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      Ron DeSantis Helicopter Photo Spurs Questions About Campaign Ethics

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      It’s not the first time that the Florida governor has faced accusations of inappropriately blurring the lines between his official duties and his presidential campaign.It was a photo op intended to turbocharge Republican voters, one showing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posing in front of a helicopter on Sunday at the southern border in Texas.But the display is creating an unwanted spotlight for Mr. DeSantis: The helicopter is funded by Texas taxpayers, raising questions about the political nature of the flight and its cost.Federal law requires presidential candidates to pay the fair-market rate for noncommercial air travel and reimburse providers of flights. In this case, the Texas Department of Public Safety owns the 2008 Eurocopter, according to a Federal Aviation Administration database of aircraft tail numbers.Additionally, ethics rules in Texas bar officials there from using state resources in support of political campaigns.Mr. DeSantis’s office suggested that he was visiting the border in a dual capacity, as both governor and presidential candidate, but his official schedule as governor omitted mention of it. Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis in the governor’s office, referred questions on Wednesday about the helicopter flight to the Texas Department of Public Safety.That agency said Mr. DeSantis was briefed during his visit about joint immigration enforcement activities between Florida and Texas at the border, part of a program known as Operation Lone Star.“The briefing included an aerial tour which was provided by D.P.S. in order to give Gov. DeSantis a clearer understanding of how Florida’s resources are being utilized along our southern border and see the challenges first hand,” Ericka Miller, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in an email on Wednesday. Mr. DeSantis’s campaign shared the helicopter photo on Twitter on Monday, the same day that he proposed a series of hard-right immigration policies in a campaign speech in Eagle Pass, a small Texas border city.Reflecting the split nature of his duties, Mr. DeSantis on Sunday wore a short-sleeve white shirt that said “Governor Ron DeSantis” on the right and “DeSantis for President” on the left.Mr. DeSantis’s use of the taxpayer-funded helicopter was first reported by The Daily Beast, which also noted that he took a boat tour of the Rio Grande as part of his visit. A Fox News reporter accompanied him by air and by water.That boat is owned by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, The New York Times confirmed. The state agency had already deployed the vessel there through a mutual-aid arrangement, and as part of the Operation Lone Star program.Mr. Redfern, in a statement, challenged that there was anything inappropriate about Mr. DeSantis’s ride on the Florida taxpayer-owned boat.“Participating in a routine patrol with F.W.C. is not outside the purview of the governor’s job as the state’s chief executive,” he said.Myles Martin, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission, said in an email on Wednesday that he was not able to comment about specific candidates or their activities. But he pointed out that federal campaign finance rules require candidates to reimburse federal, state or local government entities when using aircraft owned by them to campaign.Political committees must also pay back costs associated with others means of transportation, including boat travel.Mr. DeSantis has previously faced accusations that he is inappropriately blurring the lines between his official duties and his campaign.As Mr. DeSantis prepared to sign Florida’s record-breaking budget earlier this month, lobbyists and state lawmakers said the governor’s staff called them seeking either campaign contributions or political endorsements — outreach that would normally be made by members of Mr. DeSantis’s campaign. The conversations left the lobbyists and lawmakers afraid that Mr. DeSantis would veto their projects from the budget if they did not comply, they said.And when Mr. DeSantis signed the budget, he vetoed several projects sponsored by state Senator Joe Gruters, a Republican who has endorsed former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner. Mr. Gruters accused the governor of retribution, calling him “meanspirited” and saying he had chosen to “punish ordinary Floridians” because of a political disagreement.The governor’s office denied that the vetoes were political. And at a news conference in Tampa last week, Mr. DeSantis said there was nothing wrong with aides in his office supporting his campaign in their “spare time.”But Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, filed state ethics and elections complaints against three top staffers in the governor’s office. “Any reasonable person could infer from the reporting that our governor was holding the state budget hostage in exchange for political endorsements and donations — actions that are both unethical and illegal,” Ms. Fried said in a statement.Earlier this year, Mr. DeSantis also signed a bill shielding his travel records from public disclosure, preventing an accounting of the taxpayer funds being used to cover security and other costs during his campaign trips. More

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      Ron DeSantis Calls for ‘Deadly Force’ Against Suspected Drug Traffickers

