Ken Paxton Allegedly Committed Voter Fraud Six Times

Election experts are raising serious red flags after learning that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton voted in six elections while registered at an address where he does not live, ProPublica reported Tuesday.

The Texas attorney general has been registered to vote at his Collin County home—where he has not lived since his divorce two years ago, according to filings by his ex-wife State Senator Angela Paxton.

It’s not entirely clear where Mr. Paxton has resided since, but prior reporting linked him to another home in Denton County—making him ineligible to participate in elections in Collin County. Doing so is a second-degree felony punishable by a fine up to $10,000 and up to 20 years in prison. Election lawyers have cautioned that this kind of voter fraud is incredibly hard to prove.

Voter rolls showed that Paxton voted in Collin County in the March Republican primary, and again in May when he became his party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate.

David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer, told ProPublica that Paxton would be allowed to remain registered there if he had a reasonable expectation of returning, but his contentious and highly publicized split from his ex-wife suggests that is not the case.

“I think there would be questions raised about a residence where someone does not live, does not spend the night, and can in no way have the intent to continue to reside,” Becker said. “Those would probably raise red flags in any state.”

“Certainly, the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Texas, someone who has made claims about election integrity and made it a priority of his office, should be charged with knowing the laws of residencies of the state of Texas with regard to voting,” Becker said.

Forget “knowing”—Paxton’s office published the very guidelines he broke. When Paxton announced the creation of a tip line for suspected voter fraud in February, he shared guidelines for voter registration including the requirement to “provide the address where you reside when registering to vote.”

Attorney Clark Birdsall told ProPublica that Paxton’s apparent violation was “especially egregious that someone such as Ken Paxton appears he’s not conforming to the law.”

Paxton, a fierce ally of President Trump, has previously advocated for cracking down on voter fraud, while also threatening to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

The attorney general’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Madison Cercy, Paxton’s campaign spokesperson, called the report a “baseless, lie-filled tabloid story.”

An “explosive” diarrhea virus is tearing through the Midwestern United States, presenting yet another challenge for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the weakened Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC initially only reported 145 confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis last month in the U.S. But on July 1, Michigan health officials confirmed 100 more cases in only nine days, a troubling spike.

The cyclosporiasis infection—caused by “a one-celled parasite too small to be seen with the naked eye”—has impacted nearly 700 people in Michigan and Illinois. It can be found in contaminated water and unwashed leafy produce, and is most active in the spring and summer.

Symptoms begin with diarrhea, then can include appetite loss, bloating, nausea, cramping, and fatigue. Confirmed cases include those aged five to 86, with over 60 percent of them being women. There have been no deaths, although 20 people have been hospitalized. While this parasite appears every year, this many cases is certainly abnormal. Last year there were only 50 confirmed cases in Michigan, according to NBC Chicago.

“Outbreaks of cyclosporiasis have been occurring across the United States and now here in Michigan,” the state’s chief medical executive, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, said in a statement. “Based on the unusual number of cases we have identified in a little over a week, we anticipate additional cases of illness being reported. We recommend Michiganders contact their health care provider if they experience sudden, ongoing diarrhea and reach out to their local health department if additional members of their family are suffering from the same symptoms.”

The temperature is extremely high in many parts of the United States, and public trust in the CDC is extremely low. The next few weeks will be a significant test on their ability to manage outbreaks like this.

Republicans are rushing to Mitch McConnell’s defense as rumors swirl that the former Senate majority leader might be dead.

Conservative commentator Scott Jennings wrote on X that he spoke to his “old friend” Tuesday morning.

“He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes … about IRAN, UKRAINE, the unfolding situation in MAINE, my visit to the [Teddy Roosevelt] Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history,” Jennings said. “I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible.”

McConnell also reportedly spoke with Senator John Barrasso earlier in the day, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Monday, according to NOTUS’s Al Weaver.

“Leader Thune spoke with Senator McConnell yesterday by phone,” a Thune spokesperson told Weaver. “They had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security.”

But lawmakers on the other side of the conservative caucus weren’t so confident. At least one MAGA-aligned legislator, Utah Senator Mike Lee, shared online that most of Congress had stayed mum on the subject because they were completely and utterly in the dark as to the state of McConnell’s health.

“Many of us aren’t speaking about Mitch McConnell’s condition because we know nothing about his condition,” Lee wrote on X Tuesday.

