Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he wants to end his campaign on a “positive” note. Sen. John Cornyn, however, is prepared to go down fighting.

Paxton said Thursday he’s pulling his negative ads against Cornyn in the final days ahead of their bruising GOP primary for Texas’ Senate seat. The move reveals that the MAGA warrior, bolstered by President Donald Trump’s endorsement, is confident in his ability to clinch the Republican nomination.

But Cornyn, who’s facing an uphill battle to keep his seat, responded that he will keep his own attacks coming, leaning into Paxton’s long trail of personal and political scandals.

In a race that’s been defined by personal shots, the latest online dustup between the two underscores the difficult path forward for the Texas GOP after next week’s runoff election. The Paxton-Cornyn matchup has deepened divisions between the MAGA and establishment wings of the GOP, and the fighting between the two camps has gotten so ugly that some Republicans are fearful it will dampen turnout in the midterms, hurt down-ticket Republicans — and possibly cost them the seat.

Paxton’s announcement came after Texas GOP Chair Abraham George, a fellow conservative hardliner, asked the candidates to move beyond their feud out of consideration of the fight ahead to keep the seat red. The attorney general, who has gone after Cornyn for being too old to continue serving in Congress, wrote on X that his campaign has “already changed our TV ad traffic starting today to ensure our campaign ends on a positive note and that we can focus on beating the leftist lunatic in the fall,” referring to Democratic nominee James Talarico.

He called on Cornyn “to do the same for the good of our party. A Super PAC supporting Paxton, Lone Star Liberty, also announced Tuesday it was pulling its own negative ads.

Cornyn respondedin a post on X that Paxton is “desperate to avoid accountability” — and laid out exactly how bruising his ads will remain, saying the campaign needs a few more days to make sure voters know “that you plea bargained with a child sex offender, offering them only one day in prison and no sex offender registry as a favor” to a donor. He was referring to a recent report by the Texas Tribune on a plea deal Paxton offered to a man facing sexual abuse charges.

Cornyn and his allies have poured millions into brutal, personal ads trying to defeat Paxton — and they’ve had a lot of material to work with. Paxton has faced an impeachment attempt by the state legislature, ethics complaints from his staff and a federal securities fraud investigation. He’s currently going through a divorce that his wife filed for on “biblical grounds.”

Republicans are increasingly concerned that a Paxton nomination would put the seat in jeopardy, given his significant personal and political baggage, and bracing to spend upwards of $100 million to bail him out in the general election. Cornyn finished narrowly ahead of Paxton in the March primary, but the Trump endorsement puts Paxton in a strong position to overcome that deficit.

“We are going to continue to tell the truth about Paxton,” Cornyn said in another post. “He’s escaped accountability for too long. Judgment day is coming.”

The Democratic National Committee — after months of both internal and external pressure — released a haphazard version of its autopsy of Kamala Harris’ failed 2024 presidential campaign on Thursday.

The report paints a bleak portrait of the party following the crushing loss to President Donald Trump, who carried every battleground state in his Electoral College romp, even as it fails to address some of the defining issues of the campaign, including Israel and Gaza.

Democrats “have proven incapable of projecting strength, unity, and leadership, and voters have drifted away,” Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, who authored the report but is not mentioned in the published version, writes. The autopsy was first released by CNN and shortly after published by the DNC.

Rivera writes that since President Barack Obama’s historic win in 2008, “Democrats have lost ground at every level of government.”

“These losses are the direct result of missed opportunities to invest in our states, counties, and local parties and candidates,” he writes.

This is a breaking news story that will be updated.

Colorado Democrats censured Gov. Jared Polis late Wednesday for his decision to grant clemency to Tina Peters, a former county clerk who is serving a prison sentence after being convicted of allowing unauthorized access to voting machines in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

The two-term governor’s decision, which he made last week, “materially harmed the Colorado Democratic Party’s institutional credibility and efforts to defend democratic institutions and election integrity,” the party said in a statement.

“Colorado has spent years building trust in our elections and proving they are secure,” the party said. “At a time when democracy and voting rights are under attack across the nation, weakening accountability for someone convicted of undermining that trust is a mistake.”

Peters was sentenced to roughly nine years in prison in 2024 after being convicted of state charges of assisting in the breach of state election equipment. Peters allowed a man affiliated with Mike Lindell, a conspiracy theorist aligned with President Donald Trump, to access Mesa County election systems.

The state was forced to spend nearly one million dollars to replace it all, Secretary of State Jena Griswold said.

In the years since, her case has become a rallying cry for Republicans who continue to falsely insist that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. Trump himself has championed Peters’ cause.

“The Governor made this decision based on the facts of the case and what he believed was the right thing to do,” Eric Maruyama, Polis’ press secretary, said in a statement. “Sometimes the right thing isn’t the popular thing with everybody. Democracy is strongest when disagreement is met with debate and dialogue, not censorship.”

Polis shortened Peters’ sentence from nine years to 4.5, and she is eligible for parole soon. The governor, who has been careful to insist that his move to halve Peters’ prison term did not constitute a pardon, told BLN last week that the 2024 sentence was draconian and connected to Peters’ political beliefs.

“There should be no consideration of what we say — how unpopular it is, how inaccurate it is — in sentencing or in criminal proceedings,” he said.

But Democrats, including Polis’ potential successor in Colorado, were harshly critical of his decision.

Sen. Michael Bennet, who is running for the state’s governor post in November, told BLN this week that Polis’ “terrible” Peters decision would disqualify him from being considered for the open Senate seat should Bennet win.

“She is a stone-cold election denier,” Bennet said. “She’s never said anything other than that.”