Running 🏃 For The Texas GOP Primary

 Ken Paxton goes for the headlines:

“Democrats have abandoned their offices by fleeing Texas, and a failure to respond to a call of the House constitutes a dereliction of their duty as elected officials,” Paxton said in a statement. “Starting Friday, any rogue lawmakers refusing to return to the House will be held accountable for vacating their office.”

The large print giveth, the small print taketh away (Paxton agrees with me):

Paxton himself has acknowledged that this would likely be a lengthy and complicated process, telling conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that they’d have to bring individual lawsuits in each district.

“We'd have to go through a court process, and we'd have to file that maybe in districts that are not friendly to Republicans,” Paxton said on Monday. “So it's a challenge because every district would be different.”

By the time Paxton could file suit(s) and get process served (50 times!), and allow for answers (20 days from date of service, if memory serves. I could look it up, but close enough for highway work.), a month or more would have passed. Courts would probably happily dismiss on mootness. Most judges wouldn’t want to touch this turkey with a club, and would happily leave the issue to the voters (state districts are NOT being redrawn). And this is why:

Sec. 201.024. REMOVAL. If an officer is removed from office by a court or other tribunal, a vacancy occurs on the date the judgment becomes final.

A case on appeal is generally not final until the final appeal is rendered, or appeals are dropped. So, by the time each case was resolved, new regular elections would have occurred.

Besides, Abbott would have to set 50 special elections if the cases were final before the next elections. It would be a huge cock up that would leave Abbott and Paxton covered in the shit they threw at the fan.

Everything these clowns say about this is performative trumpery.