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AUSTIN, Texas ( THE TEXAS TRIBUNE)– Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing online messaging platform Discord, accusing the tech company of exposing children to predators using the service and deceiving users about the safety of the platform.

Paxton filed the lawsuit Friday in a Collin County state district court, the latest in a recent flurry of lawsuits by Paxton’s office against tech companies and other businesses ahead of his U.S. Senate GOP runoff against incumbent John Cornyn on Tuesday.

Texas joins Nevada, Indiana and New Jersey as states that have recently sued Discord. Florida announced its investigation of the company in March. Many private lawsuits have been filed in recent months, as well, largely from families accusing the messaging service of allowing children to be sexually abused or exploited while using Discord.
East Texas Primary Runoff Election Guide: Where to vote & what’s on the ballot

Paxton first opened an investigation into the messaging platform in 2024, along with several other tech companies, all broadly focused on user data privacy. Paxton announced last October, following the killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, that he would expand the investigation of Discord to include a focus on the sexual exploitation of minors and extremist content on the platform.

Discord is an online messaging service generally used by people to communicate while playing video games. It also includes chat functions and the ability for users to create topic-based servers. Paxton has sued other video game and social media platforms, like Snapchat, Tiktok and Roblox, in recent months over similar concerns that they are violating users’ data privacy and allowing their platforms to be used to exploit children.

“Discord has allowed and invited all kinds of nihilistic violence and evil,” Paxton said. “We live in a time where the dangers children face online have never been greater, and every parent in Texas deserves to know their child is protected.”

A Discord spokesperson said the platform has robust safety features for teenage users and is continuously working to improve existing safety features. The spokesperson noted roughly 80% of Discord’s users are adults and the service requires its users to be at least 13.

“The lawsuit’s characterization of Discord does not reflect the platform we have built or the investments we have made in user safety,” a Discord spokesperson wrote in a statement. “We look forward to collaborating with policymakers in working toward a safer online experience for all users on Discord and across the internet.”

In 2023, Texas lawmakers strengthened laws requiring social media platforms to protect minors from inappropriate content online. That legislation, called Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act, is still fighting its way through the courts and parts have been blocked for being unconstitutionally vague.

Paxton has used the remaining provisions of the SCOPE Act to bring lawsuits against Discord and the other tech companies.

The lawsuit asks the courts to require Discord to implement age verification for all users under that law, the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act. The lawsuit also seeks for Discord to pay fines under the state Deceptive Trade Practices Act, arguing the company has misled users about the safety of the platform.

Paxton cited a 2025 lawsuit filed by the family of a 13-year-old girl who says she was groomed on Roblox, then later Discord, before being sexually assaulted in her home. The family’s lawsuit argues the companies failed to protect the girl.

This week, Paxton also sued WhatsApp and its parent company Meta, alleging the platform can access users’ private messages.

DALLAS (AP) — After three terms in the U.S. House and two unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Senate, Colin Allred said he’s heard plenty about voters’ suspicions that politicians are just trying to make a buck in Washington.

“‘What about the stock trading in Congress? What about people getting rich in Congress?’” Allred said they ask him regularly. “And I have to say to them, you’re absolutely right about that, too. We need to be better.”

He’s challenging Rep. Julie Johnson in the Democratic runoff for a Dallas-area House seat on Tuesday, and he’s one of several candidates trying to harness populist anger over congressional stock trading. Allred has denounced Johnson for trades involving companies like Palantir, a data analytics firm with ties to President Donald Trump’s administration.

Johnson said her trades were handled by a financial manager, and she accused Allred of being “only out for himself.” She pointed to financial disclosures that showed Allred’s wealth nearly doubling during his own time in Congress, although Allred said his assets were in a blind trust and the money came from his wife’s income as a partner at a law firm.

“To be clear, the sum total I made on that trade was only $90,” Johnson said of her Palantir stock. “My opponent is trying to make it seem like it was hundreds or thousands.”

The bitter campaign is emblematic of broader debates within the Democratic Party over the role of money in politics. Long a refrain of strident progressives and good-government reformers, accusations that political rivals are self-dealing or bought by special interests have become a mainstay of Democratic primaries. The heightened criticism of lawmakers’ personal wealth comes as the party looks to sharpen its anti-corruption message against Trump and to develop a platform for overhauling Washington if Democrats take power in the midterms.
Some are tracking congressional stock trading

Trump campaigned on a promise to “drain the swamp,” capitalizing on Americans’ disdain for the Washington establishment. Now that his family is profiting while he’s back in the White House, Democrats are eager to regain the upper hand on an issue that could prove potent with voters.

“The difficulty is that right now, no party has the mantle on anti-corruption,” said Daniel Lobo-Lewis, a political consultant in Washington. “Many voters outside of the beltway see both parties as corrupt, because they see all politicians as bought by the donors or by their own self-interest.”

