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Paxton’s defense team

I feel slightly weird about this.

A crook any way you look

Six top officials and employees at the Texas attorney general’s office have taken a leave of absence to help defend suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial this summer.

Those employees are solicitor general Judd Stone, the agency’s top appellate lawyer; assistant solicitors general Joseph N. Mazzara and Kateland Jackson; Chris Hilton, chief of the general litigation division; senior attorney Allison Collins; and executive assistant Jordan Eskew.

The news was first reported by the conservative website The Daily Wire. Jarrod Griffin, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, confirmed the report to The Texas Tribune.

Prior to Tuesday, it was unclear who would serve as Paxton’s lawyers in the impeachment trial before the Texas Senate.

I can’t fully articulate why this feels weird to me. I just didn’t expect his employees to be the ones taking on the task of defending him in the Senate. I guess I assumed he’d hire a couple of high-priced private attorneys, who would most likely be financed by his fat cat supporters. That’s icky in its own way, while this is almost heartwarming – they’re loyal enough to go without pay for some number of weeks to save his bacon! – and yet it still just has strange vibes to me. We don’t have the Senate rules yet about the trial, but this would seem to be within whatever those rules turn out to be. Is it weird that I think this is weird? I assume these people were all hand-picked by Paxton and would likely move on if they fail. Maybe I’m just overthinking it. What do you think? Oh, and how do you think they feel about going up against these guys?

While you ponder that, here’s a Chron story about the guy who had been temporarily filling in for Paxton as AG.

The Attorney General’s Office has announced that First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster will be the temporary replacement for Ken Paxton, who was impeached by the Texas House last week.

As first assistant attorney general, Webster represented Texas taxpayers in Paxton’s lawsuit that sought to overturn the 2020 election results for Donald Trump.

Webster started working for the office at a tumultuous time in October 2020, shortly after eight top aides reported Paxton to law enforcement, accusing him of taking bribes and abusing the authority of his office. Paxton fired the whistleblowers and hired new department heads, including Webster.

[…]

In December 2020, Webster signed his name to an unsuccessful suit filed by Paxton before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential wins in four battleground states.

The State Bar of Texas later sued Paxton and Webster for professional misconduct for his part in the suit, arguing that it made dishonest and misleading statements about the existence of voter fraud, including many that had already been debunked in other courts in the country. The case against Paxton is ongoing, and a judge dismissed the case against Webster, though the bar is appealing.

Top Republicans have come to their defense, with Abbott saying the case “raise(s) separation-of-powers questions under our Constitution” and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calling it “politically motivated.”

The whistleblowers in their suit are seeking $15,000 in civil damages against Webster, as well as Paxton, for adverse personnel action taken in violation of the Texas Whistleblower Act. According to the suit, Webster had a role in firing all four and is accused of using intimidation tactics and pressuring some of them to resign.

I drafted this before the news about John Scott’s appointment as temporary AG, so this is less important now. Maybe the upside of Scott as temporary AG is that the agency, which does have basic operational things to do, is now being led by someone who’s not a close personal friend of Ken Paxton and might have something on their mind other than getting him off on the impeachment charges. Just a thought.

Anyway. We’ve discussed the State Bar’s actions against Webster before. I believe this is the first report I’ve seen that the judge’s ruling dismissing the case has been appealed; I’m delighted to see that. Beyond that, Brent Webster is to me basically like Angela Paxton, in that his moral qualities are severely limited by his voluntary association with Ken Paxton. We kind of already know everything we need to know about him. And now we can worry a little bit less about it.

DeGuerin and Hardin to prosecute Paxton

Wow.

A crook any way you look

Prominent lawyers Dick DeGuerin and Rusty Hardin will serve as lead prosecutors for the Texas House in the Senate impeachment trial of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The two Houston-based defense attorneys, introduced at a Capitol news conference Thursday, are legends in their own right, having separately represented a litany of high-profile athletes, celebrities and politicians in criminal and civil investigations.

DeGuerin defended former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay against charges that he illegally funneled corporate donations to members of the Texas Legislature in 2002. DeLay was found guilty, but his conviction was overturned on appeal.

[…]

Hardin is on a short list of attorneys named “Texas Legal Legends” by the State Bar of Texas’ litigation section and, before opening a private practice two decades ago, served 15 years as a prosecutor in the Harris County district attorney’s office.

At a brief news conference on Thursday, Hardin and DeGuerin noted that together they have more than 100 years of legal experience and said it was an honor to represent the House in Paxton’s trial, which has not been scheduled but will occur before Aug. 28, according to a resolution recently adopted by the Senate.

The two said their job was to be transparent as they lay out all of the allegations against Paxton so senators, who will sit as a jury, as well as members of the public can decide for themselves if Paxton deserves to be permanently removed from office.

“The people of the state of Texas are entitled to know whether their top cop is a crook,” DeGuerin said. “We know the importance of transparency in these proceedings because the people have a right to know.”

Hardin said he “shocked” by the allegations against Paxton that were detailed in the 20 articles of impeachment. “This is not about a one time misuse of office,” he said. “This is not about a two-time misuse of office. It’s about a pattern of misconduct.”

He added: “I promise you it is 10 times worse than what has been public.”

That sound you hear is me fanning myself. That may be hyperbole, but still – inject it directly into my veins. I know we’re still a couple months out, but I am ready for this trial to begin. Here’s a Chron op-ed from State Rep. Andrew Murr about why Republicans should want to impeach Paxton if you want more.

How bad is the “Death Star” bill going to be?

We’ll soon be finding out.

That’s no moon…

House Bill 2127 has been approved by the state House and Senate, and Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign it any day.

Crafted by state Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), the bill aims to create a statewide, uniform set of regulations for businesses, which Burrows says have been hurt by a patchwork of local rules.

Broadly speaking, the bill would achieve that goal by wiping out local governments’ ability to set rules beyond what the state already specifies on issues related to agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, occupations, property, local government and natural resources.

Thursday’s [San Antonio City Council] committee meeting offered a first glimpse at how HB 2127 might play out for cities that could soon be responsible for its implementation.

Required breaks and other heat-related mandates some council members want to create in San Antonio for construction workers are exactly the kind of regulations HB 2127 was intended to stop, after city-led efforts like paid sick leave ordinances became popular in recent years. Labor groups have labeled the pending legislation the “Death Star Bill” because they consider it so wide-ranging and powerful.

The bill’s supporters cite other progressive-led city initiatives HB 2127 would have also thwarted, such as bans on plastic bags, which other municipalities have sought to implement. The legal concept under which such laws are applied is known as preemption.

The legislation marks the latest incursion in a years-long effort by the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature to chip away at the ability of Democratic-led big cities to govern themselves.

Unlike narrower past efforts, however, city officials are not yet sure how far-ranging the effects of HB 2127 will be and how much of their past work will be undone.

“If the bill [becomes law] … [does] that mean that everything we’ve done [on this committee], including, for instance, proactive apartment inspection … would be out the door?” Rocha Garcia asked Assistant City Attorney Jameene Williams, who said she could not yet provide an answer.

[…]

Since HB 2127’s initial committee hearing, which featured testimonies from San Antonio, Houston and Dallas officials, begging lawmakers to use caution on such a dramatic change, proponents of the bill say it’s been tweaked to mitigate cities’ confusion and angst.

One amendment added during the Senate floor vote added language saying cities can recoup their legal fees if they’re sued for maintaining an ordinance in conflict with the law and the lawsuit is deemed frivolous. Another removed language saying city officials could be held liable for violations of the law, in addition to the municipalities.

Other amendments proposed by Senate Democrats aimed at labor protections failed.

The number of state codes that would be preempted by the bill has also changed, from six in the initial draft to a total of nine.

“As [with] most bills that are so controversial when they first get started, there was a little bit tweaking here and there,” said Rod Bordelon, a regulatory attorney and scholar for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, which supports HB 2127. “But substantively, I think the bill as passed … is pretty closely related to what was filed originally.”

State law gives cities explicit authority over many issues within the codes the bill seeks to preempt — authority that cities would maintain even if the bill becomes law. For example, the local government code gives cities permission to regulate fireworks, zoning and law enforcement.

That means cities would still be able to regulate many issues within the nine codes the legislation preempts, but city attorneys would need to examine all new and existing ordinances on a case-by-case basis to ensure they wouldn’t violate the new law.

“It’s the subject matter within that code that we’d have to look at,” Williams told the council committee Thursday. “So it’s not an automatic preemption of all of our ordinances that fall under that particular code. We’d have to look at the substance of the ordinances.”

While city leaders say that’s an overwhelming burden on their resources, proponents of the bill say they’re simply shifting the burden of compliance to the city instead of businesses.

“If the City of San Antonio issues an ordinance and that seems to be in conflict with state law or other ordinances around the state, then [private businesses] are having to sit down with their lawyers and compliance specialists and figure out what do they need to do in each one of these jurisdictions,” said Bordelon.

See here for some background. The short answer to all this is that it will be sorted out, over the course of years, by the courts. There may be revisions made to this law, if certain aspects of it are found to be unworkable or not what the authors intended, in a future legislative session. Maybe someday, in a Democratic Texas, it will be repealed, or at least largely rolled back. Until then, every city is going to have to ask these questions and get their lawyers to do this research before they take action on a whole host of things. And that, I assure you, was the point.

What will Angela do?

This is a good and balanced article about one of the people who will sit in judgment of Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate: his wife, Angela Paxton.

Sen. Angela Paxton

When it came time for the high school teacher and guidance counselor to launch her own political career, a $2 million loan from her husband propelled Angela Paxton to a narrow victory for a state Senate seat in the booming Dallas suburbs. Once elected, she filed bills to expand his office’s powers, and approved budgets over his state agency and salary.

Now, Sen. Paxton is a key figure in the next phase of Ken Paxton’s historic impeachment: as a “juror” in a Senate trial that could put her husband back in office or banish him permanently.

It’s a role that raises an ethical cloud over the Senate proceeding. State law compels all senators to attend, but is silent on whether she must participate.

“If it were a trial in the justice system, she would be completely required to (step aside),” said Kenneth Williams, professor of criminal procedure at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. “It’s a clear conflict of interest.”

The trial is to start no later than Aug. 28, and it promises to be quite personal for Angela Paxton.

The 20 articles of impeachment brought against Ken Paxton include sweeping charges of abuse of office and unethical behavior. They include a bribery charge related to an extramarital affair with an aide to a state senator. Another suggested Angela Paxton was involved in the installation of $20,000 countertops at their home, paid for by a political donor.

Angela Paxton hasn’t said if she’ll recuse herself from the trial. She declined comment when approached by The Associated Press outside the Senate chamber on Monday.

State Rep. Andrew Murr, who led the impeachment investigation in the state House, declined to say if he thinks Angela Paxton should step aside. The Senate gets to set the rules, he said.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tightly controls the Senate and its 19-12 Republican majority. He suggested to a Dallas television state before last week’s House impeachment vote that Angela Paxton will participate in the trial.

“I will be presiding over that case and the senators — all 31 senators — will have a vote,” Patrick told WFAA-TV. “We’ll set the rules for that trial as we go forward and we’ll see how that develops.”

The state constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the chamber to convict. But there is little historic precedent in drafting impeachment trial rules, and nothing with a similar spousal conflict, Williams said.

In nearly 200 years of Texas history, Ken Paxton is just the third official to be impeached and the first statewide official impeached since Gov. James “Pa” Ferguson in 1917.

There’s no legal mechanism to force Angela Paxton out of the trial like there would be a criminal trial, Williams said.

“It’s up to her ethical standards and compass, basically,” Williams said.

[…]

Mark Phariss, the Democrat who lost to Angela Paxton by 2 percentage points in 2018, noted her sharp political instincts. He predicted she won’t step aside from a trial.

“My assumption is she will not recuse herself. Because she does not seem to distance herself from her husband, either when she ran for office in 2018 initially or at any time subsequently,” Phariss said.

We’ve discussed Sen. Paxton before, and my opinion matches Mark Phariss’. Maybe – a very big maybe – Dan Patrick could gently persuade her to recuse, for the optics of it if nothing else. But first you’d have to believe that Dan Patrick would do that, and then you’d have to believe she’d listen to anyone else. I think this comment by Ted Wood, that she will ultimately not recuse but go “present, not voting”, which still leave the “convict” threshold at 21, is highly plausible. The bottom line is that there’s just no evidence to suggest that she has any inclination to do the right thing.

Which, as noted, is fine by me. Perhaps the rules team will box her out, but that remains on par with Dan Patrick trying to talk sense into her. I’ll believe it when I see it.

To be fair, she’s not the only potentially conflicted Senate juror.

The House impeachment articles accuse Paxton of using state Sen. Bryan Hughes as a “straw requestor” for a legal opinion that protected a political donor from property foreclosure.

Hughes has not addressed whether he expects to be called as a witness or if he will recuse himself. He did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

I think Sen. Hughes – who, it must be noted, is also a terrible person – has a fairly easy out here. If he’s called as a witness, he absolutely must recuse, for all the obvious reasons. It’s so obvious that I think the rules people will cover it in their work. But if not, I don’t think he’s required to step down, at least not based on what we know now. It’s credible to me that he did Paxton a favor without knowing the motive behind it. If there’s anything to suggest otherwise, then absolutely he must go, too. But until then, I think Hughes can defer the decision until his status as a potential witness is resolved.

State moves to buy Fairfield State Park

This would be a fitting end to this saga.

Texas isn’t giving up on saving Fairfield Lake State Park, a 1,820-acre park that operated on leased land for decades until the owner sold it earlier this year. On Thursday, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department commissioners gave the agency’s executive director the power to take “all necessary steps” to acquire the property that includes the park.

In late February, visitors said their goodbyes by collecting seashells, skipping rocks and casting their fishing lines from a boat on what they believed was the last day the park, about 100 miles south of Dallas, would be open to the public.

The park had announced it was closing after Vistra Corp., the energy company that had leased the land at no cost to the state, reached an agreement to sell the land to a developer. The state later struck a deal with the new owner to let the park remain open temporarily while the state explored its options.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission Chair Arch H. “Beaver” Aplin III said during Thursday’s meeting the agency has “sufficient funds” to purchase the park and has made an offer to buy the 5,000 acres of land that includes the park.

“We need more parkland in Texas, not less. And this is a critical moment for Texas during our centennial celebration year,” Aplin said. “I’m committed, and these commissioners are committed, to keeping the park, and we’re determined to protect it for the present and future generations to that end.”

Vistra didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Shawn Todd, founder and CEO of Dallas-based Todd Interests, said Thursday that his company’s contract to buy the property that includes the park isn’t final but will go through “in a matter of days.” Todd said he received an offer from TPWD, “refreshingly saying that they were respecting private property rights and made us an offer to purchase our contract.”

“We responded timely, and in good faith to that offer with a proposal that we felt would have been an incredible win for the Texas parks and for the state of Texas,” Todd said. “And candidly a significant sacrifice to our family and firm.”

He said the agency has not yet responded to the company’s proposal.

See here for the previous entry. I have no idea what kind of counter-offer Todd Interests has made. It would be reasonable to be a bit skeptical of their claims of how good it would be for parks, but I’m willing to hear them out. If the end result is that Fairfield State Park remains open to the public more or less as it was before all this went down, I’d consider that a win. I hope we find out soon.

Two thoughts on the whole impeachment thing

A crook any way you look

Let’s start with the obvious, which is the “Why now?” question. A lot of people seem to be mystified. Why, after nearly a decade of Ken Paxton’s criming, did the House General Investigations Committee decide to go all scorched earth on him now? I’ve seen some theories about it having to do with the federal investigation into Paxton and Nate Paul being taken up by the Justice Department instead of the local US Attorney, with a Twitter thread that I forgot to bookmark speculating that the House signing off on the $3.3 million settlement would somehow make House members complicit in a coverup of Paxton’s activities, since now nothing would or could come out in court. I don’t buy that – it’s not clear to me that the change of venue for the investigation means anything about its ultimate resolution, and I cannot see how any House member could be criminally liable for voting to approve that settlement and payout. If anything, it would be the whistleblowers, who are still pushing for that settlement to be ratified, who would be in danger of obstructing the feds. None of that makes any sense to me.

My best guess, as an amateur Democratic pundit who has spent zero time at the Capitol talking to people, is that it comes down to two things. I was struck by the comment made by Rep. Brian Harrison – who by the way voted against impeaching Paxton – in which he opined that “there are a large number of my colleagues who do not hold the current attorney general in very high regard”. That’s just a background condition, but it sets the stage for everything else. Once the settlement was announced and it was clear that Paxton expected the Lege to pick up the tab for his criming, I think that allowed for the investigation to begin. There was some resistance up front, but it wasn’t too much. Honestly, given the more-than-occasionally petty nature of the Legislature, I think it was when Paxton didn’t bother to address the budget committee himself about the payment that got enough people into a foul mood about the whole thing for the ball to really start rolling.

What I’m saying is this: A lot of Republicans didn’t like Ken Paxton all that much to begin with. I’m sure there are many reasons for that, but let’s accept that as fact and go from there. Those same Republicans probably don’t much care for the big-money interests that support Paxton and tend to be a threat to your typical Republican legislators, who have to deal with the possibility or actuality of those fat cats bankrolling a primary challenger to them and riling up the rubes to harass them and their staff. Taking a shot at Paxton also means sticking it to those people, and I don’t doubt for a minute that was a catalyst. Throw in that request for the $3.3 million, a penny-ante but still annoying and arrogant shit sandwich that they’re being told they need to eat, and now you have a reason for the committee to decide to take a closer look at the Nate Paul situation. Finish it off with a committee made up of people who clearly took the assignment seriously, and here we are. (*)

Am I certain of this explanation? Of course not. I have no way of knowing. But this makes sense to me, and is consistent with what we know. I am open to alternate ideas, and of course any insider information from people who do have real insight. Send me an email with whatever off-the-record dirt you want to share, I’ll be delighted to read it.

The second point I want to discuss is “What is the best possible outcome for the Democrats?” The best possible outcome for society at large is for Paxton to be convicted by the Senate, then arrested by the feds, and eventually convicted in both state and federal court before spending some number of years in jail. You know, being held accountable for his actions and all that. I’m rooting for that, but I’m also rooting for Democrats to maximize their chances of winning elections next year, because the best way to deal with the bigger picture of why the likes of Ken Paxton was able to flourish for so long begins with Democrats winning a lot more political power in this state. What needs to happen to give them that chance next year?

