Ken Paxton’s Office Sues Over Too Many People of Color Early Voting

Republican Texas Senate hopeful Ken Paxton’s office is suing election officials in his state’s largest county for helping people of color to vote.

Paxton’s lawsuit claims that a get-out-the-vote advertisement campaign from Harris County’s office essentially constitutes reverse racism because it encouraged Black and Latino voters (groups with historically lower access to elections) to vote. Harris County is Texas’s most diverse county, notably housing Houston.

“By specifically directing voting advertisements to these and many other racial or ethnic ‘detailed targeting’ terms, it is readily apparent that Harris County is attempting to increase the likelihood that only certain racial and ethnic groups—but not all—will vote,” the lawsuit reads. “In any event, there can be no legitimate reason for Harris County to intentionally target voter advertisements toward this peculiar assortment of African American, Asian, and Latino ethnicities, cultural interests, and countries, but not toward any European ethnicities.”

Harris County has already stopped running the ads, and Paxton has recused himself from this lawsuit, even though he is, of course, Texas’s current attorney general.

This lawsuit also comes as Harris County is shattering early voting records, with over 950,000 residents having cast their ballots and one day of early voting still left. The previous record for a nonpresidential election was 855,711 people in 2018.

“Ken Paxton filed this lawsuit in the final days of voting because he wants to stop Houstonians from going to the polls. He’s whining about ads that do nothing more than tell neighbors when to vote and where to get information about voting,” Texas Democratic Congressman Christian D. Menefee wrote online. “Paxton is upset that diverse voters across Harris County are making their voices heard. He doesn’t like that in this election, people are showing up in big numbers in neighborhoods like Third Ward, Acres Homes, Cypress, Tidwell, and Sunnyside.”

“Remember this: Someone with as much power as the Texas Attorney General would only take desperate action like this lawsuit because he is scared,” he continued. “I hope everyone in Harris County who is eligible to vote sees this lawsuit for what it is, and goes to cast their ballot in this election.”

Vice President JD Vance just showed everyone why he isn’t a viable presidential candidate for 2028.

During a pretaped Fox News town hall that aired Thursday, Vance punted a crucial question about lowering the cost of living to talk about President Donald Trump’s new favorite topic: Republican Senator Jon Husted’s ass.

“A constant message that my generation hears from the right is to get married young, have kids young, have as many kids as possible. And I think what the right doesn’t acknowledge most of the time is how disincentivized we are currently because of the cost of owning a home and the general expenses of raising a family,” one young woman said.

“How does the right and yourself expect us to start families young when, you know, the average price of a home in America now costs more than $415,000, which just feels out of reach for us?”

“Sure, sure. Well first of all, again. Thank you for the question, and thanks for the support. I want to point out that I think that I’ve been asked four or maybe five questions by my count. I’ve only been asked one question about Jon Husted’s ass,” Vance said.

Host Jesse Watters managed to laugh, but to viewers at home, the moment felt tone-deaf.

“How is this real and how is he this bad at politics? Or humor? Or interacting with other humans?” wrote Pod Save America’s John Favreau on X.

“If Vance is the candidate in 2028, he will be eminently beatable. He is an awful politician,” Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan wrote on X.

The most embarrassing part? Vance’s actual answer wasn’t much better.

“The one thing that I’d say is, my job is to make it easier for you guys to be able to afford a good life. But as a pure personal advice I’d say: It’s never the right time,” Vance said. “And the one regret, the one regret that I have in my life—Usha and I talk about this all the time—is, I wish we had gotten married earlier, and I wish we had kids earlier. Because you can’t go back and make the decision differently.”

So, after all of that, Vance’s advice is just to get married and have kids even if the cost of living keeps getting higher? The vice president has preached about young people having babies since before he first entered the White House, but when faced with actual voters’ concerns, he preferred to go for a stupid viral moment.

President Donald Trump reportedly flew into a rage once he learned that Alina Habba Mildon got a $50 million contract to secure a pardon for a billionaire family.

The New York Times reports that Mildon, Trump’s former personal lawyer who has held multiple jobs with his administration, inked the lucrative deal with a company started by the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan national who was looking for a presidential pardon. Trump was angered by the size of Mildon’s contract, and said that she should donate some of that money to his presidential library or another entity related to him, according to the Times.

Trump even told one of his confidants that the Herrera family shouldn’t pay out the rest of their contract with Mildon, the Times reported. He later called Mildon, but it’s not known if he directly told her to make a donation.

What Trump seems to be mad about is that he has created a pay-to-play pardon procedure for his administration, where individuals seeking pardons arrange a way for the president to personally benefit in some way in exchange for forgiveness for the crimes they’ve committed. Trump basically admitted as much earlier this month, expressing disappointment over Representative Henry Cuellar staying loyal to the Democratic Party after Trump pardoned him for corruption charges.

Trump has issued many pardons to people who successfully lobbied his administration, spending millions to get the ear of White House lawyers and the president himself. He also reportedly promises pardons to White House staffers, including “anyone who comes within 10 feet” of the Oval Office, according to a Wall Street Journal report from April. It seems he’s mad if anyone close to him is making money off of pardons without giving him a cut.

A group of senators was briefed on what the next phase of the Trump administration’s war on Iran will look like. One of them thinks it’s “insane.” 

Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, offered those remarks at a Middle East Institute panel on Wednesday. 

“I will just say this: Their plan is insane.... It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law,” Murphy said. “There’s been open reporting as to what we may be planning, and the civilian infrastructure that we may be targeting.... They have been asked by the president to develop a plan. Whether they believe it will work or not, I do not know. But the plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongment and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests.” 

President Trump is expected to ramp up operations against Iran after the midterm elections, with anonymous sources saying the U.S. has already begun warning its allies about a renewed military campaign. Last week, Israeli sources told ABC News that they discussed intensifying the blockade on Iranian oil exports and bombing petrochemical sites with the United States. Murphy’s comment seems to be confirmation that there is an escalation in the works. 

That would likely result in more Iranian civilians dying, more of their infrastructure being destroyed, more U.S. soldiers dying and being wounded, and continued high fuel prices. It would also further expose Trump’s false promises about the conflict, which appears to be developing into our next forever war. And the primary goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability does not seem to have actually been achieved.  

President Trump personally helped failed right-wing Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro flee to the United States, according to a new report in The New York Times.

Bolsonaro, who would have faced multiple criminal investigations if he stayed in Brazil, landed in Miami Wednesday after losing Brazil’s presidential election to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But he wouldn’t have made it without the Trump administration’s help.

Bolsonaro and his family were able to come to the United States on a special kind of parole usually reserved for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” after he apparently showed Homeland Security an expired diplomatic passport. His next step will be applying for a green card, a process which an administration official said will be fast-tracked in a manner similar to his brother Eduardo, who was granted permanent residency last year.

Bolsonaro flew from Argentina to Ecuador before finally landing in Miami—and he did it all on a private jet handled by Jason Miller, a White House communications official, an unnamed administration official told the Times.

Brazil’s Supreme Court had ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passport by Monday given that he was under criminal investigation for a massive money-laundering scheme. The senator was reportedly convinced that he would be arrested following his election loss. His father, Jair Bolsonaro, is currently serving out house arrest in Brazil for attempting his own version of January 6. He also fled to Florida in late 2022 briefly before his arrest.

Trump has been close with the Bolsonaros, both personally and politically. On Monday, he claimed without any proof that the election had been “rigged” against Bolsonaro. “It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” he told reporters. “Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me.”

Bolsonaro has yet to concede the election to Lula, and declared himself the leader of Brazil from the United States in a letter on Wednesday.