They're trying to make an example out of us

Why we've got to stand and fight when so many others bend the knee

For fighting the attempt to gerrymander five congressional seats in Texas, I have been accused of bribery by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

I also face criminal contempt charges related to his bribery accusation. And if that were not enough, Paxton is now trying to shut down the voter registration and voting rights organization I founded. Our Texas-based assets have been frozen, and the AG has gone so far as to indicate that my personal assets could be frozen as well.

We’ve racked up over $300,000 in legal fees over the last two weeks, and counting.

And, if Paxton’s requests are granted in full, I will be locked up in the Tarrant County jail before long.

You might wonder what laws I’ve broken to incur the full legal wrath of the State of Texas.

Me too.

But, as you’ll see, it turns out that this has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with Paxton’s attempt to decimate the opposition party before the next elections, improve his prospects in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate and divert attention from his own legal challenges.

Here’s why Paxton is coming after me, our organization, our volunteers and ultimately the voters of the state of Texas.

I run Powered by People, one of the largest voter registration organizations in the country. Over the last six years, our volunteers have helped register hundreds of thousands of Texas voters. This is no small thing. Texas is the toughest state in the nation for people to join the rolls. There is no online voter registration, no automatic voter registration and no same-day voter registration here. And the laws surrounding the few available means of getting registered are onerous and confusing.

Our in-person, volunteer-driven registration program has worked to overcome these challenges, and our focus on young voters has proven particularly effective. In 2024, the young Texans we helped register voted at a rate of 79%. The national average for this demographic is 42%.

One of our great volunteers Aimee, working with first-time voters in Houston.

Our volunteers have also done important work outside of elections and politics.

During the pandemic, for example, when demand at food pantries was high and the availability of traditional, older, volunteers was low, Powered by People volunteers took on more than 17,000 shift hours at food banks across the state and donated more than $200,000 to their operations. We provided a critical stop gap for our fellow Texans, regardless of party or any other difference between us.

Powered by People volunteers at the El Paso food bank in 2020.

The next year, during the 2021 Texas power grid failure, our volunteers made more than a million phone calls to senior citizens across the state to connect them with warming centers, clean drinking water, food and transportation. We also raised more than $1.4 million and donated every penny of it to local programs throughout the affected parts of Texas to provide shelter, water and assistance to people and communities who bore the brunt of this man-made disaster.

While Senator Ted Cruz was at the Ritz Carlton in Cancun, while energy pipeline companies were making billions in obscene and illegal price gouging profits, while the governor and those in power were hapless and impotent, our volunteers once again stepped up to help those in need.

In addition to our work registering people to vote and helping them in both natural and man-made disasters, we have also aggressively organized Texans in the fight for greater voting rights. Our thinking: how are we going to make things better for one another over the long haul if so many millions of our fellow citizens are locked out of the political process? Because Texas is the toughest in the nation in which to vote and register to vote, it’s critical that we do everything we can to elevate voting rights to the forefront of the state and national conversation.

This includes testifying at hearings, organizing rallies and protests, and making the issue central to elections at all levels of government. In 2021 we helped organize support for Democratic Texas lawmakers as they fought a series of anti-voter election bills being considered by the Republican majority. Our support included holding rallies at the Capitol, connecting citizens with opportunities to testify to legislators and raising more than $600,000 in donations to help Democratic lawmakers as they used one of their only points of leverage in the minority: breaking quorum to deprive their Republican colleagues the numbers necessary to steamroll the legislation through. Though the Democrats eventually returned and reestablished quorum, the attention they brought to the issue resulted in some positive changes to these otherwise anti-democratic voting laws.

We faced no legal challenges to any of this work, including supporting the quorum break in 2021, because we were doing what you’re supposed to do in a democracy: use our first amendment rights to advocate for the changes we want to see. We vigorously contested the clear efforts to reduce voting rights and the political power of our fellow Texans and used legal, peaceful and democratic means to fight for what we knew to be right.

But when we did the same thing earlier this month – that is, raise money to support the legal, democratic tactic of a quorum break to oppose anti-voter legislation – we were met with this blizzard of bizarre charges from the Attorney General’s office (bribery, criminal contempt, deceptive trade practices, etc. etc.).

What changed between 2021 and 2025?

Two things.

First, unlike 2021, today Paxton and the larger MAGA movement are panicking over the prospect that Democrats could win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

It’s the sole reason that President Donald Trump asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott to find him these five Congressional seats. He understands that he and his administration are deeply unpopular and that he is on the path to a crushing electoral defeat in 2026.