The short answer to that question is for Republicans to be maximally divided amongst themselves, and focusing their anger and rage and money and resources on each other. You may recall that Donald Trump, as well as the slimy insect who chairs the state GOP, are firmly on Team Paxton and have been attacking every Republican who isn’t also in that camp. Trump is attacking Greg Abbott for his silence. This is what we want.

I don’t know if a near future date for a Senate trial or one that is farther out is better for this, but I do prefer there to be a definite time frame, so everyone can get more mad as the date draws near. I can make a case for either a conviction or an acquittal in terms of the political fallout, but either way I want the vote in the Senate to be as close as possible, either 21-10 (or 20-10, if Angela Paxton is recused) for conviction, or a 20-11 failure to convict with Angela Paxton casting the saving vote. Oh, and I want the question of whether or not Angela Paxton casts a vote to be divisive as well, with Dan Patrick trying to get her to recuse and she defiantly rejects him. (Remember, Angela Paxton will be on the ballot in 2024, too.)

If we get that knife’s edge conviction – really, 20-10 with Angela Paxton seething on the sidelines is best – then we not only have Trump and the state GOP and a bunch of its big moneymen mad, with a defenestrated Ken Paxton free to vent his rage at his partymates from the cheap seats, we also have a Greg Abbott-selected AG on the ballot nest year, too. It won’t matter if he selects someone who would be objectively formidable under other circumstances, because now a significant portion of the Republican base hates that person and can focus their sense of aggrievement and betrayal on them. There would surely be a nasty primary, and who knows, maybe an effort to put an independent wingnut on the ballot as well.

Add all this up, and remember that Ted Cruz is also all in on Team Paxton, and maybe that share of Republican voters who don’t want to vote for certain specific Republicans gets a little bigger, while a portion of the hardcore dead-end Trump contingent decides they’ve been stabbed in the back one time too many and they stay home. It wouldn’t take that big a shift to put Joe Biden, Colin Allred/Roland Gutierrez, whoever runs for AG, and perhaps some number of Congressional and Legislative candidates in a winning position next year. It’s a perfect storm.

Now again, am I certain of this? Of course not. Am I maybe wishcasting just a little too hard here? For sure. But is any of this implausible? I don’t think so. A few rolls of the dice have to go well, and of course we need the overall national conditions to be reasonable and for no other earthquakes to strike. It’s also well more than a year away, and as we know that may as well be a million years in political time. I’m just saying, much of this could happen, and if it does I think it works in Democrats’ favor. Just something to think about. Let me know what you think.

(*) Yes, I know, these same legislators are responsible for these conditions that they don’t like, from the moneyed interests to the frothing-at-the-mouth primary voters who are the only ones that count to them. That doesn’t mean that they can’t find a way forward when those conditions work against them for a change.

UPDATE: We have dates now. So that’s good.

Meet your Paxton prosecutors

It’s officially handed over to the Senate now.

A crook any way you look

The Texas House on Monday named 12 of its members to prosecute its case against impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state Senate.

The House announced a Republican-majority board of managers to handle the prosecution, made up of seven Republicans and five Democrats. The group immediately left the House chamber to deliver the 20 articles of impeachment to the Senate.

The House’s announcement came two days after it voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton, alleging a yearslong pattern of misconduct and wrongdoing. Paxton has blasted the impeachment as a “politically motivated sham” and expressed hope the Senate will swiftly clear his name.

The trial in the state Senate has not been scheduled yet.

The board of managers will be chaired by Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, and vice-chaired by Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston. They are also the chair and vice chair of the House General Investigating Committee, which investigated Paxton and recommended his impeachment.

The other 10 managers are Reps. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth; Joe Moody, D-El Paso; Terry Canales, D-Edinburg; Jeff Leach, R-Plano; Oscar Longoria, D-Mission; Morgan Meyer, R-University Park; Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park; Cody Vasut, R-Angleton; David Spiller, R-Jacksboro; and Erin Gámez, D-Brownsville.

The managers were named after the House adopted a resolution creating the board by a vote of 136-4.

In introducing the resolution, Murr said it was “similar” to the one used in 1975 after the impeachment of a state district judge, O.P. Carrillo. The resolution, Murr said, “authorizes the employment of a board of managers so they can proceed with the presentation of the trial in the Senate.”

See here for the previous entry. The Chron has an explainer of what to expect next. The big question has been when will this all start, and now we know.

Texas Senate to convene June 20th to consider rules for Paxton trial and that trial is to start no later than August 28.

Patrick appoints committee to consider rules for the trial: Birdwell, Hinojosa, Creighton, Flores, Huffman, King, West.

I’m sure there will be more on this soon, that news broke literally as I was drafting this. Here’s a Twitter thread with a bit more info. In the meantime, expect a special session to be called more or less right away to deal with a couple of things the Lege didn’t get to. None of that is good, but it is what it is.

UPDATE: Yeah, it’s special session time, the first of more than one planned/threatened special sessions.

Post-impeachment pre-trial roundup

Some more links of interest relating to the Paxton impeachment-a-thon. I suspect that as more reporters and columnists read the House General Investigations Committee’s report we will see more stories that zoom in on the particulars of his offenses. For instance, from TPM:

A crook any way you look

At the center of the allegations are Paxton’s relationship with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor and contributor to Paxton’s political campaigns who fell on hard financial times.

“The most senior members of the OAG believed in good faith that Paxton was breaking the law and abusing his office to benefit himself as well as his close friend and campaign donor, Austin businessman Nate Paul, and likely the woman with whom, according to media reports, Paxton has carried on a lengthy extramarital affair,” the whistleblowers’ lawsuit, filed in November 2020, reads.

FBI agents executed search warrants on Paul’s home and office in August 2019, the lawsuit says.

From there, Paul started calling in favors with Paxton. They included him asking Paxton to execute search warrants on nearly everyone involved in the chain of events that led to Paul’s own search, including:

  • The federal magistrate who issued the warrants
  • FBI agents who executed the searches
  • The federal prosecutors who obtained the warrants
  • A federal bankruptcy judge overseeing matters involving Paul’s properties
  • An Austin charity involved in litigation with Paul

Per the lawsuit, Paul and Paxton enjoyed a cozy personal relationship as Paul made his demands. Paul allegedly hired Paxton’s mistress, which she then hid on her Linkedin profile. He gave Paxton a “major remodeling” of Paxton’s home in 2020 as well.

In exchange, Paxton used his office to undertake a series of action so egregious, the lawsuit says, “that they could only have been prompted by illicit motives such as a desire to repay debts, pay hush money, or reciprocate favors extended by Paul.”

In one instance, Paxton allegedly intervened to approve an open records request from Paul’s attorneys for records related to the FBI searches. When the records were released, Paxton allegedly “personally took the file, including all the responsive documents, which included documents sealed by a federal court, and did not return it for approximately seven to ten days.”

[…]

But arguably the most stunning allegations — substantiated by the Committee’s investigation — show how far Paxton went in trying to block the FBI’s probe.

“The OAG has approximately 400 open criminal cases and 2,000 open criminal investigations each year,” the lawsuit reads. “Paxton rarely showed an interest in any pending criminal investigations, but he showed an extraordinary interest in investigations sought by Nate Paul.”

Paxton allegedly set up a meeting with the Travis County District Attorney in an effort to have a criminal investigation into the federal prosecutors and FBI agents examining Paul opened. Specifically, Paxton wanted the officials to investigate a claim by Paul that the feds had forged a search warrant after a real one had been signed off on by a federal magistrate, thereby unlawfully gaining access.

As Attorney General officials denied that claim, Paul leaked the fact of Paxton’s investigation into his obviously false claims to the media — a winning strategy if there ever was one, but an approach which pales in comparison to what may have been the denouement of Paxton’s attempt to use his office to help his buddy out.

In September 2020, Paxton hired an attorney named Brandon Cammack as outside counsel. With five years of experience under his belt, Cammack allegedly began to investigate those investigating Paul.

Paxton purportedly claimed that he was “tired of his people not doing what he had asked,” before allegedly directing Cammack to act as a “special prosecutor.”

Per the lawsuit, Paxton empowered Cammack to act as a “special prosecutor” even though he hadn’t yet signed a contract with the Office of the Attorney General. One of the alleged whistleblowers to-be refused to sign an employment contract for Cammack; Cammack then, allegedly, at Paxton’s direction, falsely claimed to be a special prosecutor “in order to obtain grand jury subpoenas under false pretenses to investigate, harass, and intimidate Nate Paul’s perceived adversaries.”

In that mostly fake role, Cammack allegedly obtained 39 grand jury subpoenas directed at “law enforcement agents and federal prosecutors” involved in the Nate Paul investigation — much of the list that Paul initially asked Paxton to investigate.

It’s a stunning allegation of abuse of power, and one that essentially reads like a crime spree undertaken from within and with the reins of a state law enforcement agency.

All of this has been covered before, and I’ve faithfully blogged about it as well. But all this happened over the course of years, and most normal people have either forgotten it or never saw it in the first place. Now we’re going to get a greatest hits collection, all dumped in the course of a week or two. That will have an effect.

The Trib gets a lot of mileage from a conversation with committee vice chair Rep. Ann Johnson.

“No one person should be above the law — least not the top law enforcement officer of the state of Texas,” state Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, a member of the House Committee on General Investigating, told his House colleagues on Saturday.

“We should not ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen,” he said. “Texas is better than that.”

The impeachment charges centered on Paxton’s entanglement with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor whose relationship with Paxton as a friend and political donor had caused several of his staff members to report him to federal authorities and prompted an FBI investigation — which Paxton allegedly refused to help law enforcement with. Paul was fined more than $180,000 and ordered to serve jail time by a state judge after he was found in contempt of court earlier this year.

“All roads lead to Nate Paul,” state Rep. Ann Johnson, a Houston Democrat and vice chair of the investigating committee, told the chamber before outlining Paxton’s yearslong relationship with his friend.

Members of the House committee that investigated Paxton said they believed he broke the law by using the agency to serve the interests of Paul, from whom he allegedly took bribes — including when the real estate developer was sued for fraud.

Eight top deputies from Paxton’s office reported him to federal authorities almost three years ago, alleging he had misused his authority to help Paul with a fraud lawsuit from the Austin nonprofit Roy F. & Joann Cole Mitte Foundation.

Spiller said Saturday that Paxton demonstrated an intense desire to help his friend with the lawsuit against the advice of his deputy attorney general. In return, Paxton allegedly received bribes and favors from Paul — from home remodeling to hiring a woman with whom Paxton had an affair.

In one now-infamous story, Paxton allegedly accepted $20,000 worth of countertop materials from Paul through contractors renovating his home in Austin.

Johnson said they learned of the story after talking to a “young man” who worked at the AG’s office. The employee, Johnson said, once observed Paxton and a contractor discussing a remodel. During the exchange, Johnson said, the contractor said he needed to “talk to Nate” before proceeding with a change to the kitchen countertops.

“This young man is disturbed” by the interaction, Johnson said as she retold the story. “In fact, he is crushed by it. He believes Ken Paxton is one of his heroes.”

The employee eventually turned down a promotion and then quit the office. But he allegedly continued to receive money from Paxton’s campaign for a few months after, Johnson said, implying that the monthly $250 checks were Paxton’s attempt to keep the young man quiet. She said the former staffer called the campaign to tell them to stop sending the money and sent it back.

Earlier in the week, a Paxton aide tried to cast doubt on the investigation by disputing the materials of the countertops involved in the home remodel. Paxton and his supporters also attempted to undermine the report by claiming that the allegations were largely made by “political” appointees — an assertion that House committee members swiftly shot down Saturday.

Committee members also claimed that Paul helped Paxton maintain his affair with a San Antonio woman by giving her a job at Paul’s company in Austin. It made her “more convenient” to Paxton, Johnson said.

Johnson claimed that a distraught Paxton once bemoaned his continued love for the woman he was having an affair with to his staff, who were gravely concerned that it was improper and could open the attorney general’s office up to blackmail. Exposure of the affair, Johnson said, would have risked Paxton’s reputation as a “Christian man” who cherishes “family values” with his political base.

“He has an interest in attempting to keep this affair quiet,” Johnson said. “He also has an interest in continuing it.”

[…]

And then there was the divinely-inspired donation at a local Dairy Queen.

While Paxton was serving in the Texas Legislature as a state representative a decade ago, he became affiliated with the CEO of Servergy, a McKinney-based software company that courted him as a partner. William Mapp, the firm’s founder and former CEO, had donated to Paxton’s campaign and the two decided to go into business together.

At a Dairy Queen, the CEO reportedly said that “God had directed him” to give Paxton 100,000 shares of company stock, which Paxton argued shows the stock was a gift.

“However, documents … indicate that the stock was, again, for services,” the House Committee’s report said.

The Servergy relationship became the subject of a felony securities fraud indictment in 2015 that accused Paxton of recruiting investors without disclosing his own investment in the company or attempting to confirm the company’s claims about its technology.

According to the SEC, he persuaded five people to invest $840,000 into the company. The case is still ongoing.

The House committee’s members said they began probing Paxton’s behavior after the attorney general requested $3.3 million from the state to settle a lawsuit with the whistleblowers fired from his office after they accused Paxton of accepting bribes and other misconduct.

“There was no investigation prior to this time,” [Rep. Charlie] Geren, one of the committee’s five members, said on the House floor Saturday.

The settlement served Paxton by avoiding a trial that may have exposed to the public even more details of the attorney general’s wrongdoing, Geren said.

“Most disturbingly, the settlement agreement was made without prior approval of funds and obligates the Texas taxpayers — not [Attorney] General Paxton — to pay $3.3 million for his actions,” Geren told his House colleagues.

Yep, that’s from the 2015 state charges against Paxton that are still awaiting some form of resolution. Everyone knows that Paxton has been under indictment for nearly a decade. I’ll bet most people by now have forgotten what he’s under indictment for. Well, they’re going to be hearing about that again, too.

They’ll also be hearing a lot more about Nate Paul and his relationship with Paxton.

[Nate Paul] has been fighting multiple bankruptcies and legal battles with creditors for years. He was recently ordered to pay over $180,000 in fines and spend 10 days in jail for contempt of court in Travis County, and is appealing that ruling.

[…]

His company, World Class Holdings, reportedly owned the 156-acre former 3M campus in northwest Austin, as well as prime downtown parcels. Together with a portfolio of storage facilities located in several states, the company’s worth at one time was said to have approached $1 billion.

Personally, Paul owns a 9,000-square-foot mansion west of downtown Austin appraised at $7.1 million, according to Travis Central Appraisal District records.

Leading up to the pandemic, Paul’s business empire began to falter. Between 2019 and 2020, 18 of Paul’s companies declared bankruptcy, according to the Austin Business Journal, which has covered Paul’s comings and goings extensively since 2014, when his name suddenly became the most searched phrase on the newspaper’s website.

World Class also has been embroiled in several lawsuits involving investors and partners. And in August 2019, his business and home reportedly were raided by federal and state agents.

[…]

Paul said he was quickly able to acquire properties because of real estate prices suppressed by the 2009 recession. In 2015, he made a splash by bidding $800 million for a portfolio of properties including New York City’s legendary Plaza Hotel.

He also began raising his personal profile. In 2015, he was photographed with then-candidate Donald Trump, a meeting set up by a business associate who once worked for Trump.

He reportedly has hobnobbed with celebrities, including Los Angeles Lakers guard Avery Bradley, whom he met at UT; and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

In 2018, he donated just under $50,000 to a variety of Republican politicians, including $25,000 to Paxton.

And what about the Senator-wife, who is now on the jury panel for his trial? I don’t care about Angela Paxton’s biography or any of that soft-focus stuff. She’s as terrible a person as he is. I want to know how that mess might play out.

On Saturday, just two days before the Legislature was set to adjourn, the House voted to impeach Ken Paxton. The case now goes to the Senate for a full trial to decide whether he will be removed from office permanently.

Ken Paxton has said he thinks he will get a “quick resolution” in the Senate, “where I have full confidence the process will be fair and just.” The Senate is not only more conservative than the House, but the small, tight-knit chamber is ruled with an iron fist by [Dan] Patrick, a key ally of both Paxtons.

But Patrick has not yet stepped up to defend Ken Paxton, instead saying he intends to call a trial.

“We will all be responsible as any juror would be, if that turns out to be, and I think the members will do their duty,” Patrick told WFAA-TV. “I will be presiding over that case and the senators — all 31 senators — will have a vote. We’ll set the rules for that trial as we go forward and we’ll see how that develops.”

Because Texas has not impeached anyone in almost 50 years, Patrick has a lot of power to design the process to suit his goals. One of the central, unanswered questions is Angela Paxton’s role in this procedural drama.

Public Citizen, a progressive government watchdog, has called for her to recuse herself. She has not yet said how she plans to handle her role.

“My guess is she will have to step aside in the course of this,” [UH poli-sci professor Brandon] Rottinghaus said. “There’s no ethical way she can be a juror in this case.”

But even if she recuses, it’s difficult to eliminate her influence from the proceedings, as a colleague of the jurors, an ally of Patrick’s and a surrogate for her husband. On Saturday, while the House considered the impeachment articles, she was on the floor of the Senate, socializing with her colleagues.

“In the Senate, particularly, loyalties matter,” Rottinghaus said. “Many of the senators have loyalties to their fellow senators, to the lieutenant governor, but also a lot of these members have [loyalty] to the network of conservative Republicans who put a lot of these members in office.”

I really don’t know what happens here. I think the only way Angela Paxton recuses herself is if Dan Patrick makes her, and I’m not even sure he can make her. I think if she does recuse herself it will be because the outcome is clear one way or the other and her vote won’t matter. If it’s at all in doubt, I just don’t believe she’ll step aside.

In the meantime, there’s that big question everyone keep asking: Why did this all happen now?

Well, there are a few possible answers to that.

