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.

The Emerging Anti-MAGA Majority Wake up: Trump has fundamentally reshaped the electorate. This is good news for the fight against MAGA fascism.

Excellent analysis by Michael Podhorzer of an emerging anti-MAGA majority. This majority did not come into being because of 2016 voters switched sides in casting their votes in 2020. Instead, this was an artifact of a new, anti-MAGA majority who turned out to the polls—after not having voted in 2016. Podhorzer notes that

"Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory triggered the greatest increase in voting in midterms in American history and nearly the greatest increase for presidential elections. Turnout in the last three elections has literally been off the charts."

It's encouraging to see that young people—Gen Z and Millenials—are voting more as they age than prior generations. Also, those that didn't vote either for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in 2016 returned to the polls, including young white youth whose vote aligns less with their more pro-MAGA parents. Plus, these combinations of voters are more diverse than prior elections, giving these segments of the electorate an edge in 2020.

Podhorzer is correct in noting that we remain a divided nation—and how this is more the rule than the exception in our nation's history. I encourage you to also read Ronald Brownstein, who cites Podhorzer, in this June 24, 2022 article in The Atlantic titled, "America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good: The great “convergence” of the mid-20th century may have been an anomaly."

Podhorzer and Brownstein both point to the mid-twentieth century Great Society and civil rights reforms as the exception, rather than the rule. That is, the norm in U.S. history is division. I would like to push back on this and suggest that another interpretation, namely, that robust policy and political movements make a difference in people's lives, consciousness, and the well-being of our nation.

The good news is that we can relax a bit from all the doom and gloom reports that unlike Podhorzer, rely on polls instead of actual voting behavior, of voters leaning into fascist leaders. This means that Democrats' best route to victory—most particularly in purple states—is to focus on differentiating themselves from a party with, in his words, a "fascist movement’s agenda." 

In the meantime, as educators, we need to continue educating the next generation in the skills and habits of mind that promote a critical understanding of democracy and our nation's troubled history that respects and honors differences while simultaneously promoting unity consciousness, empathy, and solidarity with poor people's struggles.

As an electorate, we must of course continue supporting voting rights. Such an enlightening and worthwhile read. Thanks to Diane Ravitch for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela

The Emerging Anti-MAGA Majority

Wake up: Trump has fundamentally reshaped the electorate. This is good news for the fight against MAGA fascism.

MICHAEL PODHORZER

JUN 8, 2023

In 2016, Trump shocked the world by tearing down the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Quickly, a new consensus congealed around the idea that despite having lost the national popular vote, and only barely having won the Electoral College, Trump had improved Republicans’ fortunes for the foreseeable future with his unique appeal to “uneducated” voters. Suddenly, white non-college voters became the “it” constituency. For the last seven years, even as their proportion of the population shrinks, the focus on them increases, most recently with assertions that Democrats have been continuously hemorrhaging working class voters. Despite everything we know about Trump, earlier this year there were a rash of stories about how Trump could win again in 2024 despite being the only president to ever incite a deadly attack on the Capitol to overturn an election he lost. In all those stories, “working class” voters were the basis for those predictions.

Yet, since 2016, Republicans have lost 23 of the 27 elections in the five states everyone agrees Democratic hopes in the Electoral College and the Senate depend on. When Trump was sworn in, Republicans held four of those five states’ governorships, and six of the ten Senate seats. Moreover, Republicans defied history by losing nearly across the board in those states last year, the only time anything like that has happened to a Party running against such an unpopular president in a midterm.

How could all of this happen?

As the unique voter file analysis in this post confirms, it didn’t happen because very many of those who had voted for Trump in 2016 had buyers’ remorse. (Indeed, the number of 2016 voters switching sides has been historically low, and a wash as some have moved from Clinton to Trump.) Instead, Republicans have lost because of the emerging anti-MAGA majority consisting of those who did not vote in 2016. The literally unprecedented surge in new voters over the last three elections has two components: 1) young people are aging into the electorate, and are voting at a higher rate than previous generations at their age, and reject MAGA by 20-point margins, and 2) those who skipped 2016 (the so-called “Obama-none” voters) have returned. Those margins with young voters have two components – that young voters are much more diverse than the rest of the population, and young white people are far more anti-MAGA than their parents.

Minority Rule: How 3 Percent of Texans Call the Shots for the Rest of Us, by Michael Hardy, Texas Monthly

This is a sobering, must-read piece by Michael Hardy (2022) in The Texas Monthly that helps explain why Republicans' are at odds with most Texans, generally, on such issues as abortion and gun rights. 

"Neither of these measures enjoys broad public support; polls show that most Texans hold moderate positions on abortion, gun rights, and many other key issues. But state lawmakers have made sure that doesn’t matter."

