Tag: texas
John Cornyn

'Hard To Run From Prison, Ken': Senator Rips Indicted Texas Attorney General

Former Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) is among the Senate Republicans who is being mentioned as a possible replacement for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who on Wednesday announced that he is retiring from that position. The 82-year-old McConnell plans to serve out the rest of his term, which doesn't end until January 3, 2027, but he is stepping down as GOP leader in the U.S. Senate in November.

Far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is hoping that someone other than Cornyn will be chosen. Although the conservative Cornyn has endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, Paxton believes that he isn't MAGA enough.

Paxton, who has been battling legal problems — including securities fraud charges — but survived an impeachment effort in the Texas legislature, attacked Cornyn in a February 28 post on X (formerly Twitter).

The Texas AG wrote, "It will be difficult for @JohnCornyn to be an effective leader since he is anti-Trump, anti-gun, and will be focused on his highly competitive primary campaign in 2026. Republicans deserve better in their next leader and Texans deserve another conservative Senator."

Cornyn, in response to Paxton's tweet, posted, "Hard to run from prison, Ken."

Paxton has been battling legal problems for almost a decade.

In 2015, Paxton was serving his first term as Texas attorney general when he was indicted on securities fraud charges And his legal problems have persisted; the case has been delayed but is scheduled to go to trial in April. Paxton, as Cornyn mentioned, is still in danger of going to prison.

Despite his legal problems, Paxton was reelected as state attorney general in 2018 and won a third term in 2022.

Paxton, in 2023, was impeached in the GOP-controlled Texas House of Representatives, and fellow Republicans argued that acts of corruption and allegations of bribery made him unfit to continue serving as Texas attorney general. But he was later acquitted in an impeachment trial in the Texas Senate, where Republicans also have a majority.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Paul Pressler

Southern Baptists Settle Sex Abuse Case Against Far-Right Former Leader

By Robert Downen

The Southern Baptist Convention and others have reached a confidential settlement in a high-profile lawsuit that accused a former leader of sexual assault, ending a six-year legal drama that helped prompt a broader reckoning over child sexual abuse in evangelical churches, expanded victims’ rights in Texas and showed that a prominent conservative activist and Texas House candidate repeatedly downplayed abuse allegations.

In 2017, Duane Rollins filed the lawsuit accusing Paul Pressler, a longtime Southern Baptist figure and former Texas judge, of decades of rape beginning when Rollins was a 14-year-old member of Pressler’s church youth group in Houston.

Rollins claimed in court documents that the alleged attacks pushed him into drug and alcohol addictions that kept him in prison throughout much of his adult life. After disclosing the alleged rapes to a prison psychiatrist, Rollins filed the suit in Harris County against Pressler along with other defendants who he accused of enabling or concealing Pressler’s behavior — including the Southern Baptist Convention and Jared Woodfill, the former chair of the Harris County GOP and Pressler’s longtime law partner.

Rollins’ claims were a key impetus for “Abuse of Faith,” a 2019 investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News into sexual abuse in the SBC, the nation’s second-largest faith group. The series led to major reforms in the SBC, revelations that top leaders had routinely ignored or downplayed warnings about a sexual abuse crisis, and an ongoing Department of Justice investigation.

As part of Rollins' suit, at least seven other men came forward with their own allegations of sexual misconduct by Pressler in incidents spanning four decades. The suit also showed that Woodfill, a prominent anti-LGBTQ+ activist, was aware of allegations that Pressler was a sexual predator but continued to provide him with young, male personal assistants who worked out of Pressler’s River Oaks home. Three of the men have alleged sexual abuse or misconduct.

Woodfill is currently running for a Texas House seat against incumbent Rep. Lacey Hull, R-Houston, and has been endorsed by Attorney General Ken Paxton and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.

Pressler, 93, is one of the most influential evangelical figures of the last half-century, and is considered the co-architect of the SBC’s “conservative resurgence” that began in the late 1970s and prompted the faith group to adopt literal interpretations of the Bible, align more closely with the Republican Party, ban women from preaching and strongly condemn homosexuality.