The material facts of the case changed in the past few months. The whistleblowers had a slam-dunk case for illegal termination. Some of them sued. Partly in order to shut down the lawsuit quickly—and to prevent the plaintiffs from liberating AG documents via the discovery process—Paxton settled in February 2023, offering them $3.3 million in taxpayer money. He asked lawmakers to fund the settlement. Even though the dollar amount was trivial, this didn’t sit well with many in the Legislature. Paxton was asking them to eat a turd sandwich so he could protect himself from his own stupidity. It made them look bad. It made the party look bad.

In March, the House Committee on General Investigating opened an investigation into the settlement. The committee is most famous this session for laying the groundwork for the unanimous expulsion of Bryan Slaton, the Republican former representative from Royse City who had sex with a nineteen-year-old staffer after giving her alcohol. The Slaton case was known within the committee as “Matter B.” The Paxton inquiry was known as “Matter A.” The committee has been working on it for months, hiring five investigators. Though their work was clearly diligent and thorough, it couldn’t have been all that difficult: most of the material behind the twenty impeachment charges the committee gave to the House is publicly available. Some of it has been known for the better part of a decade.

And look, these guys all knew what Paxton was. There’s a famous story about Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott that has circulated in Lege circles for years but has never been addressed by either man. When Paxton was a lowly lawmaker and Abbott was the attorney general, the story goes, they ended up in a box together at a football game. Supposedly, Abbott unleashed on Paxton about his unethical and potentially illegal behavior, making his contempt clear. Within just a few years, Paxton was attorney general and Abbott was celebrating him on the campaign trail. Lawmakers and state leaders hadn’t learned to love Paxton, presumably. But taking him on would have eaten up political capital and alienated Paxton’s powerful right-wing backers. So they just . . . didn’t.

The reality is, there was no clear way for the Lege to get rid of Paxton other than by beating him in an election or impeaching him. The first has proven very difficult. Impeachment, which is so alien a process to the modern Legislature that it might as well have come from Mars, needed a hook. Nothing Paxton did before he became attorney general would work. It’s arguably not until this session that the Lege has had a clear case: Paxton asked for taxpayer money to pay off whistleblowers he had illegally fired to cover up other illegal activity. On Friday, the House committee conducting the investigation released a statement in which it underlined the connection. “We cannot over-emphasize the fact that, but for Paxton’s own request for a taxpayer-funded settlement . . . Paxton would not be facing impeachment.”

But this is still an extraordinary, earthshaking thing for the Lege to do. After it became public what the House was up to, Paxton was asked by a conservative radio host what he thought about the news. Paxton affected an air of wounded surprise. “I have no idea why they’ve chosen to do this,” he said. The House had violated the omertà that state officials in Texas generally follow, in other words—they don’t hold each other accountable. In a properly functional system, of course, they’d be doing that all the time.

I have some thoughts about this as well. I’ll address them in a post tomorrow.

Finally, it’s probably best to maintain a little cynicism as we watch this play out.

Various media outlets, and a few of Paxton’s defenders, have made much of the lightning speed of this past week. But while it may have been mere days between the Republican-led House General Investigating Committee’s announcement of their investigation and their unanimous vote to introduce 20 articles of impeachment to the full House for Saturday’s hearing and impeachment vote, Paxton has been under felony indictment for securities fraud since he became attorney general in 2015. The FBI had been investigating Paxton on allegations that he used his office to benefit a wealthy donor, Nate Paul, since late 2020. Only in February of this year did the Department of Justice take over that probe, breathing new life into it.

Paxton’s overreach the next month, in March of this year, appears to have been the second-to-last straw. According to the committee’s own memo, released the day before the full House hearing: “But for Paxton’s own request for a taxpayer-funded settlement over his wrongful conduct, Paxton would not be facing impeachment.” Not, please note, the wrongful conduct—that is, Paxton’s firing of four whistleblowing members of his own senior staff after they accused him of using his office to help out Paul. Nor Paxton’s decision this past spring to pay $3.3 million to settle out of court. Or even the $600,000 the House spent defending Paxton. But Paxton’s request that taxpayers pay that $3.3 million—and that his fellow GOP colleagues go on record approving that request.

The final straw? Paxton, likely knowing that Phelan was going to try to gloss this most recent disgusting legislative term by ending it on a high note, called on him to resign last week over alleged drunkenness—via a tweet. Making it look super-extra-duper political when the House General Investigating Committee revealed that afternoon that it had been investigating Paxton in secret since March. The committee then heard a three-hour presentation from its investigators detailing allegations of corruption against the attorney general and voted to forward 20 articles of impeachment to the full House.

Believe me when I say that I, like many people who have been burned by the Texas GOP’s seemingly endless appetite for cruelty, ignorance, and hypocrisy, felt a certain satisfaction as I watched yesterday’s coverage of it setting itself on fire. Top moment? When the first group to appear outside the Capitol in Austin in response to Paxton’s call for supporters to turn out was around 100 people preparing for the “Trot for Trans Lives,” a 5K run held in support of transgender Americans affected by the waves of anti-trans rights legislation passed in recent years, including by Texas lawmakers.

Small pleasures aside, none of this is as satisfying as it sounds, nor do I think it will end well. First of all, because of all the bureaucracy that lies ahead. Governor Greg Abbott, who has remained curiously silent this past week while he sticks his finger into the political wind, has 10 days to tell the Senate to start a trial. A trial that would be presided over by Paxton buddy arch-conservative Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and that’s likely to be kicked down the road infinitely and/or end with an acquittal.

Yeah, the timing of what happens next remains unclear to me. If nothing else, we’re getting a partial special session at some point.

Like I said, I’ll have some thoughts on the “why” and “why now” of this tomorrow. Until then, if all this hasn’t been enough for you, Mother Jones, the Associated Press, and the Rivard Report have more.

House impeaches Paxton

For the third time in as many days, I say Wow.

A crook any way you look

In a history-making late-afternoon vote, a divided Texas House chose Saturday to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, temporarily removing him from office over allegations of misconduct that included bribery and abuse of office.

The vote to adopt the 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23.

Attention next shifts to the Texas Senate, which will conduct a trial with senators acting as jurors and designated House members presenting their case as impeachment managers.

Permanently removing Paxton from office and barring him from holding future elected office in Texas would require the support of two-thirds of senators.

The move to impeach came less than a week after the House General Investigating Committee revealed that it was investigating Paxton for what members described as a yearslong pattern of misconduct and questionable actions that include bribery, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice. They presented the case against him Saturday, acknowledging the weight of their actions.

“Today is a very grim and difficult day for this House and for the state of Texas,” Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, a committee member, told House members.

“We have a duty and an obligation to protect the citizens of Texas from elected officials who abuse their office and their powers for personal gain,” Spiller said. “As a body, we should not be complicit in allowing that behavior.”

Paxton supporters criticized the impeachment proceedings as rushed, secretive and based on hearsay accounts of actions taken by Paxton, who was not given the opportunity to defend himself to the investigating committee.

“This process is indefensible,” said Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, who complained that the vote was taking place on a holiday weekend before members had time to conduct a thorough review of the accusations. “It concerns me a lot because today it could be General Paxton, tomorrow it could be you and the next day it could be me.”

[…]

The vote came as hardline conservatives supportive of Paxton’s aggressive strategy of suing the Biden administration were lining up in support of him. Former President Donald Trump — a close political ally to Paxton — blasted the impeachment proceedings as an attempt to unseat “the most hard working and effective” attorney general and thwart the “large number of American Patriots” who voted for Paxton.

Trump vowed to target any Republican who voted to impeach Paxton.

As lawmakers listened to the committee members make their case, Paxton took to social media to boost conservatives who had come to his defense, including Trump, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, and conservative radio host Grant Stinchfield, who tweeted, “Kangaroo Court in Texas.”

About 90 minutes into the debate, the official Twitter account of the Texas attorney general’s office began tweeting at members of the committee to challenge some of the claims being made.

“Please tell the truth,” the agency’s account said.

Because Paxton was impeached while the Legislature was in session, the Texas Constitution requires the Senate to remain in Austin after the regular session ends Monday or set a trial date for the future, with no deadline for a trial spelled out in the law.

See here and here for the background. The Trib did some liveblogging of the proceedings, and DMN reported Lauren McGaughy was livetweeting it. You can see how every member voted here. Of interest: Every member from Paxton’s home base of Collin County voted Aye. Everyone in Harris County voted Aye except Reps. Harless (HD126, Nay), Paul (HD129, Nay), Schofield (HD132, Nay), Swanson (HD150, Nay), and Harold Fucking Dutton (Present, Not Voting). Rep. Tom Oliverson was an Excused Absence, and Rep. Shawn Thierry was marked as absent.

As noted before, if Paxton is convicted Greg Abbott will appoint a replacement, who would then have to run in 2024. He can appoint an interim AG pending the Senate action, but has not yet said anything as of the drafting of this post. We do have this:

We wait to see when the Senate will act. I’ll have some further thoughts later. The Chron, WFAA, the Statesman, Texas Public Radio, the San Antonio Report, the Texas Signal, Reform Austin, Daily Kos, TPM, Mother Jones, and the Press have more.

A tale of two elections bills

The good news.

Texas lawmakers have voted to reverse an expensive state law requiring election officials to replace all their current vote-counting equipment with technology that doesn’t exist.

An unprecedented mandate the Legislature passed in 2021, without fully realizing its consequences, would have decertified equipment that counties currently use to count votes, to be replaced by machines on which data “once written, cannot be modified,” at an estimated cost of more than $100 million.

The bill amending the requirement is now headed to the governor’s desk. It will allow counties to use the equipment they already have.

The initial measure, aimed at preventing the tampering of vote data, passed in 2021 on a voice vote without debate, largely unnoticed, tucked into the sweeping voting law Senate Bill 1.

In February, Votebeat reported on the problems with the mandate and election officials’ growing concerns. This year’s legislative session was the best opportunity to amend the proposal before it took effect for the 2026 elections.

In March, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican, and other lawmakers filed legislation to amend the law, which, according to the secretary of state’s office, would have also required the purchase of new equipment for each election.

Hughes’ proposal to amend the provision — Senate Bill 1661 — was approved unanimously by both chambers. During a Senate committee hearing in March, Hughes said that there had been a “misunderstanding on the scope” of the provision, though he didn’t elaborate.

[…]

Election administrators who tried to sound the alarm on the problem without success in 2021 are relieved.

“It’s nice that, you know, the powers that be finally listened to what we’ve been saying all along on that issue,” said Chris Davis, who is the Williamson County elections administrator and a member of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators. The organization mobilized and reached out to lawmakers to make them aware of the provision’s implications. And, Davis said, Votebeat’s reporting also fueled the urgency that led to the corrective legislation.

When Sen. Bob Hall, supported by Hughes, first proposed the requirement in 2021, both legislators said it would prevent “cheating” and the “manipulation” of vote data stored in USB flash drives and taken from polling places to central counting stations — although there’s no evidence any such thing has ever happened.

The law prohibited counties from using reusable storage devices, such as the USB flash drives, which are certified by the secretary of state. The “once written, cannot be modified” requirement also prohibits the use of equipment such as ballot scanners and tabulating machines, all now used to count votes. The technology the law required, known as “write once, read many,” or WORM devices, generally refers to CD or DVD drives and the discs they burn data onto.

Votebeat reported that in order to fully comply, counties would have to buy entirely new voting systems for each election, since the whole point is that the equipment can’t be reused. The secretary of state’s office estimated that it would cost taxpayers more than $116 million to replace the eliminated equipment, plus an ongoing cost of more than $37 million every two years, since new equipment would have to be purchased for each election. And that’s only if counties could have found such equipment. Voting equipment that would match the requirements does not appear to have been invented by any election equipment company operating in the United States.

See here and here for the background. Not stepping on the rakes that you yourself have strewn in your path isn’t really a victory for truth and justice, but we take what we can get around here. As noted before, the real lesson here is that Bob Hall is as stupid as he is malevolent, and no one should ever listen to him.

With good news comes the bad news.

The Texas House of Representatives gave crucial approval on Tuesday to a Republican-backed effort rooted in conspiracy theories that would remove the state from a national coalition that helps prevent voter fraud.

Senate Bill 1070, authored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, was approved by the House on a 85-61 vote. The bill would allow Texas to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC, a multistate program used for checking duplicate voter registrations and cleaning voter rolls. The bill is now headed back to the Senate for approval of changes proposed by Rep. John Bucy, D-Austin, that would add requirements to comply with federal and state privacy guidelines if an alternative system is contracted by the state.

ERIC, considered by election administration experts across the country to be the best tool for preventing double voting across state lines, has been a target of viral conspiracy theories spread since early last year by a fringe conservative publication, The Gateway Pundit. The nonpartisan program compares voter registration rolls from all its member states, along with other data, to flag voters who have died, moved away, or registered elsewhere so that states can remove outdated registrations from their rolls.

Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, spoke against the bill Tuesday and said it was concerning to see the Texas Legislature take such action based on a conspiracy theory.

“That’s why I don’t understand why we have this bill before us, particularly when we know the data shows that ERIC has helped Texas identify duplicate registrations, and that’s exactly what we should be trying to do,” Turner said.

[…]

Texas law requires the state to participate in a multistate data-sharing program to clean its voter rolls, and the state has been a member of ERIC since 2020. The Texas Legislature budgets about $1.5 million to participate in the program. About $115,000 of those funds pay for annual fees to use ERIC’s voter-matching data. The rest of the funds go to paying for postage, mailing, and printing costs to send notices to residents ERIC identifies as eligible voters who are not yet registered, an effort the program requires of its member states.

Members of the ERIC task force argued the state was spending too much money on the program and suggested Texas could instead use private-sector alternatives. Members of the ERIC task force also pushed for the state to stop spending funds on such mailers for eligible voters.

Hughes’ bill directs the secretary of state to build its own version of a multistate cross-check program or to find a “private sector provider” with a cost that won’t exceed $100,000.

In March, the secretary of state announced it was taking steps to build its own version of the program and researching viable options in the private sector. Votebeat reported those efforts could stall or take years.

The bill nonetheless requires such a system to identify voters whose addresses have changed, who have died, or who are ineligible to vote, including because they have been convicted of a felony. Lastly, the bill also requires that a contract with the private sector provider “may not require any additional duty of the state” that isn’t listed in the legislation — such as the mailers to unregistered but eligible voters that ERIC requires its member states to send.

Bucy proposed changes to the bill that election policy experts say are “guardrails” on systems that could potentially replace the program.

Bucy’s amendment strikes language in the bill that seeks to identify “voters who have been convicted of a felony; and who are not eligible to vote including a felony conviction” and changes it to “voters who are ineligible” under the state Election Code. The amendment also now requires any system the state uses to comply with federal and state laws relating to the protection of personal information.

The changes, which would have to be approved by the Senate before the bill goes to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, also say the secretary of state may not contract with a private-sector system unless the contractor requires a background check for its employees. Such a system must also use data from the National Change of Address database to screen for voters who have moved.

“Adding that extra component of verification beyond whatever this mystery vendor might provide is probably a good change,” said Daniel Griffith, senior policy director at Secure Democracy USA, who added that the requirements could help with the state obtaining more accurate information. “But the question is now whether the Senate will accept those amendments.”

See here for some background. As of Saturday the revised SB1070 was still awaiting action in the Senate, so it’s possible this could die. Not the worst outcome if that happens. Kudos to Rep. Bucy for the amendments to make this less bad. Maybe if this does pass it will ultimately be a little harder to “clean up” the voter rolls, which is probably not what the lunatics who have pushed this would want. In any event, this is more indicative of the kind of session this has been.

Impeach-a-palooza

The impeachment debate in the House will happen today.

A crook any way you look

The Texas House intends to take up a resolution to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton at 1 p.m. Saturday, according to a memo from the House General Investigating Committee.

Citing Paxton’s “long-standing pattern of abuse of office and public trust,” the memo said it was imperative for the House to proceed with impeachment to prevent Paxton from using his office’s “significant powers” to further obstruct and delay justice.

The committee proposed allocating four hours of debate, evenly divided between supporters and opponents of impeachment, with 40 minutes for opening arguments by committee members and 20 minutes for closing statements. A simple majority is needed to send the matter to a trial before the Texas Senate. If the House votes to impeach Paxton, the memo said, the House would conduct the trial in the Senate through a group of House members called “managers.

The committee stressed that Paxton’s request earlier this year for the Legislature to pay $3.3 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit led to its investigation and ultimately the articles of impeachment. The memo also said impeachment is not a criminal process and its primary purpose is to “protect the state, not to punish the offender.”

See here for the background. You can read the articles of impeachment here. Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick are still playing this close to the vest, but the state GOP Chair and other assorted deplorables are firmly Team Paxton. And speaking of which

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is accused of impeachable offenses including bribery tied to helping a woman with whom he allegedly had an affair get a job through Austin real estate investor Nate Paul.

His wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, may soon decide whether he deserves to be removed from office for that and other alleged violations of law and the public trust, which were released Thursday night by a Texas House committee.

The senator’s chief of staff did not respond to a request for comment about whether she would recuse herself.

“The first option would be for her to recuse herself,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. “The second would be for the Senate to make that judgment on whether they believe going forward with a sitting senator being a spouse of a person on trial is a look you would like to have.”

It’s unclear how the more conservative Senate would vote, even if the impeachment case were to pass the House with a majority vote.

“We will all be responsible as any juror would be, if that turns out to be, and I think the members will do their duty,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in a Thursday interview with WFAA.

On the one hand, we shouldn’t even be having this conversation. The fact that Angela Paxton could be the deciding vote on whether Ken Paxton gets removed from office or not makes this as clear a case of conflict of interest as one could imagine. Twenty votes to convict are enough to remove him if there are 30 votes total. If there are 31 votes total, and one of the No votes belongs to Angela Paxton, he stays. It doesn’t get any more obvious than that. On the other hand, there is no other hand. There’s also no mechanism other than personal integrity and/or a sense of shame to compel Angela Paxton to step aside for this. I’m sure you can guess what I think she’ll do.

Whatever does happen, that we have gotten to this point at all is a big and wholly unexpected deal.

​​For nearly a decade, Texas Republicans largely looked the other way as Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal problems piled up.

That abruptly changed this week.

