Paxton’s Attack on Jolt Echoes a Long History of Silencing Latino Political Power, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Paxton’s Attack on Jolt Echoes a Long History of Silencing Latino Political Power

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 1, 2025

While I do not pretend to know the particulars beyond what has been reported by Nguyen and Klibanoff in the Express-News (2025), the effort by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to shut down the Jolt initiative—one of the state’s most effective Latino civic-engagement organizations—most certainly fits into a well-established pattern. It echoes a long Texas history of suppressing Latino political power through intimidation, manufactured crises, and the selective use of state authority.

To truly understand this moment, we must see it in its historical and decolonial context. For well over a century, Texas has deployed legal, political, and bureaucratic tools to police and shrink the political power of Latino communities. From poll taxes, white primaries, English-only ballots to literacy tests, voter purges, and now “election integrity” scare tactics, the state has continuously reengineered the political landscape to maintain racial hierarchy.

Today’s version of that old project further includes gerrymandering—most notably the failed attempt, under pressure from Donald Trump, to draw five new congressional districts designed to dilute rising Latino voting power and secure permanent Republican control. That map was ultimately too extreme even for Texas courts, but the message was unmistakable: Latino political participation is to be contained, not cultivated (Guo, 2025).

Paxton’s attack on Jolt follows the same logic. It stems from a thoroughly debunked 2024 social-media rumor alleging that migrants were being registered to vote at driver’s license offices in North Texas—a claim that local officials, including Republican leaders, dismissed outright. Yet Paxton seized on this fiction to launch an intrusive investigation into groups working primarily with Latino voters.

When his initial efforts faltered in court, Paxton simply pivoted, filing a new lawsuit accusing Jolt of orchestrating an “unlawful voter registration scheme,” despite providing no evidence of noncitizen voting. Instead, he targets the organization for conducting voter registration drives at DMV locations—community hubs where working-class Latinos naturally gather. In a telling distortion of Texas election law, he now frames a volunteer’s explanation of the parent-agent provision as evidence of wrongdoing.

The point is intimidation, not truth.

Taken together, these actions reveal a disturbing theory of democracy: Latino civic participation is inherently suspect, and any infrastructure that supports it must be dismantled. Whether through extreme gerrymanders designed to nullify Latino voting strength, or legal assaults on organizations registering Latino youth, the goal is the same—maintain political power by shrinking the electorate.

A decolonial lens makes this continuity visible. Latino civic organizations like Jolt are not just registering voters; they are challenging a longstanding colonial logic that extracts labor while denying civic belonging. When young Latinos organize, vote, and assert political agency, they interrupt the racial order Texas has spent generations protecting. That is the disruption Paxton is attempting to crush.

And this is not new. Texas officials have repeatedly equated Latino civic engagement with disorder or fraud, from the surveillance of Chicano activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Contreras, 2025) to the recent attempt to shut down El Paso’s Annunciation House (see Paxton v. Annunciation House, Inc. 2025). Each episode follows the same pattern: when Latinos build power, the state responds by declaring that power illegitimate.

see Contreras (2025)

Jolt is simply the latest target.

That said, it surely concerns the political establishment that approximately 200,000 Latina and Latino youth in Texas turn 18 every year (as Jolt notes on its webpage). This rising generation of Gen Z voters represents a profound demographic shift—one that makes efforts to suppress Latino civic engagement not only predictable, but deeply revealing of the racialized anxieties driving state power.

The lawsuit against Jolt is not about voter fraud—it is about fear. It is about a political establishment that recognizes the demographic reality of Texas and is scrambling to freeze the electorate in place. It is about denying young Latinos the tools they need to participate in public life. It is, at its core, an attempt to preserve a political order that can no longer command the consent of a changing population.

Texas cannot claim to be a democracy while treating the political participation of its largest communities of color as a threat to be neutralized. Jolt’s resistance is not only a legal fight—it is an act of collective self-determination. It affirms what generations of activists, elders, and organizers before us have insisted: we belong here, our voices matter, and our political engagement strengthens, rather than threatens, the fabric of this state. We need and deserve organizations like Jolt that do the essential work of cultivating young leaders, expanding civic participation, and ensuring that Latino communities can exercise the full rights of citizenship. To defend Jolt is to defend democracy itself.

The struggle for Latino political power in Texas is far from over, but the outcome of this case will say much about who this state believes democracy is for.

