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FORT WORTH (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) — Republicans Michael Burgess and Joe Barton, former congressmen who represented North Texas in Washington, are alike in their support of Sen. John Cornyn.

They both endorsed the longtime Republican senator for a fifth term. They both saw him lose Tuesday night, when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton soundly won his runoff against Cornyn, an endorsement from President Donald Trump in tow.

But, Wednesday morning — after assessing the wreckage of a scathing primary season that fractured the state’s Republicans — the two men have reached different conclusions about their plans for the Nov. 3 general election, when Paxton will face Democratic nominee James Talarico.

“I do not plan to vote for Ken Paxton,” said Burgess, who now lives in Aubrey, after representing Congressional District 26 from 2003 to 2025.

He said the solution isn’t voting for Talarico.

“I may write John Cornyn’s name in,” he said. “I may write my name in. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
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But supporting Paxton?

“Just morally, it’s something I cannot bring myself to do,” he said.

Barton will.

“There is no way on God’s green earth I’m going to turn around and vote for the Democratic candidate,” said Barton, who has known Cornyn for years, having represented Congressional District 6 for more than three decades before retiring in 2019. Barton even put a sign in his front yard supporting his former colleague’s bid, he said.

There’s always the option to sit out altogether, but that’s a nonstarter for the former congressman.

“You could say, ‘I just won’t vote,’ but that’s not fair because you have an obligation,” Barton said. “Democracy eventually narrows things down to two candidates, and if you participate, you participate, and I will support Paxton.”

Many Republicans across the state are weighing the same question of what to do come November.

The run up to Tuesday was bruising as Cornyn went on the attack, going after Paxton’s personal and professional troubles that have loomed over his political career.

The attorney general has faced allegations of securities fraud, bribery, corruption and infidelity, but has come out largely unscathed. Meanwhile, he’s garnered a reputation as a conservative champion in the courtroom and a loyal friend to Trump and the MAGA movement.

Facing fears of a torn-apart party and an expensive fight ahead, there have been early calls for unity within the GOP, as the national party tries to keep its grip on the Senate in November and as Texas Republicans worry about keeping statewide and legislative seats red in what could be a vulnerable, midterm election cycle.

Republican U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill of Flower Mound told Paxton’s election night watch party attendees that they need to unify unless they’re ready to see Talarico in Washington.

“Now we’re at a point where it’s the Reds versus the Blues, it’s shirts and skins,” Gill said. “Now it’s time for Republicans to come together to unite to make sure that we send a Republican, Ken Paxton, to the Senate.”

Republican state Rep. Mitch Little was one of the most outspoken Paxton supporters during the primary election. Before being elected to represent part of Denton County in 2024, Little’s claim to political fame was as Paxton’s defense attorney in the impeachment trial.

He said Paxton is no stranger to garnering party support after a heated primary. In 2022, Paxton went head-to-head with challenger George P. Bush in a primary runoff for his seat as attorney general. After clinching the 2022 win, Paxton quickly turned to torn Republicans asking for alliance.

The same demand was a cornerstone of Paxton’s victory speech. He also gave a short statement of thanks to Cornyn for his years of service.

“Tonight is not the end of a campaign,” Paxton told supporters. “Tonight is the beginning of the fight to preserve every value we hold dear. The future of Texas and the future of America is on the line, and I intend to do everything I can to expand our movement. I won three statewide elections, because I know how critical it is for our party to come together, and that’s what we must do now.”

Little said politicians have to master the art of keeping short accounts.

“Once you’re in politics, you don’t tend to forget things like that,” Little said. “You know who ran the ugly ads and had negative things to say about you, but you have to put that in its proper compartment and just realize that the state of Texas is more important than any of those, any kind of personal grudge that you might hold.”

Cornyn didn’t mention Paxton by name in an election night speech, but did say he’d support the Republican ticket in the general election.

Burgess repurposed a quote from Trump as he reflected on Wednesday’s losing outcome for Cornyn.

“I’m not happy,” he said.

The president endorsed Paxton in the final days of the runoff, bucking Senate leadership’s preference of a Cornyn-Talarico ballot. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and members of the Republican establishment are now beginning to build bridges with Paxton in the wake of his decisive victory, Axios reports.

To Burgess, it seems, too many bridges have been burned to win over Cornyn voters like him.

“I don’t know how you make up that ground over the five months ahead … given just the amount of turmoil that’s going to be present in the electorate,” Burgess said.

Paty Hardy, a former State Board of Education member who endorsed Cornyn, has moderate Republican friends saying they won’t vote in the general election.

She has her reservations with Paxton — his character and her impression that he’s arrogant — but she won’t be joining her friends in staying on the sidelines. Cornyn has more of a “gentleman persona,” Hardy said.