In revealing it had been secretly investigating Paxton since March — and then recommending his impeachment on Thursday — a Republican-led state House committee sought to hold Paxton accountable in a way the GOP has never come close to doing. It amounted to a political earthquake, and while it remains to be seen whether Paxton’s ouster will be the outcome, it represents a stunning act of self-policing.

“We’re used to seeing partisans protect their own, and in this case, the Republicans have turned on the attorney general,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “It’s really surprising.”

[…]

As an impeachment vote nears on the House floor, Paxton is about to learn how many Republican friends he really has, both inside the Capitol and outside.

Paxton has closely aligned himself with Donald Trump over the years, but the former president has yet to come to the attorney general’s defense. And in an interview Thursday with WFAA, Patrick declined to stick up for Paxton, pointing out that he may have to preside over a Senate trial.

“We will all be responsible as any juror would be, if that turns out to be, and I think the members will do their duty,” Patrick said.

While Patrick ultimately endorsed Paxton in 2022, it came after The Texas Tribune reported that the lieutenant governor was meddling in the primary and working against Paxton.

A handful of Republicans in the Legislature have already sided against Paxton by supporting his primary challengers in 2022. Sen. Mayes Middleton of Galveston personally funded two of Paxton’s rivals to the tune of six figures. But for the rest, this will be the first time they have to publicly render judgment against the scandal-plagued attorney general.

[…]

On Friday morning, Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, called in to a Dallas radio show and said he was undecided on how he would vote. But he raised multiple questions about the process so far and said that while the allegations against Paxton are “very concerning,” he may be even more worried the House is fueling the perception that it is trying to “criminalize political opposition.”

Asked if there were enough House Republicans willing to join Democrats in impeaching Paxton, Harrison declined to make a prediction.

However, he said, “I think it’s fair to say that there are a large number of my colleagues who do not hold the current attorney general in very high regard.”

I remain skeptical that this will go all the way, though the general dislike of Paxton – maybe some of them are just tired of his shit – could be a big factor. Still requires a non-trivial number of Republicans to turn on him, though. This story says it will take a majority vote in the House to send the matter to the Senate for trial (so only a dozen or so Rs in the House), but previous reporting has said it takes a two-thirds vote in the House to send the matter to the Senate. Looking at the relevant laws, that appears to be the case:

Sec. 665.054. REMOVAL VOTE. (a) The governor shall remove from office a person on the address of two-thirds of each house of the legislature.

(b) The vote of each member shall be recorded in the journal of each house.

Seems clear to me, but views differ. I guess we’ll find out later today. I’ll get back to that in a minute. Note this as well:

SUBCHAPTER D. OTHER REMOVAL PROVISIONS

Sec. 665.081. NO REMOVAL FOR ACTS COMMITTED BEFORE ELECTION TO OFFICE. (a) An officer in this state may not be removed from office for an act the officer may have committed before the officer’s election to office.

(b) The prohibition against the removal from office for an act the officer commits before the officer’s election is covered by:

(1) Section 21.002, Local Government Code, for a mayor or alderman of a general law municipality; or

(2) Chapter 87, Local Government Code, for a county or precinct officer.

This is the argument that Paxton’s representative in the House Chris Hilton was making, that the activities that the committee was investigating all took place before the 2022 election and thus is invalid as grounds for impeachment. The statute doesn’t specify which election, however, and I as a noted non-lawyer will point out that this could reasonably be read to mean his initial election to the office in question, which was 2014. There’s a lot of law nerdery going on about this. I’m sure we’ll hear more of it today. If the House does send this to the Senate, it won’t surprise me if there’s an immediate writ of mandamus filed with SCOTx to weigh in before it proceeds any further. And you thought this was going to be a relatively peaceful holiday weekend.

One more thing, on the subject of what could happen in the House:

Another data point for simple majority in the House. Make of that what you will. But if that does happen, Greg Abbott would have the option of naming a temporary AG while this gets sorted out. If Paxton does get convicted, or somehow decides it’s better to resign first, Abbott would pick someone to fill his unexpired term. That person would then be on the ballot in 2024, as would be the case when Abbott appoints a judge, and I can only imagine how searingly hot that election, in a Presidential year with Ted Cruz also on the ballot, could be. Oh, and just imagine the bloody Republican primaries next March, too. Is your blood pumping yet? I’ll have more tomorrow.

UPDATE: Paxton is handling all this with all the grace and wisdom that you’d expect from him.

No more vehicle inspections

I didn’t know about this one.

Texas legislators have approved a bill to eliminate annual vehicle safety inspections, meaning automobile registration renewals would never again be contingent on the state of a motorist’s windshield wipers or fuel cap.

The Texas Senate passed HB 3297, authored by state Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, on Sunday. The bill just needs Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature to eliminate the safety inspection for non-commercial vehicles in Texas.

To offset any blow to state finances, the proposal replaces the $7.50 state inspection fee with a fee paid with the vehicle’s registration. Drivers would save the $7 cut that inspection stations pocketed.

The new law would take effect Sept. 1, ushering in the biggest change to vehicle registration since state officials linked registration and annual inspections to a single sticker placed on the windshields of Texas cars and trucks in 2015. The state has 22 million registered vehicles.

[…]

Nixing the safety check, however, does not end emission testing, which is required for all vehicles in 17 counties, including most of the Houston and Dallas metro areas, Austin and El Paso. Nearly 17 million people, more than half of the state’s population, live in those counties.

[…]

Mechanics and others opposed eliminating of the inspections, saying it would lead to potentially dangerous situations on Texas roadways when more cars do not receive a proper once-over and even more pollution from poorly maintained vehicles.

“If (the bill) passes, we will see an escalation of vehicles on our roadways that cannot pass a basic safety inspection,” Cpl. Mike Bradburn, of the Travis County Constable Precinct Three Clean Air Task Force, told lawmakers when HB 3297 received a public hearing on April 11. “If a vehicle cannot pass a basic safety inspection, it would be reasonable to believe it would not pass an emissions test leading to more pollutants in the air.”

Studies of states that have stopped safety checks on vehicles, however, show little impact on overall roadway safety. After federal rules allowed states to lift the inspections in the 1970s, most stopped doing in-person examinations, preferring that police to use their discretion to assess a vehicle during a traffic stop if they suspected a problem. Only 13 states still conduct annual inspections.

I blogged about the efficacy of vehicle safety inspections way back in 2009. If there’s really no demonstrable value in doing them then I’m okay with eliminating them. Emissions testing is a different matter, and while those would continue for most Texas vehicles, it’s not clear to me how that would be enforced. I doubt we do anything to track emissions data and how many vehicles that are (or would be if anyone caught them) in violation are out there on the road, but if we did it sure would be nice to see if that number creeps up over the next few years.

House General Investigations Committee votes to impeach Paxton

Once again, I say Wow.

A crook any way you look

In an unprecedented move, a Texas House committee voted Thursday to recommend that Attorney General Ken Paxton be impeached and removed from office, citing a yearslong pattern of alleged misconduct and lawbreaking that investigators detailed one day earlier.

During a specially called meeting Thursday afternoon, the House General Investigating Committee voted unanimously to refer articles of impeachment to the full chamber. The House will next decide whether to approve the articles against Paxton, which could lead to the attorney general’s removal from office pending the outcome of a trial to be conducted by the Senate.

No Legislature has impeached an attorney general, an extraordinary step that lawmakers have historically reserved for public officials who faced serious allegations that they had abused their powers.

The decision came minutes after a representative from Paxton’s office demanded Thursday to testify in front of the House committee probing Paxton’s alleged criminal acts and decried the committee’s actions as “illegal.”

Chris Hilton, chief of general litigation for the attorney general’s office, interrupted the five-member panel’s brief meeting to demand to testify on behalf of Paxton’s office. State Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, shook his head and moved forward with the meeting, which went into executive session almost immediately after gaveling in.

“The people deserve to hear from this office in the context of this investigation,” Hilton said. “The voters want Ken Paxton, and this committee — by investigating him, by not allowing us to be heard here today, by never reaching out to us at any time during this investigative process — is trying to thwart the will of the voters. We deserve to be heard here today.”

Once the committee returned from meeting in private, members voted to issue “preservation letters” directing the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Facilities Commission to protect pertinent information. The committee did not discuss what information it wanted preserved.

Then committee members voted to adopt the articles of impeachment with discussion.

In a statement later Thursday, Paxton sought to turn the tables on allegations that he acted in a corrupt manner while in office, blaming the move toward impeachment proceedings on “corrupted politicians in the Texas House.”

“It is a sad day in Texas as we witness the corrupt political establishment unite in an illegitimate attempt to overthrow the will of the people and disenfranchise the voters of our state,” he said.

[…]

Only the Texas House can bring impeachment proceedings against state officials, which would lead to a trial by the Senate. Under the Texas Constitution, Paxton would be suspended from office pending the outcome of the Senate trial. The constitution also allows the governor to appoint an provisional replacement.

Removal from office would require the support of two-thirds of senators. This has happened only twice in Texas history, to Gov. James Ferguson in 1917 and District Judge O.P. Carrillo in 1975.

After being rejected from testifying before the House investigating committee Thursday, Hilton told reporters the panel’s actions were illegal under a section of Texas law that says a “state officer may not be removed from office for an act the officer may have committed before the officer’s election to office.”

Hilton argued that the statute meant “any impeachment can only be about conduct since the most recent elections.”

On Twitter, the Texas District and County Attorneys Association said it’s unclear if Paxton could be impeached for conduct that occurred before his latest election. The so-called forgiveness doctrine prohibits “most” officials from being removed from office for conduct that predated their most recent election. But, the organization added, statutes outlining the doctrine have only been applied to local officials.

“Maybe we’ll get to see some new law made,” the organization added.

[…]

No Republican House members have yet called for Paxton’s impeachment. But Jeff Leach, R-Plano, urged the public to tune into Wednesday’s committee hearing, which he said would discuss “issues of vital importance.”

“Make no mistake,” Leach said on Twitter. “The Texas House will do our job and uphold our oaths of office.”

And Phelan, who in early May cited his role as the House’s presiding officer as the reason why he did not comment on sexual misconduct allegations against Slaton until after the chamber expelled him, has dropped that approach with Paxton. The speaker on Wednesday called the committee investigators’ report “extremely disturbing” and said Paxton “appears to have routinely abused his office for personal gain.”

Republicans for years have fended off questions about Paxton’s legal and ethical issues, variously deferring to courts to decide them and voters to determine if they were disqualifying. A key question is why the Republican-led House is acting against Paxton now.

Phelan said the House had an obligation to vet the whistleblowers’ claims because a proposed settlement between the four former employees and Paxton’s office would have cost $3.3 million — funds the Legislature would have to approve.

Murr expressed concern Wednesday that the settlement would help Paxton avoid a trial at which evidence of his alleged misdeeds would become public.

See here for the background. The Chron has a useful explanation of what happens next.

The Legislature can impeach any state officer, head of a state department or institution, and any member or trustee of a state institution, according to Texas law.

Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said the process is similar to the national impeachment process with which many Texans are probably already familiar and resembles a court proceeding.

The House would be first to conduct proceedings. If members were to vote and approve impeachment, the matter would move to the Senate, which would hold its own trial.

The House would need to approve the impeachment on a two-thirds vote in order for it to advance, and the Senate would need to approve removing Paxton on a two-thirds vote. As in a state district court trial, both the House and Senate would each have the ability to call witnesses, compel testimony and hold potential witnesses in contempt.

The Legislature does not have to be in session for an impeachment to move forward, according to state law.

The House could start impeachment proceedings now, before the biennial session ends Monday. But if it does not, the governor can call the members into session, the law states. The House speaker also can do so if 50 or more members ask for it. Or a majority of members can compel a session if they sign a written proclamation.

The Senate has similar authority under the law to continue its work when not in session.

I’m far from certain that the votes will be there to dethrone Paxton, but the early chatter on the House side suggests that they will do their part and hand this hot potato off to the Senate. Assuming all 12 Democrats vote to convict, at least eight Republicans would have to do so as well, and that’s whether or not Sen. Angela Paxton recuses herself. (The mind boggles, I know.) In the meantime, as of the writing of this post, neither Greg Abbott nor Dan Patrick has said anything. I cannot see them turning on their buddy, but this whole thing has been so utterly bizarre that I hesitate to make any guesses about what might come next.

I leave you with two tweets and then the rest of the links.

Indeed. WFAA, Texas Public Radio, TPM, the Associated Press, the Austin Chronicle, Mother Jones, the Current, and Reform Austin have more.

Harris County to sue over those two new election laws

I wish I felt more optimistic about this.

Harris County will file a lawsuit challenging two Republican-backed election bills headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, County Attorney Christian Menefee announced Wednesday.

At issue are two measures that apply only to Harris County, including one that abolishes the elections administrators office.

Menefee said the lawsuit would be filed after the bills are signed into law by the governor.

“The Texas Constitution is clear: the Legislature can’t pass laws that target one specific city or one specific county,” Menefee said. “And that constitutional ban makes a whole lot of sense. We don’t want our lawmakers going to Austin, taking their personal vendettas with them and passing laws that target local governments instead of doing what’s in the best interest of Texans.”

Both bills originally were written to apply more broadly.

Senate Bill 1750, the measure eliminating Harris County’s elections administrator post, initially applied to counties with at least 1 million residents, before it was narrowed to include only Harris.

More than half of Texas’ 254 counties have appointed elections administrators, including several of the most populous, such as Bexar, Tarrant, Dallas and Collin.

The bill returns election responsibilities to the elected county clerk and tax assessor-collector, ending Harris County’s three-year run with an appointed elections administrator.

The second bill the county plans to challenge, Senate Bill 1933, increases state oversight and requires Harris County election officials — upon being placed under “administrative oversight” — to clear all election policies and procedures with the Secretary of State. The bill also gives the Secretary of State, currently former state senator Jane Nelson, authority to send employees from her office to observe any activities in a county’s election office.

A last-minute amendment to that bill narrowed the scope to only Harris County.

“I think we were all completely blindsided,” Menefee said.

While the first bill transfers election administration duties to two elected officials, the second bill creates an expedited process to remove those two officials, Menefee said.

“Under Senate Bill 1933, the Secretary of State is able to initiate lawsuits to remove only two elected officials from office in the entire state of Texas, and that’s the Harris County Clerk and the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector,” Menefee said.

[…]

Rice University political science Professor Bob Stein disputed Bettencourt’s “performance not politics” rationale for the bills.

“This was red meat,” Stein said. “They needed to do this the same way they did voter ID laws in many states, to convince the base that they were doing something about a problem that they claimed existed but did not exist.”

Stein said he thinks it unlikely the county’s legal challenges will succeed.

His fellow Rice political scientist Mark Jones agreed.

“Counties, under the Texas Constitution, really only have those powers that the state chooses to endow them with. And what the state giveth, the state can taketh away,” Jones said. “And so, on a legal perspective, Harris County doesn’t have a leg to stand on in terms of objecting to the elimination of the elections administrator position.”

The county, however, may be able to make the case that it needs more time to implement the transition, he said.

See here for the background, and here for the full statement from County Attorney Menefee. I hate to say this, but I think Mark Jones is right. Years ago when I was a young blogger and discovering the weird ways of Texas politics, I learned about the constitutional ban against targeting or specifying a city or county or other entity in a bill. The way around that was always to put in enough qualifiers to narrow the bill down to only one thing or place or whatever. Far as I know, that’s been The Way It Is And Has Always Been for forever. That doesn’t mean it’s kosher, legally speaking. It may mean that it’s never been challenged in court like this – cities and counties have often asked for specialized legislation in the past, after all – or it may mean that Menefee and others think that the animus aimed at Harris County pushes these bills over a legal line. I don’t know enough to say, but it’s something we’ll be able to tell when we see the actual complaint that gets filed.

Even if we accept everything that Menefee is saying, and there’s no prior case law to contradict his claims, I suspect that the courts may be reluctant to side with Harris County specifically because of the current laws that were written in similar fashion in the past. While there could be a narrow order in Harris County’s favor that just addresses these bills and the forthcoming complaint, the potential will be there for a very large can of worms being opened. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that can were then weaponized against Houston by the usual cadre of villains. I don’t want to speculate too much ahead of the facts – Christian Menefee is way smarter than I am about all this, and I trust his judgment. But these are the things I am worried about.

Again, the problem here is the very political targeting of Harris County by a Republican Party that values its own power over everything else. In an equitable world, in a world where voting rights were cherished and protected, these laws wouldn’t stand a chance. We don’t live in that world, and until we get better state leaders and a real Voting Rights Act again, we won’t live in that world. The route we have to deal with this problem right now is littered with obstacles and probably won’t lead to anything good. But it’s all we have. The Press has more.

House General Investigations Committee goes hard after Paxton

Wow.

A crook any way you look

A Texas House committee heard stunning testimony Wednesday from investigators over allegations of a yearslong pattern of misconduct and questionable actions by Attorney General Ken Paxton, the result of a probe the committee had secretly authorized in March.

In painstaking and methodical detail in a rare public forum, four investigators for the House General Investigating Committee testified that they believe Paxton broke numerous state laws, misspent office funds and misused his power to benefit a friend and political donor.

Their inquiry focused first on a proposed $3.3 million agreement to settle a whistleblower lawsuit filed by four high-ranking deputies who were fired after accusing Paxton of accepting bribes and other misconduct.

Committee Chair Andrew Murr said the payout, which the Legislature would have to authorize, would also prevent a trial where evidence of Paxton’s alleged misdeeds would be presented publicly. Committee members questioned, in essence, if lawmakers were being asked to participate in a cover-up.

“It is alarming and very serious having this discussion when millions of taxpayer dollars have been asked to remedy what is alleged to be some wrongs,” Murr said. “That’s something we have to grapple with. It’s challenging.”

Many of the allegations detailed Wednesday were already known, but the public airing of them revealed the wide scope of the committee’s investigation into the state’s top lawyer and a member of the ruling Republican Party. The investigative committee has broad power to investigate state officials for wrongdoing, and three weeks ago the House expelled Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, on its recommendation.

In this case, it could recommend the House censure or impeach Paxton — a new threat to an attorney general who has for years survived scandals and been reelected twice despite securities fraud charges in 2015 and news of a federal investigation into the whistleblowers’ claims in 2020.

