Star State, as the post-2030 Census reapportionment is poised to gift additional House seats to Texas while kneebuckling the map for Democrats nationwide. With newly redrawn House maps that favor Republicans and not another U.S. Senate race in the state until 2030, now is the ideal moment for Texas Democrats to notch victories up and down the ballot and send a message that they can play in the state.

“There’s just a ton of evidence to suggest that this is a much more favorable cycle than anything we’ve seen in Texas in the last 30 years. Is it enough to win in November? I don’t know,” said Fischer. “If it’s possible to win in Texas, all of the things are there for us to do it.”

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The storied career of Sen. John Cornyn came to a swift and decisive end at the hands of the GOP voters who once propelled him to power.

The senator was a towering figure in both national and Texas politics, known for his sober temperament, ability to cut deals and role in shaping the Senate GOP conference during the last four presidencies. Then, just about an hour after polls closed Tuesday, Cornyn lost his primary to Ken Paxton, a scandal-plagued MAGA darling who was boosted by President Donald Trump’s last-minute endorsement.

Cornyn’s defeat is rattling the establishment wing of the GOP, who viewed the brutal primary as a battle for the soul of the party. His supporters mourn his approaching absence in the Senate as another example of an institutionalist who fell victim to the rise of the populist right, what they see as the end of an era of compassionate conservatism.

“It just blows my mind that anybody could look at John Cornyn and somehow call him a secret liberal RINO,” said Josh Schroeder, mayor of Georgetown, Texas, and a Cornyn supporter. “If that guy can’t pass a conservative litmus test, who can?”

Cornyn’s loss stands to further deplete the corps of senators willing to work across the aisle on thorny policy issues, from immigration reform to gun safety — potentially contributing further to increasing polarization on Capitol Hill.

While Cornyn was not a frequent bipartisan operator in the mold of former Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) or Rob Portman (R-Ohio), he occasionally dug in to try and find compromise. His loss comes just ten days after fellow Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) lost his own primary to a Trump-backed challenger. Before that, it had been 14 years since the last elected senator lost a primary.

“He’s always been about delivering results for Texas rather than chasing headlines,” said Brian Walsh, Cornyn’s former communications director. “He respects the Senate as his institution and believes deeply in doing the work the right way, even when it’s difficult, or I would say politically inconvenient.”

His participation was often crucial as a member of the GOP leadership team and a key Republican fundraiser who operated with the tacit approval of Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who served as GOP leader for nearly all of Cornyn’s tenure.

Even though his supporters were long skeptical of his odds in the primary, Cornyn chose to go down swinging. He continued to run negative ads against Paxton throughout Texas until the last minute, harping on Paxton’s indiscretions. And he warned during an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday that the attorney general would be an “albatross” on the rest of the Republican ticket “likely to have a negative drag on the down ballot races in Texas, judges, local officials, House of Representatives, you name it.”

But those moral arguments did not sway a majority of primary voters — or Trump, who chose to endorse the attorney general and cited Cornyn’s decision to wait to endorse his third presidential run as proof he was insufficiently loyal.

Paxton’s supporters have long shrugged off his long trail of criminal and ethics investigations, impeachment by the state legislature and ongoing divorce, complete with accusations of infidelity, believing that his commitment to carrying the MAGA torch was more important than corruption allegations or a messy personal life. Paxton, for his part, has tried to focus the campaign on his qualifications for the Senate — and allegiance to Trump.

Paxton also benefitted from a strong anti-incumbency sentiment rippling throughout Texas. The GOP base was ripe for his argument that Cornyn was too enmeshed in the D.C. swamp to justify sending back to Washington even as those attacks bewildered Cornyn’s supporters, who pointed to his long record of voting for Trump’s agenda.

As majority whip during Trump’s first term, Cornyn helped shepherd the president’s signature tax bill across the finish line. In 2024, he fell just a few votes short of becoming majority leader against Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). And few Republicans have demonstrated fundraising prowess like Cornyn, the former chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who has brought in more than $400 million throughout the course of his political career.

“Senate Republicans were very eager to see their friend and colleague continue, and Cornyn is one of those guys that would’ve raised money for his fellow incumbents. That’s unlikely to continue,” said a GOP Senate strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Trump, after weeks of standing on the sidelines, swooped in at the start of early voting to back Paxton, a reward for the attorney general supporting his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Cornyn, on the other hand, voted to certify the results.

Throughout the bitter campaign, Cornyn shifted to the right on some issues, adopting the fiery language of the MAGA base, which was seen as an effort to endear himself to Trump in a bid for his endorsement. Most prominently, he ran an ad declaring that “radical Islam is a bloodthirsty ideology.”

