Bosom Buddies Until Political Death Do They Part in November: Sticking Together Like Two TX Flies on a Dead Dog’s Eye.
By Scott Ortkiese | July 10, 2026 | Email: so@throughlinesynthesis.com
Texans deserve plain speaking about Paxton.Literallyanyone, and I mean anyone, is better than this squalid little thug, Ken Paxton representing Texas in the Senate. A backup middle school civics teacher. A retired sheriff. The guy who checks IDs at the Buc-ee’s on I-10. The bag of pinto beans in your pantry. Any of them would serve Texas more honestly than this rotten little crook, because none of them are running around under a cloud of felony indictments, bribery allegations, impeachment articles, taxpayer-funded whistleblower payouts, a divorce petition from their own state-senator wife, or a shared fake-name Uber account with a real estate developer under federal indictment.
Ken Paxton is a mean-spirited little miscreant. No Texan should support this twisted little lawyer running for the U.S. Senate with a public record that spans eleven years, four courthouses, one impeachment trial, and $6.6 million of your money.
And the only reason he is on the ballot at all is that corpulent thug, Trump, endorsed him a week before the runoff. That is the story of the Paxton campaign: hitch yourself to Trump, ride the endorsement into Washington, and let MAGA gravity do the rest. It was an ugly bet even in a good month for Trump. In July 2026, it is a suicide pact. Screw ‘em both.
Because Donald Trump is now the most unpopular president in the modern history of American polling (Newsweek, USA Today). He’s presiding over a war with Iran that he already started once, quit, and started again (Detroit Free Press), gas prices Texans can feel in their trucks (NPR/Marist via OPB), an economy circling the drain, and a federal judge who just ordered his own Justice Department to hand over the Epstein Files it had been sitting on illegally (Judge Sullivan order). The bigger crook is drowning. Paxton is chained to him. Good.
This is the case against Ken Paxton. Not ideology. Receipts.
The rap sheet: a decade of the same little crook doing the same little crimes
Every entry below is on the public record. No allegations. No gossip. Just indictments, court filings, sworn testimony, settlement checks, and one biblical divorce petition from his own wife.
July 2015.A Collin County grand jury indicts Paxton on two first-degree felony counts of securities fraud and one third-degree felony for failing to register with the Texas State Securities Board. He is the first sitting Texas attorney general criminally indicted in 32 years (Wikipedia, Courthouse News). Paxton stalls the case for nine years. Nine stinking years.
2019 to 2020.Paxton starts moonlighting as personal legal muscle for Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, a campaign donor under federal investigation. Impeachment records say Paxton “morphed the Office of the Attorney General into Paul’s concierge law firm,” meeting Paul 20 to 24 times in the spring and summer of 2020 alone (Washington Examiner). The Texas AG, on the clock, running errands for a crooked donor. Read that again.
October 2020.Eight of Paxton’s own top deputies, all Republicans, all hand-picked by him, walk into the FBI and turn their boss in for bribery and abuse of office (Texas Tribune). Four get fired. They sue. Ken Paxton is such a vile piece of work that his own team ratted him out to the feds.
December 8, 2020.Under active felony indictment and a fresh FBI probe, Paxton filesTexas v. Pennsylvaniaat the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to void the electoral votes of four other states. Republican Senator Ben Sasse said the lawsuit “looks like a fella begging for a pardon” (Wikipedia, Philadelphia Inquirer). Election law scholar Rick Hasen called it “the dumbest case I’ve ever seen filed on an emergency basis at the Supreme Court.” A Republican senator and a legal scholar both saying the quiet part out loud, in public, on the record. This is the wretched grifter asking Texans for a promotion.
December 11, 2020.The Supreme Court dismisses the case in a three-sentence order. Texas, the justices said, “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections” (NPR). Texas taxpayers pay Paxton’s legal bills. Have you ever noticed that corrupt lawyer-politicians never pay legal bills, but Texas taxpayers do?
January 6, 2021.Paxton speaks at the Trump rally on the Ellipse immediately preceding the storming of the U.S. Capitol (Wikipedia). He is the only state attorney general in the country who refuses to sign a bipartisan letter condemning the riot (Newsweek). The pardon he was so obviously fishing for never arrives. But the leash he wraps around Trump’s wrist that day is permanent.
December 2023.To perfectly illustrate what piece of sh%t Paxton is, he personally goes after Kate Cox, a Dallas mother of two carrying a fetus with fatal trisomy 18, to stop her from ending a pregnancy her doctor said threatened her life and her future fertility. He threatens felony prosecution against her doctor and three Houston hospitals (BBC, Texas Tribune). She flees the state. The Texas Attorney General, using the machinery of the state, hunting down one Texas mother. Whatever you think about abortion, that is not what a even a semi-decent man does with public power. That is what a political animal without a conscience does.