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      Campaigning in a Texas border city, the Florida governor laid out a series of hard-right immigration proposals, including some that would face legal roadblocks or test the limits of presidential authority.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida made a campaign stop in the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas.Brent McdonaldGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday proposed a host of hard-right immigration policies, floating the idea of using deadly force against suspected drug traffickers and others breaking through border barriers while “demonstrating hostile intent.”“Of course you use deadly force,” Mr. DeSantis said after a campaign event on a sweltering morning in Eagle Pass, a small Texas border city. “If you drop a couple of these cartel operatives trying to do that, you’re not going to have to worry about that anymore,” he added. He said they would end up “stone-cold dead.”He did not clarify how Border Patrol officers or other law enforcement authorities might determine which people crossing the border were smuggling drugs. He said only that “if someone is breaking through the border wall” while “demonstrating hostile intent or hostile action, you have to be able to meet that with the appropriate use of force.”Mr. DeSantis’s proposal served as an escalation of Republican messaging on the border and was part of a host of plans he unveiled in an effort to match the hard-line immigration stance of former President Donald J. Trump, who privately suggested shooting migrants in the legs during his administration.Mr. DeSantis said that if elected, he would seek to tear down some of the pillars of American immigration law, such as the automatic granting of citizenship to those born in the United States.And he said his administration would “fully deputize” state and local law enforcement officers in states like Texas to arrest and deport migrants back to Mexico — a power now reserved for the federal government — and to detain migrant children indefinitely, despite a court order imposing strict limits on the practice. He also promised to end “phony asylum claims.”“Of course you use deadly force,” Mr. DeSantis said of drug traffickers after the campaign event, held on a sweltering morning in Texas.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesThose policies are sure to appeal to conservative voters in the Republican presidential primary contest, but they would be likely to run into legal roadblocks and could test the limits of presidential authority. The Constitution has been held to guarantee birthright citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states cannot enact their own immigration policy.And while Mr. DeSantis argued that the country needed harsh new immigration rules because the current ones were encouraging dangerous border crossings and the mistreatment of migrant children, some of his proposals could also endanger migrants, including the use of “deadly force” against people cutting through the border wall.“You do it one time and they will never do it again,” he said.His campaign said in a news release that he would follow “appropriate rules of engagement” and that the rules would apply to “those trying to smuggle drugs into the United States.” (The overwhelming majority of drugs are smuggled in commercial vehicles coming across official ports of entry, not carried by migrants, according to U.S. border authorities.)Another plan Mr. DeSantis put forward, which would require certain asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, was previously employed by Mr. Trump, drawing criticism for forcing migrants to live in squalid tent camps where some were reportedly subjected to sexual assault, kidnapping and torture.Mr. DeSantis has made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, but he has presented few specifics until now. Other policy proposals he released on Monday included:Deploying the military to “assist” Border Patrol agents until a wall is finished.Cracking down on Mexican drug cartel activity, including by blocking precursor chemicals used to manufacture drugs “from entering Mexican ports,” if the Mexican government does not act to stop the cartels.Detaining all migrants who cross the border without authorization until their immigration court hearing date. (Such a policy would most likely require the creation of a vast new prison system.)“These are ideas that have rightly been categorized for a really long time as radical and extremist,” said Aron Thorn, a senior lawyer in the Beyond Borders Program of the Texas Civil Rights Project.The policy rollout on Monday suggested that Mr. DeSantis, who is trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 percentage points in national polls, was trying to outflank the former president on immigration. Mr. DeSantis — whose “stop the invasion” language is a hallmark of America’s far right — has argued that he is the candidate most likely to enact conservative immigration policies. He has accused Mr. Trump of “running to the left,” saying that “this is a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016.”But even among voters who came to see Mr. DeSantis on Monday at a cinder-block-and-steel Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Eagle Pass, some said that they remained more inclined to vote for Mr. Trump.“He’s Trump 2.0, but this isn’t his time,” said John Sassano, 60, a retired teacher in Eagle Pass who described himself as a former Democrat. “I’d love to see him as V.P.”Sandy Bradley, 66, a retired government worker, traveled with two friends from Del Rio, a nearby border town, to hear Mr. DeSantis, buying festive cowboy hats at a Walmart on the way. “I think he will catch up,” she said, adding that Mr. DeSantis seemed to share her Christian values.She added that she wanted a candidate who would address illegal immigration and “stop all the influx.”Mr. DeSantis went directly from the event to a news conference at a ranch along the Rio Grande outside town where the state of Texas had recently constructed fencing with concertina wire in an area where migrants often cross.“This is an ongoing problem,” said Ruben Garibay, who owns the ranch. Mr. Garibay, wearing a black cowboy hat and speaking in the shade of a tree as the temperature neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit, said he had agreed to host Mr. DeSantis but had yet to make up his mind about which candidate to support. “It’s a little early in the game,” he said.Mr. Trump first deployed a so-called Remain in Mexico policy, which the Biden administration later reversed. He also proposed ending birthright citizenship during his first campaign, although he failed to do so while in office, and has recently renewed those calls as a candidate. And, of course, he ran in 2016 on building a wall at the southern border, an issue that helped propel him to the White House.On his social media site on Monday, Mr. Trump said that Mr. DeSantis’s “sole purpose in making the trip was to reiterate the fact that he would do all of the things done by me in creating the strongest Border, by far, in U.S. history.”Hundreds of migrants waiting inside a makeshift migrant camp to be loaded onto buses and taken for processing at a Customs and Border Protection substation in El Paso, Texas, in May. Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York TimesAs governor, Mr. DeSantis last month sent hundreds of Florida law enforcement officers and Florida National Guard members to Texas, saying President Biden had failed to secure the border, a repeat of a similar effort in 2021 ahead of Mr. DeSantis’s re-election campaign.This year, Mr. DeSantis also signed a bill cracking down on undocumented immigrants that was seen as one of the harshest such measures in the country. And he announced a national coalition of more than 90 local sheriffs who said they would band together to fight gang activity and illegal drugs that they argue are the result of the Biden administration’s border policies. (Only a few of the sheriffs are from border states.)Some immigration analysts questioned the viability of Mr. DeSantis’s proposals, suggesting they were driven by the political imperatives of a presidential campaign.“The bulk of the proposal is the usual laundry list of Republican talking points that have not been successful, either in Congress or in the court of public opinion,” said Louis DeSipio, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, citing the idea to end birthright citizenship, among other proposals. “The purpose is probably not a serious policy debate but instead to focus on an issue that is a weakness for Biden and a sensitive one for Trump.”And Jennie Murray, the president of the National Immigration Forum, a nonprofit group that advocates immigration policies that address economic and national security needs, pointed to the difficulties in actually carrying out Mr. DeSantis’s plans.“Deporting huge numbers of immigrants would be costly and extremely detrimental, especially during these times of historic labor shortages,” she said.Miriam Jordan More