Pressler — who formerly represented Houston in the Texas House and served for 14 years as a state appeals court judge — is also an influential figure in GOP politics. His endorsement has for years been sought by conservative evangelical politicians, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). In 1989, Pressler was nominated to lead the Office of Government Ethics under President George H.W. Bush, though the bid was later withdrawn; and Pressler is a founding member of Council for National Policy, a secretive network of conservative judges, politicians, media figures, megadonors and wealthy business owners that is currently led by Tony Perkins, head of the anti-LGBTQ+ Family Research Council.

Pressler denies the allegations and has not been criminally charged for any of the alleged abuses. An attorney for Pressler did not respond to a request for comment about the settlement, which is not public.

In a statement, legal representatives for the Southern Baptist Convention and its executive committee confirmed that they had “entered into a confidential settlement agreement” despite being “fully prepared” to proceed to a trial that was scheduled for February after being postponed twice this year.

“However, several factors ultimately made settlement the more prudent choice,” they wrote. “Chief among those factors was the horrendous nature of the abuse allegations, the likelihood that counsel for the SBC and Executive Committee would have to confront and cross-examine abuse survivors, the Executive Committee’s current financial condition, and the willingness of multiple insurance carriers to contribute to the terms of the settlement.”

Michael Goldberg, who represented Rollins along with a team of lawyers from Baker Botts, said Friday that they had resolved the matter with Pressler on "mutually satisfactory terms," and added that his team was "very proud of the settlement we reached against the Southern Baptist Convention and Jared Woodfill."

Woodfill has denied wrongdoing and said this week that he has not settled the case, though a Harris County judge signed off on a motion last week that said “all claims, counterclaims and controversies” in the suit were resolved.

"We are fighting the insurance company and oppose any payment,” Woodfill said in a text message on Thursday.

A pattern

The settlement almost never happened.

By the time that Rollins disclosed the alleged abuses to a prison psychiatrist in 2016 and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a “direct result of the childhood sexual trauma he suffered,” the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit against Pressler had long passed.

Nevertheless, Rollins pushed forward with the suit, arguing that the alleged rapes by Pressler — a spiritual mentor who Rollins said weaponized religious language to justify his predations — were so traumatizing that he unconsciously developed a sort of Stockholm syndrome that, coupled with the drug and alcohol addictions he blamed on the trauma, made it impossible to recognize himself as a victim until decades had passed.

Thus, Rollins argued, his statute of limitations should have begun when he realized he had been abused, rather than when the last assault occurred. His lawsuit was initially dismissed on statute grounds. But Rollins appealed and, eventually, had the dismissal overturned by the Texas Supreme Court, which agreed with Rollins’ arguments. The court’s opinion was a major victory for sexual abuse victims and their advocates, who have for years pointed to research that shows child sexual trauma can remap developing brains and make it difficult for many survivors to come forward until after their 50th birthday, and after their standing to file lawsuits has elapsed.

Rollins’ lawsuit also uncovered a 40-year pattern of alleged abuses by Pressler. As part of the suit, a former member of Pressler’s youth group said in a sworn affidavit that Pressler molested him in 1977 while the two were in a sauna at the country club in Houston’s tony River Oaks neighborhood. The man was entering his sophomore year in college at the time; Pressler, meanwhile, was a youth pastor at a Presbyterian church in Houston. He was ousted from that position in 1978 after church officials received information about “an alleged incident,” according to a letter introduced into the court file. Soon after, Pressler ramped up his involvement in Southern Baptist life.

Rollins said Pressler began sexually abusing him not long after. He said the rapes continued on and off for nearly a quarter-century, often while he was working as Pressler’s aide.

In 2004, court records show that a small group of leaders at the massive First Baptist Church of Houston were made aware of allegations that Pressler, a powerful deacon at the megachurch, had undressed and groped a young man at his home. In a letter to Pressler that was unearthed as part of Rollins’ lawsuit, the church leaders condemned Pressler’s "morally and spiritually" inappropriate behavior. They also feared that publicizing the allegations would damage Pressler's reputation in their church and the Southern Baptist Convention.

An attorney for First Baptist Church of Houston, which was a defendant in Rollins’ lawsuit, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday about the lawsuit settlement. The church has previously defended its handling of the 2004 incident, saying that there were differing accounts of what happened and that Pressler’s position on church committees and as a teacher were eliminated as a result.