A survey from YouGov and The Economist conducted this month found 47% of Americans strongly disapprove of Trump (only 23% strongly approve). His overall approval rating is quickly descending to levels that come close to matching his numbers prior to the midterm blowout he suffered in 2018.

On his signature policy issues, he’s doing even worse. A July Gallup poll found only 38% of Americans approve of his handling of immigration; 37% approve of his economic stewardship; and 29% approve of his oversight of the federal budget. And a more recent Pew poll shows just 32% of Americans support the tax and spending law that he refers to as the “Big Beautiful Bill.” It turns out people don’t like the government cutting Medicaid, transferring hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealthiest 1%, spending billions more on gestapo harassment of their neighbors and adding nearly $4 trillion to the national debt.

In other words, with numbers like these there is no chance Trump can hold the narrow majority he has in the House, especially since Democrats only need to pick up three seats to take the Speaker’s gavel. Unless he can change the fundamental dynamics of the 2026 election, there will soon be a check on his lawlessness, accountability for his crimes and corruption and the very real possibility that we’ll have something close to free and fair elections in 2028.

And so, through Trump’s henchmen in Texas –Paxton, Gov. Greg Abbott, and the Republican legislature – he is trying to radically alter the electoral math in his favor by redrawing five congressional districts, making it more likely that those Democratically-represented seats will be won by Republicans in 2026.

That’s what we were fighting by supporting Texas Democrats’ quorum break. Their courage in leaving the state – which opened them up to threats of violence, arrest and removal from office – not only focused national attention on Trump’s attempted power grab in Texas, it also provided the time and political will for other political leaders to act.

Just look at California. Moved by the injustice of the Texas power grab and the leadership shown by the Texas Democrats who left the state, Governor Gavin Newsom is now working to redraw California’s congressional maps, fighting fire with fire.

This is what Ken Paxton calls “bribery”.

But there’s another reason the Attorney General is weaponizing the full force of the state’s prosecutorial power against me and Powered by People.

Paxton is running for Senate.

After leading in early polling by as much as 17%, Paxton is now locked in a dead heat with incumbent Senator John Cornyn for the Republican primary nomination. (I also happen to be the highest polling Democrat who could face him in a potential Senate general election.) He clearly hopes that this political prosecution of me and Powered by People will shore up his support and raise money for his campaign and damage a potential opponent in the general election for U.S. Senate. That explains the desperate flurry of misleading press releases, media appearances and Twitter rants about me and these lawsuits.

(Note: the Fifteenth Court of Appeals are all conservative justices appointed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott.)

Well, maybe there’s a third thing.

Paxton has his very own, very real, legal challenges. He might want everyone to look the other way.

In 2015, for starters, he was indicted on state securities fraud. He just settled the case last year, agreeing to pay $300,000 to his victims, performing 100 hours of community service and taking fifteen hours of legal ethics education.

Then, in 2020, seven members of Paxton’s staff, including some of his top aides, called for him to be investigated for corruption “including improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal acts.”

That same year, after Joe Biden defeated Trump for President, Paxton filed the unsuccessful Texas v. Pennsylvania case in an effort to overturn the election and deny the will of the voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. The United States Supreme Court was not impressed with this obsequious attempt to both please Trump and steal a freely and fairly decided election and refused to hear the case. (As an additional consequence, the Texas State Bar filed a lawsuit in 2022 alleging Paxton made dishonest representations to the Supreme Court, but it was eventually dismissed by the Texas Supreme Court.)

It's worth noting that Paxton was also one of the headline speakers at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6^th 2021, immediately preceding the attempt to violently steal the previous year’s presidential election.

You’d think he’d slow down after his indictment, rebuke by the Supreme Court and the Texas Bar, but Paxton has only got one gear: corruption. It soon became widely known that Paxton was apparently trading favors from the AG’s office for benefits received from wealthy donors. The allegations were serious and substantiated to the degree that in 2023 he was impeached by a vote of 121-23 in the Texas House of Representatives. The articles of impeachment alleged that Paxton “gave preferential treatment to a political donor who bribed him, misapplied public resources and made false statements against whistleblowers, obstructed justice in the securities fraud trial against him, and made false statements regarding his financial interests.”