“It probably was not wise for him to run again, because of the fact that he has been around for so long, but he’s — I just like the guy,” she said. “He’s a good man.”

Paxton wasn’t Hardy’s first pick, but the attorney general aligns with her conservative policy positions on issues like abortion and sports participation for transgender athletes more than Talarico does.

“I probably won’t go door to door or anything like that,” she said with a chuckle.

Cornyn could have been better about standing up to Republicans in the Senate and he and his peers more aggressive on the SAVE America Act, an election bill Paxton made a center point of his runoff bid, Hardy said.

The incumbent’s electability in November against Talarico factored heavily into her endorsement calculus.

Barton, the former congressman who is supporting Paxton going forward after endorsing Cornyn, said Cornyn lost not because he did a bad job — “he did a very good job” — but because voters wanted a change.

You’ve got to give Paxton credit, he said.

“It’s no small task to defeat an incumbent U.S. Senator of the stature of John Cornyn,” Barton said.

Paxton is a personable man who is good with people in small settings and will be an effective U.S. senator, Barton said. Asked if he has any lingering reservations he’d like to see Paxton overcome, Barton turned the conversation to Democrats.

“I have great faith in the Democrat Party to expose whatever they consider Mr. Paxton’s flaws to be ad nauseam,” said Barton, who is no stranger to scandal himself.

Paxton’s public divorce on “biblical grounds” was a feature of the primary. In a perfect world, people have a perfect private life and marriage, but that’s very rare, he said. What matters more is how officials conduct themselves in office, their voting record and service to constituents.

“I will not say that your private life does not matter,” Barton said. “I think it does matter, but it is not normally the determining factor.”

For Burgess, the way Paxton “has treated his spouse” is something he “almost can’t get over.”

Weighing whether there’s anything Paxton could do to win over his vote, Burgess replies, “We’ll see.”

“That’s his task for the next five months,” he said.

LONE STAR (KETK) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced the results of a months long investigation into child exploitation on Friday, including the arrest of one East Texas man for possession of child pornography.

Operation Soteria Shield was conducted in the months of March and April with the goal of finding “offenders who exploit children through online platforms, social media, messaging applications, and other digital environments.”

In that time, the FBI’s Dallas field office cooperated with over 90 Texas law enforcement agencies to arrest 276 people, reportedly rescuing 89 children in the process. Operation Soteria Shield arrived in East Texas when the Lone Star Police Department was assigned a cybertip.

The cybertip was from the social media platform X, formerly called Twitter. The tip claimed a person living near Lone Star in Morris County was using the X artificial intelligence platform “Grok” to generate “life like images of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).”

On March 27, Lone Star Police Department officers, Morris County Sheriff’s Office deputies , Ore City Police Department officers, Mt. Pleasant Police Department officers, Hawk Cove Police Department officers and FBI agents took Jesus Aleman Jr. into custody in connection to the cybertip.

According to Lonestar PD, Aleman admitted to having CSAM on his phone at his Morris County residence. After Aleman was arrested on a warrant for possession of child pornography, officers got a search warrant for his phone, which was found to contain over a thousand CSAM images.

“The men and women of East Texas Law Enforcement want all abusers and exploiters of children to know that the internet that was once your playground is now our hunting ground and you can no longer hide on the net,” Lone Star PD said on Friday.

Aleman was a registered sex offender from a previous conviction, meaning his case is being forwarded to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for federal prosecution, according to Lone Star PD.

“Operation Soteria Shield brought together over 90 agencies from across the state of Texas,” FBI Dallas special agent in charge R. Joseph Rothrock said. “Together, we were able to make a significant impact in the ongoing battle against predators who exploit children in our communities. This would not have been successful without the resolve of each participating agency. The FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to prioritize the safety of the most vulnerable members of our communities.”

The operation’s namesake, Soteria, was an ancient Greek pagan goddess who personified safety, salvation and protection from harm.

WASHINGTON (AP) — David Johnston was a licensed attorney when he illegally entered the Capitol with a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. More than five years later, the South Carolina man is offering to help fellow “J6ers” apply for payouts from the Trump administration’s nearly $1.8 billion new fund for people claiming to be victims of a weaponized government.

He’ll do it for a 10% cut of any award, capped at $5,000 apiece.

“I think the narrative is changing” about how the history of that day is being told, Johnston said in a video he posted to social media. “I think good things are happening for us.”

Hundreds of Trump loyalists pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol, admitting under oath that they broke the law. Now pardoned by Trump, many hope to capitalize on their crimes by tapping into the $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate the Republican president’s allies who believe they were politically prosecuted.

