A States United Action count finds nearly 200 Republicans who backed Trump's attempt to overturn 2020 on this November's ballot. Capital & Main profiled nine who have report cards on this site — six voted on Jan. 6 to throw out two states' results, and some won't say they'd certify the next one.
Ken Paxton's TV ad shows James Talarico saying 'If you are OK with getting taxed more, you are welcome to join this movement.' FactCheck.org found the ad cut out who he was talking to — wealthy people — and that its claims about income taxes and property taxes misdescribe one vote and leave out others.
Records from Ken Paxton's 2023 impeachment show his so-called blind trust invested $600,000 in a company built by a man who had just finished a federal prison sentence for mortgage fraud. The company then wired the Paxtons more than $83,000 in six months while it fell behind on taxes owed to local schools.
Forget the slogans. Judged by what they voted for, what they did, and what they refused to stop, this is what Republicans in Congress stand for, on 20 issues, with the receipts.
A ProPublica investigation traces how Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor, helped Idaho revive its ban, threatened hospitals over a court-approved abortion and prosecuted a midwife — and what anti-abortion groups expect him to do with a Senate seat.
While his opponent was home with the flu, Ken Paxton ran ads calling him 'mentally fragile,' led a 'Where is James Talarico?' chant, and opened a tip line. His senior adviser then posted that Talarico had 'definitely been admitted to a mental institution.' The Ohio facility says he was never a patient.
A Washington Post review found five organizations with business before Ken Paxton's office gave to his campaigns. A game maker's executives gave more than $100,000 while his office reviewed whether their machines were gambling. A donor gave $10,000 two months after an opinion that helped his rock-crushing plant.
Texas's top law-enforcement officer watched New Year's fireworks in Dubai with two Americans who had skipped federal fraud charges. One of them had donated $190,000 to Paxton, including $25,000 days after he was indicted. Paxton's campaign won't talk about the trip.
Texas Monthly obtained the nine-page, unsigned document Abbott's lawyers walked the state securities commissioner through, laying out ways to bring government power against the East Plano Islamic Center. His team concluded there was no securities case. Paxton filed one, and the commissioner says he was told to resign.
A leaked deposition from the SEC's 2014 fraud investigation shows Ken Paxton accepting 100,000 free shares in a company he brought investors into, losing track of the certificates, and pointing federal lawyers to his wife when asked about $100,000 on his tax return.
States Newsroom asked Senate candidates in nine close races what they'd do about the automatic Social Security cut coming in 2032. Dan Sullivan, Roger Marshall, Michael Whatley and Jon Husted didn't respond. Ken Paxton, Mike Rogers and Ashley Hinson offered promises with no plan — weeks after Paxton was recorded telling lobbyists 'we have to suck it up' on spending cuts.
In a leaked recording from a private Capitol Hill fundraiser, Ken Paxton said 'reasonable cuts to mandatory spending' are unavoidable. About three-quarters of that spending is Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. His campaign didn't answer when asked which programs he'd cut.
In the primary, Ken Paxton attacked John Cornyn for running on 'D.C. establishment' money. At a private Washington fundraiser, he admitted D.C. now controls his own message — after Republicans spent $122 million backing him in September, only $1.2 million of it from his own campaign.
Texas v. Kennedy began as a fight over transgender people. Ken Paxton's Texas was one of five states that stayed in after most others quit — and a judge has now erased the rule telling states to serve disabled people in their homes instead of institutions.
A super PAC backing Ken Paxton reported a $250,000 check from a Plano 'entrepreneur' who doesn't live there, at an address that is a rented mailbox. The money came from the son of a family friend whose tax-fraud pardon Paxton helped win.
An Associated Press review of Ken Paxton's calendars and security bills found more than 275 out-of-state trips — Napa wineries, ski towns, Europe, Mar-a-Lago — while his official calendar sat empty for about 730 workdays. Texans paid at least $1.9 million for his security on the road. A ProPublica-Texas Tribune review later found nearly 1,000 trips with his security detail since 2015, costing $3.3 million, with only 1 in 6 tied to state business.