He was acquitted in the Texas Senate but it’s worth noting that he benefited from a series of unusually corrupt interventions on his behalf. The presiding judge during his trial, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, took $3 million from a pro-Paxton group in the lead-up to the deliberations on the impeachment charges. Millions more were spent to influence other Senators before they voted. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the “fix was in from the start and that Mr. Patrick lobbied his fellow GOP Senators to unite against the House articles of impeachment.”

Now this summer, we’ve learned that Paxton claimed as his primary residence three separate houses, allowing him to illegally lock in low interest rates. These lower rates saved the Paxtons tens of thousands of dollars in loan payments. Paxton also received an improper homestead tax break on two of those homes. To be clear, it is both a federal and a state crime to make false statements on mortgage documents and it is illegal in Texas to take a homestead tax break on two separate properties.

Interestingly, Paxton’s AG office is tasked with investigating allegations of mortgage fraud. Also interesting: the Trump administration is aggressively pursuing mortgage fraud allegations against two of his political opponents in “far less serious circumstances” (Sen. Adam Schiff and New York AG Letitia James) and has now used mortgage fraud as the basis for his attempt to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.

This might help explain why Ken Paxton would rather divert public attention to me and Powered by People through this aggressive, frivolous and untruthful litigation than address his own very real and successful efforts to break the law, weaponize the justice system and do the political bidding of his patron, Donald Trump.

What Powered by People was doing by raising support for the Texas Democrats in this political fight – holding rallies and town halls, using social and traditional media to draw attention and persuade people to participate in the political process, encouraging people to donate to support the Democrats – is all protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. In fact, it is the most hallowed speech of all. Because, if we are unable to organize politically, if we are unable to freely contest political decisions, if we are unable to peacefully and democratically vie for political power, then we don’t live in a democracy at all.

Powered by People and I are political actors involved in a political contest that will determine the balance of power in the House of Representatives. There’s nothing more important than this fight at this moment.

If we lose the fight, if Trump can successfully rig the 2026 election before the first vote is cast, then I believe the consolidation of authoritarian power in his hands will be nearly unstoppable. That means more masked federal agents without badges or warrants sweeping our fellow Americans off the streets, more of Trump’s political opponents targeted for vengeance, intimidation and violence, and it means it is far more likely that a Republican majority Congress will roll out the red carpet for a Trump third term.

It is because Powered by People and I are fighting so fiercely that Paxton is trying to silence me, destroy our organization and put me behind bars. He fears our successful voter registration and turnout programs as well as our strong support of the Texas Democratic legislators. He fears the power of people should they be able to freely and fairly vote in future elections.

At a moment where seemingly every person and institution that has the power to fight Trump and his authoritarianism is instead bending the knee – Harvard, Columbia, Paramount/CBS, Paul Weiss, Zuckerberg/Meta, Bezos/Amazon and Cook/Apple, etc. – they will try to make examples out of those with the courage of their convictions in order to cow others into silence and complicity.

Which is all the more reason for us to fight.

And that’s what we’re going to do. Every day, with all we’ve got.

We’ve fought through every one of Paxton’s allegations in court and in the court of public opinion, sued him in El Paso County and now brought the fight to the 15th Court of Appeals, where this week we won a stay on Paxton’s weaponization of the state’s prosecutorial power.

We’ve continued to hold rallies, town hall meetings and registration drives. This summer, we’ve donated more than a million dollars to the Texas House Democratic Caucus, the Black Caucus and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, and our volunteers are out there right now registering more young Texans to vote and then staying in touch with them throughout the next fourteen months to make sure they do.

And if Paxton is successful in draining the remaining resources we use to run Powered by People through these expensive lawsuits, if he forces us to close our doors… we’ll open new ones, all across the state, all over the country.

We will continue the fight by whatever means necessary.

We’ll work with like-minded organizations focused on adding more active Democratic voters to the rolls; we’ll work with the Democrats in these newly drawn Texas districts, conceding nothing and even working to pick up seats currently held by Republicans (they can’t defy the political gravity of Trump’s sinking polls, especially since they had to lose Republican voters to create the newly drawn districts); we will take an active role in the national effort to stop authoritarianism and replace it with a government of the people that boldly delivers for everyone in this country.

Ken Paxton wants to make an example out of us, any one of us who dares defy this authoritarian power grab. So let’s decide that we’ll all be the example we need right now.

Do not give in. Do not give up. Do not submit, do not bend the knee. Fight until we win and then keep fighting so that Texas and this country never face this kind of authoritarianism again.