Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued four states in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election. He sued the companies behind the pain reliever Tylenol over unproven claims that pregnant women who take it are at higher risk of giving birth to an autistic child. And he tried to challenge the Affordable Care Act in court.
Critics argue that such lawsuits are more about fighting for President Donald Trump than defending Texans. Trump has been widely criticized for spreading misinformation about 2020 election fraud, cautioning pregnant women against taking Tylenol and slashing health care funding in the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
“He became very much a legal officer for the National Republican Party and for Donald Trump personally,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.
Once elected, attorneys general traditionally have been much less partisan. But supporters argue it’s what’s needed in the current political environment. State Attorneys General from both parties have increased their influence as national political players under the growing partisan divide, which could leave the interests of many constituents behind.
As Paxton vies for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in the runoff, what the Texas Attorney General should or should not do has become a campaign issue for some of the candidates seeking to succeed him. It’s an opportunity to convince voters it’s time to return to the status quo — or stay the course.
A different direction?
Paxton is challenging U.S. Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary runoff election. His successor could chart a new course for Texans and return to a traditional model of Attorney General or continue on the more activist path.
State Senator Mayes Middleton, the frontrunner in the Republican primary runoff to replace Paxton as Attorney General, is presenting himself as his natural successor — a fighter for Trump’s agenda. His well-funded campaign has peppered the airwaves with ads dubbing him “MAGA Mayes.”
“We need someone in that office like me who will use every resource and tool to back up President Trump and his America First agenda, and that is exactly what I will do,” Middleton said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Grapevine in March.
Paxton endorsed one of his former deputies, Aaron Reitz, in the GOP primary for Attorney General. Reitz came in last in the primary and has since backed Middleton in the runoff election.
Middleton’s runoff opponent, Congressman Chip Roy, also has touted his relationship with the president. But Roy also has publicly criticized Trump. He previously said in a press release that Trump’s conduct during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol during President Joe Biden’s inauguration was “clearly impeachable” but called the Democrats’ articles of impeachment flawed.
Roy told the Texas Tribune ahead of the primary election the state needs an attorney general who's focused on Texans’ interests, not blind loyalty to the president.
“You need somebody who’s demonstrated strength and independence,” he said. "We’ve got to defend the state of Texas, defend our borders, defend our streets, keep it safe and defend ourselves against the federal government interfering with us, no matter who’s there.”
The Democratic candidates for Texas Attorney General go further, arguing that the Office of Attorney General shouldn’t be considered a political stronghold for anyone, including conservatives.
State Senator Nathan Johnson from Dallas, the frontrunner in the Democratic primary runoff, told KERA in a December interview that he’d completely reshape the office and its priorities if elected.
“I would not make it a political stronghold,” Johnson said. “It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to the attorney for the people of the state of Texas, whether they're Democrats or Republicans. There is some damage to undo.”
His runoff opponent, former Galveston mayor Joe Jaworski, has similar ambitions.
“I am running for attorney general to make sure that we have a functioning state government and a lawyer at the top of it who can tell the truth about the way things ought to be,” Jaworski said.
Whatever voters decide will have consequences beyond Texas, as conservatives gain — or lose — a vocal and powerful soldier in the fight for Trump’s agenda at the national level.
Partisan shift
Texas has become the leader of championing conservative interests under Paxton’s leadership.
Other attorneys general across the country have stepped onto the national stage, said Rebecca Deen, a professor of political science and the Senior Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Arlington. But she said Paxton stands out among his peers.
"Paxton is quite talented at focusing the partisan and ideological spotlight on what he's doing,” Deen said.
But Greg Abbott, now the governor of Texas, may have led the way. He spent much of his time as Texas’ attorney general leveraging his office to battle then-president Barack Obama on conservative priorities, refining ways for a political activist to put the Texas Office of the Attorney General on the national stage.
“What I really do for fun is I go into the office, [and] I sue the Obama administration,” Abbott said in 2012.
Abbott filed 31 lawsuits against the federal government during his tenure as attorney general, with many of them focusing on environmental regulations he argued were harmful to the Texas energy industry.
The now-governor’s attacks on the federal government still had a Texas focus. His successor took it to the next level, Jilson said.
“Paxton was much more likely to take on battles that had more national import than Texas impact," he said.
That’s not how the role of attorney general started out. Originally, attorneys general were the chief legal officer of their states and protected state powers. Their jurisdiction was mostly civil cases.