When Paxton cleverly declared that he would drop out of the primary if the Senate GOP killed the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, Trump’s priority election bill, that staved off the president’s planned endorsement of Cornyn. The Texas senator belatedly announced a reversal of his longheld support of the filibuster. And Cornyn introduced a bill two weeks ago to rename a major U.S. highway Interstate 47 to honor Trump. But it came far too late to save him.

But in a hyper-partisan environment, Cornyn’s decisions to occasionally work with Democrats doomed his standing among the rabidly conservative base in Texas.

Cornyn kept to the outskirts of high-stakes bipartisan immigration talks, such as the “Gang of Eight” that sought a comprehensive overhaul in 2013. But he later partnered with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in exploring a narrower, border-security-focused bill.

He also found success reaching across the aisle in 2022 on gun safety legislation in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was modest relative to Democratic demands for stricter gun control. But it was still the most significant federal gun legislation in a generation — and it provoked intense backlash among hard-right voters in Texas.

“We both know that when we’re doing what’s right, it doesn’t matter what other people think,” Cornyn texted Sinema at the time.

Four years later, Paxton made the legislation a centerpiece of his campaign, accusing Cornyn of shepherding “the worst gun control bill in decades.”

Texas will now be swept up in an expensive and competitive Senate race, with Democrats amped to compete against Paxton, who they view as more vulnerable than Cornyn in a midterm environment favorable to their party. Many believe Democratic nominee and state Sen. James Talarico is their best shot in a generation at flipping a statewide seat.

Schroeder, who represents a small town in Talarico’s former district, said the Democrat is capable of pulling off a strong campaign: “He appears to be campaigning from the high road while the Democratic party is just slicing Paxton to shreds because they got a whole lot of ammunition.”

In the aftermath of the brutal primary, some Republicans fear that the state of the GOP is dire – and potentially unable to unify ahead of November with the possibility that some Cornyn supporters will sit out the race entirely or vote for Talarico. After the race was quickly called on Tuesday, Talarico posted on X: “To Senator Cornyn’s supporters: you have a place in our campaign.”

In his concession speech, Cornyn said he will support the GOP ticket: “I’ve fought the good fight, I’ve finished the race, and I’ve kept the faith.”

“I’ll have more to say later.”

Mike DeBonis and Samuel Benson contributed to this article.

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Progressive sex therapist Maureen Galindo lost the Democratic runoff for Texas’ 35th District after being accused of antisemitism and facing condemnations from within her own party.

Johnny Garcia’s victory over Galindo on Tuesday has national and Texas Democrats breathing a sigh of relief.

They had moved en masse to disavow Galindo after she said in a recent social media post that she would write legislation to turn a local ICE detention center into a “prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking.” They had also accused Republicans of trying to prop her up, pointing to a shadowy super PAC with possible GOP ties, Lead Left, that pumped over $900,000 into the race to boost Galindo and attack Garcia.

The district is one of the five that Texas Republicans are targeting for pickups this fall, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has added Garcia, a county sheriff’s deputy, to its coveted “Red to Blue” program to support his candidacy.

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Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated Sen. John Cornyn in the Senate GOP runoff Tuesday, cementing the influence of the far right in Texas and potentially putting the seat in play for November.

Paxton was boosted by a last-minute endorsement from President Donald Trump in the final days of the race. His defeat of Cornyn, a towering figure in Texas politics and four-term incumbent, is a major MAGA coup.

But establishment Republicans and major national donors have warned that a Paxton victory would lead to a costly general election against Democratic nominee James Talarico. Head-to-head polling shows Talarico with a slight lead over Paxton.

Paxton overcame his deficit in the March primary, where he finished narrowly behind Cornyn, by leaning on his grassroots support among MAGA voters — a base he’s cultivated throughout his tenure in Texas.

He also overcame millions of dollars in attack ads from Cornyn that highlighted his long trail of personal and political scandals. And Trump’s endorsement one week before the primary runoff likely sealed the deal.

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Texas Democratic Rep. Christian Menefee defeated longtime Rep. Al Green in a runoff that was defined by heavy outside spending and clashes over generational change.

The Tuesday result will likely end the long career of Green, a 78-year-old civil rights champion who was running for a 12th term in Washington. He entered the race in the newly drawn Houston-area 18th District after his own district was carved up in redistricting.

Menefee, a 38-year-old Harris County attorney and fellow member of the Congressional Black Caucus, was sworn into Congress earlier this year after winning a special election in January to serve out the remainder of the late Rep. Sylvester Turner’s term. He is expected to cruise to victory in November in the safely Democratic Houston district.

The race was also the latest sign of the power of the crypto lobby’s influence. A cryptocurrency super PAC poured $4 million into the race to back Menefee, turning the incumbent-on-incumbent showdown into the most expensive House runoff in Texas this cycle.

In the end, Green, an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, couldn’t overcome the cash disadvantage despite his name recognition.

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