Lobo-Lewis and Nico Agosta founded the Political Integrity Project last year to track stock trading and corporate donations involving members of Congress.

The organization asks candidates to sign an “integrity pledge” to refrain from trading stocks or accepting corporate donations while in Congress and vow not to work as a lobbyist after they leave office. So far, about 90 challengers and seven sitting lawmakers have taken the pledge.

“If we want to, in any way, start rebuilding trust in our political institutions, it starts with no-brainer changes like this that have an approval rating above and beyond any other issue you could imagine,” Lobo-Lewis said.

Congress has yet to enact a stock trading ban for its members, though insider trading is already illegal for members just like it is for anyone else. There are multiple proposals on Capitol Hill, but none have gained traction.

A bipartisan bill to ban congressional stock trading stalled this year despite receiving Trump’s blessing during his State of the Union. And Democrats remain divided over the number of alleged loopholes in their competing proposals.
Anti-corruption messages spread in Democratic primaries

A crowded race in a Democratic-leaning Utah congressional seat has featured attacks over candidates’ personal wealth. State Sen. Nate Blouin criticized his main rival, former Rep. Ben McAdams, for having equity in a Utah data center firm, and excoriated others in the race for past investments and jobs.

McAdams said the equity of several thousand dollars was payment for a past contract completed by his government consulting firm while he was a private citizen. His campaign defended the data center project by saying it would use no water and run on clean energy.

A spokesperson for McAdams also claimed Blouin “is currently hiding his corporate donations” by removing them from campaign disclosure reports, which McAdams’ campaign claims “is not only deceitful, it breaks campaign finance law.”

In an interview, Blouin rejected the claim that he broke the law, and said that he removed the donations because he returned the money to each donor.

“It was actually quite uncomfortable to return some of those,” said Blouin, because some of the firms included local firms and clean energy companies. “But there is a perception that campaign contributions from lobbyists and companies influence votes, and I think there is some truth to that.”

In a New York City congressional district that includes both Wall Street and the Democratic Socialists of America’s headquarters, the city’s former comptroller, Brad Lander, has accused Rep. Dan Goldman of trying to buy another term by using his own wealth to match campaign contributions. Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss family fortune, says he entered all of his assets into a blind trust after taking office in 2023.

A spokesperson for Goldman said Lander is “running a deceitful campaign based on absurd lies that Dan is beholden to special interests” and that Goldman has raised more campaign funds than Lander “without taking a dime of corporate PAC money.” Goldman has spent his own money on the race, the spokesperson said: “To ensure that the NY-10 voters can be sure that he is beholden only to them and his principles.”

Lander said Goldman’s spending is “not illegal, but it is certainly anti-democratic when a quarter-billionaire like Dan Goldman not only dumps millions of his own inherited wealth into his elections but also solicits money from the same forces who are rigging the economy and worsening the affordability crisis.”
More candidates are fighting over stocks in California

Even representatives who support a ban on congressional stock trading are feeling the heat.

Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California is facing multiple primary challengers who have criticized the congressman for holding stocks while serving in Congress. Sherman does not trade individual stocks and supports a ban on stock trading.

“I only own three individual stocks, which I inherited from my mother when she passed away, which were originally acquired by my grandmother,” Sherman said. “I have never sold them because I made a promise to my constituents that I would not buy and sell individual stocks.”

One of Sherman’s primary challengers is Jake Levine, a former climate adviser to President Joe Biden, who signed the pledge from the Political Integrity Project. But Sherman said Levine “refuses to disclose key elements of his $18 million stock portfolio, and actively bought and sold stocks while serving on the National Security Council.” Levine has said he cannot disclose the portfolio because it is managed by his family and he has no oversight.

In the race to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California State Sen. Scott Wiener has critiqued his progressive opponent, Saikat Chakrabarti, over his personal wealth. Chakrabarti is a former software engineer who earned millions as an early employee at the tech firm Stripe. He later served as the first chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Wiener said that Chakrabarti “has enormous investments” and “is trying to buy this seat” while “spreading bogus conspiracy theories” with his own wealth. He criticized Chakrabarti for not disclosing the last decade of his stock trades.

“If you’re making a ban on stock trades a central part of your campaign — as Saikat is doing, running around saying that everyone under the sun is corrupt — how about you tell the voters about your own stock trading history,” Wiener said.

Chakrabarti retorted that his wealth as a private citizen is not relevant to his future time in office and that he would place all of his assets into a blind trust should he be elected. He critiqued Wiener for being supported by super PACs funded by the AI firm Anthropic and other major corporations.

“This is all part of a larger problem, which is just the whole idea of corruption in our politics,” Chakrabarti said. “If you’re in Congress, you sit on committees that oversee a lot of these industries, and it’s unethical to be using that insider information, that knowledge to make stock trades. But that doesn’t apply to a private citizen.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in the Lone Star State will make their second attempt to nominate a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in a primary runoff election on Tuesday, the electoral version of the Texas two-step.