A bipartisan backlash to the fund and a legal roadblock have not dimmed the celebratory response from Jan. 6 rioters clamoring for a share of the taxpayer money. Some are staking claims even though the government has not established an application process and a judge has frozen the fund’s formation, at least temporarily.

Rioters seek compensation payouts

The fund’s critics see it as another vehicle for Trump and his allies to whitewash the events of Jan. 6, retroactively justify the mob’s assault on a pillar of American democracy and reward some of Trump’s most loyal followers.

Jason Riddle, a military veteran from New Hampshire who was sentenced to 90 days behind bars after pleading guilty to riot charges, publicly rejected a pardon from Trump. Likewise, he said it would be “ridiculous” for him or any other Jan. 6 rioter to get government compensation.

“I’d love money, but I can’t accept that. That would bother me for the rest of my life,” he said. “We weren’t innocently persecuted just because of who we are or who we vote for. We were persecuted for committing criminal behavior in the Capitol of the United States.”

Plenty of other “J6ers” do not share Riddle’s reluctance.

A Florida man who posed for photos with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s podium argued on social media that he deserves to be compensated for the cost of his infamy. A rioter from New Jersey described by prosecutors as a Nazi sympathizer hailed the fund as “good news not just for J6ers but all victims of weaponization.” A Texas man who received a seven-year prison sentence for storming the Capitol with a metal tomahawk celebrated the fund as “payback” for “victims of Biden’s tyranny,” referring to Democratic President Joe Biden.

Oregon resident Pamela Hemphill, sentenced to 60 days in jail for her conviction, rejected a pardon from Trump but has drafted a written claim for compensation from the fund. Unlike scores of rioters who claim to be victims of a government weaponized by Democrats, Hemphill blames Trump for her legal troubles. Her claims letter says she is seeking $5 million in compensation.

“I wouldn’t have been through all of this if Trump hadn’t lied about the election being stolen,” she said during a telephone interview. “It’s a direct result of his lies that I was even there that day.”

Fund faces legal and political challenges

It is an open question whether anyone convicted of a Capitol riot-related crime could be eligible for payments from a fund created to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has not ruled out that possibility. Blanche said there are no limits on who can apply, but he noted that the fund’s five commissioners — all yet to be named — will decide who deserves to be compensated and why, based on factors such as “what the person did, his sentence, how much time he was in jail.”

“That’s up to the commissioners,” Blanche told The Associated Press on Thursday when asked about his position on whether violent Jan. 6 defendants should be eligible for payments.

“You have to define something and then stick to it. That’s something I’ve been hesitant to try to do, because it’s very fact-intensive,” Blanche said. ”Me sitting here and talking in hypotheticals is something that I don’t think is fair to the process.”

It is unclear whether Congress would block payments to Jan. 6 defendants. Senate Republicans who are angry about the settlement have said they want to place parameters on the fund as part of a Department of Homeland Security spending bill. They abruptly left town earlier this month after a tense meeting with Blanche and will return on Monday with the situation unresolved.

A federal judge in Virginia has frozen the fund’s establishment and temporarily blocked any processing or paying of claims. The judge issued that ruling Friday in one of at least three lawsuits challenging the fund.

Brendan Ballou, a former prosecutor who tried several Jan. 6 cases before leaving the Department of Justice last year, sued on behalf of two police officers who helped defend the Capitol from the mob. Ballou views the fund’s creation as part of a broader Trump campaign to undermine democratic institutions and rewrite the history of Jan. 6.

“And if the president is successful in that effort, if he’s able to get people to either forget or condone that day, he knows that he can get people to accept any attack on democracy,” Ballou said.

Rioters emboldened by Trump’s Jan. 6 recasting

Nearly 1,600 people were charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. More than 1,200 were convicted and sentenced before Trump issued mass pardons and ordered the dismissal of all pending Jan. 6 cases. Trump also freed far-right extremist group members who were imprisoned for plotting to attack the Capitol to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden.

The self-described “J6 community” isn’t the only pro-Trump constituency angling for cuts of the money.

Meshawn Maddock, who was charged as being a fake elector for Trump in Michigan before a judge dismissed the case last year, said she and her husband, state Rep. Matt Maddock, “absolutely” plan on making a claim. She believes the fund’s use of taxpayer money is justified because it “paid for the prosecution and investigation of the years that I was being hunted down.”

“I want vengeance and I want retribution,” Maddock said.

Trump’s campaign to recast Jan. 6 as a peaceful protest seems to have emboldened many convicted rioters.

Johnston’s eagerness to help other Capitol rioters with claims contrasts with his remorse at sentencing in 2022. He apologized for his “terrible lapse in judgment” before a judge sentenced him to three weeks in jail and three months of home detention. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor trespassing charge.

“It was a dumb, dumb thing to do,” Johnston told the judge. “I am 100% responsible for what I did that day.”