Trump racked up back-to-back wins in his successful campaigns to oust two non-MAGA Republican incumbents, Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana and Rep. Tom Massie in Kentucky, both of whom lost primaries this week to Trump-backed challengers. But then Trump rained on his own parade with a petulant endorsement of Texas Senate challenger Ken Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn.

Trump had stayed out of the Texas race, until Senate Republican Leader John Thune refused to bend to Trump’s wishes on funding Trump’s East Wing ballroom vanity project. Last weekend, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that funding could not be included in the latest budget bill. An outraged Trump phoned Thune and demanded that he fire the parliamentarian. Thune refused. As revenge, Trump endorsed Thune’s friend and preferred candidate, the badly blemished state AG Paxton, who has a long history of political and personal scandals. Paxton was impeached on corruption charges but acquitted in a 2023 impeachment trial. He reached a deal in 2024 to end a long-running securities fraud case.

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In the case of Massie, there was no immediate fallout, other than to demonstrate Trump’s continuing hold on the MAGA base. But in the Texas case, the endorsement of Paxton increases the chances that James Talarico will pick up the Senate seat for the Democrats. Polls consistently show Talarico in a toss-up against the incumbent Cornyn but beating Paxton by several points, well beyond the polling margin of error.

The endorsement also reportedly infuriated Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Scott warned, “It is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee.” Several other Republicans have pointed out that if Trump was going to endorse one of the candidates, he should have done it well before they wasted money raising millions of dollars against each other that could have been better spent in November. “I’m sad, I’m actually sad,” said Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. “Now it’ll just cost us a fortune.”

Unlike in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson has little power base of his own, and has therefore hitched his wagon to Trump, Majority Leader Thune displays more independence and there is little that Trump can do to him other than try to punish him by weakening the Senate’s Republican majority. Thune has also criticized Trump’s latest Justice Department weaponization slush fund.

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Cassidy, now a liberated lame-duck senator with nothing to lose for the remainder of his term, has said that he will never vote to approve Trump’s ballroom. And on Tuesday, Cassidy provided one of four Republican votes to bring up a challenge to Trump’s stalemated Iran war, under the War Powers Act. The measure passed, 50-to-47, with three Republicans absent. The last time the proposal was considered in the House, it lost on a tie vote. Now, it could well pass. Trump would veto the bill, but it would be an important symbolic rejection of his unpopular war.

The shifting sentiment demonstrates the bind that Trump has created for his fellow Republicans. By combining disastrously unpopular policies with demands for absolute loyalty, he increases the chance of massive Republican losses in November. Even the Republican recent gerrymandering wins will hold down Democratic net gains but not enough to reverse the trend of a wave election.

Meanwhile, over on the Democratic side, Trump’s lunacy continues to energize the progressive base. In Pennsylvania’s Third Congressional District, which includes Center City and much of North and West Philadelphia, progressive Chris Rabb, the candidate of the Working Families Party, DSA, and the Sunrise Movement, blew away two more establishment Democrats—one of whom, Ala Stanford, was backed by AIPAC. When the race was called, Rabb, currently a state representative, had 44.2 percent of the vote, a 15-point lead over the next-highest vote-getter.

Trump’s actions produce some short-run gains for his personalist brand of politics, but as the fall election approaches, they portend a divided and disabled Republican Party against energized and progressive Democrats.

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Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America. Follow Bob at his site, robertkuttner.com, and on Twitter.