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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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A former Trump administration official has warned that President Donald Trump could seek to contest the result of the Texas Senate race if Republican Ken Paxton narrowly loses to Democrat James Talarico.
Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official in Trump’s first administration who has since become a prominent Trump critic, told Newsweek that he expects Trump to launch an effort to overturn the results if Talarico defeats his candidate in one of the marquee U.S. Senate races of the midterms.
“If Talarico wins, it will only be by a point or two, and I'd expect Trump to contest a narrow loss there the same way he's preparing to contest close races everywhere else,” Taylor said.
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Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Newsweek: “Miles 'Anonymous' Taylor is a leaker with Trump derangement syndrome. No one cares what this washed-up has-been has to say."
In recent days, courts have rejected the Trump administration’s appeal to reject 20,000 mail-in ballots in California, and a bid to block Alaska from certifying the results of a closely watched Senate race.
And on Tuesday, the Department of Justice said it has deployed 1,000 federal election monitors and observers to all 50 states in what it said is the largest Election Day monitoring effort in history. In Texas, the DOJ said monitors are being deployed to seven counties: Bexar, Dallas, Harris, Waller, Blanco, Bowie and Nueces.
Taylor said in the event of Paxton's defeat, the Trump administration is likely to focus efforts on Harris County, Texas’ most populous county.
“In particular, watch what DOJ does in Harris County on Wednesday morning,” Taylor said. “There’s a not insignificant chance you see guys in FBI windbreakers carrying boxes out of buildings as part of a Trump effort to muck up the results.”
Harris County Attorney Abbie Kamin told Newsweek that her office is preparing to counter possible election interference. Kamin has set up an election protection legal task force of over 30 attorneys, Houston Public Media reported.
“We will defend every eligible voter’s rights here in Harris County," she said. "I will not allow anyone, not even a president, to undermine the fundamental right to vote. My office continues to stand up in court to ensure that no agency, at any level of government, interferes with our elections.”
Newsweek has contacted the FBI as well as the Paxton and Talarico campaigns for comment via email.
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Taylor’s comments come as the showdown between Paxton, the state’s attorney general who has been dogged by past scandals and accusations of corruption, and Talarico, a state lawmaker and seminarian, has become a huge test of Republican dominance in Texas, with Talarico giving Democrats their best chance yet of breaking a 30-year losing streak in the state that Trump carried by nearly 14 points in 2024.
The final polls of the race show Talarico ahead in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988, and where a Democrat has not won a statewide office since 1994.
It comes as Republicans are scrambling to defend their Senate majority, as races in reliably red states became unexpectedly competitive as voters grow increasingly frustrated over high costs and the war with Iran, which have contributed to Trump’s falling approval ratings across the country.
‘A Massive Story’
Taylor, who is no longer a member of the Republican Party but says he remains a stalwart conservative, said the fact the Senate race in Texas is so competitive is a reflection of how voters feel about Trump’s leadership.
Paxton defeated Senator John Cornyn in a primary runoff in May with the help of a late endorsement from Trump, part of his efforts to oust lawmakers he viewed as insufficiently loyal to him. Many establishment Republicans had rallied behind Cornyn, viewing Paxton as a liability in a general election because of his highly publicized history of legal and political troubles.
The fact that Texas is a toss-up at all is a massive story,” Taylor said.
“A Republican normally starts a statewide race there with a high-single-digit cushion,” he said. “And instead Ken Paxton has trailed in nearly every public poll for a month or two.
“I think it shows how furious voters are about corruption, the MAGA movement’s failings, and Donald Trump’s leadership—all in a single race.”
Taylor argued that Paxton's candidacy makes the race a wider test of the future of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
“Paxton is also probably the purest symbol of the Trump phenomenon anywhere on the ballot,” he said.
“He's the guy who turned a state attorney general's office into a weapon against political enemies before Trump did it at the federal level… and if Texas voters reject that model, it tells you something about how much appetite is left for it nationally.”
But he also cautioned against assuming that recent polls would translate into a victory for Talarico.
“I’d still be cautious,” he said. “Texas has broken Democratic hearts before, and the record early vote cuts both ways, I think.”
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Who Is Miles Taylor?
Taylor joined the Department of Homeland Security as a senior adviser during Trump's first term in 2017, and was the chief of staff of the department from February to September 2019.
He left the Trump administration in 2019 and revealed himself as the author of an anonymous 2018 New York Times op-ed that was sharply critical of Trump shortly before the 2020 election.
Taylor later published a book, A Warning, under the pen name "Anonymous" and another book under his own name called Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump. He also founded Defiance.org, a nonprofit aimed at countering government corruption and abuses of power.
He quit the Republican Party in 2022, writing in an op-ed that it has become “glaringly obvious that my party no longer represents conservative values but in fact poses a threat to them—and to America.”
Last year, Trump ordered DHS to look into Taylor’s government service. In a memo, he accused Taylor of fabricating stories to sell his book and directed DHS and other government agencies to look into Taylor and strip him of any security clearances.
A White House spokesperson last year told Newsweek that Taylor is “a hack who weaponized and abused his government position to prioritize his own ambition, personal notoriety, and monetary gain over keeping his constitutional oath,” and that he is “wholly unqualified to speak about anything related to the President or his Administration.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matthew Cannon and Emma Lee-Sang
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