Office needs a scrub
It’s high time for tough questions to be asked of Paxton on how he’s conducting business.
Every Republican official in Texas with a functioning conscience knows what should be done with our long-indicted, oft-accused, hitherto unaccountable Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Yes, that includes you, Texas Senate Finance Chairwoman Jane Nelson and you, influential Houston state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, both members of the powerful committee that will question Paxton’s agency this week in a legislative hearing.
Paxton should be scrubbed from the Office of Attorney General with the thoroughness one applies to disinfecting any other contaminated surface.
Any number of disinfectants might work against the stains left by a man who has managed to avoid trial for five long years on securities fraud charges and finally last year saw seven of his own top aides at the AG’s office allege that Paxton committed bribery and abuse of office in his efforts to help a campaign donor.
A unanimous call by top GOP officials to pressure him to resign would be nice. Better yet, impeachment and conviction by the Texas Legislature. And finally, if necessary, an electoral trouncing by a well-funded challenger with some scruples.
Let us say for the record that this editorial board calls on Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan — all Republicans — to take any other measures that will protect Texans from further lawlessness, scandal and shame at the hands of Paxton.
Alas, while some of our brave statewide Republicans have expressed concern for Paxton’s alleged transgressions, they don’t seem willing, just now, to dirty their hands with the task of attempting to oust him.
For now, the most prominent Republican to call for Paxton’s resignation is Congressman Chip Roy, who criticized the AG for attacking the staffers who had alleged wrongdoing. Roy said Paxton should step down “for the good of the people of Texas.”
There you have it, from yet another former Paxton staffer.
As for impeachment, it’s rare in Texas, and rarer still when the party of the accused holds power. As for an electoral comeuppance, that can’t happen soon. While a couple of potentially promising Republican and Democrat challengers have been mentioned, they won’t get their chance until 2022 when Paxton is up for re-election.
So, here we are, stuck with an alleged lawbreaker as our top law enforcer, forced to watch as he saps from his office and from this proud state, more attention, more taxpayer money and more dignity with each passing day.
That’s not to say we don’t have faith in the FBI investigation into Paxton that’s reportedly underway or the whistleblower litigation brought by several of his accusers. But, for now, the most expedient elixir we can hope for seems to be that trusty old disinfectant, sunshine.
We were intrigued when the Chronicle’s Jeremy Wallace reported Monday that lawmakers, in a draft budget, proposed to slash Paxton’s request for funding by $89 million and cut more than 150 positions.
Our spirits brightened further when Bettencourt, the Houston Republican, was quoted saying of Paxton’s office: “We have a lot of questions that need to be asked.”
Indeed. Ideally, Paxton, who maintains his innocence, would be there to answer them. But considering his chief legal strategies of delay and obfuscation aren’t consistent with open, honest public testimony, we won’t hold our breath on that one, either.
And considering Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, is a member of the generally collegial body, we don’t expect fireworks.
What we do expect is some whiff of accountability in the only form we can get it: tough, straightforward, long-overdue questions about how Paxton is conducting business at the one of the nation’s largest attorney general offices and how he’s spending the people’s money.
In January, the Associated Press reported that Paxton was seeking tens of millions in state money to hire outside lawyers to handle massive antitrust litigation against Google — a job his top lawyers surely could have done if they hadn’t left the agency after accusing him of bribery.
We caution lawmakers against withholding funding that the office genuinely needs. We were glad to see Sen. Nelson, the finance chair, say she didn’t want victim services cut. But we welcome targeted hits to Paxton’s ego-boosting agenda of high-profile, headline-grabbing lawsuits that don’t directly serve everyday Texans.
Other than the FBI and the courts, lawmakers this session might be the only check Texans can hope for on a public official who has become a malignancy on honest, effective government: a man elected to uphold the law who instead believes he is above it.
One day after receiving her first dose of Moderna’s COVID vaccine, Luz Legaspi, 72, woke up with bruises on her arms and legs, and blisters that bled inside her mouth.
She was hospitalized in New York City that day, Jan. 19, with a severe case of immune thrombocytopenia — a lack of platelets, a blood component essential for clotting.
The same condition led to the death in January of Dr. Gregory Michael, 56, an obstetrician in Miami Beach whose symptoms appeared three days after he received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
It is not known whether this blood disorder is related to the COVID vaccines. More than 31 million people in the United States have received at least one dose, and 36 similar cases had been reported to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, VAERS, by the end of January. The cases involved either the PfizerBioNTech or Moderna vaccine, the only two authorized so far for emergency use in the United States.
But the reporting system shows only problems described by health care providers or patients after vaccination and does not indicate whether the shots actually caused the problems.
Officials with the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that they were looking into the reports, but that so far, rates of the condition in vaccinated people did not appear higher than the rates normally found in the U.S. population, so the cases could be coincidental.
In a statement, Pfizer said: “We take reports of adverse events very seriously” and added it was aware of thrombocytopenia cases in vaccine recipients.
Moderna also provided a statement, which did not address the question of the platelet disorder but said the company “continuously monitors the safety of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine using all sources of data” and routinely shares safety information with regulators.
Hematologists with expertise in treating immune thrombocytopenia said they suspected that the vaccine did play a role. But they said cases after vaccination were likely to be exceedingly rare, possibly the result of an unknown predisposition in some people to react to the vaccine by developing an immune response that destroys their platelets.