With a settlement with his “whistleblower” former employees a done deal and Trump’s Justice Department promising not to prosecute him, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today that he is officially throwing his hat into the ring for the Texas seat in the U.S. Senate currently held by John Cornyn.
According to the Texas Tribune, the GOP Primary race between Paxton and Cornyn the incumbent “promises to be among the most heated and expensive Republican primaries in the country and in recent Texas history. It also marks the latest flashpoint in a power struggle between the Texas GOP’s hardline, socially conservative wing — which views Paxton as a standard-bearer — and the Cornyn-aligned, business-minded Republican old guard.”
Praising Ted Cruz as “a great U.S. senator,” Paxton told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that it is “time we have another great senator that will actually stand up and fight for Republican values, fight for the values of the people of Texas and also support Donald Trump in the areas that he’s focused on in a very significant way.
“And that’s what I plan on doing.”
Paxton also told Ingraham that it is “time for a change in Texas.” There are, no doubt, an untold number of Texans — especially most in the LGBTQ community, and most especially transgender people and their families — who vehemently agree with Paxton that it is time for a change, except they aren’t looking for the same kind of change Paxton wants.
Paxton has, during his tenure as AG, gone to great lengths top target the LGBTQ community for attack, zeroing in on transgender adults and youth. He has, for instance, sued several Texas doctors for providing gender-affirming healthcare to trans youth, and is currently preparing to depose officials with Dallas Independent School District who he says have ignored state law to allow trans youth to compete in school sports.
Paxton has most recently focused on refusing to allow trans people to change their names and gender markers on state identification documents, but his anti-LGBTQ animosity goes far beyond those boundaries.
For example, since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decades-old Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion, and Justice Clarence Thomas has called for the court to take similar action on previous rulings establishing marriage equality and abolishing sodomy laws, Paxton has pledged to enforce the state’s currently-outdated law prohibiting private sexual contact between consenting adults of the same gender.
— Tammye Nash