Last week’s news that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is stepping down set off intense speculation about his successor. The three serious contenders: Minority Whip John Thune (Career NumbersUSA  Rating C+), Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso (Career NumbersUSA  Rating C+), and Texas Sen. John Cornyn (Career NumbersUSA  Rating C) [‘Three Johns’ lead race to succeed McConnell, by Al Weaver, The Hill, February 29, 2024]. There’s no obvious favorite for immigration patriots, but Cornyn should absolutely not be the guy. For years, he has taken the lead in advocating some of the worst ideas within the GOP. He is one of the few Republican senators who still openly champions Amnesty. He’s also responsible for Juneteenth becoming a national holiday. He could be even worse than McConnell, if that’s possible. If he gets the leadership, the party would backtrack from its America First progress.

Cornyn wasn’t always terrible on immigration. Back when Republican leaders lined up in favor of Amnesty, Cornyn stood against them. He publicly opposed the idea both in 2007 and in 2013, when he was one of the Senate leaders fighting against Amnesty. But the probable reason: The GOP was spooked by Tea Party primary challenges back then, and above all by Dave Brat’s epochal 2014 primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on the Amnesty issue. In 2014, Cornyn himself actually faced a quixotic primary challenge from Tea Party favorite and immigration patriot Steve Stockman—later unjustly sentenced to prison after he attacked IRS Headmistress Lois Lerner—who undoubtedly would have had a good campaign issue had Cornyn supported the Amnesty.

But in recent years, notably during the Trump Administration, Cornyn has become one of the worst of the worst Republicans on immigration.

While Donald Trump was in office, Cornyn pushed for an Amnesty for DREAMers, illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as minors “through no fault of their own,” as the Treason Lobby mantra goes. President Barack Obama’s illegal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program legalized hundreds of thousands of illegals, a significant number of whom are criminals.

Cornyn has sought to keep these legal protections in place ever since Trump tried to scrap the program in 2017. He was one of the chief Republicans who insisted that Congress must permanently legalize them. He even criticized his home state for suing to permanently end the program. “[T]here is a role for compassion and for pragmatism,” he said in response to the lawsuit. “In America, we don’t hold children responsible for the mistakes their parents made.” (Of course, we don’t reward them either.)

Cornyn added that we need the “talent” of these illegals and asserted that they are “very productive, good young people.” [Cornyn pans Texas lawsuit to end DACA: ‘I honestly don’t understand,’ by Mitchell Schurman, Dallas Morning News, May 7, 2018].

While his attempts to get a permanent solution to DACA failed in 2018, he didn’t give up. He continued to press for the DACA Amnesty while Trump was in office. In 2020, he took to the floor of the Senate to urge his colleagues to take up this issue. He proudly proclaimed that he had discussed this matter with left-wing Treason Lobbyists:

[Dreamers] deserve to know that when they apply to college, grow up their families, live their lives, and do all the things everybody else wants to do, that they can do so without a dark cloud hanging over their plans. …

I’ve engaged with the Texas Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, LULAC [League of United Latin American Citizens], Catholic Bishops and a number of other individuals and organizations that share my commitment to providing certainty for these young people. I hope we can come together and help them. These folks want nothing more than to continue to be part of the American dream.

Cornyn Calls for Permanent Solution for DACA Recipients from Congress, White House, Cornyn.Senate.gov, June 18, 2020

In his 2020 reelection campaign, he even released an ad in Spanish about it!

When Biden secured the presidency, Cornyn was excited about working with Democrats on “immigration reform,” which of course really meant Amnesty. Shortly after the 2020 election, he said not reaching this goal was “one of my biggest disappointments in my time in the Senate” [Biden win revives immigration talk, by Jordain Carney, The Hill, November 17, 2020]. 

In the summer of 2021, Cornyn unveiled his plan to legalize DREAMers. Every illegal alien enrolled in the DACA program would be on the path to citizenship. Fortunately, Cornyn failed. The Right attacked it, correctly, as a betrayal. The Left attacked it for not legalizing enough illegals.

The senator has tried to stay quiet about Amnesty since that disaster. But he hasn’t always succeeded. In 2022, he seriously gaffed following passage of the anti-gun, red-flag law he sponsored. In celebrating the move to disarm law-abiding Americans, Cornyn blurted out on the Senate floor: “First guns, now it’s immigration.”

He knew that comment would outrage his party, so he tried to pass it off as a joke. It wasn’t. He revealed what he would do as party leader in the Senate. He tried to restart talks of a grand immigration “deal”—Treason Lobby code for “sellout—but they fizzled without any results. Nevertheless, he will definitely try again if he is in charge [U.S. Sen. John Cornyn eyes the seemingly impossible: a bipartisan deal on immigration, by Matthew Choi, Texas Tribune, January 18, 2023].

