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Independent, source-first accountability

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Issue record

Government accountability

Campaign positions remain attributed. Official actions are shown separately, with narrow relationship labels and limits.

Campaign positions

What each campaign says.

Ken Paxton

His campaign's issues page treats accountability as ending what it calls the weaponization of government and draining the swamp, alongside President Trump's legislative priorities, and separately as standing against Republicans it calls RINOs. It proposes no ethics, disclosure, term-limit or stock-trading measure. What his own account posts instead are actions of the office he heads: settlements, investigations and suits, including a settlement of over $1 billion with Meta in August 2026.

Ken Paxton for Senate X Office of the Attorney General of Texas

James Talarico

His campaign makes this the first thing he says he would legislate: an anti-corruption package banning super PACs and corporate PACs, banning partisan gerrymandering through independent commissions, passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, banning congressional stock trading, term limits of six House terms and two Senate terms, required annual town halls, an end to presidential pardons, and Supreme Court term limits with a binding code of conduct.

Talarico for Texas

Ted Brown

His campaign's accountability material is about executive power and the courts: require congressional approval of every executive order and emergency declaration before it takes effect, sunset all emergency authorities, protect habeas corpus, abolish civil asset forfeiture, end mandatory minimum sentences, require judges to tell jurors they may judge the law, and end qualified immunity for police officers.

Ted Brown Election Committee

Evidence timeline

Where statements meet the record.

  1. campaign position

    Ken Paxton: record does not settle this

    His campaign's issues page and its biography page both give a number for the suits he brought against the Biden administration. The Office of the Attorney General publishes no docket and no ledger of the suits it has filed. Its newsroom is the only list it offers and it is a paginated index of press releases, ten to a page, which returned page one unchanged whether a search term or a larger page size was requested, so it cannot be filtered to suits against one administration and is not a count of filings in any case. The office's own biography carries two related numbers and neither is this one: it says he filed 27 lawsuits against the Obama administration during a two-year stretch, and that he has "obtained an injunction or other winning ruling in more than 75 percent of the cases he's brought against the federal government". The one countable ledger the office does publish is its opinion series, which counts written opinions and not suits. His own account of the litigation is on his campaign account in general terms: "When the Corrupt Biden Administration came for us, I took them to court and I won." Limit: What would settle it is a docket: a list of cases filed by the State of Texas against federal defendants over a stated period, from the courts rather than from the office's press releases. This desk did not read federal court dockets, and it is recording that it did not, rather than counting press releases and calling the result a check. Nothing here says the claim is wrong, and nothing here says it is right.

    Ken Paxton for Senate Ken Paxton for Senate Office of the Attorney General of Texas Office of the Attorney General of Texas Office of the Attorney General of Texas X

  2. campaign position

    Ted Brown: Not comparable yet

    His campaign site states what he says he would do with the seat. There is no comparable official action to set beside it. He has held no office: a search of the Legislative Reference Library's member index returns 45 Texas legislators whose surname begins Brown and none of them is him, and the attorney general's opinion index, which reaches back to 1939, does not include him. What the official record does carry is the candidacy itself. The FEC's candidate index records him as a Libertarian candidate for this Senate seat in 2024 and again in 2026, and the Texas Secretary of State's final ballot certification of August 28, 2026 places him on the November 3, 2026 ballot as the Libertarian candidate. Limit: A pledge about future votes cannot be checked against a record that does not exist. He has never held office, so this desk records the pledge and the absence of any comparable action, and nothing more. That absence is not a finding about him; it is what a candidacy without office looks like in the official record.

    Ted Brown Election Committee Legislative Reference Library of Texas Office of the Attorney General of Texas Federal Election Commission Texas Secretary of State

  3. official action

    Ken Paxton: Matches stated record claim

    His campaign account says he secured a settlement of $1 billion with Meta in the week before the post, and separately that he secured $1.4 billion from the same company in 2024 over personal data. The office's own release of August 26, 2026 says it: "Attorney General Ken Paxton secured over $1 billion as part of a historic settlement with Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”) to protect Texas children online." The same release records the earlier figure he cites and a third: it calls this "the third settlement worth over $1 billion that Attorney General Paxton has secured from Big Tech companies" and states that he previously secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta over facial-recognition data and a $1.375 billion settlement with Google. It also records what the settlement requires of the company beyond money, including age assurance, a daily two-hour limit for teenage users and notifications disabled by default during school hours. This is official action by the office he heads, and it is a settlement, not a vote, a sponsorship or a cosponsorship. Limit: Both figures he gives are in his office's own release, and the release is the office's account of its own work rather than a court record: this desk did not read the settlement agreement, any court filing, or any docket. What kind of action this was matters for how it is read here. A settlement is an exercise of the attorney general's litigating authority, not a recorded vote or a sponsorship, so it cannot be set beside a roll call the way a legislator's record can. Whether Texas has received any of the money, and whether the safeguards have been put in place, are questions about administration that this card does not assess.