Erin Epley, lead counsel for the investigating committee, said the inquiry also delved into the whistleblowers’ allegations by conducting multiple interviews with employees of Paxton’s agency — many of whom expressed fears of retaliation by Paxton if their testimony were to be revealed — as well as the whistleblowers and others with pertinent information.

According to state law, Epley told the committee in a hearing at the Capitol, a government official cannot fire or retaliate against “a public employee who in good faith reports a violation of law … to an appropriate law enforcement authority.”

The four whistleblowers, however, were fired months after telling federal and state investigators about their concerns over Paxton’s actions on behalf of Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor and a friend and political donor to Paxton.

“Each of these four men is a conservative Republican civil servant,” Epley said. “Interviews show that they wanted to be loyal to General Paxton and they tried to advise him well, often and strongly, and when that failed each was fired after reporting General Paxton to law enforcement.”

Epley and the other investigators then walked the committee through the whistleblowers’ allegations, including help Paxton gave Paul that went beyond the normal scope of his duties.

“I ask that you look at the pattern and the deviations from the norm, questions not just of criminal activity but of ethical impropriety and for lacking in transparency,” investigator Erin Epley told the committee. “I ask you to consider the benefits [for Paxton].”

[…]

The investigators interviewed 15 employees for the attorney general’s office, including Joshua Godby, who worked for the open records division when Paxton pressured the division’s staff to get involved in a records fight to benefit Paul in a lawsuit.

Out of the 15 people, investigators said, all except one expressed concern about retaliation from Paxton for speaking on the matter. The investigators also interviewed a special prosecutor, Brian Wice, in a separate securities fraud case that has been ongoing for eight years, as well as representatives for the Mitte Foundation, an Austin nonprofit involved in a legal dispute with Paul.

The investigators outlined the alleged favors Paxton did for Paul. In exchange, Paul helped with a “floor to ceiling renovation” of Paxton’s Austin home and employed a woman with whom Paxton was allegedly in a relationship. Paxton is married to state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, who learned of the affair in 2019, leading to a brief hiatus in the relationship before it resumed in 2020, Epley told the committee.

See here for where we started. I assume that “brief hiatus” is in the affair, which means that, um, he’s still canoodling with whoever his not-Angela inamorata is. I dunno, maybe someone should look into that a bit more? Like, maybe there’s some more potential lawbreaking or rules-violating there? Just a thought.

Wow.

Addressing the House Committee on General Investigating, the team outlined several potential criminal offenses they alleged Paxton committed including abuse of official capacity, misuse of official information, misapplication of fiduciary property and accepting an improper gift.

They said Paxton improperly used his office’s resources to help real estate developer and campaign donor Nate Paul on multiple occasions throughout 2020, raising alarm bells among his senior-most aides who viewed Paxton’s personal interventions as highly unusual and unethical. Some of the alleged crimes are felonies, the team noted.

“So is it fair to say the OAG’s office was effectively hijacked for an investigation by Nate Paul through the Attorney General Ken Paxton?” Committee Vice Chair Ann Johnson, D-Houston, asked.

Investigator Erin Epley, a former assistant US attorney, responded: “That would be my opinion.”

[…]

Earlier this year, Paxton and the whistleblowers announced a tentative settlement agreement.

The agency agreed to pay $3.3 million to the four whistleblowers, contingent on legislative approval, and Paxton would apologize for calling them “rogue employees.” Neither side admitted to “liability or fault” by agreeing to the settlement.

The request spurred the House ethics committee to look into the funding request. While the probe began in March, Murr and Phelan first confirmed the inquiry on Tuesday.

Epley said the team reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, including emails, contracts, criminal complaints and lawsuit documents over months. They also interviewed the whistleblowers, other agency employees, officials in the local prosecutor’s office and more.

The team’s presentation to the committee, which lasted more than three hours, delved into years of alleged misconduct by Paxton, including the whistleblower accusations as well as active state securities fraud indictments.

They did not shed any new light on Paxton and Paul’s relationship. But the team said it found evidence to support the whistleblower’s allegations that Paul helped remodel the kitchen in Paxton’s Austin home and secured a job for a woman with whom Paxton was allegedly having an affair.

The investigators said Paxton seemed to sympathize with Paul, whose businesses and offices were raided by the FBI in 2019. Over the course of the next year, investigators say Paxton began personally steering the agency to intervene in matters benefiting Paul.

It began with public records requests, when Paxton repeatedly pushed staff to release sensitive FBI documents to Paul’s legal team, the investigators said. Paxton told an agency staffer he believed Paul was being railroaded, said investigator Terese Buess, who previously led the Harris County prosecutor’s public integrity unit.

“[Paxton] said he did not want to use his office, the OAG, to help the feds” or or [the Department of Public Safety,” she added.

Murr stopped Buess at that moment, asking, “Did you just state, I want to be very clear, that the Attorney General for the state of Texas said he didn’t not want to use his office to help law enforcement?”

Buess responded: “That is exactly what was relayed to us.”

Over the coming months, and against the advice of top staff, he directed the agency attorneys to issue a rushed legal opinion that Paul’s team used to fight a dozen foreclosures, the team noted. And Paxton ordered staff to intervene in a legal conflict between Paul’s businesses and a local charity in a way that helped the developer, investigators said.

“General Paxton, in this instance, charged with protecting Texas charitable foundations, disregarded his duty and improperly used his office, his staff, his resources to the detriment of the (charity) and to the benefit of a single person: Nate Paul,” Buess said.

[…]

The investigators also discussed in detail the active criminal fraud cases against the attorney general. Paxton was indicted for felony securities fraud eight years ago related to his involvement with a North Texas technology firm but has not yet faced trial.

An unrelated bribery investigation also came up. In 2017, the Kaufman County district attorney looked into concerns that Paxton took a $100,000 gift from a man his agency had investigated for Medicaid fraud. She closed the investigation after determining Paxton did not break state laws because he had a personal relationship with the donor.

The team spoke with at least 15 people and said all but one had concerns about retaliation inside the agency. They did not list who they interviewed. It is unclear whether they spoke with Paxton or Paul.

The four members of the investigative team all said they believe sufficient evidence supported the whistleblower’s allegations. They listed a series of crimes they believe Paxton may have committed, including abuse of official capacity and misuse of official information, both felony offenses.

“In relation to many of these crimes, there’s of course the aiding and abetting portion of it,” said investigator Mark Donnelly, another former prosecutor. “He’s acting with other individuals, and conspiracy to commit crimes that violate both the state of Texas laws and federal laws.”

“That’s alarming to hear,” Murr responded. “It curls my mustache.”

Okay first, go back to the Trib story above and look at the picture of Andrew Murr. You’ll know how serious that statement of his is. Second, those are some real greatest hits that this committee is playing. I mean, the Kaufman County bribery investigation, which ultimately went nowhere? Are they thinking about that as background material – you know, “establishing a pattern”, as they say on “Law & Order” – or do they think there was something that should have been acted upon? The mind reels. Finally, maybe the Justice Department ought to perhaps Do Something with this investigation, which is now in their laps? And maybe Texas Democrats ought to push them to take action on this? Again, just a thought.

And for the third time, wow.

The House investigators, a group of five attorneys with experience in public integrity law and white collar crime, said they reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, including emails, contracts and criminal complaints, and interviewed 15 people. All but one stated they had “grave concerns” regarding Paxton showing hostility or retaliation toward them for their participation.

Paxton signed a settlement with the whistleblowers in February for $3.3 million, but the deal is effectively dead because the Legislature has declined to fund it this session, which whistleblowers have said was a condition of the agreement. The session ends May 29. The whistleblowers’ attorneys have asked the Texas Supreme Court to continue on with the suit.

Epley told committee members Wednesday that Paxton violated the state’s open records law to help Paul obtain information about the FBI’s investigation into him and a raid it had executed against his home and business office.

The attorney general’s office, which is charged with determining whether information needs to be released, had issued a “no-opinion” ruling on the matter — the first time it had done so in decades. The office receives about 30,000 requests per year.

Epley said Paul should have been denied the documents, since the open records law has a clear exception for law enforcement matters, yet Paxton pushed for its release.

According to Epley, Paxton obtained his own copy of the documents and directed an aide to hand-deliver a manila envelope to Paul at his business. After that, Paul’s attorneys stopped asking for the FBI records.

Investigator Mark Donnelly also provided new information on Wednesday that an attorney of Paul’s had recommended that Paxton’s office hire a young and inexperienced lawyer named Brandon Cammack as outside counsel to help Paxton investigate the federal officials looking into Paul. That could have been a conflict of interest, as Paul was the one who had requested the investigation in the first place.

Donnolly did not name the attorney who referred Cammack, but Hearst Newspapers has reported on the strange relationship between Cammack and an attorney who represented Paul, Michael Wynne.

Paul, who is in the middle of multiple bankruptcy proceedings and financial litigation, had wanted the attorney general’s office to uncover details about the federal law investigation into him and his businesses.

Paxton hired Cammack as a “special prosecutor” against the advice of his staff, according to the investigators. They said Cammack was able to use the unredacted FBI report from Paxton to pinpoint the targets of 39 subpoenas, which went to Paul’s business interests and law enforcement officials.

You know, this stuff has been out there for a long time. And for a long time, it’s largely been ignored despite the voluminous record. In the same way that there’s basically no such thing as an anti-Trump Republican any more, because they’ve either been corrupted or they’ve left the Republican Party, at least up until now there’s been no such thing as an anti-Ken Paxton Republican in Texas. Mad respect to the three Republicans on this committee and their investigators, and to the whistleblowers before them, but there have been multiple opportunities before now to deal with the Paxton problem. Even if the Lege ultimately moves forward with impeachment, which by the way will require at least eight of Dan Patrick’s hand-puppet GOP Senators to turn on Paxton, he’s gotten away with this shit – and done a ton of damage while doing so – for way too long. Better late than never and all that, but boy howdy is this late.

I will close with three tweets of interest.

I’ve already pre-ordered that book for my Kindle. Texas Public Radio, the Associated Press, Reform Austin, and TPM have more.

Lege kneecaps Harris County elections

I have three things to say about this.

The Texas House of Representatives voted Tuesday to force Harris County to eliminate its chief election official and to give state officials more authority over elections there.

On a 81–62 party line vote, House Republicans passed Senate Bill 1750, which will abolish the Harris County elections administrator position — a nonpartisan position appointed by local elected officials — and return all election duties to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector.

Failed amendments by Democrats would have changed the new law’s effective date to December, instead of Sept. 1, to give county officials time to conduct the November county and municipal elections and to transfer the duties. Another failed amendment would have given the authority to transfer election duties to the county commissioners. The bill is now on its way to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk — and could ultimately face Harris County’s opposition in court.

Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum said in a statement to Votebeat that when the provision takes effect in September, it’ll be 39 days from the voter registration deadline and 52 days from the first day of early voting for a countywide election that includes the Houston mayoral race.

“We fear this time frame would not be adequate for such a substantial change in administration, and that Harris County voters and election workers may be the ones to pay the price,” Tatum said.

Also approved Monday was a bill that would let the Texas secretary of state intervene in local elections. It would grant the state the authority to investigate election “irregularities” after complaints are filed and the authority to order the removal of a county election administrator or to file a petition to remove a county officer overseeing elections, such as a clerk, if “a recurring pattern of problems” isn’t resolved. The secretary’s current role in elections is only to guide and assist counties, with no oversight powers.

Senate Bill 1933 was originally written to apply to all counties but was amended on the House floor to impact only Harris County, by the House sponsor of the measure, Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress. The House’s changes to the bill now have to receive approval from the Senate this week.

[…]

Harris County leaders say the two bills would set a “dangerous precedent.” That’s why the county is now evaluating whether they can take legal action if the proposals become law.

County Attorney Christian D. Menefee in a statement said state legislators are singling out Harris County “to score cheap political points.”

“I want to be clear: this fight is not over,” Menefee said. “We cannot and will not allow the state to illegally target Harris County.”

1. It’s obnoxious and petty, but I still don’t quite understand the hate-on for the Elections Administrator office. Nothing will substantially change in terms of how elections are done in the county as a result of this, just the names and who they report to. Hell, as things stand right now the Chair of the Harris County GOP is on the oversight board of the EA. That authority disappears once the powers revert to the County Clerk and Tax Assessor. It’s a poke in the eye, but beyond that I don’t see what the Republicans think they’re getting out of this. What am I missing?

2. SB1933 is a lot easier to understand. The possibilities to screw with elections are scary enough, but I’m more worried about it being used to screw with voter registration, both to make it harder to get registrations done and to make it easier to throw voters off the rolls. There’s a reason why the voter rolls barely grew in the years that Paul Bettencourt was in charge of that.

3. There are some obvious avenues for attack in court, both state and federal. I don’t have much faith that the end result will be what we want, though. Like everything else, the only way out of this is winning more elections. And yes, the Republicans who pass these laws to make that harder for Democrats to do know that, too. The Chron, TPM, and Mother Jones have more.

Paxton calls on Phelan to resign

The last few days of a legislative session are always the dumbest days of the session.

A crook any way you look

Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday that state House Speaker Dade Phelan should resign, accusing him of presiding over his chamber “in a state of apparent debilitating intoxication.” Paxton also asked the House General Investigating Committee to probe Phelan, a fellow Republican.

Paxton’s call for Phelan’s resignation came days after a video clip went viral that showed Phelan slurring his words while overseeing House floor proceedings Friday night. Phelan’s office has declined to comment on the incident.

“After much consideration, it is with profound disappointment that I call on Speaker Dade Phelan to resign at the end of this legislation session,” Paxton said in a statement posted on Twitter. “His conduct has negatively impacted the legislative process and constitutes a failure to live up to his duty to the public.”

Minutes later, Paxton also posted to Twitter a screenshot of a letter he sent the chair of the General Investigating Committee, Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, asking him to open an “investigation into Speaker Phelan for violation of House rules, state law, and for conduct unbecoming his position.” The General Investigating Committee was meeting Tuesday afternoon but does not publicly comment on any pending investigations.

Phelan’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Paxton’s remarks.

Texas Republicans regularly fight among themselves, but Paxton’s comments Tuesday were striking even by that standard.

The 44-second video clip of Phelan began circulating on social media over the weekend. It was pushed by Phelan’s intraparty critics, including former state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford. It was also the subject of anonymous text messages deriding Phelan as “Drunk Dade.”

Phelan’s defenders noted he seemed to speak normally before and after the clip. They also noted that the people pushing the video, like Stickland, may be out for revenge after the House voted to expel one of their political allies, ex-state Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City.

[…]

Paxton shares political ties with Slaton, the ousted lawmaker. A top campaign contributor to both has been Defend Texas Liberty PAC, the Stickland-run group that is mostly financed by conservative megadonors Tim Dunn and the Wilks family.

You can see the video here if you’re so inclined. I have not given this any real thought, but Scott Braddock speaks for me:

I have no opinion about what condition Speaker Phelan was in, nor do I particularly care. Honestly, he was probably just as exhausted as everyone else is at this point in a session. I do care about the assholes who enabled Bryan Slaton and who are still mad that he faced consequences for his repellant actions. That’s about all the thought I care to give this. The Press and Reform Austin have more.

UPDATE: Okay, now I’m interested.

Following Attorney General Ken Paxton’s call for Speaker Dade Phelan’s resignation, Phelan’s office responded by presenting their perspective on Paxton’s motives.

The House Committee on General Investigating has issued subpoenas to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) relating to the firing of eight whistleblowers from the attorney general’s office.

Cait Wittman, the spokeswoman for Phelan, highlighted the committee’s investigation into “Matter A” since March, as evidenced by committee minutes and official House records. According to Wittman, the motives and timing behind Paxton’s recent statement calling for Phelan’s resignation are abundantly clear.

She stated, “As outlined in the attached preservation letter, the Committee is conducting a thorough examination of the events tied to the firing of the whistleblowers in addition to Ken Paxton’s alleged illegal conduct.” The committee minutes further revealed the issuance of subpoenas.

Wittman characterized Paxton’s statement as a desperate attempt to salvage his reputation, stating, “Mr. Paxton’s statement today amounts to little more than a last-ditch effort to save face.”

The letter says that, “The House has been conducting an investigation related to your request for $3.3 million dollars of public money to pay a settlement resolving litigation between your agency and terminated whistleblowers.”

Nice. Do the letters FAFO mean anything to you, Kenny?

UPDATE: Color Jeremy Wallace skeptical of the video evidence.

There will be a broadband referendum on your fall ballot

One more reasonable accomplishment amid the wreckage.

Rep. Trent Ashby

Texas lawmakers took another step Thursday toward expanding internet availability in the state by passing a bill that invests $5 billion for broadband development.

House Bill 9, filed by Republican state Rep. Trent Ashby of Lufkin, would create the Texas Broadband Infrastructure Fund. The money would be administered by the Texas comptroller’s office and would be the biggest state investment in broadband development to date. The bill is accompanied by House Joint Resolution 125, which proposes a constitutional amendment that would ask Texas voters to approve the historic amount and create the fund.

The legislation has cleared both chambers, and two amendments adopted Thursday will send it back to the House for final approval before going to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. One amendment, proposed by Sen. Joan Huffman of Houston, said it was a recommendation from the Texas Comptroller’s office as a way to “remove legal burdens allowing for moneys to be allocated without the need for burdensome legal filings for each individual asset.”

Another amendment, proposed by Sen. Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, would direct the state’s broadband office to supplement the non-federal match on a sliding scale based on where it’s necessary to add additional state funds to make a project area economically feasible to serve. Nichols said this would allow the state to amplify the impact of federal funding and ensure providers have skin in the game.

The proposed legislation is an attempt to fill the gaps in broadband availability statewide. Nearly 7 million Texans don’t have reliable internet service. According to the Broadband Development Office’s map, released earlier this year, most urban areas of the state have broadband availability, while most rural areas have slow service or none at all.

This and another bill by Rep. Ashby and Sen. Nichols would build on legislation passed last session, and would add to the money that will come to Texas from the bipartisan infrastructure bill of 2021. The House had not concurred with the Senate amendments as of when I drafted this, but it seems likely all that will be dealt with in short order. Even in terrible sessions there are decent things that get done. It’s just that the bad so outweighs the good. We know what the solution is for that.