Also on the ballot are primary runoffs in more than a dozen congressional districts, plus state contests for lieutenant governor, attorney general and others.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn was the top vote-getter in the March 3 primary, but strong showings by two GOP challengers forced the four-term incumbent to Tuesday’s head-to-head matchup with state Attorney General Ken Paxton, the second-place finisher who received President Donald Trump’s endorsement on May 19.

The contest is Trump’s next opportunity to purge the party of incumbents he views as insufficiently loyal to him and his agenda. It also sets the stage for a general election where Democrats are increasingly optimistic about their chances to score an upset in the heavily Republican state as they look to retake control of the U.S. Senate. Historically, voters have tended to punish the incumbent president’s party at the ballot box in midterm election years.

The winner will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in the general election.

Trump seemed open to endorsing Cornyn following the primary, and he did not excoriate the incumbent in his endorsement of Paxton, as he’s done recently with Republican incumbents in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky. But he said Cornyn “was not supportive of me when times were tough.”

Cornyn was critical of Trump ahead of the president’s 2024 campaign.

Since much of the Texas primary campaign has focused on the candidates’ loyalty to Trump, the counties where the president has the most support could play a decisive role. Although many of the counties Trump won in 2024 with 80% or more of the vote are rural and sparsely populated, collectively they made up about a fifth of the GOP primary vote. Paxton beat Cornyn in these counties, 45% to 40%, while Cornyn performed better than Paxton in the rest of the state.

In counties Trump carried with between 50% and 80% of the vote, Cornyn received about 42% of the vote, edging Paxton by a percentage point. Republican primary voters in the 12 counties Democrat Kamala Harris carried in 2024 preferred Cornyn, 44% to 40%. These counties made up 25% of the overall primary vote, larger than the share of Trump’s 80%-plus counties.

Only two incumbent U.S. senators from Texas have lost a primary in the last 100 years.

In 2025, Republicans redrew the state’s congressional districts at Trump’s urging as part of an effort to maintain control of the U.S. House.

Among the notable primary runoffs that resulted from the new congressional map, Democratic U.S. Reps. Christian Menefee and Al Green will face each other in the redrawn 18th Congressional District. In the new 33rd Congressional District, Democratic U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson faces a challenge from her predecessor, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close statewide at 7 p.m. local time, which is 8 p.m. ET and 9 p.m. ET. Most polls are in Central time and close at 8 p.m. ET, while polls in the westernmost part of the state are in Mountain time and close at 9 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The AP will provide vote results and declare winners in Republican primary runoffs for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, railroad commissioner, Court of Criminal Appeals, state Senate and state House and in Democratic primary runoffs for U.S. House, lieutenant governor, attorney general, state Board of Education and state House.

Who gets to vote?

Voters who did not participate in a party primary on March 3 may vote in the runoff for either party. Voters who did cast a ballot in a party primary may only vote in the runoff of the same party as they did in the primary. In other words, Democratic primary voters may not vote in a Republican primary runoff or vice versa. Voters in the non-partisan primary may vote in either party’s runoff.

How many voters are there?

As of the March 3 primary, there were nearly 19 million registered voters in Texas.
How many people actually vote?

About 2.2 million Republican primary votes and about 2.3 million Democratic primary votes were cast in the March 3 Texas primary.

In the 2022 Republican primary for Texas Attorney General, turnout was about 1.9 million voters in the primary and about 932,000 in the primary runoff.
How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 63% of the vote in the March 3 Republican primary was cast before primary day.

As of Thursday, about 621,000 Republican primary ballots and about 262,000 Democratic primary ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election.

When are early and absentee votes released?

Counties tend to release all or nearly all results from early and absentee voting in the first vote update of the night, before any in-person Election Day results are released.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the U.S. Senate primary in March, the AP first reported results at 8 p.m. ET just as polls closed in most of the state. By 11:39 p.m. ET, 75% of the vote had been counted. Vote results were released continuously until about 5:58 a.m. ET, with about 98% of the total vote counted.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

Texas requires an automatic recount only in cases of a tie vote. Losing candidates may request and pay for a recount if the margin is less than 10% of the leading candidate’s vote. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 161 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.
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Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign event in Lubbock, Texas, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Annie Rice)
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Date
May 19, 2026 5:55 PM
Headline
Election 2026 Texas Senate
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FR171627 AP
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LUFKIN – One person is dead and two have been injured following a single-vehicle crash on U.S. 59 in Lufkin, according to police. The Lufkin Police Department said traffic on U.S. 59 South is was blocked after a single-vehicle crash killed one person. A Grapeland woman, Alishia M. Scott, 43, was pronounced dead at the scene in the 5000 block of U.S. 59 south of Lufkin A man and woman are being treated for their injuries.  Her family has been notified. The three were in a Chevrolet Tahoe traveling north toward Lufkin when the accident occurred. An investigation by Lufkin Police and DPS Troopers is under way.