To grasp this, one must understand that out of 30 million Texans and 22 million eligible voters and 17 million registered voters only 2 million vote in GOP primaries, leaving ultimately one million, or three percent of Texans, to elect our state leaders.  Despite the tremendous growth of the Latino population, Republicans have gerrymandered districts—that in 2020, "reduce the number of majority-Hispanic districts from six to five." Republicans have rigged the system by Latino packing voters into specific districts. What this means is...

"a candidate such as Governor Greg Abbott or Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick needs the support of only a million or so primary voters, representing just 3 percent of all Texans, to win the Republican nomination."

To be sure, this has consequences for all communities. I appreciate Hardy's story of Asian Texans for Justice leader, Lily Trieu and how the Asian American community in Sugar Land, located near Houston, is structured out, leaving her community with no meaningful representation.

As I had previously blogged (read: The Awful 88th Legislative Session: Losers included taxpayers, teachers, trans youths, and anyone who uses electricity—Texas Observer ), the ever-curtailing of voting rights in

Democratic Party strongholds combines with gerrymandered districts that do not reflect, in particular, the growth of the Latino community. 

According to the 2021 American Community Survey of the U.S. Census, Latino Texans represent 40.2% of the state’s population while Anglo, non-Hispanic Texans account for 39.4% (Ura, 2022).

The Latino vote has been rising (Gamboa & Acevedo, 2022), but as the story out of Sugar Land illustrates, it literally doesn't make a difference in those districts where they have been structured out.

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Gamboa, S. & Acevedo, N. (2018, Nov. 12). Youth, Latino mobilization paid off in the midterms. Now groups gear up for 2020. Retrieved: https://tinyurl.com/mr2d96zu

Ura, A. (2022, Sept. 15). Hispanic Texans may now be the state’s largest demographic group, new census data shows, Texas Tribune. Retrieved: https://tinyurl.com/bwb5whw9

Minority Rule: How 3 Percent of Texans 

Call the Shots for the Rest of Us

Statewide officials and legislators are far to the right of most Texans. Why? Low primary-election turnout and an anemic Democratic party.

By Michael Hardy

November 2022 | Texas Monthly

Illustrations by Brian Rea

If you want to see the future of Texas, take a drive down Synott Road, in Sugar Land, the booming suburb twenty miles southwest of Houston. Start at the intersection with Old Richmond Road. Here, tucked beside a Texaco station, you’ll find a Mexican food truck and DD’s Ejide African Restaurant, which serves aromatic specialties such as oxtail pepper soup. Heading south along Synott, you’ll soon pass Hindu, Buddhist, and Cao Dai temples, a mosque, an apostolic church, and a halal grocery store. 

Sugar Land is the largest city in Fort Bend County, one of the fastest-growing and most diverse areas in the United States. Between 2000 and 2020 the county more than doubled in size, to a population of 823,000. A preponderance of that growth is attributable to Asians, who now account for one in every five residents. As recently as 2000, non-Hispanic white Texans made up nearly half the population of Fort Bend County; today, that group makes up just 30 percent of the population, followed by Hispanic (26 percent), Asian (22 percent, about half being of Indian descent), and Black (22 percent) Texans. It’s also one of the best-educated counties in the state, with nearly 20 percent of the adult population holding a graduate or professional degree. 

The county’s political evolution has been equally dramatic. Between 1968 and 2016, it voted Republican in every single presidential election. In Congress, the majority of the county was represented by the likes of libertarian icon Ron Paul and former Republican majority leader Tom DeLay. But over the past decade, the pendulum has swung. In 2016 Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump here by seven percentage points, becoming the first Democrat to carry the county since Lyndon Johnson. In 2020 Joe Biden won Fort Bend County by eleven points—part of a nationwide suburban backlash against Trump. “Trump made a lot of people uncomfortable,” said County Judge KP George, an Indian American Democrat and the county’s top elected official. “About thirty percent of our population is foreign-born. They didn’t like his rhetoric.”  

Fort Bend County is what economists call a leading indicator. Between 2010 and 2020, Texas grew by nearly four million residents, with people of color responsible for 95 percent of that growth. The state is now 40 percent non-Hispanic white, 40 percent Hispanic, 13 percent Black, and 6 percent Asian—with the latter the fastest-growing demographic. As in Fort Bend County, that transformation has been accompanied by political change. Although no Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1994—and no Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976—the party has been chipping away at the Republican advantage over time. In 2012 Mitt Romney won the state by sixteen points. In 2020 Trump won by less than six.  