Some dough for downtown

It would be nice.

Sen. John Whitmire

With just days left in this year’s regular session of the Texas Legislature, Houston-area lawmakers are fighting for a measure that would likely provide several billion dollars to expand the George R. Brown Convention Center and for other downtown projects.

“This means everything to Houston,” said state Sen. John Whitmire, a Democrat from Harris County and author of the legislation. “It’s just a real infusion of economic development downtown, where we we really need to focus.”

The measure, Senate Bill 1057, would essentially cut Houston in on a deal Dallas and Fort Worth have enjoyed since similar legislation was passed in 2013. It would allow the city and Houston First, the government corporation that operates Houston’s convention venues, to receive certain downtown hotel taxes in excess of the amount collected this year for up to 30 years.

The additional revenue would be modest, perhaps $2.3 million dollars in the city’s next fiscal year beginning July 1, according to analysis from the state Legislative Budget Board. But that amount could grow each year as the revenue swells past the 2023 baseline.

A spokesperson for the state comptroller’s office says that while the agency doesn’t do economic impact projections, it expects the city could reap more than $1.8 billion over 30 years.

State Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Democrat who represents parts of north and east Harris County, co-authored the legislation in the Senate, and state Rep. Sam Harless, a Republican of Spring, is sponsoring the measure in the House.

The money could be used to expand and modernize the George R. Brown Convention Center as well as for projects in the downtown area, says Michael Heckman, president and CEO of Houston First.

“Houston has an outstanding convention campus, but we can always do better,” Heckman said Tuesday. “This funding, if approved, would allow us to remain a tier-one city for years to come.”

[…]

Whitmire, who is a candidate in this year’s mayoral election as well as the longest-serving member of the Texas Senate, said the additional revenue could be used on projects other than those specifically tied to the physical convention center. Related projects within a 3-mile radius of city hall would be eligible, including potential new parks and green spaces that would better connect downtown with the EaDo neighborhood.

One project backers believe could benefit would be a proposed park over the sunken freeway that is part of the planned $9.7 billion, 20-year reconstruction and relocation of I-45.

“That’s just opening up downtown to the east side,” Whitmire said.

Overall this would have a fairly modest effect on Houston’s finances, but anything that brings more revenue to the city is worth pursuing. The bill is on the House general calendar so it should have a decent shot at passing. Here’s hoping.

Lege approves parkland money

I feel compelled to note the rare good thing emerging from this Legislature.

The Texas House on Monday gave preliminary approval to two bills, Senate Bill 1648 and Senate Joint Resolution 74, that would, with voter approval, create a Centennial Parks Conservation Fund to invest up to $1 billion to buy more land for the state parks system.

Advocates are calling it a “historic” and an “unprecedented” level of investment in the state’s park system, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

“This would create a new golden age for our state parks,” said Luke Metzger, the executive director of Environment Texas. “We have a lot to celebrate. What a great birthday present to give all Texans for the state parks system’s 100th.”

The bill and resolution by Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, already have received an OK from the Senate and need a final vote in the House before heading to the governor’s desk for final approval. The governor has called for an increase in the budget for state parks, and advocates are optimistic that he will approve the bills.

If he does, the issue will go before voters as a constitutional amendment in November, and the state could begin spending the money as early as Jan. 1.

According to a report by Environment Texas last year, Texas lags behind most others states in state parkland: The state ranks 35th in the nation for state park acreage per capita, with about 636,000 acres of parkland for a population of over 29 million as of 2019. The report suggests that Texas needs to add 1.4 million acres of state parks by 2030 to meet the needs of its residents.

[…]

Parks became a hot political topic at the Capitol after Fairfield Lake State Park, about 100 miles south of Dallas, announced it was closing because it’s on leased land and the owner was selling the land. It is one of 14 state parks that sit on leased land.

The owner, Vistra Corp., sold the 5,000-acre property, which includes the park, to Dallas-based real estate developer Shawn Todd and his firm, Todd Interests, which planned to build a private golf course and gated community on the property. Lawmakers have been in negotiations with the park’s new owners to keep the park open to the public, and advocates have been pushing for funding to buy more parkland so there won’t be a repeat of the Fairfield debacle.

“Our local parks all the way to our state parks were one of the few places that were safe for people to gather and enjoy time with each other and enjoy time in nature during the worst of the COVID pandemic,” said Robert Kent, Texas state director for The Trust For Public Land.

As lawmakers make big investments in Texas parks, Kent said he hopes they will find a way not only to buy land for new parks but to preserve existing ones, too.

He pointed to another set of bills, House Bill 3165 and House Joint Resolution 138 by Rep. Justin Holland, R-Rockwall, that might do just that. The bill would create a conservation fund that would provide grants to preserve water resources as well as local and state parks. The resolution would put the fund on the November ballot for voter approval.

The Texas House approved the bill and resolution earlier this month. The Senate hasn’t yet voted on them.

I’ll vote for those two resolutions if they both make it onto the ballot. I’m not a big parks guy myself but I absolutely agree they are a necessary and vital public resource. As for the Fairfield situation, the House passed a bill in late April that would require the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission to approve any application for new or amended water rights related to Fairfield Lake, which would likely scuttle the development process. That bill is still in committee in the Senate, so time is running out. I’ll circle back to that one after the session is over, if I haven’t seen any news on it before then.

Bill to ban gender-affirming care sent to Abbott, lawsuit to follow

The next fight will begin immediately.

Texas is on the brink of banning transgender minors from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapies, treatments that leading medical groups say are important to supporting their mental health.

The Senate has voted 19-12 Wednesday to accept Senate Bill 14’s House version and send it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, two days after the lower chamber passed the legislation. Legal groups opposing the bill — including the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, Lambda Legal and the Transgender Law Center — said Thursday they will launch a legal challenge to try and block the legislation from becoming law.

SB 14 is a legislative priority for the Republican Party of Texas, which opposes any efforts to validate transgender identities. It’s also a key proposal among a slate of GOP bills that would restrict the rights and representation of LGBTQ Texans this session, amid a growing acceptance of Christian nationalism on the right.

[…]

“This legislation is vicious, it’s cruel and it’s blatantly unconstitutional,” Ash Hall, policy and advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Texas, said following the first House vote. “The bigotry and discrimination in this bill will not stand up in court and it will not stand the test of time.”

And already, the prospect of losing access to these treatments has prompted many parents of trans kids — including Randell’s — to consider traveling out of state for care or flee Texas altogether, costly options that are not available to all. Others have also spoken publicly about not wanting to abandon the community that they love or that their families have been in for generations.

“We’re not going to be able to know how many children will be ‘saved,’ as it’s been called, from this lifestyle, but we will definitely be able to track what harm it may cause,” said Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, on Wednesday. “It is my hope that every child affected by this bill can have a chance to grow up and see that things will get better.”

See here for the previous update. From the inbox, here’s what is coming next:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and the Transgender Law Center pledged Thursday to file a lawsuit against a sweeping new law banning transgender youth from accessing medically necessary health care that the Texas Legislature just sent to the governor’s desk.

Texas Senate Bill 14 bans the only evidence-based care for gender dysphoria for transgender people under 18 and aims to strip doctors of their medical licenses for providing their patients with the care they know to be medically necessary. Texas lawmakers have ignored the warnings of transgender youth, their families, and the medical establishment about the harms of this law.

Similar restrictions in Alabama and Arkansas have been enjoined by federal courts, and legal advocates have filed challenges in federal court to bans enacted in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Montana. A state court judge in Missouri recently blocked enforcement of the Missouri attorney general’s emergency order blocking provision of gender-affirming care.

The aforementioned organizations issue the following joint statement:

“We will be filing a lawsuit to protect transgender youth in Texas from being stripped of access to health care that keeps them healthy and alive. Coming on top of the effort last year to classify providing medically necessary and scientifically proven care to transgender youth as child abuse and threatening to tear Texas families with transgender children apart, an effort currently blocked in state court, Texas lawmakers have seen fit to double down.

“They are hellbent on joining the growing roster of states determined to jeopardize the health and lives of transgender youth, in direct opposition to the overwhelming body of scientific and medical evidence supporting this care as appropriate and necessary. Transgender youth in Texas deserve the support and care necessary to give them the same chance to thrive as their peers. Medically necessary health care is a critical part of helping transgender adolescents succeed in school, establish healthy relationships with their friends and family, and live authentically as themselves. We will defend the rights of transgender youth in court, just as we have done in other states engaging in this anti-science and discriminatory fear-mongering.”

Bans like S.B. 14 are opposed by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

If you or someone you know needs mental health resources or support, please visit:
—Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860 or https://www.translifeline.org
—Trevor Project at 866-488-7386 or https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

I will obviously keep an eye on that. Lambda Legal has more.

Abbott threatens special session if he doesn’t get his voucher bill passed

It’s not the Lege these days without a special session threat.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday said he would veto a toned-down version of a bill to offer school vouchers in Texas, and threatened to call legislators back for special sessions if they don’t “expand the scope of school choice” this month.

“Parents and their children deserve no less,” he said in a statement. His dramatic declaration came the night before the House Public Education Committee was scheduled to hold a public hearing on Senate Bill 8, the school voucher bill. That measure passed the Senate more than a month ago, but has so far been stalled in lower chamber as it lacks sufficient support.

The committee is set to vote Monday on the latest version of SB 8, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, which would significantly roll back voucher eligibility to only students with disabilities or those that attended an F-rated campus. This would mean that fewer than a million students would be eligible to enter the program.

Abbott doesn’t believe the revised version does enough to provide the state with a meaningful “school choice” program. Since the start of the legislative session, Abbott has signaled his support to earlier proposals that would be open to most students. The governor also said he has had complaints over the new funding for the bill, saying it gives less money to special education students. It also doesn’t give priority to low-income students, who “may desperately need expanded education options for their children,” he said.

The centerpiece of the original Senate bill was “education savings accounts,” which work like vouchers and direct state funds to help Texas families pay for private schooling.

The version approved by the Senate would be open to most K-12 students in Texas and would give parents who opt out of the public school system up to $8,000 in taxpayer money per student each year. Those funds could be used to pay for a child’s private schooling and other educational expenses, such as textbooks or tutoring. But that idea has faced an uphill climb in the House, where lawmakers signaled last month their support for banning school vouchers in the state.

I haven’t followed the ups and downs of this latest version to suck money out of the public school system and use it to subsidize private schools. I will note that as in previous sessions, there was a budget amendment passed in the House to block any money being spent on vouchers, and in last week’s “get stuff done before the legislative calendar deadlines”-palooza, a motion to suspend the rules for an amended version of SB8 was shot down. Neither of those things happen without Republican support, and that’s been the key thing about the voucher fight all along – at least in the House, the votes for it aren’t there.

Abbott, like Rick Perry before him, has successfully used special sessions to pass Republican bills that Democrats have blocked via parliamentary means in regular sessions, like the omnibus voter suppression bill in 2021 and the bill aimed at shutting down abortion clinics that Wendy Davis filibustered in 2013. The extra time was what Republicans needed to overcome these procedural obstacles. Here, though, the resistance is coming from other Republicans. When special sessions have been called to overcome that kind of friction – see, for example, 2017 and the efforts then to pass a bathroom bill (who would have thought those would be the good old days) – they have generally ended in failure.

That could happen here. As Scott Braddock has noted on Twitter, there’s nothing to stop Speaker Phelan from taking a motion to adjourn sine die right after gaveling in the special session. I doubt that would happen, but it may be the case that there’s nothing Abbott and/or Dan Patrick can do to cajole or coerce the reluctant Republicans to change their minds. We’ll just have to see, if it comes down to it. The two people in Austin right now that I bet are rooting against that the hardest are probably Sens. John Whitmire and Roland Gutierrez, both of whom have other things to pursue as soon as they’re able to start fundraising again. Stay tuned.

Dan Patrick reminds everyone who’s in charge

In case you forgot.

Online sports betting isn’t coming to Texas any time soon, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Saturday.

The state House narrowly advanced a bill this week that would allow Texans to vote on legalizing the practice, a milestone for the gambling industry’s push to expand in the Lone Star State. Supporters had already expected an uphill climb in the Senate, but Patrick put an end to any remaining speculation on Twitter.

“I’ve said repeatedly there is little to no support for expanding gaming from Senate GOP,” Patrick tweeted. “I polled members this week. Nothing changed. The Senate must focus on issues voters expect us to pass. We don’t waste time on bills without overwhelming GOP support. HB 1942 won’t be referred.”

Still, gambling advocates say the bill’s passage in the House — by a vote of 101 to 42 — shows the potential to advance the legislation in future sessions.

State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano and the author of the legislation, has argued that Texans already have easy access to illegal forms of online betting, where they spend millions of untaxed dollars every year. He said legalizing the practice would “allow these people to come out of the shadows” and put them under a “regulatory framework that will protect Texans who are already doing this now.”

This is the reason I have always been dismissive of all the breathless pre-session articles about how the gambling industry is gearing up and hiring millions of lobbyists and citing polls that show public support for gambling and economic studies that say it will literally rain honey on us all if we authorize casinos and sports books. There’s one person you have to convince in the state, and that’s Dan Patrick. Until he is no longer in charge, gambling isn’t going anywhere. Maybe – I know, this is crazy talk, but stay with me – the gambling interests should focus a bit more on that in the next election.

(Yes, I know, Patrick always cites the level of support in the Senate, and I’m sure he’s right about that. But then, the Republican Senate caucus is an army of his clones, so there’s a chicken-and-egg question there. If Patrick changed his mind, would his minions follow? It’s an interesting question, one we’ll almost certainly never get an answer to. That said, if Mike Collier were presiding over the Senate this session, it wouldn’t surprise me if there remained some entrenched opposition among the mini-Patricks. But at least then we’d have some clarity, and the lobbyists could turn their attention to those individual Senators.)

Who you calling “groomer”?

Bryan Slaton is the poster boy for that epithet.

Bryan Slaton

In public, former state Rep. Bryan Slaton was a conservative champion unafraid to ruffle feathers and pick fights, even with Republicans he deemed insufficiently conservative.

A self-described “bold and brave Christian-Conservative” who’d worked as a youth pastor, Slaton featured a picture of his wife and infant son on his campaign website. On social media, he railed against “groomers,” saying their efforts to sexualize minors needed to be stopped.

Away from the public eye, however, the Royse City Republican fell far short of the morally upright life he sold to voters — a guise ripped away by a scathing 16-page report that detailed his inappropriate sexual conduct with a 19-year-old legislative aide who worked in his Capitol office.

Slaton invited the woman to his Austin apartment late on a Friday night and poured her enough alcoholic drinks that she felt dizzy and had double vision, leading to unprotected sex, after which the woman reportedly purchased emergency contraceptives against a potential pregnancy, the report by a House investigative committee found.

Slaton resigned Monday and was expelled from the House by a unanimous vote Tuesday, but his hypocrisy has cast a harsher light on Republican-led efforts to crack down on supposedly grooming-related activities, including drag performances, gender-affirming care for transgender minors and classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity.

LGBTQ advocates are pointing to Slaton to redirect attacks back on the GOP, saying conservative Republicans were so busy policing drag artists and transgender Texans that they missed abuse — and so-called “grooming behavior” — by one of their own.

Rep. Jessica González, D-Dallas, said those who voted to expel Slaton should also oppose legislation he supported that would ban transgender adolescents from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy, on which the House is scheduled to vote on Friday.

“It’s no surprise that the man obsessed with children’s bodies — especially transgender kids — is a predator,” González said in a statement. “The courage to stop a predator has to extend to opposing his crusade to fixate the entire state on children’s genitals. He’s been calling my community ‘perverts’ and ‘groomers’ for years — when it turns out he should’ve invested in a good mirror.”

To this all I would add is “And Paul Pressler and his enabler Jared Woodfill, too”. The rest of the story is various Republicans mumbling excuses and dodging questions about Slaton. I don’t care about that. Remember the name Bryan Slaton, and remember why we remember the name. Shitty people in politics is a universal problem, just like shitty people in any other part of life is, but the Bryan Slaton type of shitty people is a Republican problem.

House passes bill to ban gender affirming care for minors

Friday was a bad day.

Texas has taken a major step toward banning transgender minors from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapy — care that medical groups say is vital to their mental health — after the state House gave Senate Bill 14 initial approval Friday.

Trans Texans and LGBTQ advocates consider the bill one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in this year’s legislative session. It would ban trans people younger than 18 from getting certain transition-related care. Kids already accessing treatments would have to be “weaned off” in a “medically appropriate” manner, the bill says. It also bans transition-related surgeries, though those are rarely performed on kids.

The House’s vote to advance the bill followed over five hours of pushback from Democrats, who had successfully delayed the bill on a technicality twice last week. On Friday, Democratic lawmakers once again tried to raise points of order, a parliamentary maneuver aimed at delaying or defeating bills, but their efforts failed this time. Some Democrats, though, defected and voted in favor of the bill.

The initial vote was 92-48, though three Democrats later said they accidentally voted in favor and meant to oppose the bill. Still, nine other democrats voted for the bill, according to the vote record. State Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth was also listed as voting against the bill — the only Republican to do so — even though he is a co-sponsor of the legislation and later tweeted that he was proud of its initial passage.

As SB 14 advances, Texas — home to one of the largest trans communities in the country — is moving ever closer to joining over a dozen states in restricting transition-related care for minors. The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal have already raised legal challenges against several of them. And judges have so far blocked the efforts to limit these treatments for trans youth in Alabama and Arkansas.

Pending one more final vote in the House, SB 14 would return to the Senate, which has already passed a version of the legislation that mandates an abrupt cutoff as opposed to a tapering off process.

Trans Texans, their families and medical groups say transition-related care is critical to supporting the mental health of trans youth, who are already facing higher risks of depression and suicide than their cisgender peers. Getting access to these treatments, they say, is time intensive and requires multiple medical evaluations. Parents are included in decisions about what treatments, if any, are best for individual children.

“The bill in front of us today is banning health care,” said state Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, while advocating for a failed amendment that would have largely foiled the legislation. “Politics shouldn’t determine health care, period.”

Some Democratic lawmakers, including the nine openly LGBTQ state representatives, stood outside the chamber prior to debate and read letters from trans youth who would be affected by SB 14 and their families. And earlier in the day, LGBTQ Texans and their allies marched to the Capitol to protest the legislation, just over a week after state police forcefully booted scores of them from the Capitol and handcuffed two.