Rumors about McConnell’s health spiked late Monday, when far-right influencer Laura Loomer claimed on X that an unnamed “high level source close to the White House” told her that McConnell is “officially brain dead.” In a separate post, Loomer claimed that McConnell is in organ failure, and that the White House had been told he “isn’t ever coming back.”

Shortly afterward, the reporter that first broke the story that McConnell had gone into cardiac arrest in mid-June—Desirée Townsend—said that her sources had shared the same information.

Within hours, far-right influencers were demanding proof that McConnell was still alive, questioning why his office had not shared a video of the 84-year-old lawmaker if he was able to talk. McConnell’s office has not yet done so. In the weeks since McConnell was hospitalized, his team has released only vague and repetitive statements that have failed to acknowledge the senator’s condition or why he was receiving care.

An Afghan man who worked with the United States military for more than a decade died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody due to an allergic reaction—but the release of his death certificate brings more questions than answers.

Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal suffered “an adverse drug reaction” to an unidentified substance, which triggered anaphylaxis and exacerbated his asthma, according to his death certificate. The document was certified on June 25 and released Monday, three months after his death.

AfghanEvac, an advocacy group, reported that the death certificate falsely states that Paktiawal died on March 12—a day before he was even taken into custody. It also lists the effects of methamphetamine, which Paktiawal’s friends and family say he did not use.

“If my brother never used that drug in his life, how did it get into his body while he was inside an ICE building?” said Naseer Paktiawal, the deceased’s brother.

The family has still not received an autopsy report explaining Paktiawal’s death certificate. In a June 24 letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Dallas County Criminal District Attorney’s Office said it would continue to withhold his full autopsy report because of a pending federal criminal investigation.

Paktiawal was detained by federal immigration agents in Richardson, Texas, on March 13 while dropping off two of his children at preschool. After 24 hours with ICE, he was dead.

The evening of his arrest, Paktiawal complained of shortness of breath and chest pain while being held in the ICE’s Dallas field office. He was then transferred to Parkland Hospital, where he received treatment and remained for observation. The next morning, medical staff observed that his tongue had become swollen. Later, after cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other lifesaving measures, Paktiawal was declared dead.

Before emigrating to the United States in 2021, Paktiawal was a member of the Afghan special forces who were hired by the U.S. government. He worked with them for more than a decade.

According to ICE, Paktiawal was “paroled into the U.S. by an immigration officer,” or granted temporary permission to enter the country under Operation Allies Refuge, an evacuation effort for allied Afghan nationals that took place under the Biden administration.

ICE claimed they had no record of his military service, and said his parole expired in August 2025. The agency also claimed that Paktiawal had previously been arrested for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program fraud and theft.

More than 50 people have died in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office—a marked increase from past administrations—but Paktiawal’s death is the first to be ruled an accident.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s old firm recently cut a $1.6 billion rare earth metals deal, and Democrats in Congress are investigating his role in the apparent conflict of interest. 

Bloomberg reports that the deal, finalized last month, likely benefited Lutnick’s two sons, who took over Cantor Fitzgerald after their father left to join the Trump administration. The financial services company served as a placeholder agent for the deal between the Department of Commerce and USA Rare Earth, or USAR, and Democrats expressed their concerns in a letter to Brandon Lutnick, Howard’s younger son and the firm’s chairman, dated Monday. 

“It is imperative your company provide complete transparency about the substantive conflict of interest concerns raised by the circumstances of this investment,” said the letter, written by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Ron Wyden in addition to Representative Zoe Lofgren. “Secretary Lutnick appears to have played a part in facilitating the USAR deal with Commerce.”

Wyden, Warren, and Van Hollen all serve on the Senate Finance Committee, with Wyden serving as its ranking member. Lofgren is the ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. They also sent a letter to USAR detailing their concerns.  

In January, the Trump administration agreed to take a 10 percent stake in USAR, and the Commerce Department offered the company funding and loans. These terms “raise serious questions about Secretary Lutnick’s exposure to federal conflicts of interest and bribery laws,” the legislators wrote in the letter. 

One year ago, USAR was a much smaller company. After meeting with Secretary Lutnick and other administration officials, it secured government help in January and has since purchased a rare earth mine in Brazil and acquired, either in partial stakes or in totality, processing businesses in France and the United Kingdom. 

These Democrats are hoping to get details about the meetings between Cantor Fitzgerald and the Commerce Department. But, even with congressional hearings, they may not get much in the way of answers, considering how much the president and his administration traffic in corrupt, self-serving business deals.