And that isn’t all. Cornyn also strongly advocated for “refugees” and “asylum seekers.” He opposed his state’s decision to refuse refugees when President Trump granted the states this power [Texas Senator Disagrees With Gov. Greg Abbott Over Refugees, by Igor Bobic, HuffPost, January 15, 2020]. He was one of the foremost advocates of resettling as many Afghans as possible following America’s departure from that war-torn country. He sponsored bills to fund their resettlement and to accelerate their naturalization. “The U.S. has always been a nation of immigrants,” he told one group of newly arrived Afghans [Cornyn meets with Afghans, by Dianne Solis, Dallas Morning News, October 15, 2021].

Cornyn also wants to import foreigners to replace American workers.  In 2020, he signed a letter urging Trump to allow guest workers in the country at the height of the COVID lockdowns [Senators Graham, Cornyn, Murkowski and Lankford Among Republicans Set to Block Trump’s Guest Worker Immigration Pause, by Jason Hopkins, Daily Caller, May 28, 2020]. In 2021, he entertained the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would legalize hundreds of thousands of illegal-alien farm workers [Senate Republicans lukewarm on House’s ag labor bill, by Jacqui Fatka, Farm Futures, July 22, 2021]. He also told Democrats he wanted to increase the number of H-2B seasonal visas [Businesses banking on a summer boom face foreign worker shortage, by Rebecca Rainey, Politico, July 4, 2021]. That same year, he supported giving “unused” visas to thousands of foreign doctors and nurses.

Cornyn is also not keen on a border wall. He opposed Trump’s threat to shut down the government if Congress refused wall funding in 2019. Cornyn claimed the idea was “off-putting to a lot of people” [Border lawmakers spurn Trump’s wall proposal, by Ted Hesson and Renuka Rayasam, Politico, January 10, 2019]. When he ran for reelection in 2020, he disagreed with Trump about diverting defense funding to border security.

As far as his Numbers USA rating, Cornyn has been all over the place. His current grade is the only A+ he has received, and his career rating is an anemic C.

On race, Cornyn is even worse. He led the effort to pass Juneteenth federal holiday legislation in the Senate. “The passage of this bill represents a big step in our nation’s journey toward equality,” he said in celebrating its sail through the Senate. He attacked Republicans who rightly saw it as an anti-white holiday, deriding them as “kooky.”

Of course, the holiday’s whole purpose is to guilt whites into supporting reparations, as many of its black advocates frankly argue. And Cornyn made it possible.

Not surprisingly, Cornyn fell hard for the Floyd Hoax. He met with George Floyd’s family and declared that he was dedicated “to rooting out racial injustices so no other family has to experience what George Floyd’s family has.” He became one of the lead Republican advocates of criminal justice ”reform” in the Senate shortly after the Floyd Revolution.

In keeping with his support for Juneteenth, Cornyn advocates erasing Southern heritage. He backed efforts to rename military bases named after Confederate generals [John Cornyn signals openness to removing Confederate names from military bases, by Abby Livingston, Texas Tribune, June 12, 2020].

All this should disqualify Cornyn. But he isn’t a dummy. During the latest border deal disaster, he skillfully fortified his credibility among conservatives. Cornyn never defended the terrible border deal when it was released. He publicly said he had serious concerns about it. His sudden aversion to a deal produced in talks he supported reeked of opportunism, but it helped sink the bill [Cruz, Cornyn help sink border bill Republicans had long demanded, by Benjamin Wermund, Houston Chronicle, February 7, 2024].

Many conservative senators might remember this as they cast their vote. They may think Cornyn is one of them rather than a snake in the grass.

But they can’t trust Cornyn. If he becomes GOP Senate leader, he could push the party in any direction he wants. He would certainly lobby for at least a bill on DACA. There’s a chance he might strive for a grand Amnesty in the mold of the Gang of Eight’s. He can’t be trusted on any issue that concerns immigration patriots.

While his competitors might be boring establishmentarians, at least they hold the distinction of not leading the push for a DACA Amnesty and Juneteenth.

Cornyn is absolutely a nonstarter. No Republican who claims to be America First can support him as leader. Some, such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, are already speaking out against him.

It will be difficult for @JohnCornyn to be an effective leader since he is anti-Trump, anti-gun, and will be focused on his highly competitive primary campaign in 2026. Republicans deserve better in their next leader and Texans deserve another conservative Senator. https://t.co/IKJYcoXzat

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) February 29, 2024

More must follow suit. There is no way we can make America Great again with John Cornyn as GOP leader in the Senate.

Washington Watcher II [Email him] is an anonymous DC insider.