{"id":12113,"date":"2025-08-06T21:46:40","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ken-paxton-launches-investigation-into-beto-orourke-led-group-over-texas-quorum-break\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T21:46:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:46:40","slug":"ken-paxton-launches-investigation-into-beto-orourke-led-group-over-texas-quorum-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ken-paxton-launches-investigation-into-beto-orourke-led-group-over-texas-quorum-break\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Paxton launches investigation into Beto O\u2019Rourke-led group over Texas quorum break"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into a political organization led by former presidential candidate Beto O\u2019Rourke for allegedly helping Texas Democrats block newly proposed congressional maps.<\/p>\n

In a Wednesday afternoon press release, Paxton said the O\u2019Rourke-led group, Powered by People, may have violated bribery, campaign finance and abuse of office laws, citing \u201cpublic reports\u201d that Powered by People was \u201cbankrolling\u201d the Texas House Democrats.<\/p>\n

The organization\u2019s purported involvement in helping fund Democrats\u2019 out-of-state travels was first reported<\/a> by The Texas Tribune, which Blue Light News has not independently confirmed.<\/p>\n

Powered by People did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Paxton \u2014 a Republican who is also primarying Sen. John Cornyn<\/a> (R-Texas) \u2014 has vowed to seek the expulsion<\/a> of Democratic state lawmakers who fled the state this weekend to prevent the legislature from hitting quorum, preventing Republicans from passing a gerrymandered congressional map that could give the party as many as five more House seats in the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott attempted to accelerate the process by filing an emergency petition against Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu with the state\u2019s Supreme Court on Tuesday. But Paxton and Abbott face legal and procedural hurdles<\/a> as they attempt to force Democrats back to the state for the special session called by Abbott last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas cannot be bought. I look forward to thoroughly reviewing all of the documents and communications obtained throughout this investigation,\u201d Paxton said in the press release. \u201cThese jet-setting runaways have already lost public trust by abandoning our state, and Texans deserve to know if they received illegal bribes to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paxton also said he had issued a \u201cRequest to Examine,\u201d requiring the organization to supply his office with documents and communications related to its alleged involvement in the quorum break.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into a political organization led by former presidential candidate Beto O\u2019Rourke for allegedly helping Texas Democrats block newly proposed congressional maps. In a Wednesday afternoon press release, Paxton said the O\u2019Rourke-led group, Powered by People, may have violated bribery, campaign finance and abuse of office laws, citing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}