“Think of it as a defensive or reactive approach, where maybe the state would get sued, and then the AG would provide legal representation to the state,” said Paul Nolette, a professor and director of Marquette University’s Les Aspin Center for Government.
There was also more cooperation across the aisle, Nolette said, as attorneys general took on a regulatory role in the mid-20th century, with an emphasis on consumer protection and antitrust cases. Those core functions are less partisan, Nolette said.
State AGs sometimes aligned with the White House when it benefited their state. But it wasn’t unusual for attorneys general to clash with a president if local interests diverged from national concerns, even if they were members of the same political party.
"A lot of that has gone away, and today the office is heavily focused on advancing partisan goals through the states,” said Thomas Gray, an associate political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas.
The core functions of an AG’s office largely continue even though the majority of press releases lean more partisan, Gray said. But resources are finite.
"You have only so many lawyers who can only put in so many hours on things, and so if you have them taking on more of one thing, then they must be taking up less from the other,” Gray said.
National player
Paxton sued the Obama administration 17 times during the short period his time in office overlapped with the administration after he took over from Abbott as attorney general in 2015. Paxton later sued President Joe Biden’s administration over 100 times, including his failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
Now, many of the attorney general’s lawsuits feature anti-Muslim rhetoric. He has filed multiple lawsuits and launched investigations of a proposed Muslim-oriented housing development in North Texas formerly known as EPIC City.
The proposed housing community has faced national and state scrutiny. Paxton and other top Republicans in Texas accused the project developer of religious discrimination and imposing Sharia Law, a religious code which forms parts of Islamic traditions but is not legally enforceable in the United States.
The project’s developer, Community Capital Partners, has repeatedly denied the allegations. A spokesperson for the developer accused Paxton of anti-Muslim bias.
"His express reference to EPIC in official press materials confirms that this is not neutral or even-handed enforcement, but religious discrimination by the State," the spokesperson said.
Paxton’s statements about Muslims are not unlike what many Republican lawmakers in Congress have said. Two Texas Congressmen, Chip Roy and Keith Self, started a “Sharia Free America Caucus” that has 50 members from 22 states.
Abortion access, another key priority for Republicans at the national level, has also been the center of several of Paxton’s lawsuits and investigations. He has sued multiple out-of-state providers for allegedly mailing abortion pills to Texas in violation of state law, which bans most abortions and prohibits mailing or distributing abortion medication.
Democratic attorneys general in other states have also weighed in on abortion. California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Trump administration last year over the president’s executive order defunding Planned Parenthood, leading a coalition of 22 attorneys general and one governor.
Litigation has become a powerful tool for states looking to challenge federal policies, Nolette said. Attorneys general, often in multi-state coalitions, file their lawsuits in a district court with a sympathetic judge who will issue a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction blocking the policy in the lawsuit, he said.
“This has been an effective strategy in really frustrating and delaying at the very least, if not eventually killing policies coming from Washington,” Nolette said.
Attorneys general often claim the lawsuits’ purpose is related to states’ rights and federal overreach, he said.
“But in reality, it has a lot less to do with any sort of commitment to state authority and a lot more to do with the priorities of the national political coalition, whether Republican or Democratic,” Nolette said.
Greater impact
Prioritizing key national GOP issues has paid off for Paxton, who won Republican support in multiple elections despite his political scandals, including securities fraud charges that were later dropped and corruption allegations that led to a failed impeachment.
The lawsuits are meant to energize the Republican base, Deen said.
"He's not trying to reach Democrats,” she said. “He's not trying to reach moderates. He is feeding red meat to the folks who brought him."
Nolette said the partisan trend attorneys general have been following the past decade is concerning, especially for voters who aren’t aligned with those politics.
About 43% of Texans voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election according to Associated Press election results. That’s about the same number of registered Democrats in California according to the Public Policy Institute of California, which found in a September 2024 to July 2025 survey that about 45% of the state’s registered voters were Democrats. About a quarter of California voters were registered Republicans, and about 22% were registered as independents.
Taking a partisan approach as the chief legal officer for a state leaves other constituents unrepresented, he said.
"When an AG takes a very polarized approach, then that essentially alienates a very large percentage of the overall population of the state,” Nolette said.
Got a tip? Email Caroline Love at clove@kera.org.
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