Democrats just seized one of the Republican Party’s most powerful weapons

Democrat Nathan Johnson’s victory in the Texas attorney general race ends nearly three decades of Republican control of an office that has been central to the party’s use of lawsuits to challenge Democratic policies. Texas can still take part in political litigation, but Republicans will lose a large state legal operation they have used to pursue policy goals through the courts.

The office oversees nearly 750 attorneys, and Texas’s federal courts have helped make it a powerful base for these cases: litigants can often steer suits to particular trial judges, while appeals go to the Republican-leaning Fifth Circuit. The Supreme Court reviews only about 60 of the 7,000 to 8,000 petitions it receives each year, and its decisions can come after long delays. The article cites a Texas judge’s order reinstating a Trump-era border policy that remained in effect for nearly a year before the court reversed it.