Reference

Contreras, R. (2025, January 6). Scoop: CIA releases docs on Latino civil-rights-era surveillance, Axios. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/06/cia-releases-docs-latino-civil-rights-era-surveillance?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Guo, K. (2025, July 10). As Texas Republicans prepare for mid-decade redistricting, cautionary tales loom from the past, Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-redistricting-congressional-districts-past-mistakes-overreach/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Nguyen, A., & Klibanoff, E. (2025, November 11). Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down. San Antonio Express-News. https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/texas-latino-civic-group-sues-to-block-ag-ken-21163598.php

Paxton v. Annunciation House, Inc., No. 24-0573 (Tex. Sup. Ct. May 30, 2025). https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/supreme-court/2025/24-0573.html

Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down

By ALEX NGUYEN and ELEANOR KLIBANOFF/The Texas Tribune,Nov 11, 2025

Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block his efforts to shut them down. Paxton announced Monday that he was seeking to revoke the nonprofit’s charter, alleging that the group had orchestrated “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.”
This is not the first legal back-and-forth between Jolt and Paxton’s office. Last year, the organization successfully sued to stop the state’s investigation into their voter registration efforts. In the new suit, Jolt’s lawyers argue Paxton’s efforts to shut them down are retaliation. The attorney general’s office has also in recent years targeted other organizations aiding Latinos and migrants, such as the effort to investigate and shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House.

“Jolt is simply the latest target of his unlawful campaign to undermine and silence civil rights groups in Texas,” said Mimi Marziani, a lawyer representing the nonprofit.

The background

In August 2024, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said on X that a friend had seen organizations registering migrants to vote outside state drivers license facilities in Fort Worth and Weatherford. But local officials, including the Parker County Republican chair, said there was no evidence backing the post.

Bartiromo’s debunked claims still prompted an attorney general investigation into organizations including Jolt.

Jolt then sued for a temporary restraining order, saying that Paxton’s probe would harm the organization as well as put its workers and volunteers at risk. In October 2024, both sides agreed to pause their legal fight and Jolt was allowed to continue its work, while the courts addressed a different lawsuit involving the tool used by Paxton to investigate the group. The attorney general’s office now said in its recent court filing that it has agreed to not issue another subpoena, instead opting to launch a new lawsuit.

In addition, Paxton announced earlier this year that his office is investigating cases of “potential noncitizens” casting more than 200 ballots in 2020 and 2022, which would be around one-thousandth of 1% of the votes cast during these periods.

Meanwhile, Texas counties are looking into more than 2,700 registered voters who were flagged as “potential noncitizens.” At least six of them have been confirmed to be U.S. citizens.

Voters also recently approved a constitutional amendment adding language to the state’s constitution saying that a person who is not a U.S. citizen cannot vote in Texas. Noncitizen voting was already illegal prior to this update.

Why Texas sued

Following Bartiromo’s claims, the attorney general’s office sent an undercover agent to a DMV location near San Antonio to investigate by attempting to register a fake daughter — who wasn’t physically with him — to vote, according to Paxton’s Oct. 23 court filing. It said a Jolt volunteer deputy registrar still instructed the agent on how to register his daughter, despite her absence.

Although when the agent asked for a form to take his daughter, the Jolt volunteer said he could not let the agent have one. The agent said the volunteer then inferred that he could register his daughter to vote, which is illegal, according to the filing.

“I stated in a question format that I couldn’t have one, and (the VDR) replied that since I have her information, I could register her to vote, alluding to being a parent and that I had that right,” the agent wrote. “This was inferring that I could sign her voter registration card, and while (the VDR) made this statement he overtly looked away. This is not only incorrect but illegal per election code.”

Jolt disputed this claim about legality in its court filing.

Paxton’s filing didn’t provide evidence of Jolt registering noncitizens to vote. Instead, it said the group’s decision to hold voter registration drives near DMV locations “illuminates its unlawful motive.”

“This is because U.S. citizens can already register to vote at any DMV with proof of citizenship,” the court document said. “Thus, there is no need for a VDR at such locations.”

Paxton brought the lawsuit in Tarrant County, saying that a “substantial part of the events” underlying its claims took place there.

“JOLT is a radical, partisan operation that has, and continues to, knowingly attempt to corrupt our voter rolls and weaken the voice of lawful Texas voters,” he said in a news release. “I will make sure they face the full force of the law.”

What Jolt says

The nonprofit filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, asking a judge to stop Paxton’s state lawsuit because it infringes on their rights under the First Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.

In particular, Jolt said in a court filing that its volunteer didn’t do anything wrong because Texas’ election code does allow for a person to appoint their parent as “an agent” to “complete and sign a registration application” for them. The parent must also be a qualified voter or must have submitted a registration application and be eligible to vote, according to the code.

“Here, the State provides very few particularized factual allegations in its Petition to support its Motion for Leave, instead relying upon sweeping but unsupported claims about Jolt’s motives, beliefs and activities,” the group said in its initial response to Paxton’s lawsuit.

Jolt also said it will fight to defend its mission, adding that Paxton is “abusing his authority” in order to stop its voter registration drives.

“This is a systematic effort to dismantle the infrastructure of Latino civic engagement in Texas,” ⁨Jackie Bastard⁩, Jolt’s executive director, said in a news release.

This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.