"We want real conservatives, real Republicans" says Texas GOP Chair in planned lawsuit against the state to close Republican primaries

Texas Republican Party Chairman Abraham George said the party intends to sue the state of Texas to close the Republican primaries.
In an interview for Eye On Politics, George told CBS News Texas, "We wanted to have closed primaries for many, many years now. We've had this as a priority as part of the platform for many cycles. We expected our legislators to take care of this at the legislative session in the last convention that was held in San Antonio in the 2024 convention, about 10,000 people in the delegation came together and said we're going to change our rules to have the Republican primaries closed. We had about three bills in the last legislative session that we liked and we expected to pass, but unfortunately, that did not happen."
George said this left the party with no other option than to file suit against the state. "The state law does not allow us to have a closed primary. So we're just trying to get the court to tell us that the Republican Party of Texas has the right to have closed primaries and we have the right to associate with the people that we believe are Republicans. We are expecting our statewide leaders to be on our side on this."
He said this is crucial for the party to avoid interference from Democrats. "There is a reason why the party is frustrated with this process of any Democrat can come and choose the Republican nominee and find the weakest Republican or even a liberal and put them on our ballot under our name, and we had worked to get them elected. So we're kind of done with that. So we want real conservatives, real Republicans who will uphold the party's principles and our priorities."
The plan to sue the state comes months before the state's March 2026 primary, which features an already contentious battle between U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate.
George said he didn't think closed primaries will have an impact on this race. "I don't know if there's going to be a huge difference. It's going to make any big difference in that election itself, but I don't know. I haven't looked at any of the numbers. This is not specific to any specific election, including the 2026 primaries. What we are trying to do is something we've been working on for close to a decade to close our primaries."
Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder tells CBS News Texas the party has no plans to seek closed primaries.
Full interview with the Texas GOP Chair below:

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"Military strikes alone cannot destroy Iran's extensive nuclear knowledge," the Washington-based Arms Control Association said in a statement after the U.S. strikes with massive bunker-busting bombs on sites including Iran's two main underground enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow. "The strikes will set Iran's programme back, but at the cost of strengthening Tehran's resolve to reconstitute its sensitive nuclear activities, possibly prompting it to consider withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and possibly proceeding to weaponisation." Israel has also said it has killed Iranian nuclear scientists but, while little is known about the personnel side of Iran's nuclear programme, officials have said they are sceptical about that having a serious impact on Iran's nuclear knowledge, even if it might slow progress in the near term. The West says there is no civilian justification for Iran's enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade fissile purity. Iran says its nuclear objectives are solely peaceful and it has the right to enrich as much as it wants. Iran's nuclear programme has made rapid advances since Trump pulled the United States out of a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers that placed strict limits on its atomic activities in exchange for sanctions relief. After the U.S. withdrawal in 2018 and the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions, Iran pushed past and then far beyond the limits imposed by the deal on items like the purity to which it can enrich uranium and how much it can stockpile. URANIUM STOCK At least until Israel's first strikes against its enrichment installations on June 13, Iran was refining uranium to up to 60% purity, a short step from the roughly 90% that is bomb-grade, and far higher than the 3.67% cap imposed by the 2015 deal, which Iran respected until the year after Trump pulled out. The last report on May 31 by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog that inspects Iran's nuclear facilities, showed Iran had enough uranium enriched to up to 60%, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. It has more at lower levels like 20% and 5%. The exact impact of Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and materials has yet to be determined. In addition to the enrichment sites, the U.S. struck Isfahan, where officials have said much of Iran's most highly enriched uranium stock was stored underground. One important open question is how much highly enriched uranium Iran still has and whether it is all accounted for. A senior Iranian source told Reuters on Sunday most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordow, the site producing the bulk of Iran's uranium refined to up to 60%, had been moved to an undisclosed location before the U.S. attack there. 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Nobody is bombing North Korea now, are they?" a European official said. Even if inspections continue, because of Trump's withdrawal in 2018 Iran had already scrapped extra IAEA oversight provided for by the 2015 deal. That means the agency no longer knows how many centrifuges Iran has at undeclared locations. The IAEA says that while it cannot guarantee Iran's aims are entirely peaceful, it also has no credible indication of a coordinated nuclear weapons programme. The Israeli and now U.S. strikes have already raised fears among diplomats and other officials, however, that Iran will use those centrifuges to set up a secret enrichment site, since one could be built inside a relatively small and inconspicuous building like a warehouse. "It is quite possible that there are enrichment sites that we don't know about. Iran is a big country," a Western official said, while adding that Iran could also choose to bide its time. "In two years, if Iran were to start from scratch, they would only need a few months to reconstitute a new programme and to get back to where they were yesterday." (Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi; writing by Francois Murphy; editing by Mark Heinrich)

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