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      Three Texas police officers charged with murder after fatally shooting woman

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      Three police officers in San Antonio, Texas, are facing murder charges after fatally shooting a woman in her apartment during a confrontation early Friday.The woman, 46-year-old Melissa Perez, was having what appeared to be a “mental health crisis” when officers encountered her and shot her dead, San Antonio police department (SAPD) chief William McManus said on Friday at a news conference.Police had been called to her apartment complex about 2am after reports that she was cutting wires connected to the building’s fire alarm system, according to local TV news state KSAT.Local firefighters initially responded, but officers later approached Perez, who was walking her dog outside, and she ran to her apartment and locked herself inside. As the officers tried to enter her apartment, she threw a glass candle at them, hitting an officer in the arm, and wielded a hammer, the department said.An officer fired multiple rounds that did not strike Perez. After she moved closer to the officers again with the hammer, the three officers fired at Perez and this time struck her.Emergency medical services pronounced her dead at the scene. The department reported no other injuries from the gunfire.The SAPD released body camera footage from the incident late on Friday afternoon that showed the officers trying to enter her apartment as Perez told them “you ain’t got no warrant”.At Friday’s news conference, McManus said that the officers’ behavior was “not consistent with … policy and training” at the department.“They placed themselves in a situation where they used deadly force, which was not reasonable given all the circumstances as we now understand them,” he said.“This event does not accurately reflect the high level of dedication and commitment demonstrated by our over 2,500 officers nor should it undermine the extensive and advanced training we provide to ensure the health and the safety of both our officers and the community they serve.”The three officers – identified as Sgt Alfred Flores, Eleazar Alejandro and Nathaniel Villalobos – had 14, five and two years of service with the police, respectively. The officers were arrested and suspended from their posts Friday, and they were eventually released on $100,000 bail.The police chief said the officers are being investigated individually, and the local district attorney’s civil right division is reviewing the case.Murder charges against police officers for on-duty shootings are rare, but there has been an uptick after police departments came under global scrutiny in 2020. That year, a police officer in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd.Earlier this year, five police officers in Memphis were charged with the murder of Tyre Nichols, who was recorded being beaten by officers after he was pulled over for allegedly driving recklessly. More

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      Will Hurd Announces 2024 Presidential Election Bid

