Paxton (TX AG) renews demand for State House Speaker to resign

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, recently acquitted in an impeachment action, called on State House Speaker Dade Phelan to resign. He had done this once before, after Phelan apparently tried to preside over the House while intoxicated. Yesterday he called for Phelan’s resignation a second time, according to The Gateway Pundit.

Paxton and Phelan feuding

Paxton blames Phelan for his impeachment troubles, a thing Phelan cannot and apparently will not deny. Indeed Phelan lamented the acquittal, describing it loosely as a miscarriage of justice. The attorney general had faced twenty counts, all amounting essentially to embezzlement, favoritism, and honest-services fraud. The Senate refused to try four of the counts, considering them still pending in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Administrative Law Office. But in trying the other sixteen, the Senate acquitted Paxton.

Two X users shared video apparently showing Phelan trying to address the house while intoxicated.

In this incident, which occurred in May 2023, Phelan tries to speak, but slurs his words. That could be consistent either with intoxication or with a cerebral infarction (blood stop) or hemorrhage (internal bleed) – i.e., a stroke.

Today at 11:51 a.m. CDT, the Attorney General published this long-form X post:

Aside from the word-slurring incident, Paxton accused Phelan of:

• Setting up his impeachment from political motives,
• Killing a border security measure (presumably part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star), and
• “Empower[ing] an Obama lawyer to stop conservative legislation.”

The full meaning of that last is not clear. What is clear is that these, not the intoxication incident, are the Attorney General’s real grievances.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called the impeachment “a waste of time” that “should never have happened.” Likewise, the Texas Nationalist Movement lambasted the State House, calling it dysfunctional and antagonistic to the people of Texas.