The same year that First Baptist was made aware of those allegations, Rollins filed a lawsuit for non-sexual assault against Pressler that was quickly settled for $450,000. Woodfill, who represented Pressler in the matter, said under oath last year that he was told by Rollins’ attorney at the time that Pressler had sexually abused Rollins as a child. Despite that, Woodfill continued to lean on Pressler’s conservative reputation, connections and influence to bolster their law firm, providing him with young, male personal assistants despite Pressler doing almost no work.

“I can think of one or two cases that he brought in,” Woodfill testified as part of Rollins’ new lawsuit last year. “He may have gone to one hearing in his entire time with us, two at the most. Really, it was his name. … He got an employee that worked for him. So he didn’t get a salary. He didn’t get a draw. He didn’t get a bonus. We paid for someone to come and assist him. That’s how he got compensated.”

Woodfill similarly downplayed sexual misconduct allegations in 2016, after a 25-year-old lawyer at his firm alerted Woodfill that Pressler had told him “lewd stories about being naked on beaches with young men” and then invited him to skinny-dip at his ranch, court records show. The attorney said he addressed the incident with a longtime employee of Woodfill’s law firm, who made it clear that this was not the first time he’d heard such allegations.

“I discovered that this was not unusual behavior for Pressler, and that he had a long history of lecherous behavior towards young men. Even going as far as bringing scantily clad men and parading them through the office,” the attorney wrote in an affidavit that was filed as part of Rollins’ lawsuit.

Woodfill — who’d just played a key role defeating an equal rights ordinance for LGBTQ Houstonians — responded to the young man’s request for help with shock. “This 85-year-old man has never made any inappropriate comments or actions toward me or any one I know of,” he responded, court records show.

The young attorney’s claims are similar in detail to those from other Pressler accusers, who said he leaned on his stature and connections in conservative religious and political circles to try and coerce them into lewd massages, naked swimming sessions or sex. One accuser — a young Houston Baptist University student — said in a sworn affidavit that he stopped pursuing a career in ministry, frequently had panic attacks and attempted suicide as a result of Pressler’s alleged behavior.

Court filings also show that Pressler’s family was alerted about his behavior in 2017, when an aide claimed in a letter that he had “both heard stories of and personally witnessed” Pressler getting nude massages from “young men who work for him.” He also claimed that Pressler had recently bragged about skinny-dipping with three boys who were younger than 10, and that he had seen Pressler “manipulate” a 20-year-old into giving him a massage and then repeatedly kiss him.

“He talks way more about nudity, the male body, being naked in spas in Europe, being naked in general than God, or his Baptist background,” the aide wrote before announcing his resignation.

Pressler, he added, “needs to be stopped.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Matt Rinaldi

Texas GOP Rejects Ban On Association With Neo-Nazis And Antisemities

"Texas GOP executive committee rejects proposed ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Two months after a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser was caught hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas have voted against barring the party from associating with known Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers.

In a 32-29 vote on Saturday, members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee stripped a pro-Israel resolution of a clause that would have included the ban— delivering a major blow to a faction that has called for the party to confront its ties to groups that have recently employed, elevated or associated with outspoken white supremacists or antisemitic figures.

In October, The Texas Tribune published photos of Fuentes, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, entering and leaving the offices of Pale Horse Strategies, a consulting firm for far-right candidates and movements. Pale Horse Strategies is owned by Jonathan Stickland, a former state representative and at the time the leader of a political action committee, Defend Texas Liberty, that two West Texas oil billionaires have used to fund right-wing movements, candidates and politicians in the state — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Matt Rinaldi, chairman of the Texas GOP, was also seen entering the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was inside for nearly 7 hours. He denied participating, however, saying he was visiting with someone else at the time and didn’t know Fuentes was there.

Defend Texas Liberty has not publicly commented on the scandal, save for a two-sentence statement condemning those who've tried to connect the PAC to Fuentes’ “incendiary” views. Nor has the group clarified Stickland's current role at Defend Texas Liberty, which quietly updated its website in October to reflect that he is no longer its president. Tim Dunn, one of the two West Texas oil billionaires who primarily fund Defend Texas Liberty, confirmed the meeting between Fuentes and Stickland and called it a “serious blunder,” according to a statement from Patrick.