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      Mr. Hurd, a moderate who represented a large swing district for three terms, called Donald J. Trump a “lawless, selfish, failed politician.”Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman who was part of a diminishing bloc of Republican moderates in the House and was the only Black member of his caucus when he left office in 2021, announced his candidacy for president on Thursday with a video message that attacked the G.O.P. front-runner, Donald J. Trump. “If we nominate a lawless, selfish, failed politician like Donald Trump, who lost the House, the Senate and the White House, we all know Joe Biden will win again,” he said, referring to Republican losses in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections, in addition to Mr. Trump’s own defeat in 2020.Mr. Hurd, 45, represented the 23rd District for three terms before deciding not to run for re-election in 2020, when a host of G.O.P. moderates in Congress chose to retire instead of appearing on a ticket led by President Trump.His district was larger than some states, extending from El Paso to San Antonio along the southwestern border.Mr. Hurd, who also made an appearance on “CBS Mornings,” emphasized in his video that Republicans needed to nominate a forward-looking candidate who could unite the party and country.”I’ll give us the common-sense leadership America so desperately needs,” he said. A formidable gantlet awaits Mr. Hurd, a long-shot candidate in a crowded G.O.P. presidential field. To qualify for the party’s first debate in August, candidates are required to muster support of at least 1 percent in multiple national polls recognized by the Republican National Committee. There are also fund-raising thresholds, including a minimum of 40,000 unique donors to individual campaigns.Before entering politics, Mr. Hurd was an undercover officer for the C.I.A. and his tenure of nearly a decade with the agency included work in Afghanistan.In Congress, he developed a reputation for working across the aisle and drew attention in 2017 when he car-pooled from Texas to Washington with Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat and House colleague.While Mr. Hurd largely toed the Republican line, he was also known for bucking Mr. Trump. During his final term in the House, Mr. Hurd voted more than one-third of the time against Mr. Trump’s positions. Mr. Hurd was a particularly strident critic of the president’s push to build a wall along the entire southern border, a cause célèbre for Mr. Trump that he ran on in 2016. In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, Mr. Hurd called Mr. Trump’s border wall initiative a “third-century solution to a 21st-century problem.”It was not the first time that Mr. Hurd had spoken so bluntly in opposition to a piece of Mr. Trump’s agenda.When Mr. Trump signed an executive order in January 2017 blocking citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, one of the first acts of his presidency, Mr. Hurd condemned it, saying the policy “endangers the lives of thousands of American men and women in our military, diplomatic corps and intelligence services.”And when Mr. Trump attacked four freshman Democratic congresswomen of color in 2019, Mr. Hurd denounced the president and criticized the direction of the Republican Party.“The party is not growing in some of the largest parts of our country,” he said in a June 2019 speech to the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative L.G.B.T.Q. group. “Why is that? I’ll tell you.”“Don’t be a racist,” Mr. Hurd continued, according to The Washington Blade. “Don’t be a misogynist, right? Don’t be a homophobe. These are real basic things that we all should learn when we were in kindergarten.”But while Mr. Hurd broke with Mr. Trump on some notable occasions, he also dismayed Mr. Trump’s critics when he voted in lock step with House Republicans against impeaching Mr. Trump the first time in December 2019. Mr. Trump was impeached in a party-line vote by the House for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, but acquitted by the Senate. More

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      Who Is Will Hurd? 5 Things to Know About the Presidential Candidate