    X X Office of the Attorney General of Texas

  4. official action

    James Talarico: Matches stated record claim

    His campaign's corruption page makes a claim about his own funding and dates it to his first race. His Senate committee's filings through June 30, 2026 itemize $348,408.24 of receipts from political committees, and not one of those committees is recorded by the FEC under the organization type Corporation or the type Trade Association. What the money is instead, on the FEC's own classification, is $147,000.00 from 29 leadership PACs, $83,000.00 from 19 labor-organization PACs, $58,500.00 from 13 hybrid PACs, $9,500.00 from 6 other candidates' committees, $7,750.00 from 3 membership-organization PACs, $25,308.24 from 6 committees the FEC carries without an organization type, and $17,350.00 from 16 committees the filing lists without an FEC id at all. The FEC summary records no party-committee contribution to the committee. Limit: On the FEC's own classification the filing bears the claim out for this committee and this cycle: no itemized contribution from a committee the FEC records as connected to a corporation. The check is only as fine as that classification, and two rows are where it is weakest. Six committees, holding $25,308.24, are carried by the FEC with no organization type, and sixteen, holding $17,350.00, are state or local committees the filing lists without an FEC id, so the FEC classifies them not at all. The claim is dated to his first Texas House race in 2017 and this check covers only his federal committee's 2025-2026 filings; his Texas state filings are a separate jurisdiction and were not read. Unitemized receipts are not in this check at all.

    Talarico for Texas Federal Election Commission Federal Election Commission

  5. official action

    Ted Brown: Matches stated record claim

    The banner at the top of every part of his campaign site makes a claim about his funding. The filings record no political-committee money at all. The FEC's cycle summary for TED BROWN ELECTION COMMITTEE through June 30, 2026 records $0.00 in contributions from other political committees and $0.00 from party committees, and the itemized schedules carry no such receipt to group. Of $7,459.52 in receipts for the cycle, $5,000.00 is a contribution from the candidate himself and $2,459.52 is from individuals, of which $1,150.00 is itemized and $1,309.52 is not. Limit: The checkable part of the banner is the funding, and the filing bears it out completely for this cycle: no committee money of any kind. Two bounds sit beside it. A committee this small itemizes little, so the check has almost nothing to classify rather than a classification that came back clean; and the word "beholden" is about influence, which no filing measures and this card does not assess. His largest single receipt is his own $5,000.

    Ted Brown Election Committee Federal Election Commission Federal Election Commission

  6. official action

    Ken Paxton: Matches stated record claim

    His campaign biography says the political establishment has repeatedly tried to silence him and that he never yielded to it; his issues page puts the same claim as a politically motivated investigation of him and of President Trump. Both chambers acted on him in 2023 and both were Republican-held. On May 27, 2023 the Texas House adopted H.R. 2377, impeaching him and preferring 20 articles, by 121 yeas to 23 nays with 2 present and not voting (Record 2191); the Journal accounts for 149 members, 85 Republicans and 64 Democrats, and of the 121 yeas 60 were Republicans and 61 Democrats, while all 23 nays were Republicans. He was then out of the office: the attorney general's own opinion index records John Scott serving as provisional attorney general from May 31 to July 14, 2023 and Angela Colmenero from July 14 to September 16, 2023, in each case "Pursuant to article 15, section 5 of the Texas Constitution". The Senate tried 16 of the 20 articles and acquitted on every one on September 16, 2023. The presiding officer stated on the record that conviction on a single article would remove him and that the threshold was 21 votes; no article drew more than 14. The Senate then had 31 members, 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats, and 30 votes were recorded on each article; Senator Angela Paxton, the respondent's wife, is not among the members whose votes the record carries. On each of the twelve articles that drew 14 yeas those yeas were the chamber's 12 Democrats and 2 Republicans and all 16 nays were Republicans; Article IV drew 2 yeas to 28 nays, Article VIII 8 to 22, Article IX 12 to 18 and Article V 13 to 17. The four articles held in abeyance, XI to XIV, were dismissed 19 to 11 on Senator Birdwell's motion, and the judgment records that "A dismissal of these articles of impeachment does not constitute an acquittal of any charge contained in the articles of impeachment". The judgment reinstated him the same day and he holds the office now. Limit: What the record bears out is the checkable part of the sentence: formal proceedings were brought against him, they kept him out of the office for the 108 days between May 31 and September 16, 2023, he contested them rather than resigning, and they ended in acquittal on every article tried. The record calls that a suspension, not a removal, and this desk uses the same word on both cards that touch it. What no record can settle is the rest of the sentence, whether the proceedings were corrupt or were an attempt to silence him. That is a claim about motive and this site does not assess motive, in either direction. Two things are stated here so the record is not read as an argument: the chamber that brought the articles and the chamber that acquitted were both Republican-held, and the party split of each vote is given above. The dismissal of the four remaining articles is carried in the words of the judgment because the judgment itself says a dismissal is not an acquittal. This desk read the trial rules only as the record of proceedings quotes them, and did not read the articles' underlying allegations or any evidence.

