When Donald Trump abruptly pardoned indicted Texas
Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar and his wife last week, it seems he didn’t bother to consult Texas Republicans, for whom the exculpatory action had to be deeply annoying. After all, Trump had just forced the Texas legislature to conduct a mid-decade gerrymander of U.S. House seats in order to boost the GOP’s hopes of hanging onto the chamber in the 2026 midterms. Yet here was Trump taking away one of their main talking points (Cuellar’s 2024 federal indictment for allegedly working with his wife on a long-term scheme to take bribes from the government of Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank) against one of their main 2026 targets.

Trump, acting in response to a letter from Cuellar’s daughters begging for a pardon and touting their parents’ many virtues, appeared to view the Texas congressman as a fellow victim of “lawfare” from Joe Biden’s Justice Department. On Truth Social, Trump had no compunctions about

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