Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is loathed by progressives for many reasons, but a big one is his apparent consistent interest in suing over and otherwise attacking federal laws and actions benefiting minorities in Texas.
Word on the street is Paxton may have found a new scheme that will hurt poor Hispanics in Texas that he’s totally cool with associating himself with.
It is the cause of Texas bigwig C Y Benavides. Benavides is specifically trying to build a dump to house toxic waste imported from maquiladoras in Mexico — which output a ton of it and are not exactly good environmental stewards — literally in a Texas floodplain right next to colonias where poor Hispanic Texans live.
We’ve covered this in various iterations here, here, here and here before.
Rumor is that Benavides and Paxton have been going on hunting trips together.
C Y is big into hunting. When he was running for Webb County Judge, he actually took a break from campaigning to “chase a longtime dream of hunting Marco Polo sheep in the subzero climes of Tajikistan.” He also employs this lobbyist who kills hippos and then turns their feet into beer coolers.
And in red state America, hunting is of course a great way to buddy up to right-wingers who you want to advance your cause and do your dirty work. Benavides has had to duke it out with the local Laredo community that doesn’t want his waste dump, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (a joke of a commission but still one that didn’t seem totally sold on what he was doing). His scheme is not turning out to be a slam dunk. So, enter the hunting trips with powerful right-wing Texas pols to bring it over the finish line.
Paxton is an easy target on this, being someone who exhibits little interest in sticking up for Hispanic Texans in particular.
He’s the guy who has led the charge, nationally, against both DAPA and DACA, and provided the “legal pretext” for Trump nixing DACA.
He’s also sided with Trump and others who want to screw Hispanic Texans who own property on the border out of their property rights by using eminent domain rules to build Trump’s wall on their land.
Paxton is also one of the leading Republicans seeking to drive the narrative of widespread “voter fraud,” and has been attempting to gin up evidence of non-citizen voting in Texas.
He’s made voter ID, which naturally tends to lead to disenfranchisement of minorities including Hispanics, a top priority.
A District Judge found the law Paxton championed to be a violation of the Voting Rights Act that was intended to deny Hispanic and African-American voters their right to cast a ballot and have it counted.
You’ll be surprised to know that San Antonio, again home to lots of Hispanics, has been a target for his “anti-voter fraud” efforts. This is all despite there being zero evidence of a “voter fraud” problem in Texas.
Paxton has also sued to gut President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, despite the fact that it is well-known and well-documented that climate change and other environmental woes including high pollution levels adversely impact poor minorities more than the rich, white people who constitute his base.
And he’s trying to have the whole Affordable Care Act ruled unconstitutional, which would again adversely impact poorer minorities including a ton of Hispanics in his state.
On the one hand, with his obvious “issues” with Hispanics, it’s maybe a little weird if Paxton has been heading out on exotic, rustic hunting trips with Benavides who is Hispanic (though he’s not poor, so maybe that makes him the “okay” type of Hispanic).
On the other, though, since the landfill only gets built if officials decide that those poor, Hispanic residents of the colonias don’t matter and even though there are a ton of problems with Benavides’ toxic waste dump plan, he should get to build it anyway.
That seems right in line with what Paxton would think — even though he obviously isn’t a big fan of property rights when it comes to border landowners who don’t want Trump’s wall slicing up their ranches and all that.
It would sure be nice to see Democrats talking about these kinds of issues more if they’re serious about turning Texas blue. That’s not going to be an easy task, but 2018 showed that it is doable if the party applies itself over a consistent period of time and goes after easy targets.
Paxton sure looks like one.