Texas is leading a Jim Crow-style assault on Black and Latino voters.
While Republicans’ imposition of a newly gerrymandered and demonstrably racist congressional map has garnered national news headlines, other assaults on nonwhite voters in the Lone Star State appear to have garnered less attention. That includes scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to shut down — in some cases, even criminalize — people and organizations that help Latinos vote.
My colleague Hayes Brown shined a light last year on this behavior, and the dubious “election fraud” claims fueling it. And the latest group to be targeted by Paxton is the Jolt Initiative, a group focused on civic participation among Latinos.
Paxton has filed a lawsuit seeking to revoke the group’s nonprofit charter on grounds the group engaged in “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.” Adhering to Republicans’ conspiracy theory-riddled rhetoric about undocumented immigrants swaying elections, Paxton alleges the group “coordinated the scheme to recruit and solicit individuals to submit unlawful voter registration applications, which could be designed to register illegal aliens who lack proper identification.”
Jolt Initiative denies wrongdoing and has filed its own lawsuit against Paxton seeking to block his efforts to shut them down. The organization, which used the court system to successfully stave off Paxton’s attempt to probe them last year, alleges the attempt to revoke their charter amounts to retaliation.
“Jolt is simply the latest target of his unlawful campaign to undermine and silence civil rights groups in Texas,” Mimi Marziani, a lawyer representing the nonprofit, told The Texas Tribune. The Tribune previously reported that Paxton’s crusade against Latino voter groups appears to have been prompted by debunked claims that Fox News host Maria Bartiromo spread on her social media account and TV show last year.
In Texas and other Republican-controlled states across the country, we’re witnessing multipronged efforts to roll back civil rights and racial progress — efforts that mirror tactics deployed by segregationist state governments in the past. White segregationists controlling various states launched what they called “sovereignty commissions” following the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that struck a blow to school segregation and the idea of “separate-but-equal” schools. These commissions were basically groups of state officials — sometimes including the attorney general — who banded together to uphold white supremacy and impede nonwhite people from enjoying civil rights.
And it’s worth noting how easily this following description of Mississippi’s “sovereignty commission,” published by the state’s department of archives and history, could easily be used to describe what Paxton is doing to Latino voter groups:
The Commission investigated individuals and organizations that challenged the racial status quo. Commission investigators toured the state and compiled reports on civil rights activities in the counties. They also responded to specific requests from local state officials and members of the public.
History’s echoes are clear to hear if you’re willing.