Five weeks before Election Day, Greg Abbott hasn't accepted a debate with Gina Hinojosa, Ken Paxton has committed to none after promising 'of course' he'd debate James Talarico, and Tom Cotton is sitting out Arkansas TV's debates in favor of one hosted by Salem Media.
Ken Paxton's campaign took about $40,000 from donors tied to a Houston developer that courts investors in China for its Texas housing — before his super PAC spent more than $10 million on ads tying James Talarico to "communist China."
Updated October 15: David Rouzer skipped a UNC Wilmington forum and Russell Fry backed out of an NAACP forum six hours before it started; Tom Cotton's only agreed debate fell through. October 12: Keith Self, asked on national TV whether he would debate, called the district 'my seat.' October 10: Cliff Bentz declined four debate invitations because accepting would make his opponent look 'credible,' Jim Pillen called debates 'theater,' and Julie Fedorchak pulled out of North Dakota's public TV debate. Earlier: Jeff Hurd declined televised debate invitations and agreed to one 30-minute session before a friendly audience instead. John McGuire says he'll debate when his opponent apologizes for raising a BlackRock sale the disclosure records in his wife's retirement account. They join fourteen Republicans we have already documented ducking the one event they can't script.
A chief of staff in a group chat with Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer. A political director whose profile picture showed Hitler's SS. A student outreach recruit who asked whether Jews should be sent to North Korea. A swastika flag in a congressman's office. Eight Republicans on this site, one answer.
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Tierra Walker was a 37-year-old Texas mother, dangerously sick during her pregnancy.
Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old San Antonio mother, died of preeclampsia at 20 weeks pregnant after asking doctors about ending her pregnancy. Her family's wrongful-death lawsuit names Ken Paxton, saying his enforcement of Texas's abortion ban scared doctors into doing nothing.
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Political ads have always been sleazy, but MAGA Republicans are no longer just stretching the truth: they are using AI and digital tools to manufacture lies.
Bo French, the GOP nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner, posted a photo of South Asian students at a UT football game and called it a 'problem.' John Cornyn asked whether other Republicans would condemn it. Asked directly, Ken Paxton never said French's name. He attacked James Talarico instead, and got Talarico's words wrong.
The ad, titled 'King James,' uses an AI-generated Talarico to deliver a monologue rewriting the Bible. It stitches together fragments of his real remarks, strips their context, changes some of his words, and scripts them into a speech that does not exist. Paxton's campaign did not answer when The Advocate asked why it manufactured footage instead of using real video.
Greg Abbott's campaign used AI to swap an American flag for a transgender flag in a photo of his opponent talking to a child about a closed school. Ken Paxton scripted a speech his opponent never gave. Marsha Blackburn put hers in a prison jumpsuit. Cindy Hyde-Smith registered a domain in her opponent's name.
America PAC has reported $5.1 million in independent spending this cycle. Eighteen Republicans with report cards on this site are the main beneficiaries — and nearly three-quarters of the money went to attack ads, not to making a case for them.
Texas ranks 40th of 50 on the measures we track, with the second-worst food insecurity and second-worst women's health scores in the country. Greg Abbott signed the abortion ban and the school voucher law, never expanded Medicaid, and now runs on affordability after property tax levies rose to $89.4 billion and home insurance premiums rose 79%. Here is the record, and what each of the seventeen Republicans running for reelection has been busy with.
Trump's super PAC put $10 million into Ken Paxton's Senate race and Elon Musk's PAC has spent $1.4 million more. Paxton's own campaign has spent about $264,000 on ads. Two men and a handful of billionaire-funded groups are paying for the rest.
A federal judge blocked the Postal Service's mail-ballot rule on Friday, finding no evidence of mail voting fraud in the record. Twelve Republican states were in court defending it — and asking to be exempted from the block so the rule could run in their states as a test.
The same Medicaid funding fight, the same legal argument, a different president. Texas hospitals are losing $27 million a day. Parkland alone is out $528,000 a day. The attorney general who won this case once has not filed anything.
ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found Paxton left $1.3 million in mortgages off his federal disclosure, valued a plot of land at up to $50,000 that his own business partner says is worth $1 million, and reported no rental income from homes that were being rented.
On Fox News he blamed a residency rule Texans got rid of nearly eleven years ago. His explanation says nothing at all about the two other houses whose mortgages bar renting, one of which is on Airbnb.
A Republican governor signed the Texas Dream Act in 2001 with bipartisan support. In 2025 the Justice Department sued, Paxton's office agreed the law was illegal, and a judge struck it down before anyone who relied on it could be heard. The DOJ has now sued 21 states.
More than 1.2 million Texans have suspended voter registrations with the November election barely two months away. Here is the record of the two Texas Republicans on the November ballot who have spent years working those voter rolls — and what you can do before the October 5 deadline.
Paxton sat for depositions in 2019 and 2022 in a securities fraud dispute. The Wall Street Journal reported the 2019 transcript shows he handed a former client's records to the lawyer suing that client. Texans can't read either one.
In 2007, Texas built the largest state cancer research program in American history. It passed overwhelmingly, and 61% of voters approved it. Paxton was one of just 26 no votes — and in the same session he helped kill the state's mandate for the vaccine that prevents cervical cancer.
NBC News obtained the 53 names referred to Paxton's office. One was charged with noncitizen voting. At least five were listed as American citizens in prior court records. Even the Heritage Foundation counts fewer than four such cases a year nationwide.
The Fifth Circuit restored nine provisions of Texas SB 1 that a judge had struck down for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. More than three million eligible Texas voters have a disability.
In 2020 the federal guidance said nursing homes should have a plan to make sure residents can vote. The July 2026 replacement deletes that language and warns staff about breaking voting laws — citing a Texas prosecution in which no improper vote was ever cast.
A New York Times investigation found one of Paxton's top sources of income is a cell tower on the campus of a hospital whose board he served on. He has reported between $100,000 and $1 million from it about every 18 months.
Paxton's 'Protecting the Texas Promise' agenda is a stack of new tax deductions. You have to itemize your taxes to claim the deductions — and only about 10% of taxpayers do. Even conservative economists say it will push prices up, not down.
The fair banned guns after a 2023 shooting injured three people. Paxton sued — against the reasoning of a legal opinion he himself issued in 2016, which he then quietly withdrew weeks after filing.
Paxton's settlement with Texas Children's Hospital is finalized: $10 million, three doctors permanently stripped of their hospital privileges and two former ones barred for life, and the nation's first 'detransition clinic' due to open by October. A Stanford pediatrician calls it a clinic built by legal intimidation.
Paxton opened a formal investigation into the American Academy of Pediatrics, claiming its vaccine advice is bought by drug companies — in the middle of the country's worst measles outbreak in 30 years.
Two-thirds of MAGA voters say they'd stick with a Republican accused of sexual assault. Ken Paxton is what that looks like on an actual ballot.
A settlement in Paxton's lawsuit wiped out the dunes sagebrush lizard's endangered status. More than 95% of its habitat is already gone — and a Midland oilman is one of the top donors to the super PAC backing Paxton's Senate run.
Texas AG Ken Paxton built a career hunting voter fraud. A Texas Tribune and ProPublica investigation found he appears to have voted six times from a home he no longer lives in — and there's now a formal complaint that could be referred to his own office.
Fresh off winning the GOP Senate nomination, Ken Paxton is scrambling to win back wealthy donors who are turned off by his scandals — a reminder of just how long his rap sheet is.
A Texas Tech regent gave $274,300 to a committee backing Ken Paxton's Senate run. The next day, Paxton's office threatened to sue the Big 12 on the school's behalf.
Ken Paxton crushed John Cornyn to win the GOP Senate nomination in Texas. Here is the record of scandals, indictments, and abuse of office that Republican voters just rewarded.
Ken Paxton built his career attacking local DAs as soft on crime. Then his own office cut a deal letting a man who admitted molesting a boy serve one day in jail and skip the sex-offender registry.