    Ken Paxton for Senate Ken Paxton for Senate Texas Legislature Online Texas House of Representatives Legislative Reference Library of Texas Office of the Attorney General of Texas Office of the Attorney General of Texas Texas Senate Legislative Reference Library of Texas

  7. official action

    James Talarico: Matches stated record claim

    His campaign's corruption page republishes his post of the day of the vote, which states what the vote was and what it did. The first two sentences are exact. The House adopted H.R. 2377 on May 27, 2023 by 121 yeas to 23 nays with 2 present and not voting (Record 2191), he is recorded among the yeas, and the majority was bipartisan on the record's own arithmetic: of the 121 yeas 61 were Democrats and 60 were Republicans, and all 23 nays were Republicans, in a chamber the Journal accounts for as 85 Republicans and 64 Democrats. The third sentence is not borne out. Impeachment by the House did not remove him; it suspended him pending trial, and the office's own record says so in the only words it uses for it: the attorney general's opinion index records John Scott as provisional attorney general from May 31 to July 14, 2023 and Angela Colmenero from July 14 to September 16, 2023, in each case "Pursuant to article 15, section 5 of the Texas Constitution", the provision the Senate's judgment also cites. Removal required conviction by the Senate. The presiding officer stated on the record that conviction on one article removes him and that 21 votes were needed; on September 16, 2023 the Senate acquitted on all 16 articles it tried, no article drawing more than 14 yeas, dismissed the four held in abeyance, and the judgment reinstated him. He has held the office since. That Senate was Republican-held too: 31 members, 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats, with Senator Angela Paxton not among the thirty whose votes the record carries, and on every article that drew 14 yeas those yeas were the chamber's 12 Democrats and 2 Republicans while all 16 nays were Republicans. Limit: The claim he makes about his own record is borne out exactly: he voted to impeach, and the majority was bipartisan by the roll call's own count. One clause of the post, "Ken Paxton is hereby removed from office", is not a claim about his record at all but about the respondent's status, and it is worth setting beside what the record shows. The vote suspended rather than removed: the attorney general was out of the office for 108 days while two other people held it, and removal is the penalty a conviction imposes, which the Senate declined. He posted this on the day of the House vote, months before that acquittal. What the record shows the vote did is suspend, not remove. The check read the source the campaign itself cites, which is the post as the campaign republishes it today on its own issues page, the House Journal for that day, the Senate's record of proceedings and judgment, and the attorney general's own opinion index, which is where the office states who held it and under what authority. What the check cannot see is what he understood at the moment he posted, and the Senate had not yet voted; this desk takes no view on that, and the point of carrying the card is that the sentence is still published on the campaign's own site three years after the acquittal. The Texas Constitution's own text was read only as the official records quote it, because the state's statutes site would not serve the article to an automated reader. Both chambers here were Republican-held and both party splits are given above.

    Talarico for Texas Texas Legislature Online Texas House of Representatives Legislative Reference Library of Texas Office of the Attorney General of Texas Office of the Attorney General of Texas Texas Senate Legislative Reference Library of Texas

  8. official action

    Ken Paxton: Matches stated record claim

    His campaign biography sums up his time in the Legislature in one sentence. The service half is exact. The Legislative Reference Library records him in House District 70 from January 14, 2003 to January 8, 2013, in the 78th, 79th, 80th, 81st and 82nd Legislatures, and in Senate District 8 from January 8, 2013 to January 13, 2015, in the 83rd, where a footnote records that he drew a two-year term in the January 23, 2013 drawing. What he did there is countable too: the library's bill search records 280 bills and resolutions with him as author across those six legislatures and their called sessions, 46 of which carry a last action recording that they took effect, and a further 37 he carried as the other chamber's sponsor, 25 of which took effect. The ranking half is not in any official record. It is an assessment by organisations outside the Legislature, and no Texas legislative source scores a member. Limit: The label attaches to the half a record can settle: he served in both chambers, for the districts and across the years the sentence implies, and the legislative record of that service is substantial. The other half, that he was consistently ranked among the most conservative lawmakers, is a third-party rating and this desk checked no rating publication, so it is neither confirmed nor doubted here. Counts of authored bills are as the library records them and include resolutions; a bill that took effect is not necessarily one he carried alone.

    Ken Paxton for Senate Legislative Reference Library of Texas Legislative Reference Library of Texas Legislative Reference Library of Texas

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