In response to the scandal — as well as subsequent reporting in the Tribune that detailed other links between Defend Texas Liberty and white supremacists — nearly half of the Texas GOP’s executive committee had called for the party to cut ties with Defend Texas Liberty and groups it funds until Stickland was removed from any position of power, and a full explanation for the Fuentes meeting was given.

The proposed demands were significantly watered down ahead of the party’s quarterly meeting this weekend. Rather than calling for a break from Defend Texas Liberty, the faction proposed general language that would have barred associations with individuals or groups “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial.”

But even that general statement was not enough to sway a majority of the executive committee. In at-times tense debate on Saturday, members argued that words like “tolerate” or “antisemitism” were too vague or subjective, and could create future problems for the party, its leaders and candidates.

“It could put you on a slippery slope,” said committee member Dan Tully.

Supporters of the language disagreed. They noted that the language was already a compromise, didn’t specifically name any group or individual and would lend credence to the Texas GOP’s stances in support of Israel.

“To take it out sends a very disturbing message,” said Rolando Garcia, a Houston-based committee member who drafted the language. “We’re not specifying any individual or association. This is simply a statement of principle.”

Other committee members questioned how their colleagues could find words like “antisemitism” too vague, despite frequently lobbing it and other terms at their political opponents.

“I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists and RINOs (‘Republicans in Name Only’) don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is,” committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham told the Tribune after the vote.

House Speaker Dade Phelan similarly condemned the vote Saturday evening, calling it “despicable.”

The Texas GOP executive committee “can’t even bring themselves to denounce neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers or cut ties with their top donor who brought them to the dance,” Phelan wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “There is a moral, anti-Semitic rot festering within the fringes of BOTH parties that must be stopped.”

Before the vote, executive committee members separately approved a censure of outgoing Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, over his lead role in the investigation and impeachment of Paxton.

Saturday’s vote is the latest sign of growing disunity among the Texas GOP, which for years has dealt with simmering tensions between its far-right and more moderate, but still deeply conservative, wings. Defend Texas Liberty and its billionaire backers have been key players in that fight, funding primary challenges to incumbent Republicans who they deem insufficiently conservative while and bankrolling a sprawling network of institutions, media websites and political groups that they’ve used to incrementally pull Texas further right.

The party’s internecine conflict has exploded into all-out war since the impeachment and acquittal of Paxton, a crucial Defend Texas Liberty ally whose political life has been subsidized by the PAC’s billionaire funders. After Paxton’s acquittal, Defend Texas Liberty vowed scorched-earth campaigns against those who supported the attorney general’s removal, and promised massive spending ahead of next year’s primary elections.

Then came the news of the Stickland and Fuentes meeting — a political bombshell that sharply intensified infighting and prompted some in the Texas GOP to question the party’s proximity to racists and extremists. In the wake of the Tribune’s reporting, Phelan and other House Republicans called on their colleagues to donate money they received from Defend Texas Liberty to pro-Israel charities.

Many of the PAC’s beneficiaries have been defiant in the face of those calls, instead accusing Phelan of politicizing antisemitism and attempting to discredit the Tribune’s reporting and downplay the scandal.

Ahead of Saturday’s vote, Defend Texas Liberty-backed Reps. Nate Schatzline (R-Fort Worth) and Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) briefly spoke to the executive committee.

The day prior, Sen. Bob Hall — an Edgewood Republican who has received $50,000 from Defend Texas Liberty — was also at the Austin hotel where executive committee members were meeting, and in a speech condemned attempts to cut ties with the group based on what he called “hearsay,” “fuzzy photographs” and “narratives.”

“If you want to pass a resolution, I would make it positive,” Hall said to executive committee members on Friday. “We don’t need to do our enemy’s work for them.”

Hall reiterated that stance in an interview with the Tribune, calling the Fuentes meeting a “mistake” but claiming that there was “no evidence” that Stickland or Defend Texas Liberty are antisemitic.

“I've had meetings with transgenders, gays, and lesbians,” Hall said. “Does that make me a transgender, gay or a lesbian?”

