Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tests positive for COVID-19
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has tested positive for COVID-19 and is working from home, his office said Wednesday.
Paxton’s communications office declined to address questions about his vaccination status.
Paxton joins other high-profile Texas politicians in contracting COVID-19, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who credited his “brief and mild” illness in August to his status as fully vaccinated, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is fully vaccinated and boosted and tested positive in late December, experiencing mild symptoms before testing negative on New Year’s Day.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Allen West, the former state Republican Party chairman who is challenging Abbott in the March 1 primary, was less fortunate when he was briefly hospitalized with COVID-19 in October. West had not been vaccinated.
And U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, who is one of three Republicans challenging Paxton in the March primary, tested positive in July 2020, before vaccines were available. Gohmert’s infection was found during routine testing before he was set to travel with then-President Donald Trump. At the time he said he had no symptoms but would take hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug touted by Trump as a possible cure but rejected by researchers as ineffective.
Before Wednesday’s announcement, Paxton’s role in the pandemic was largely focused on fighting safety requirements he attacked as government overreach.
Using his position as the state government’s top lawyer, Paxton has filed a series of lawsuits to overturn COVID-19 vaccine mandates by the Biden administration and local governments in Texas.
Most recently, Paxton asked a federal judge in Tyler to block a Defense Department policy requiring National Guard troops to receive the vaccine, arguing that the requirement improperly stepped on Abbott’s authority over state troops.
That Jan. 4 lawsuit came one day after Paxton prevailed challenging a Biden administration rule requiring COVID-19 vaccines for staff and volunteers in the Head Start early education program. The Lubbock federal judge’s injunction also blocked a Head Start mask mandate.
Paxton also has turned to the courts to defend Abbott’s executive orders barring mask mandates in school districts, cities and counties.
Several trial judges and intermediate appellate courts have upheld the power of local officials and schools to require masks to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Paxton’s appeals have put several of those cases before the Texas Supreme Court.