Texas is the latest battleground in Trump's war against voters [View all]

By Hayes Brown, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor

For years, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has easily ranked among the most destructively partisan and self-servingly venal elected officials in the country. And last week, he turned his sights on suppressing the votes of Texan Latinos this fall in the name of “election integrity.”

On Wednesday, Paxton’s office announced that it had carried out an undisclosed number of search warrants in several counties, including the one that houses San Antonio. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of America’s oldest Latino civil rights groups, says the raids targeted several of its members. In doing so, Paxton has tipped his hand about his determination to undercut voting rights this fall — and potentially made an enemy of the very people the GOP needs to win.

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Paxton’s latest stunt goes further, though, indicating a newfound focus on suppressing the work of an organization rather than disparate individuals. His office’s statement last week asserted that the searches were the result of a two-year investigation of supposed “allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting” in the 2022 election but did not specify the targets of the raids or why specific homes were raided. The GOP wound up winning all of the counties where the claim that was sent to Paxton originated, but they are also in south Texas, a region that showed mixed results overall in the midterms.

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Even with years of conservatives’ narrowing the Voting Rights Act’s scope, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division can flex plenty of muscle if it believes a state has moved to suppress a minority group’s vote. Paxton may have thought that LULAC would be easy pickings or that the searches he authorized would subdue its efforts to get Latinos to the voting booth this fall. But given the response so far, I don’t think this is the fight that Paxton wanted — or one that he has much of a chance of winning.

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Please, please, please let the DOJ Civil Rights Division smack down the little weasel. LULAC endorsed Harris/Walz - first time in 95 years.