Asked if he was comparing gay people to white supremacists or Hitler admirers like Fuentes, Hall responded: “I’m talking about people who are political hot potatoes.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.


Jesse Watters

Fox Ignored Texas Woman's Legal Ordeal Over Emergency Abortion (VIDEO)

Fox News has barely covered the story of Kate Cox, a Texas woman who sought to terminate her pregnancy due to the fetus’s fatal diagnosis but had her court-ordered emergency abortion halted after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton petitioned the Texas Supreme Court. Instead, one Fox show opted to cover a supposed “attack” on “tradwives,” with host Jesse Watters dedicating a segment of his coveted 8 p.m. slot to the topic.

The Texas Supreme Court overturned a ruling granting Cox an exception to the state’s abortion ban

On December 5, Cox filed a lawsuit in Texas for an emergency court-ordered abortion “to protect her health, life, and future fertility.” Cox, who was 20 weeks pregnant at the time the suit was filed, sought the abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 18 and “had no chance of survival.” In addition, the lawsuit detailed how Cox had visited three different emergency rooms in the past month with “severe cramping and unidentifiable fluid leaks” and was “at high risk for many serious medical conditions that pose risks to her future fertility and can become suddenly and unexpectedly life-threatening” if she did not undergo an abortion. The suit also included a recommendation from Cox’s OB-GYN, who stated they have a “good faith” belief that Cox should be exempted from the ban.



Texas’ current abortion ban restricts all abortions after six weeks, a period during which pregnancy would mostly not even be able to be detected, effectively banning all abortions. The ban makes narrow exceptions for “medical emergency” cases where the pregnancy “places the woman in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.



"The lawsuit articulates that Texas’ abortion law is inconsistent, causing confusion over which pregnancies qualify for an exception. The December 7 district court ruling allowed Cox to legally terminate her pregnancy. Paxton responded to the ruling by writing that Cox had failed to demonstrate she has a “life-threatening” medical condition related to the pregnancy that puts her “at risk of death” or major bodily harm, warning doctors they could be liable for civil and criminal penalties for providing Cox an abortion, and petitioning for intervention from the Texas Supreme Court. The following day, the court temporarily blocked Cox from receiving an abortion and, on December 11, reversed the district court’s ruling. In the opinion, the court argued that “some difficulties in pregnancy … even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses.” By the time of the ruling, Cox had already left Texas to have the abortion out of state.

Fox News barely covered Cox’s story

Fox News practically buried Cox’s story, despite wide reporting from mainstream media. Fox host Pete Hegseth briefly mentioned it on Fox & Friends Weekend during a “Headlines” segment listing major national news stories; chief political anchor Bret Baier took the same approach, devoting only about 30 seconds of airtime to the story during the prime-time “hard news” show Special Report; and a panel guest on weekend show Fox News Live brought it up during a discussion about the 2024 election.
Sean Hannity gave the most coverage to the story — but not during his prime-time Fox News show. Hannity discussed Cox’s legal fight on his radio show, arguing that her case is “definitely the exception” to Texas’ draconian abortion ban.
“This is certainly an outlier. This is not your average case,” the Fox host said.
However, Hannity was primarily concerned with how stories like Cox’s (and hardline anti-abortion stances in general) affect Republicans’ electability. Hannity also brought up the late-term abortion red herring, complaining that Democrats “never want to answer” the question of whether third-trimester abortions should be banned outright.

Fox News gave airtime to a supposed “attack” on tradwives while the real attack on Cox played out

Instead of covering Texas’ attempt at forced birth, Fox News’ Jesse Watters devoted an entire segment of his 8 p.m. broadcast to the supposed feminist assault on “tradwives”-- women who subscribe to “traditional” gender roles within marriage, often invoking the aesthetic of the 1950s housewife and romanticizing submissiveness to men. Tradwife content on social media — and the broader “trad” movement itself — has been linked to right-wing and white-supremacist ideology.

In the segment, Watters blamed the media and unhappy feminists for criticizing tradwives before interviewing Estee Williams, a popular tradwife TikToker. Williams offered a disclaimer regarding women who choose to have a career, but she also agreed with Watters’ framing, arguing: “The traditional housewife is kind of under attack right now because of feminism and definitely the 1950s housewife narrative."

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.