Ken Paxton has spent almost the entirety of his decade leading the Office of the Texas Attorney General while also under felony indictment for alleged securities fraud. Yet, like every other time Paxton has faced allegations of wrongdoing, including misuse of office, retaliatory firings, and criminal misdeeds, he has once again managed to evade real punishment. By no small measure, this has been enabled by Paxton’s masterful use of state resources to court (and to bolster) the influence of extremely well-funded conservative legal organizations and networks, at the expense of the public interests he is supposed to represent, and to defend.
Notable amongst these longstanding collaborations is Paxton’s use of public funds to promote the interests of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF).
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is part of of the State Policy Network (SPN), a national network of hard-right influence peddlers working on both the state and national level to advance extreme right-wing agenda items like defunding public education, gutting environmental regulation, and slashing taxes for the nation’s wealthiest people.
