One For The Ken-Heads

Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

For us connoisseurs of corruption, aficionados of the amoral, the allegations against Ken Paxton are sort of like uncorking a rare bottle of wine.

It’s not often that you get a scandal with such a mixture of clumsiness and malice, of incompetence and (alleged) corruption. But that’s what we have in Ken Paxton, in some ways a personification of where the political right currently stands.

By day, Paxton and his team at the Texas Office of the Attorney General sued to support Trump — in one case, filing a famous, last-ditch, unsuccessful bid to have the Supreme Court order Pennsylvania and other states to say that Trump won the 2020 election. But in his free time, as alleged by a group of former employee of his and this week by the Texas House General Investigating Committee, he’s an unparalleled friend.

Take what he did for his purported longtime buddy and political benefactor, Austin real estate investor Nate Paul. I’ll have more about this on Monday, but Paul had a problem with the FBI — he was under investigation. He called on his friend Paxton to investigate the investigators, so to speak: use the Texas AG’s office to probe the FBI agents and federal prosecutors examining Paul.

Paxton eventually pulled that off. It’s kind of a miniature version of what Trump wanted to do with the DOJ, but in Texas. It’s also incredibly ham-handed, and remains unclear why Paxton was willing to go to such lengths to help his friend.
 

More next week and more on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Josh Kovensky

Demagogues All The Way Down

There’s a phantom haunting the greater New York City area — and it has a Queens accent.

It’s fear of migrants, as NYC Mayor Eric Adams tries to do the same thing to surrounding communities that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott did to NYC — ship undocumented migrants off so that what’s become a humanitarian issue is no longer his problem.

What’s happened, however, is that local demagogues as ridiculous as GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa have managed to stoke fear about the issue with typically bizarre and unfounded claims, leading at least one town to ban migrants altogether. What does that mean? Even they barely know!

Keep on eye on TPM’s homepage next week for more. 

— Josh Kovensky

A Couple Of Dems Are Trying To Get Ahead Of An AI-Generated Misinfo Flood In 2024
 

In May, Rep. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and a trio of Senate Democrats — partly in response to a dystopic artificial-intelligence-generated RNC ad — introduced legislation that would expand the current disclosure requirements, mandating that AI-generated content be identified in political ads.

In an interview with TPM, Clarke said she is concerned about the spread of misinformation through AI-generated political ads, coupled with the fact that a growing number of people can deploy the powerful AI technology rapidly and with minimal cost.

“It’s important that for our credibility as a democracy that we not leave ourselves open to any type of ploys that could ultimately cause harm, disrupt an election, build on the distrust that’s already out there given the political dynamics of previous elections,” Clarke told TPM.

Congress has recently shown interest in the topic but has largely stayed away from addressing the implications of AI for democracy, including for the upcoming 2024 election. And there hasn’t been any public support for the bill from the GOP caucus — at least not yet. Clarke, who believes the bills should be a bipartisan effort, is worried the recently emboldened right-wing in the House might block the bill’s path forward.

“There’s some folks who see the political discourse between the Democrats and Republicans as a war,” Clarke told TPM. “And they may feel like they’re being disarmed if they in any way create some sort of guardrails or rules of the road — especially those who speak so vociferously about First Amendment rights.”

— Emine Yücel

“The members are reminded to abide by decorum of the House.”

That’s what the MAGA-aligned conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who was presiding over a House session on Wednesday, said right before House Democrats broke out in laughter.

I probably don’t need to explain this but coming from the queen of breaking House decorum that’s, well, … ironic. She heckled President Biden at not one but two of his State of the Union addresses. I won’t even get into her day-to-day trolling or any of her outrageous committee hearing behavior this year.

FYI: Republicans were laughing too. 

— Emine Yücel