But as the state as a whole has moved toward the political center, its Republican party has lurched to the right, enacting some of the country’s most reactionary policies and helping make Texas an international byword for extremism. During the 2021 legislative session, the Republican majority banned abortion after six weeks, promising a $10,000 bounty to any citizen who reports a violation. (The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade this summer triggered another law banning all abortions except to save the life of the mother.) And they passed a bill allowing Texans 21 and older to openly carry a handgun without a license or training.  

Neither of these measures enjoys broad public support; polls show that most Texans hold moderate positions on abortion, gun rights, and many other key issues. But state lawmakers have made sure that doesn’t matter. During a special session last fall, legislators created new districts for themselves (and for members of Congress) as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process that occurs after every census. Drawn behind closed doors, using highly sophisticated computer models, the new maps guaranteed that most incumbents, both Republican and Democratic, remained in safely red or blue districts. As a result of this gerrymandering, few legislators have to worry about the general election. Their only vulnerability comes during the spring primary, in which a small number of voters choose their parties’ nominees. Primary elections are all about ideological purity, about appealing to hard-core activists. Moderation is not a quality in high demand. 

The Awful 88th Legislative Session: Losers included taxpayers, teachers, trans youths, and anyone who uses electricity—Texas Observer

I concur with this report by the staff of the Texas Observer. I know that it's difficult to summarize an entire legislative session in one article, but the attack on higher education via anti-DEI bills—as covered in this blog—was notable, albeit absent in this report. It appropriately makes note over the lost fight over Gov. Abbott's dream for school vouchers. Never think for a moment, however, that this agenda for public school privatization is dead. It seems to always come back, session after session, in some form. Without a doubt academic freedom, DEI initiatives, and public education, as a whole, remain at risk in our state under our current leadership.

It is also a bit curious that the Texas Observer staff didn't mention the vicious attack on Harris County elections in this report where it would have fit perfectly in any description of just how awful the last session was. I am aware that they were struggling for financial solvency this session, too.

To wit, the legislature itself engaged in outright election subversion. This should be illegal!

Remember that Houston's Harris County went for Biden over Trump by a wide margin (read: In Texas, Biden’s urban wins couldn’t offset Trump’s millions of votes in rural, red counties). Harris County is thusly a Democratic stronghold. We'll see if that holds in the next general election considering the changes Republicans made this session.

Specifically, Republican leaders in the form of both Senate Bill 1750—that eliminated the non-partisan position of elections administrator and Senate Bill 1933—that gives the Secretary of State, a partisan appointee, the authority to take over elections administration, are beyond worrisome.

When we consider that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined six states in suing the U.S. government over alleged election fraud in four states, namely, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the Texas Republican party's credibility is strained. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the case, albeit for procedural reasons (read: U.S. Supreme Court throws out Texas lawsuit contesting 2020 election results in four battleground states).

These dangerous affronts to democracy are tantamount to political repression in our state where voter disenfranchisement, in the forms of Senate Bill 1750 and Senate Bill 1933, bear the imprimatur of legislative legitimacy—when they're anything but legitimate.

Clearly, we need to expand, rather than limit, voting rights. And state government itself should not be used as a tool to protect the incumbencies of those in power. That's why we have elections.

Rather than winning the hearts and minds of the electorate, a morally degenerate party has opted to cut into the heart of a democratic stronghold like Harris County. Harris County was thus also a major loser this legislative session.

My best guess is this will continue to occur unless people of good conscience unite to vote these election thieves out of office. Aside from this, we must all come to democracy's vigorous defense, lest we lose, in effect, the franchise without which democratic governance is impossible.

-Angela Valenzuela

View online here.

by TEXAS OBSERVER STAFF  JUNE 6, 2023, 2:12 PM, CDT

As the 88th session of the Texas Legislature opened in January, Texas Observer writers scanning the political horizon noted a faint glimmer of hope that, perhaps this time, lawmakers would locate their statesman-like qualities and, at long last, spend the spring giving relief to taxpayers, the environment, electricity-users, public schools, teachers, and other long-neglected government workers.

Well, it was only ever a faint hope. Instead, the Lege lived down to its reputation, and, for the most part, spent this session in, as Observer Senior Writer Justin Miller imagined it then, a race to the bottom that took us to depths “previously unknown and unimaginable.” Think of it as the Awful 88th.

Republicans, riding a wave of authoritarian successes, wasted most of the session on an assortment of cruel social policy proposals aimed at making points with their far-right supporters and, as feared, failed to address truly important things like the electric grid, gun control, and school funding. They didn’t even accomplish their own top priority, which was property tax cuts. It wasn’t all bad, but parts were very, very bad, especially for LGBTQIA+ Texans. And now there’s a special session for added thrills. Here are a handful of highlights and a lot of lows.