“We’re rising up. The whole LGBTQIA community is fighting back against a group of people who, at their core, don’t want us to exist,” said Danielle Skidmore, a longtime Austin resident and trans woman who came to the Capitol on Friday to protest the bill.

[…]

Several Democratic lawmakers voted for the bill, according to the vote record: state Reps. Alma Allen of Houston, Rhetta Bowers of Rowlett, Harold Dutton of Houston, Tracy King of Batesville, Armando Martinez of Weslaco, Suleman Lalani of Sugar Land, Mary Ann Perez of Houston and Shawn Thierry of Houston. Democratic state Reps. Christian Manuel of Beaumont, Penny Morales Shaw of Houston and Jessica González of Dallas initially voted for the bill, according to a record of the vote, but quickly said those were accidents and that they meant to vote against it.

Thierry, the lone Democrat to publicly speak in favor of SB 14 during Friday’s debate, said she voted for it with “an open heart and clear mind.”

“As a thoughtful legislator, mother, woman of faith and child advocate, I have made a decision to place the safety and well-being of all young people over the comfort of political expediency,” she said.

See here and here for some background. Before we go further, you need to read this Twitter thread from DMN reporter Lauren McGaughy, who has been following up with all of the Dems that had apparently voted Yes on SB14. In short, nearly all of them have said their Yes vote was in error and that they will be voting No on third reading. Tracy King and Shawn Thierry are the only two who confirmed that they intended to vote Yes, while Harold Dutton – who had been voting against most of the Dem-offered amendments to weaken SB14, unlike the others – hadn’t replied as of when I drafted this. I’m very glad to hear this, as I was about to be massively disappointed in some of these people. With some of them, let’s just say this wasn’t so shocking. Shawn Thierry has gone on some kind of bizarre heel turn – she was out there voting for book bans earlier, too – and I look forward to supporting a primary opponent against her. And Harold Dutton is still Harold fucking Dutton. Tracy King has the excuse of representing a district that Greg Abbott won in 2022, for what that’s worth. He qualifies as a disappointment.

Anyway. For those of you thinking well, it’s just drawing a distinction between adults and minors, I will remind you that the Senate passed a bill that would have outlawed this care for adults as well. Once you decide that it’s okay to ban safe and effective medical care for people because you don’t like it, there’s no obvious boundary for that. Cutting off ongoing treatment for however many kids is especially heinous.

(Yes, I believe the Dems who say their vote was in error. It happens. McGaughy confirmed with Charlie Geren that his No vote was in error, too.)

There will surely be litigation over this, as there has been in other states, and at some point SCOTUS will get to decide how much value they believe trans people have. Given their previous lack of care about who gets to access what kind of health care, I’m not optimistic, but it’s all we have until we vote in a different government. Until then, here’s a statement from the All In For Equality Coalition:

The Texas House voted today to advance Senate Bill 14, which will ban evidence-based, life-saving health care for transgender adolescents in Texas.

S.B. 14 bans puberty blockers and hormone therapy, which have been used and proven to treat gender dysphoria for decades.

Hundreds of Texans came to the State Capitol on May 2 to oppose the bill banning essential health care for trans youth — and were met with violence and arrests. The All in For Equality coalition condemned the clearing of the Capitol by authorities.

The bill passed the Texas House late Friday evening by a vote of 92 to 48.

The following quote can be attributed to Ash Hall (they/them), Policy & Advocacy Strategist at the ACLU of Texas:

“This is a dark day in Texas. Our legislature has turned its back on science, parents, and the safety and lives of children. Our hearts break for transgender young people in our state who have repeatedly been attacked by their own government for callous political gain. This legislation is vicious, it’s cruel, and it’s blatantly unconstitutional. The bigotry and discrimination in this bill will not stand up in court and it will not stand the test of time. Transgender people have always existed and always will, and the vast majority of Texans do not support harming them or cutting off this life-saving health care.”

The following quote can be attributed to Ricardo Martinez (he/him), CEO at Equality Texas:

“I am beyond angry that we must keep showing up to defend the dignity, privacy and liberty of our neighbors. Banning health care that literally saves lives should not be an option. The public debate about the value of our lives is not legitimate and it is out of touch with true Texas Values. This is part of a nefarious plan to eliminate us from public life. But it won’t work. We will not stop fighting for our rights. Not now, not ever.”

The following quote can be attributed to Emmett Schelling (he/him), Executive Director, Transgender Education Network of Texas:

“Today was ugly, but I am reminded that one of the fundamental parts of our trans experience is the deep understanding that we are all we have. Queer and Trans Texans are united in the fight to build a world in our vision on our terms.”

The following quote can be attributed to Sarah Warbelow (she/her), Legal Director for the Human Rights Campaign:

“Ill-informed and ill-intentioned politicians are prohibiting Texas parents from accessing best practice medical care for their children. S.B. 14 will be devastating to trans youth and their families – and it’s just the first of the many anti-LGTBQ+ bills that Texas lawmakers are working to pass. When this bill becomes law, Texas families will be banned from accessing medically necessary, safe, age-appropriate health care backed by decades of research and supported by the entire American medical establishment. Legislators are sending a clear message that Texas is not a safe place for LGBTQ+ people. We will not stop fighting these discriminatory measures.”

The following quote can be attributed to Shelly Skeen (she/her), Senior Attorney, Lambda Legal:

“Texas legislators seem hell-bent on the targeting of transgender Texas youth, their families, and their doctors. It was not enough to threaten parents with charges of child abuse for following their doctor’s orders, but now they want to block access to all medically necessary care against well-established standards, peer reviewed research, and the advice and recommendations of every major medical association. This bill risks the health, well-being, and very lives of trans adolescents in the Longhorn State. First and foremost, Texas legislators need to listen to transgender adolescents, their families and their doctors instead of passing discriminatory laws that endanger our community. Trans youth in Texas deserve protection from legislators, not harm that endangers their futures.”

The following quote can be attributed to Marti Bier (they/them), Vice President of Programs at Texas Freedom Network:

“I am floored by the cruelty and moral hypocrisy of this bill. Access to transgender health care can be lifesaving for transgender youth; this evidence-based health care is supported by every major medical association nationwide. Still, members of our State Legislature are determined to insert themselves in the private health decisions made between loving, affirming families and their trusted medical providers. This has been a devastating day for our community and the families this bill will undoubtedly displace or tear apart. We will never stop fighting alongside our partners to create a future where transgender youth, adults, and their families are safe and free to exist in their own home state.”

If you or someone you know needs mental health resources or support, please visit:
— Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860 or https://www.translifeline.org
— Trevor Project at 866-488-7386 or https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

One more thing: The story reference a recent poll that among other things indicated that a majority of respondents claimed not to know any trans people. I’m here to tell you, you’re probably wrong about that. Your kids or your grandkids likely have a friend or classmate who is trans. Some of the fellow parents you met at your kids’ schools are the parents of a trans kid. Your coworkers, your neighbors, your high school and college classmates, the people you know from church or your favorite restaurant, they have trans people in their lives, or maybe they’re trans themselves. Maybe they haven’t let you in on that knowledge, and if so you can ponder the reasons for that, but they’re there. They’re not going away. And they have every right to live their lives. It would help them a lot if the state got off their backs and out of their doctor’s offices. That’s not much to ask.

One gambling bill makes it out of the House

It will enjoy a brief and beautiful life, like the first snowflake falling onto the street, before dying of starvation and neglect in the Senate.

Photo by Joel Kramer via Flickr creative commons

In dramatic fashion, the Texas House on Thursday gave final approval to legislation that would let voters decide whether to legalize online sports betting across the state.

The proposal needed 100 votes to pass and got exactly that when the roll was first called. A subsequent verification of the vote, which took several minutes as the clerk ticked through every member, produced 101 votes in favor of House Joint Resolution 102.

It is one of two proposals to expand gambling that have headlined the past two days in the lower chamber. Another, more ambitious piece of legislation, House Joint Resolution 155, would let voters decide whether to legalize casinos in Texas. The final consideration of that proposal was delayed until noon Friday as supporters continued working to find 100 votes.

Regardless, both proposals face long odds in the Senate, where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has repeatedly said there is not enough support. And Friday is the deadline for the House to give final passage to its bills, meaning the casino legislation is running into a time crunch.

On Wednesday, the House initially approved both proposals, but neither received the two-thirds majority that proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution need to make it out of the chamber. That left them in an uncertain position heading into Thursday.

The author of the sports-betting legislation, Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, gave an emphatic final speech on the House floor Thursday, reiterating his argument that many Texans are already betting on sports, only illegally.

“Every single one of them are criminals … under Texas law, and I believe that we should pass this bill to let them come out of the shadows and to carefully and safely regulate this,” Leach said.

The sports-betting legislation was able to clear the 100-vote threshold after several members changed their votes Thursday. At least five voted yes on HJR 102 on Thursday after voting no a day earlier.

A day earlier, the House passed the casino proposal by a vote of 92-51 and then the sports-betting proposal by a 97-44 vote. Both resolutions need a two-thirds majority from the House and Senate, followed by voter approval, to amend the state constitution.

See here for some background. I invite you to think of some other activities that are legal in other states and draw many Texans to them to partake in them because doing so would make them criminals here in Texas while I tell you that the casino bill ultimately went down.

The high-profile push to bring casinos to Texas this legislative session ended Friday after supporters acknowledged that they did not have enough votes to advance it out of the state House.

One of the authors of casino legislation, Rep. John Kuempel, R-Seguin, postponed consideration of his bill until Nov. 29, dooming its chances ahead of a midnight deadline to move it out of the lower chamber.

As the stories note, legislation to expand gambling made it farther this year than it ever had before, and that’s not nothing. It still faces the same immovable object in the Senate, and I don’t see anything to suggest that’s going to change. My advice to the casinos would be to work to remove said immovable object electorally, rather than continue to bash their heads and their seemingly limitless wallets against the wall every two years. I don’t see how that would be a worse strategy than what they’ve been doing for however long. The Chron has more.

You didn’t get your hopes up about that “raise the age” bill, did you?

Psych.

The unexpected elation felt this week by gun control advocates and families of Uvalde shooting victims dissolved to despair Tuesday, when a bill that would raise the age to legally purchase semi-automatic rifles lost its newfound momentum and was left off the Texas House’s agenda ahead of a key deadline.

Barring an unexpected development, the delay likely ends the bill’s chances of becoming law.

The proposal has long faced stiff odds in a state that has regularly loosened gun restrictions in recent years. But on Monday, in the aftermath of the deadly shooting in an Allen shopping mall, a House committee unexpectedly advanced the legislation in an 8-5 vote that included two Republicans supporting it.

That left little time for the bill to be added to the House’s calendar, however. The final day the House can pass bills is Thursday, and the chamber’s agenda must be approved 36 hours ahead of when they convene. That creates a de facto deadline of around 10 p.m. Tuesday for the measure to be placed on the calendar.

When that hour arrived Tuesday night, House Bill 2744 remained off the list.

The measure’s supporters, particularly parents of children who died at Robb Elementary in Uvalde who have been advocating for it all session, pushed until the end. Minutes before 10 p.m., a small group stood outside the House chamber holding signs and chanting and calling for the bill to be heard on the House floor. Even then, they could be heard faintly from the back of the chamber.

“2-7-4-4,” they yelled. “Put this bill on the floor.”

There were less than a dozen of them, but they could be heard inside the House chamber — their chants carrying loudly enough that Capitol staffers closed the doors to the second-floor viewing gallery.

Perhaps the loudest was Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son Uziyah Garcia was shot to death by an AR-15 in one of Robb’s classrooms. When the clock passed 10 p.m., a few Democrats left the chamber and hugged him. Soon after, witnesses in the Capitol said, a Department of Public Safety trooper approached with a decibel monitor, informed him he was being too loud and escorted him out of the building. Cross continued chanting the bill’s number as he left.

“This is just another fucking attempt to slow and stop us,” Cross said on Twitter. “2744 may have died tonight, but we will never stop!

“Texas fucked with the wrong parents!”

\Another parent, Kimberly Mata-Rubio, who lost her 10-year-old daughter Alexandria “Lexi” Aniyah Rubio in the shooting, vowed to travel to the districts of House Speaker Dade Phelan, Calendars Committee Chair Dustin Burrows and Select Committee on Community Safety Chair Ryan Guillen and “share Lexi’s story, and the disrespect shown to Uvalde families.”

“This isn’t over,” she said. “We will regroup, re-strategize and come back stronger.”

[…]

As it became clear Tuesday afternoon that the bill was again in danger, proponents voiced their frustration. Some left signs urging its passage outside the Calendars Committee’s meeting room. Others protested outside the office of Rep. Ryan Guillen, R-Rio Grande City, the chair of the committee that advanced the bill Monday.

Guillen could not be immediately reached for comment about whether the committee report had been sent to the calendars committee or whether it would be before the deadline.

“I’m sickened that HB 2744 will not be brought to a full House vote,” said Rep. Jarvis Johnson, a Houston Democrat who voted to advance the bill Monday as a member of the select House committee. “For once, the legislature seemed to listen to its constituents & do the right thing after getting this bill out of committee.”

Lawmakers could use other approaches to revive the proposal. But advocates are realistic that the measure will most likely ultimately fail. Even if it were to pass the House — a tall request — it would still need to advance through a Senate that’s perhaps even more skeptical of the idea.

See here for the background. This was as unsurprising as a genital-obsessed youth pastor turning out to be a sex predator, just to pick an analogy at random. I have nothing but love and empathy for the Uvalde parents, who have done everything they can to get the gun-humping Republicans to Do Something about all the murdered children our state keeps producing, but that’s too tall a task for anyone. The only thing we can do is vote them out. We did get a couple of the committee members to support this incremental step forward, so there has to be some room for persuasion. Until such time as we can grow enough Democrats to win on sheer numbers, we’re going to have to persuade some Republican voters to switch sides in at least some races because of the gun issue – or the abortion issue, or the marijuana issue, or the gambling issue, whatever may work for them – if we ever want to change how things are done here. The next chance to do that is next year. Same story, next election. The Chron and the Current have more.

Slaton expelled

A fitting end to his disgraceful tenure.

Bryan Slaton

The Texas House unanimously voted to expel Bryan Slaton on Tuesday, one day after the Royse City Republican submitted his resignation after an internal investigation determined that he had sex with a 19-year-old aide after getting her drunk.

After a solemn, sometimes angry and tearful recounting of Slaton’s “graphic” and “offensive” behavior, the House voted 147-0 for expulsion, making Slaton the first member of the Texas Legislature to be removed from office since 1927.

Support of two-thirds of the House was needed for expulsion.

Slaton’s nameplate was immediately removed from his desk and from the vote tally board at the front of the House chamber.

[…]

Ahead of the vote, members of the committee told the House that Slaton had not disputed the allegations and still had not expressed remorse or regret. They also said Slaton likely committed multiple crimes, including providing alcohol to a minor.

“This Texas House is not going to hear from multiple complainants about serious and alarming facts and then turn the other cheek or simply slap a member on the wrist,” Rep. Andrew Murr, a Junction Republican who leads the investigating committee, told the House.

“My heart breaks,” Murr said, his voice growing thick. “I suspect that yours does too.”

In a heartfelt speech, Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, said Slaton had exhibited a “systematic pattern of manipulation” and questioned whether the aide was able to consent at the time of the encounter after Slaton supplied her with several large mixed drinks. And she excoriated Slaton, calling him the “type of man who steals innocence” and who was “not worthy of a position of trust.”

[…]

Although Slaton resigned Monday, unless expelled he was entitled to his House salary and per diem, Murr said. Until voters elect a replacement, Slaton also would have continued to sit on assigned committees and count toward establishing a working quorum of the House.

See here and here for the previous updates. I applaud this action, and the committee and its investigator, former Judge Catherine Evans. I hope that Slaton is forever viewed as a filthy predator, that the Travis County DA pursues criminal charges against him – as of last night when I drafted this, I didn’t see anything in the news to that effect, but there’s plenty of time for something to happen – and I hope that the five former members of his staff who refused to cooperate with the investigation never find employment in the Capitol again. I feel a strong urge to wash my hands right now. Good fucking riddance.

House to vote on doomed casino gambling bill

You do you, but remember that we’re living in Dan Patrick’s world, and he’s not going to let this happen.

Photo by Joel Kramer via Flickr creative commons

After weeks of uncertainty, legislation authorizing casino gambling in Texas was cleared to come to a vote of the full 150-member House this week despite the potential of a bleak reception in the Senate as the Republican-dominated 88th Legislature heads to a finish later this month.

A proposed constitutional amendment by Rep. Charlie Geren that would authorize as many as seven resort casinos in Texas – including two in the Fort Worth-Dallas area – was placed in the House lineup for a Wednesday vote, along with a measure backed by the state’s professional sports franchises that would allow sports betting in Texas.

Geren, a Fort Worth Republican and speaker pro tempore of the Texas House, acknowledged that the gambling legislation had been cleared for a House vote during a late-afternoon meeting of the House Calendars Committee on Monday but he declined further comment before Wednesday’s House session to vote on the measures.

“I’ve got a lot more on my mind besides that gambling bill right now,” Geren told Fort Worth Report.

The fate of gambling legislation this session has been the subject of a weeks-long guessing game among lawmakers and lobbyists, with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the presiding officer of the 31-member Senate, showing resistance to authorizing gaming in Texas.

The gambling measures won approval in the House State Affairs Committee on April 3 but it’s been unclear if the House Calendars Committee, the legislative clearing house that approves bills for a vote of the full House membership, would want to force a House vote if gambling faces a dead end in the Senate.

A number of lawmakers interviewed as recently as this week said they had seen no signs of movement on the gambling front, and several said they believed the issue appeared dead for the session, a repeat of the same fate that has befallen other gambling measures in previous Legislatures.

Nevertheless, hordes of gambling lobbyists led by the Sands Corporation of Las Vegas have waged a fierce effort to overcome past defeats and push casinos and sports betting through the latest legislative session, which ends May 29.

