NBC News said that Garza last week announced a strong television ad attacking Paxton’s anti-abortion extremism. “Sometimes criminals carry guns to rob you on the streets,” the ad’s narrator states. “Sometimes they carry briefcases to rob you of your personal freedoms. Texas needs an attorney general who’ll protect us from both.” The ad states her defense of “children and families,” pointing to when she challenged the previous administration’s attempt to block a migrant minor in U.S. from an abortion.
“She eventually won, and it led to the ‘Garza Notice,’ which requires that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which detains unaccompanied immigrant minors, make them aware of their right to abortion without retaliation and obstruction,” Prism’s Tina Vasquez reported in May.
Paxton, who has obsessively used the courts to block immigration policy while literally running away from a process server related to his own litigation, had sided with the previous administration’s efforts. Since the right-wing court’s decision overturning national abortion rights, Paxton “has promised aggressive enforcement of the state’s near-total ban, which doesn’t offer exemptions for victims of rape or incest,” The Dallas Morning News reported. Recent polling conducted by BSP Research for NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Latino Victory Project found that more than 70% of Latino voters said they wouldn’t vote for a candidate supportive of a national abortion ban.
“We’re fighting tooth and nail because we know what’s at stake,” Garza told NBC News. “All of the factors are there for us—the fall of Roe, the fact that the demographics of this state have changed so significantly. I’m the only Latina in the statewide race. People across the state see themselves in my campaign.”
“Matt Rinaldi, Republican Party of Texas chairman, said in a statement that Paxton has been a Texas and national leader,” NBC News reported. Rinaldi is a former state lawmaker who infamously called deportation agents on demonstrators who were protesting the state’s discriminatory “show me your papers” law. State Rep. Ramon Romero said at the time that Rinaldi “saw a bunch of people who look Latino, and he assumed they were undocumented.”
Rinaldi got the boot from voters the following year, and is now trying to help another terrible Republican stay in office. That’s the kind of people that Paxton hangs around.
Something like the disgraceful office of the former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the office of Paxton also apparently dismissed a number of trafficking cases “because they were ‘unable to locate victim,’” the Associated Press reported last month. Like Paxton, Arpaio was so obsessed with anti-immigrant shenanigans that his office failed to investigate hundreds of alleged sex crimes, some involving children. That Republicans continue to insist they’re the party of law and order would be hilarious if it weren’t so fucking serious. “The absolute gall of Paxton to talk about the ‘Rule of Law in America!’ when, again, he’s arguably one of the most corrupt politicians in the country,” America’s Voice recently said. Ken Paxton needs to go.
“This is an important time in our history—not just in Texas, but across the country,” Garza told Prism in May. “I know that folks are tired. I’ve been there. Over the years, I’ve been so tired, fighting for everyday Texans and representing families that were separated at the border. It’s okay to feel tired, but we can’t relent. We have a vision for a better Texas—one that makes room for everyone.”
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