May 27, 2023.The Republican-controlled Texas House impeaches Paxton 121 to 23 on 20 articles including bribery, obstruction of justice, and abuse of public trust (Ballotpedia). Read the vote count. His own frigging party.
September 2023.At his impeachment trial, sworn testimony establishes his years-long extramarital affair with Laura Olson, a woman Nate Paul allegedly hired as part of the bribery scheme. Uber records under the fake name “Dave P,” a shared account Paxton and Paul both used, document more than a dozen trips to her apartment in fall 2020 (Texas Monthly, Washington Examiner). How twisted is that? The chief law enforcement officer of Texas ran a fake-name rideshare account with a crooked developer so he could go visit his mistress. His wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, has to sit in the chamber as an ineligible juror while all this comes out. The Republican Senate acquits anyway. Only two GOP senators vote to convict (NPR). The fix was in.
March 2024.Cornered by an actual April 15 trial date after nine years of ducking, Paxton settles the securities fraud case: $300,000 restitution, 100 hours community service, 15 hours of ethics education (Reuters). Ethics education. For the Attorney General. Fifteen hours. How can any Texan think of this belly crawling SOB representing us in the U.S. Senate? Think about that malignant Trump character endorsing Paxton with this knowledge.
January 2025.In the final weeks of the Biden administration, DOJ’s public integrity section quietly declines to prosecute Paxton on the corruption allegations his own deputies had reported. This came over the objections of the Texas-based federal investigators who thought they had the evidence for an indictment (Associated Press). Paxton, like a Teflon Don, walks. Again.
April 2025.A Travis County district judge rules that Paxton’s whistleblowers proved their case by a preponderance of the evidence. Meaning: the deputies who turned him in were telling the truth.
July 3, 2025.Paxton drops his appeal. Texas taxpayers, meaning you, cut the whistleblowers a $6.6 million check, roughly double the original 2023 settlement figure (Texas Tribune, Dallas Observer). Add the investigation and trial costs, and the total taxpayer tab is north of $12 million. That is a lot of playgrounds. A lot of teacher raises. A lot of border sheriffs. All of it burned to protect one crook. Ask yourself what this scumbag has done for Texas except commit crimes as a repeat offender.
July 10, 2025.Same day Paxton is gearing up to primary John Cornyn, his wife of 38 years, State Senator Angela Paxton, files for divorce “on biblical grounds,” formally alleging adultery. She writes that in light of “recent discoveries” the marriage no longer “honors God” (CNN, Newsweek). Turns out they hadn’t lived together since June 2024. The family-values candidate.
December 19, 2025.After a coalition of news organizations sues to unseal them, a judge unseals nearly 300 pages of divorce records. Angela Paxton is seeking a “disproportionate share” of the marital estate (CNN, Texas Tribune). His own wife wants extra to be rid of him. That should tell you something.
May 26, 2026.One week after a Trump endorsement, Paxton clobbers Cornyn 64 to 36 in the runoff (NYT, Reuters). And here we are.
Ten years. Fifteen scandals. One fellon, still running for the U.S. Senate.
The Trump bet, and why it just went bust
Paxton’s whole plan is that Donald Trump drags him across the finish line no matter how bad the rap sheet looks. That plan looked plausible on May 19, 2026, when Trump endorsed him over a sitting four-term Republican senator. It looked plausible on May 26, when Paxton ran Cornyn out of the party by 28 points. It stopped looking plausible about ten minutes later. Because Trump is having the worst summer of his political life, and the polling isn’t a matter of opinion.
The most unpopular president in modern polling.In the July 3 to 6 Economist/YouGov poll, Trump’s net approval hit26, matching the lowest reading in the entire Economist/YouGov series across both Trump termsandthe Biden presidency (Newsweek). The American Research Group poll from June 16 to 20 clocked him at30 percent approve, 66 percent disapprove, the worst numbers ARG has ever recorded for him across either of his presidencies (USA Today). The NPR/PBS/Marist June poll had him at 36 percent overall and athirty-three percentapproval on the economy, three points below the worst readings Joe Biden ever posted (OPB). Worse than Biden. Read that twice. YouGov reports Trump’s net approval among independents at50, the worst figure that pollster has ever recorded for anybody (Newsweek). His approval among rural Americans, the base of the Republican Party, has fallen from 60 percent in February 2025 to 50 percent as of June 2026 (USA Today). Among Republicans who “strongly approve” of him, the number dropped from 61 percent in April to 53 percent in June (OPB). Even his own people are walking away from him. This is the anchor Paxton just tied around his neck. Karma, baby, karma.