I will admit, getting this to a floor vote is an accomplishment, since previous efforts all died without getting that far. Having a Patrick minion file a gambling expansion bill, albeit a more limited one, was an accomplishment. Getting Greg Abbott and Speaker Dade Phelan on the record in favor of expanded gambling was an accomplishment. You know what’s still missing? Dan Patrick’s support. He claims it’s a lack of support from the Senators themselves, but come on. We know who’s the dog and who’s the tail here.

Maybe I’m wrong and Dan Patrick will let this come to a vote in the Senate. It’s an interesting question whether the support would be there for it if Patrick weren’t bigfooting things. Until I hear the words come out of his oily little mouth, or he finally loses an election, I will continue to believe that no gambling expansion legislation will pass in Texas. I haven’t been wrong to do so yet.

Slaton resigns

Good riddance.

Rep. Bryan Slaton

Rep. Bryan Slaton resigned from the Texas House on Monday after an investigation determined that he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a 19-year-old woman on his staff, providing her with enough alcohol before their encounter that she felt dizzy and had double vision.

Pressure had mounted on the Royse City Republican to resign since Saturday, when the House General Investigative Committee released a 16-page report finding Slaton had engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with his aide. The committee of three Republicans and two Democrats recommended that Slaton be the first state representative expelled from the body since 1927.

[…]

Slaton, 45 and married, was among the most socially conservative lawmakers in the chamber and had been one of this session’s loudest voices for cracking down on drag shows and decrying drag artists as “groomers” who want to sexualize kids.

The committee report said Slaton had invited the 19-year-old woman to his Austin apartment late March 31 and gave her a large cup of rum and coke, then refilled it twice — rendering her unable to “effectively consent to intercourse and could not indicate whether it was welcome or unwelcome.”

In other questionable actions, Slaton also provided alcohol to the aide and another woman under the age of 21 on several occasions, the report said.

The report also alleged that after Slaton and the woman had unprotected sex in the early hours of April 1, Slaton drove her home, and she later went to a drugstore to purchase Plan B medication to prevent a pregnancy. Slaton, a staunch abortion opponent, later tried to intimidate the woman and her friends into not speaking about the incident, the report said.

See here for the previous update. I skipped a bunch of paragraphs about Slaton’s buddies in the Republican Party finally turning on him, because I absolutely do not have to hand it to them. I’ll be honest, I wanted to see the House have the expulsion vote, in part because he didn’t deserve to leave on his own terms, and in part out of morbid curiosity to see if anyone would still side with him, even as the worst people in the state other than himself had already told him to get lost.

I urge you to read the committee’s report about Slaton’s extremely sleazy and gross actions in this matter if you haven’t already. That highlighted bit about the young woman in question buying a dose of Plan B was the item that made me the angriest when I read it. Because, of course, while Plan B is still legal in Texas – indeed, it’s Greg Abbott’s advised treatment for rape victims, so that he and his fellow forced birthers don’t need to pass a rape exception to our extreme anti-abortion law – there were bills filed in this session that would greatly limit access to Plan B, or even possibly make its purchase and use a felony on par with murder. I’ll give you three guesses which legislator filed that latter bill. By my count, he filed or sponsored at least four even more anti-abortion bills this session, because that’s the kind of moral exemplar Bryan Slaton is. I’m not the praying type, but if I were I’d definitely be beseeching a higher authority to spare this girl the indignity of being impregnated by this horrible man.

Anyway. He’s gone, and as I said, good riddance. One asshole less in the Lege, which is always a fine thing. He likely won’t be replaced until November – if for some godawful reason we have a special session Abbott can call for an expedited election to fill his seat. If we’re very lucky, whoever does replace him will be slightly less of an asshole. I’m not terribly optimistic.

UPDATE: From the DMN:

In a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott and chief House clerk Stephen Brown, Slaton said his resignation was effective immediately. Slaton did not mention the House General Investigating Committee’s Saturday report recommending his expulsion.

“I look forward to spending more time with my young family, and will continue to find ways to serve my community and all citizens across our great state,” he wrote.

Slaton, R-Royse City, said “it has been an honor” to represent District 2, where he won elections in 2020 and last year.

[…]

On Monday, Murr said he still planned on Tuesday to ask the vote to expel Slaton.

“Under Texas law he is considered to be an officer of this state until a successor is elected and he takes the oath of office,” Murr said in a social media post.

Under the state Constitution, lawmakers may be expelled for “disorderly conduct.” Each chamber is left to define what constitutes such conduct.

The General Investigating Committee began receiving complaints about Slaton’s behavior April 5, the report notes.

Former Harris County District Judge Catherine Evans, now a lawyer in Houston, was retained to investigate the allegations against Slaton. Evans provided the panel with the report early last week.

Slaton, who appeared before the committee for 90 minutes on Thursday, has expressed no regret and shown no remorse for his conduct, a “fact” the report called “egregious.” After meeting with the committee, he did not answer reporters’ questions about his presence before the panel.

Glad to hear the expulsion vote will still be held, even if it’s mostly pro forma at this point. And again, I cannot emphasize enough what an asshole Bryan Slaton is.

Reactions to Allen

There’s nothing I can say about the weekend massacre in Allen that hasn’t been said many times by many people. My heart is broken for the victims and their families, and my rage is ever-stoked by the sheer indifference exhibited by our so-called leaders. I just have a couple of things to note here in partial response.

Uvalde families have another reason to be angry.

Democrats and relatives of Texas mass shooting victims lambasted the state’s GOP leaders over the weekend after they again rejected gun restrictions in the wake of another massacre.

A gunman wielding what appeared to be an assault-style rifle killed eight people on Saturday afternoon at Allen Premium Outlets, a mall in a suburb about 20 miles north of Dallas. He injured seven others, three of whom are in critical condition. The victims included children as young as 5.

The shooting occurred less than a week after sheriff’s deputies in San Jacinto County reported that a lone gunman armed with an AR-15-style weapon killed five people at a neighbors’ house.

Republicans expressed grief over the mall shooting, offering prayers and condolences to families who lost loved ones. They praised law enforcement for responding and killing the shooter quickly, but they did not address the weapon he used.

​​”They don’t have any answers to this,” said Manuel Rizo, who lost his 9-year-old niece, Jacklyn “Jackie” Cazares, in last year’s mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school.

The attack at Robb Elementary was also carried out by a lone gunman armed with an assault-style rifle. The shooter bought his gun days after he turned 18, prompting calls from victims’ families to raise the age for purchasing the weapons in Texas. Republican state lawmakers have declined.

“They’re just going to ignore the facts, issue their thoughts and prayers, go through their checklist and hope that this goes away,” Rizo said.

I get emails from the Dallas Morning News with daily digests and breaking news and stuff like that. Here are the contents of two of those breaking news alerts on Monday. First one:

The Houston office of the South Korean consulate confirmed Monday that Cho Kyu Song, 37, Kang Shin Young, 35, and their child were killed. The child’s age was not immediately clear.

According to a letter from New Song Church, based in Carrollton, a 5-year-old child of the couple survived. The child was injured and was being treated at a hospital, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.

And the second one:

A security guard, an engineer, 3 children among the Allen mall shooting victims

Two Cox Elementary students, fourth-grader Daniela Mendoza and second-grader Sofia Mendoza, were killed Saturday.

Their mother, Ilda, remains in critical condition, according to an email from Wylie ISD Superintendent David Vinson.

Here’s a profile of the victims from the Trib. Just so we all know who we’re talking about here. Who we’re losing every time one of these mass shootings happens.

Later in the day, we got this news.

In a surprise move days after the Allen mall shooting and hours before a key legislative deadline, a Texas House committee on Monday advanced a bill that would raise the age to purchase certain semi-automatic rifles.

The bill faces an uphill climb to becoming state law, but the vote marked a milestone for the proposal that relatives of Uvalde shooting victims have been pushing for months.

Several relatives of children who were killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting last year sobbed when the committee voted 8-5 to send it to the House floor. Republican state Reps. Sam Harless and Justin Holland joined with Democrats on the House Community Safety Select Committee to advance the bill.

Less than two hours earlier, some of the relatives of Uvalde victims had urged the committee chair, Rep. Ryan Guillen. R-Rio Grande, to give House BIll 2744 a vote before a key deadline Monday.

“One year ago today, my daughter had her communion. About a month later she was buried in that same dress,” Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter Jacklyn was killed in the Uvalde shooting, said during an emotional press conference. “Mr. Guillen, and anybody else who is stopping this bill from passing, sad to say but more blood will be on your hands.”

Monday marks the last day House bills can be voted out of committee in the lower chamber. House bills that don’t meet that deadline face increasingly difficult odds at becoming law, though there are some avenues through which measures left in committees could be revived.

HB 2744, filed by Democratic Rep. Tracy King, whose district includes Uvalde, was debated before the House select committee last month during a hearing in which relatives of Uvalde victims shared emotional accounts of lives torn asunder by gun violence.

Monday’s legislative deadline falls two days after a gunman in Allen, a Dallas suburb of about 100,000 people, killed eight shoppers at an outdoor mall with AR-15-style rifle — the same type of weapon used by the gunman in Uvalde, where killed 19 children and two teachers were killed.

Because the man identified as the gunman in Allen was 33, raising the age limit for semi-automatic rifle purchases likely wouldn’t have kept that gunman from purchasing such a weapon. But Saturday’s shooting renewed calls for tightening some gun laws in a state whose lawmakers have loosened firearm restrictions despite repeated mass shootings.

That is true. You know what else is true? None of the false promises made by Greg Abbott about “mental health”, and none of the faux-security “school hardening” bills – you know, the ones that put more restrictions on doors than on guns, those bills – would have done anything to deter this shooter, either. It’s going to take an actual commitment to address the problem, and that begins with having a government in place that sees these shootings as problems. See what I mean about there not being anything to say that hasn’t been said before?

This Twitter thread takes you through the action yesterday that led to the committee vote on HB2744. Here’s a quote for you:

Rep. Guillen, who chairs the House Select Committee on Community Safety where HB 2744 is pending, just told reporters he is now considering having a vote on the bill. When asked what changed, he said “Nothing”.

That’s turncoat Republican Ryan Guillen speaking there. I have nothing at this point, either. Even if this bill makes it out of the House, there’s no way Dan Patrick gives it a vote in the Senate. High marks for trying, but the problem is bigger than this. DAily Kos has more.

UPDATE: Received the following statement in my inbox from Asian Texans for Justice:

“Instead of supporting what we’re asking for – gun safety legislation which 83% of AAPIs support, Texas statewide leaders are blaming mental health alone. The reality is that our state’s lax gun laws allowed someone who sympathizes with Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists to easily get a gun and kill and injure over a dozen people. We need the state legislature to take immediate action on gun reform that will make our communities safer, such as passing HB 2744, which would increase the age to buy a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21.

Asian Texans for Justice calls on local law enforcement to exhaust all measures to determine whether the gunman was truly a lone actor or if he worked in concert with other individuals or organizations who aided and abetted these horrendous actions.

We urge Governor Abbott and the Texas Legislature to focus their priorities on issues that better serve Asian and Pacific Islander Texans, and keep all Texans safe.”

I agree.

House Investigations committee recommends expelling Rep. Slaton

Wow.

Rep. Bryan Slaton

A House committee has recommended the expulsion of Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton after finding that he engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with a subordinate, then acted to thwart an investigation into the matter.

In a speech from the floor, Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, chairman of the House General Investigating Committee, said Slaton’s behavior was “induced by alcohol” that the representative provided the 19-year-old woman.

“Rep. Slaton then acted systematically to influence that subordinate and multiple witnesses to obstruct the investigation,” Murr said.

Murr said expelling Slaton was necessary to protect the “dignity and integrity” of the Legislature.

After Murr’s speech, clerks distributed the investigative committee’s report on Slaton, which detailed the panel’s findings and its recommendation of expulsion. Members sat silently for about 10 minutes and read it as Slaton remained seated at his desk, occasionally peering at his phone.

Speaker Dade Phelan then resumed normal legislative business. The speaker, who typically does not participate in chamber debates as its presiding officer, said in a written statement he would stick to that role.

“I will withhold public comment until my colleagues have the opportunity to deliberate and then vote on the General Investigating Committee’s recommendations,” Phelan said.

The decision to remove Slaton will ultimately be up to the full House; the Texas Constitution allows members to be expelled with a two-thirds vote of the chamber. Murr on Saturday filed House Resolution 1542, the legislation which would remove him.

The House has not expelled members in nearly a century. Members removed Reps. F.A. Dale and H. H. Moore in 1927 on the grounds of “conduct unbecoming any member.”

See here and here for the previous updates. I have to say, I wasn’t expecting this. Obviously, this is an extremely rare situation (side note: I sure hope someone does a little reporting to find out what “conduct unbecoming any member” meant in 1927), so I doubt anyone was expecting it, least of all Slaton. QR has a copy of the report now, but it’s behind their paywall; hopefully a public copy will be made eventually. In the meantime, I invite you to watch this brief speech about the report and its recommendation by Rep. Murr:

I also want to remind you of who Rep. Slaton is:

Slaton took office in 2021 after defeating Rep. Dan Flynn, a longtime Republican state representative whom Slaton had challenged multiple times and considered too moderate.

His political campaign was largely funded by West Texas oil and gas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. The two are among the biggest donors to some of the most socially conservative lawmakers in the Legislature, including far-right opponents to lawmakers who vote against their political interests.

Slaton is known as one of the most conservative members in the chamber, frequently rankling House leaders, and this year fought a losing battle to amend House rules to prohibit Democrats from leading legislative committees. The issue has been a major concern for ultraconservative grassroots Republicans who do not want Democrats leading key legislative debates.

Last year, he called for a blanket ban on minors at drag shows, saying it was necessary to protect children from “perverted adults.” He has also proposed giving property tax cuts to straight, married couples — but not same-sex couples or those who have been divorced — based on the number of children they have.

“Perverted adults”, indeed. The response we should all make now any time a wingnut talks about “filthy” books or drag shows or whatever else we need to “protect” children from is “You mean like Bryan Slaton?” Good riddance – I hope; we’ll see on Tuesday – to a truly awful legislator and even worse human being. Oh, and remember that the biggest moneybags in Republican politics helped foist him on us.

In the meantime, it’s still not clear what if anything the committee is doing with the allegations against Rep. Jones. Maybe the session will end and we’ll just assume they took no action, or maybe we’ll find out that they reviewed written reports but took no testimony. Not a whole lot of time left to find out.

UPDATE: The committee’s report can be found here, which I got via the DMN story. It’s 16 pages long, and you really should read it. It’s worse than I thought. Slaton actively tried to cover his tracks, none of the other staffers in his office (all male) cooperated with the investigation, his lawyer tried to delay things…it’s bad. The Trib story has been updated with details from the report since I wrote the original post. If the Travis County DA reads the report, there are multiple crimes they could try to indict Slaton for.

Two other items of interest. One is that the committee’s recommendation that Slaton be expelled was unanimous. Two, the report notes that the reason there have been so few expulsions over the years is that most members caught up in serious forms of misconduct have resigned before they could be expelled. Slaton, who has denied all responsibility in this incident, doesn’t appear likely to do that.

House Committee on General Investigations has its hearing

And honestly, that’s about all we know.

Rep. Bryan Slaton

State Rep. Bryan Slaton, the Royse City Republican accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a staffer, declined Thursday to discuss his attendance at a closed-door hearing of a House investigative panel that has been looking into the matter.

Slaton did not answer questions from reporters as he left the room where a due-process hearing was taking place. He was absent from the House floor as the investigative panel was meeting in a separate part of the Capitol.

[…]

The committee has kept its investigation under wraps, declining to name the lawmaker being investigated and referring to the investigation only as “Matter B” in public hearings. The committee was also believed to be looking into allegations of an “abusive and hostile” work environment by state Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston.

The committee had scheduled the due-process hearing for 2 p.m. Around 1:30 p.m., lawmakers on the House floor announced a separate meeting of the committee in a different room at 1:45 p.m., when members voted unanimously to issue a subpoena in “Matter B” directing a man “to provide all relevant testimony and information concerning the committee’s inquiry” and to authorize the issuing of “one or more subpoenas for a part or portion of any relevant testimony or information as necessary to avoid overburdening a witness or the committee.”

The Tribune has not confirmed the identity of the man subpoenaed.

The committee also voted to authorize a sergeant-at-arms or an agent to issue the subpoena on behalf of the committee.

As the committee wrapped up that meeting, Slaton entered a nearby room, where the second committee hearing would take place, through a back entrance.

The committee members then walked across the hall for their 2 p.m. due-process hearing and almost immediately went into executive session, ordering members of the public to leave. About an hour later, Slaton was seen exiting the room through the same door he’d entered.

Around 4 p.m., the committee adjourned without making any decisions. State Rep. Andrew Murr, a Republican from Junction who leads the committee, declined comment on Slaton’s involvement in the hearing.

See here for the previous update. One might infer that the committee demonstrated more interest in Rep. Slaton than in Rep. Jones, but it may just be a reflection of the nature of the evidence or the progress of the investigations so far. It’s laudable that the committee has been able to maintain discretion so far, but it’s also frustrating. I have to assume that eventually we’ll find out more.

House investigations committee sets a hearing

Put it on your calendar.

Rep. Bryan Slaton

The Texas House Committee on General Investigating unanimously agreed on Monday that a lawmaker may have been involved in inappropriate workplace conduct and set a due process hearing into the matter for Thursday.

The committee did not identify the target of the investigation, which member Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, referred to only as “Matter B.”

The committee is believed to be looking into the behavior of at least two representatives, Democrat Jolanda Jones of Houston and Republican Bryan Slaton of Royse City.

[…]

The investigative committee announced the due process hearing after meeting for almost two hours privately, in executive session, Monday morning. Neither Jones nor Slaton was present. It was unclear whether the hearing would be closed to the public or not.

The committee, made up of three Republicans and two Democrats and chaired by Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, investigates alleged wrongdoing in government and potential misconduct by members. It issued four subpoenas in April but did not identify what they were for.

See here and here for more on Rep. Jones, here and here for more on Rep. Slaton, and here for more on the subpoenas. It’s fine that we don’t know yet what the committee intends to do, there should be secrecy on these matters until the committee knows enough to make information public. We’ll find out soon enough.