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      Mr. Hurd, a former congressman from a swing district in Texas, is a former undercover C.I.A. officer and a cybersecurity expert.Former Representative Will Hurd, a Republican from a swing district in Texas who served three terms, faces the daunting task of establishing himself in a field of much better-known presidential candidates.Here are five things to know about Mr. Hurd, who announced his 2024 bid on Thursday.He is a former C.I.A. officer.Mr. Hurd got a job with the C.I.A. straight out of college in 2000 and spent more than eight years as an undercover agent, with stints in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.His first assignment with the C.I.A. came after Al Qaeda suicide bombers attacked the U.S.S. Cole, an American warship, killing 17 crew members. His next assignment came after Sept. 11.In an interview with The Guardian last year, he said the job had ended his engagement to a fiancée: “You know, it probably had a chilling effect on our relationship, especially when you confirm: ‘Hey babe, I actually work in the C.I.A., and we’re going to Islamabad. Pack your bags. Great!’”He has expertise in cybersecurity.Mr. Hurd has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Texas A&M University and, after leaving the C.I.A., worked as a senior adviser at a cybersecurity firm called FusionX.When he was elected to Congress in 2014, he made cybersecurity one of his main focuses and led the House Oversight Subcommittee on Information Technology.He organized a hearing in 2015 on encryption and its potential effects on law enforcement’s investigative abilities — an issue he discussed in an interview with Motherboard at a hacking conference that year. He opposed efforts backed by intelligence agencies to weaken encryption on smartphones.He has continued to work in the technology arena since leaving Congress in 2021, and joined the board of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence laboratory that developed ChatGPT.He has been critical of Trump.Mr. Hurd has not been shy about criticizing former President Donald J. Trump, and has done so since Mr. Trump first ran in 2016.In October 2016, after the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump bragged about assaulting women, Mr. Hurd called on him to leave the presidential race. In 2017, he urged Mr. Trump to apologize for claiming there was violence “on many sides” during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. And in 2018, in a guest essay for The New York Times, he wrote that Mr. Trump had “actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign.”Mr. Hurd also denounced many components of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy — describing his proposed border wall as a “third-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” calling the separation of migrant children from their parents “unacceptable,” and saying that his ban on travelers from a list of majority-Muslim countries “endangers the lives of thousands of American men and women in our military, diplomatic corps and intelligence services.”He was an unusually bipartisan lawmaker.Mr. Hurd represented one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country — a vast, largely Hispanic stretch of South Texas that he won by 2.1 percentage points in 2014, 1.3 percentage points in 2016 and half a percentage point in 2018 — and his voting record reflected that.Breaking from Republican orthodoxy, Mr. Hurd supported legislation to end a government shutdown in 2019 and to protect L.G.B.T.Q. people from discrimination. He also pushed for immigration reform, including protecting young people from deportation.And he drew attention in 2017 for a live-streamed road trip from Texas to Washington with Beto O’Rourke, then a Democratic member of Congress.“My final message for my colleagues as I depart this body: Don’t treat bipartisanship like a four-letter word,” he said in his farewell speech from the House floor.Mr. Hurd did vote the Republican line most of the time. In 2015 and 2017, he supported bills to ban abortion after 20 weeks. And though he voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act in 2017, that was only after it became clear that the bill would pass anyway; he was opposed to the Obama-era policy. He also opposed the Iran nuclear deal and called for a more hawkish policy against the Islamic State.He was one of the only Black Republicans in Congress.When Mr. Hurd was first sworn into Congress in January 2015, he was one of only two Black Republicans in the House. By the time he left in January 2021, he was the only one.He is the son of a Black father and a white mother, and has spoken about his background and his experience as a person of color on many occasions.“Two centuries ago, I would have been counted as three-fifths of a person, and today, I can say I’ve had the honor of serving three terms in Congress,” he said in a statement upon announcing in 2019 that he would not run for re-election.At the time, he said he was leaving in part because he thought he could be more effective in electing more diverse Republicans to Congress from the outside — though that has not ended up being his professional focus. The number of Black Republicans in the House has rebounded slightly, to four. More

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      Texas lawmaker says she will ‘carry out’ duties in husband’s impeachment trial

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      Texas state lawmaker Angela Paxton said Monday she will “carry out my duties” ahead of the historic impeachment trial of her husband, Republican state attorney general Ken Paxton, but did not outright say whether or not she would recuse herself on a vote to remove him from office.Breaking weeks of public silence since her husband was impeached in May, Angela Paxton did not address the accusations in a statement released by her office.Whether Paxton will cast a vote with her husband’s job on the line has raised ethical questions ahead of the looming trial in the state Senate, which is set to begin no later than August. State law compels all senators to attend but is silent on whether she must participate.“As a member of the Senate, I hold these obligations sacred and I will carry out my duties, not because it is easy, but because the constitution demands it and because my constituents deserve it,” Paxton said.A spokesperson did not immediately respond Monday night when asked whether she intends to vote.The statement was released on the eve of when rules surrounding the trial are expected to be finalized Tuesday by the Texas senate. There are 31 senators in the chamber, which is led by the Republican lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who has declined to comment on Paxton’s potential participation in the trial.Ken Paxton is temporarily suspended from office pending the outcome of the trial. More

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      Texas Republicans turn on their own in attorney general impeachment scandal