A war Trump started twice.As of July 9, 2026, the U.S. is back at war with Iran, hostilities having flared up again just weeks after a June memorandum of understanding that BCA Research’s Matt Gertken warned was never a durable peace to begin with (Detroit Free Press, The Guardian). The strikes are unpopular. The intelligence has been contested. The war-powers argument is exactly the one Paxton’s opponent, James Talarico, has been making since last year: “our Constitution is clear that it’s Congress that should declare war.” A Democrat sounding more constitutionally conservative than the Republican. That’s where we are.
An economy where nothing’s affordable.Gas prices keep climbing. Housing is unaffordable. Insulin, childcare, groceries. Every one of these is squeezing Texans in exactly the places Talarico built his campaign to talk about. Trump’s approval on the economy sits at 33 percent, lower than any point of the Biden presidency (OPB). Nine out of ten news cycles are about how much things cost. Paxton has no answer on any of them. He doesn’t even try.
The Epstein Files.On June 27, 2026, a federal judge ordered the Trump Justice Department to hand over unredacted Epstein documents it had been ordered by federal statute to release by December 19, 2025. That was a law Trump himself signed, and his own DOJ then broke (summary of the Sullivan order). Trump signed a law. Trump’s DOJ ignored it. A judge had to force his own government to obey his own signature. The unreleased material reportedly includes FBI notes from interviews with a woman who accused Trump of assault (interviews the FBI itself deemed credible, and which Trump denies), plus at least eight email exchanges with Epstein referencing a torture video and sexual activity with minors. This is not a scandal that clears. This is a scandal that gets worse every week from now until November. And it lands in the middle of Paxton’s general election.
Now imagine, seriously, imagine, how Ken Paxton would have carried himself around Jeffrey Epstein. The man who ran a fake-name Uber account with a real estate developer to visit his mistress. The man whose senior deputies said he turned the Attorney General’s office into a “concierge law firm” for a rich crook. The man whose wife just divorced him on biblical grounds. The man who, at every turn, converted public office into a favor bank for anyone rich enough to pay the fee. That is not a man who says no to Epstein. That is a man Epstein collects, files, and calls when he needs something. Paxton has spent a decade telling us exactly what species of politician he is. Ask yourself if that is a species you want anywhere near the levers of federal law enforcement.
Ironically, Trump is not saving Ken Paxton in November. Trump is the concrete block tied to Ken Paxton’s ankle. Watching him sink will be sublime.
What this Paxton thug actually did to Texas
Set the national politics aside. Ask a simpler question: has Ken Paxton, in his twelve years running the Attorney General’s office, been good for Texas? Not for Texas politicians. For Texas.
He cost Texans money on purpose.When his own senior deputies reported him to the FBI, Paxton tried to make Texas taxpayers cover the $3.3 million whistleblower settlement. The Legislature said no, then impeached him for even asking. He then ran the case into the ground for two more years until the tab had doubled to $6.6 million, plus reported total investigation and trial costs above $12 million (Texas Tribune, Dallas Observer). Texans paid twice, and then again, to protect Ken Paxton from Ken Paxton. Nobody voted for that. Nobody wanted that. He did it to us anyway.
He tried to nullify your neighbors’ votes.Texans understand federalism in their bones.Texas v. Pennsylvaniawas the most anti-Texan lawsuit in modern American history: an emergency demand that the U.S. Supreme Court reach into four other states and cancel the ballots of their voters. The Supreme Court threw it out because it violated the most basic tenet of state sovereignty. The man who spends every campaign season yelling about the Tenth Amendment filed the biggest attack on the Tenth Amendment anybody’s filed this century. Fraud.
He weaponized the AG’s office against a Texas mother.Kate Cox was not an activist. She was a Dallas-Fort Worth mom with a wanted pregnancy that had gone catastrophically wrong. A Texas district judge, applying the medical exception written by the Texas Legislature, allowed her to end the pregnancy in Texas. Ken Paxton personally jumped in, writing to three Houston hospitals that a court order “won’t insulate you or anyone else” from felony prosecution (Texas Tribune). She was forced to leave the state. Whatever your view on abortion, ask yourself: is that the job of a Texas Attorney General? Chasing down one grieving mom to score points on cable news? That’s not law enforcement. That’s cruelty on the taxpayer’s dime.
He lied about his own family values.For a decade Paxton campaigned on biblical values, family sanctity, and Christian conservative virtue. And for that same decade, as sworn impeachment testimony shows, he was running a fake-name Uber account with a donor to visit his mistress, whose job at that donor’s firm had allegedly been arranged as part of a bribery scheme (Texas Monthly). His own wife, herself a state senator, has now filed for divorce on biblical grounds and formally alleged adultery (CNN). Every Texan who was told Ken Paxton was defending the sanctity of the family got played. Every single one.
