John Cornyn Hopes Naming Highway for Trump Is Road to Senate Reelection

Locked in a close battle to keep the keys to his office, Sen. John Cornyn made a grand gesture to court a key endorsement on Tuesday. 

“I am proud to introduce legislation to rename US Highway 287 as Interstate 47 in honor of our 47th President @realDonaldTrump,” Cornyn wrote on X. 

Seems like now is a fine time to update the Observer’s list of top Texas Trump ass kissers. The president has made many headlines for not only renaming bodies of water, but for attaching his name to things such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Recently, the president and his team have continued to push for the new Washington Commanders NFL stadium to be named after him. 

Cornyn’s proposed legislation is but the latest move in a long-running effort for the longtime senator to align himself more closely with Trump after being criticized as an opponent of the president for not fully endorsing Trump’s border wall proposal and publicly criticizing Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attacks. 

Since Attorney General Ken Paxton entered the race to replace Cornyn in the U.S Senate, the incumbent has been aggressive in both publicly poking holes in Paxton’s controversial past while praising Trump, who has many of his own closet-dwelling skeletons and emphasizing the points where he and the president are aligned. On the other side of the runoff ballot, Paxton has always enjoyed Trump’s favor and has been arguably the most vocal proponent of the president, dating back to before the 2020 election won by former President Joe Biden. 

Intriguingly, neither candidate has yet to gain the president’s formal endorsement, which some suggest would be pivotal, although Trump’s approval ratings have taken a dip in recent months thanks in large part to the continued military action in Iran that have led to skyrocketing gas prices. In the days following the March primary election that Cornyn outperformed Paxton in by a few percentage points, Trump suggested on social media that Paxton should drop out, but after a few days of posturing by the candidates, neither a dropout announcement nor endorsement came. 

According to a New York Times collection, Cornyn trails Paxton in nine different polls, while he barely leads in only three, although he has significantly outgained the AG in his fundraising efforts. 

“My bill will upgrade one of our nation’s longest highways to a future interstate and save more than $5 BILLION in travel costs, all while honoring the most effective and influential president of our lifetime,” Cornyn’s Tuesday X post continued. “Texas is Trump Country & this bill cements @POTUS’ legacy by designating nearly 1,800 miles of open road to forever be known as the Trump Interstate.”

Cornyn’s bill isn’t without some sort of precedent, although his vision is on a much larger scale. In 2021, Oklahomas renamed a 20-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 287 in the state’s panhandle as the “President Donald J. Trump Highway.” Even though Republicans control the House and Senate, even if by a small margin, it is unlikely Cornyn’s legislation will prove successful. The most obvious hurdle is that U.S. 287 is not an interstate, and Cornyn’s bill is tied to a larger proposal to upgrade the second-longest three-digit highway in future, which would demand years of planning and cooperation among a number of states and federal agencies.

But as far as efforts to kiss up to the president goes, this one isn’t as bad as the local representative trying to get Trump’s picture onto the $100 bill.