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      Everything is bigger in Texas, including the drama unfolding within the chambers of its government.The impeachment of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton came as a shock to many, not just because of the nature of his alleged crimes, but because it is a rare instance of the party holding its own to account.William Flores, a political and social science professor at the University of Houston-Downtown called the situation “absolutely historic.”“This is a Republican-led impeachment against one of the highest Republican leaders in the state. It is absolutely unprecedented, at least in recent times,” Flores said.The Republican-majority Texas congress had largely remained silent on Paxton’s ethically questionable conduct that dates back before his first term in 2014, when the Texas state securities board fined him for violating financial laws.In 2020, things heated up when aides from his own office asked the FBI to investigate him. They alleged Paxton abused his power by accepting bribes in the form of donations from a real estate developer. They also claimed Paxton recommended that a wealthy donor to his campaign hire a woman with whom he was having an affair.When Paxton fired the staff members, they claimed he was unlawfully retaliating.In May, the house general investigating committee, composed of four Republicans and one Democrat, voted unanimously to recommend Paxton’s impeachment. Twenty articles of impeachment were brought against him.It’s not surprising for politicians to be embroiled in a scandal, but it is unusual for Texas Republicans, who usually remain in lockstep, to eat their own.Paxton belongs to the most extreme wing of his party. He is the architect of some of the most severe voting restrictions imposed on the state, such as preventing most mail-in ballots and disbanding drive-through voting, two methods counties have tried to implement to make voting widely accessible. He established an “election integrity” division in his office that dedicates tens of thousands of hours to investigating voter fraud cases, despite no evidence that it is a widespread problem.More recently, Paxton launched an investigation into Austin’s Dell children’s hospital for the gender-affirming care it provided, which led to the swift departure of doctors from its adolescent unit, disrupting treatment not just for transitioning teens, but also those with cancer and eating disorders. He is now pursuing a similar investigation into the Texas children’s hospital, the largest such facility in the country.He also stands in staunch opposition to reproductive choice and federal immigration policy, and in firm support of gun rights despite the string of school mass shootings his state has suffered.In 2022, faced with a subpoena to testify in a lawsuit filed by abortion advocacy organizations at his doorstep, Paxton fled in a truck driven by his state senator wife, Angela Paxton.Animosity towards Paxton culminated when he tried earlier this year to use state funds to pay a legal settlement of over $3m to the former office members who blew the whistle on their boss’s dealings.In order to use taxpayer dollars to pay legal fees for an elected official, the state legislature needs to give approval. But obtaining that approval was not as simple as Paxton might have hoped.If there’s one thing that can be counted on in tax-averse Texas, it’s less spending and limited government. And that extends to the Republicans in charge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHouse members Andrew Murr and Ann Johnson are some of the Republicans who drafted the articles of impeachment against Paxton, but also the two that serve on the far-right Texas Freedom Caucus.David Spiller, a Republican who also serves on the general investigation committee, began a statement with praise for the attorney general’s “brilliant legal mind” but said: “I have a duty and obligation to protect the citizens of Texas from elected officials who abuse their office and their powers for personal gain. I cannot be complicit in condoning the improper actions of Attorney General Paxton. I cannot ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen.”Even more atypical is the infighting now seen among party members. Hours before the investigation into Paxton was announced, Paxton called for the resignation of Republican house speaker Dade Phelan, whom he accused of drunken behavior while serving in office. Phelan’s retort was presented through his spokesperson, who called Paxton’s move “a last-ditch effort to save face”.Abbott remains silent on the impeachment of his attorney general and the fault lines emerging within his party. The state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, offered a milquetoast statement which was neither informative nor indicative of where he stood.However, Donald Trump weighed in on the drama on the Truth Social social media platform in defense of Paxton.Trump wrote: “The Rino Speaker of the House of Texas, Dade Phelan, who is barely a Republican at all and failed the test on voter integrity, wants to impeach one of the most hard working and effective Attorney Generals in the United States, Ken Paxton, who just won re-election with a large number of American Patriots strongly voting for him.”Although the spectacle has shaken up the party, Flores said not much will change within the state’s Republican party regardless of if Paxton gets ousted or not.“The red meat kind of issues that go to the core and are very popular not only in the state of Texas, but with conservatives – it’s a national playbook,” Flores said. “Texas is filled with with contradictions, but the conservatives are pretty unified around conservative issues.”Now, a senate trial will be held no later than 28 August. A two-thirds majority is needed to remove Paxton from office, including possibly one vote from his wife who has yet to recuse herself due to an unethical conflict of interest.In the event that happens, Abbott will be forced to appoint his permanent replacement and Texas will see the historic toppling of a leader not seen before in the state. More