That is his record. It is not going to get better in Washington. It is going to get worse. The U.S. Senate is the biggest favor bank in the country, and Ken Paxton has never seen a favor bank he did not want to loot.
The alternative: James Talarico
Republicans are going to spend $200 million between now and November trying to cartoon James Talarico into a coastal progressive. It is not going to work. Here is why.
Talarico is an eighth-generation Texan. He was raised by a single mother, a preacher’s daughter from Laredo who fled an abusive marriage in a Ford Escort and hid with him at the hotel where she worked (Talarico for Texas). He taught sixth-grade language arts on the west side of San Antonio, in one of the poorest ZIP codes in Texas, through Teach For America. He drives a Chevy pickup. He wears Lucchese boots. He is completing a Master of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (Time, Britannica). Compare that to Paxton, an Oklahoma boy who moved to Texas and immediately started stealing from it.
He is the only member of the Texas Legislature who has never taken corporate PAC money (Talarico for Texas). He is a Type 1 diabetic who has led the fight to cap insulin prices, put Narcan in every Texas school, and lower housing and prescription drug costs. He led the opposition to the state-mandated Ten Commandments display in classrooms, not because he opposes the Commandments, but because he opposes politicians using them as a prop. He called the mandate “un-American” and “un-Christian,” and cited the Gospel passage against public prayer for show. That is what a seminarian sounds like when he actually reads the book. Compare that to Paxton, who put a Bible on his shelf and then broke every commandment in it.
His campaign centerpiece is anti-corruption: ban corporate PACs and super PACs, ban congressional stock trading, ban partisan gerrymandering with independent redistricting commissions, impose term limits on Supreme Court justices, require every member of Congress to hold town halls (Courier Texas). He has publicly broken with national Democrats on border enforcement and Texas oil and gas: “I’ve resisted national Democrats who aim to harm the Texas oil and gas sector,” he told Politico (Politico). That is a Texas Democrat, not an East Coast import.
His frame is not left versus right. It is top versus bottom. That framing has room for a Cornyn Republican tired of Paxton’s scandals. It has room for a rancher who does not want Washington lobbyists writing energy policy. It has room for a mom on the west side of San Antonio choosing between insulin and rent. Ken Paxton has never spoken to those Texans in his life. He has been too busy running errands for donors.
The numbers say Talarico’s message is landing. He won the Democratic primary outright over Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett with 52.4 percent, no runoff required (Wikipedia). Through March 31, 2026, he had raised $40.3 million to Paxton’s $7.6 million, with $9.9 million cash on hand to Paxton’s $2.3 million (TexPolls). The June 30 New York Times/Siena poll has them tied at 47 percent apiece (USA Today). A dead heat, after a Trump endorsement supposedly worth 28 points in the primary. So much for the MAGA bump. An April TPOR poll had Talarico leading Paxton by five, powered by moderates, independents, and Black, Latino, and college-educated voters (The Guardian). Barack Obama has endorsed him. In the two hours after Paxton won the runoff, Talarico raised $600,000 online, the biggest two-hour haul of his campaign (Politico). Texans opening their wallets in real time to say no to Paxton.
Texas has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. Talarico was born a year later. That’s not a curse. That’s a chance.
The choice
On one side of the ballot: a career criminal indicted on felonies, impeached by his own party for bribery and abuse of office, turned in to the FBI by his own senior deputies, forced to pay $6.6 million of taxpayer money to the whistleblowers he fired, divorced by his own state-senator wife on biblical grounds after a decade-long affair conducted via a fake-name Uber account he shared with a bribe-paying donor, and now begging for a promotion to the U.S. Senate on the endorsement of the least popular president in modern American polling. A president mired in a second Iranian war, a collapsing economy, and a federal court order to release the Epstein Files that his own DOJ is still trying to bury.
On the other side: an eighth-generation Texan, a public school teacher, a Presbyterian seminarian, a state legislator who has flipped Republican districts by talking to actual Republican voters, who takes no corporate money, who broke publicly with his national party on the border and on oil and gas, and who has raised more than five times what Paxton has raised to take the case straight to Texans.
Ken Paxton hitched his career to Donald Trump because he thought he was buying a lifeboat. He was actually buying a ticket on theTitanic. And he handed over his entire political fortune to pay for it.
The Senate seat is not John Cornyn’s. It is not Ken Paxton’s. It is not Donald Trump’s. It is yours.
On November 3, 2026, take it back. And screw ‘em both on the way out.
