The Charlie Kirk Show - 'Roe on the Ropes' with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk Show, my conversation with the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton.

00:00:06.000 We talk about the new pro-life law that has been enacted in Texas.

00:00:11.000 We talk about his Google lawsuit.

00:00:13.000 We talk about is Texas going blue with our exclusive conversation with the Attorney General of Texas.

00:00:21.000 What a perfect time to have him on the show.

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00:01:02.000 Ken Paxton is here, everybody.

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00:01:19.000 Ken Paxton is here.

00:01:20.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:01:20.000 Here we go.

00:01:21.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:23.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

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00:02:20.000 We are super thrilled to be joined by the Attorney General of the great state of Texas, Ken Paxton, who's doing a wonderful job, who actually is in my studio as I'm in Fargo, North Dakota.

00:02:30.000 So we switched places here somewhat.

00:02:33.000 Attorney General Paxton, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:02:36.000 Hey, I'm enjoying your studio without you, but you were actually in my birthplace.

00:02:39.000 I was born in North Dakota, so I hope you're enjoying it.

00:02:42.000 So Attorney General, can you walk us through what's happening right now in Texas as far as the Supreme Court intervening and saying that the law that was just passed by the legislature is constitutional?

00:02:55.000 Well, so what happened was this was obviously passed last session, which ended in May.

00:03:01.000 And the Texas legislature put in a bill that was designed to protect the unborn when a heartbeat could be detected.

00:03:10.000 And we were sued by, I don't know, 14 plaintiffs or more.

00:03:14.000 It was a lot.

00:03:15.000 The state of Texas, they named me.

00:03:17.000 They named the governor.

00:03:18.000 And so we defended that all the way up to the Supreme Court.

00:03:22.000 And the Supreme Court basically left it in place.

00:03:25.000 They didn't say necessarily that it was constitutional, but it's an interesting case because this provides a private cause of action, which is different than other abortion laws in the past, which provided a government action that where a district attorney would have to bring a criminal case.

00:03:39.000 In this case, there's no government action.

00:03:42.000 It's just an individual cause of action.

00:03:45.000 And so it's much harder for a plaintiff to sue right now when there's really been no case.

00:03:52.000 So let's walk through what the law actually does.

00:03:55.000 This was passed in the legislature back this last spring, if I'm not mistaken.

00:03:58.000 And it says that abortions will not be performed after six weeks or when a heartbeat is detected.

00:04:03.000 Is that correct?

00:04:04.000 Yeah, that's absolutely correct.

00:04:05.000 And I don't know that anything like this has been actually passed and put into place.

00:04:11.000 I know that other states have passed similar laws.

00:04:13.000 They just haven't gone into effect.

00:04:15.000 And ours went into effect literally yesterday.

00:04:17.000 So, yeah, can you just expand on that a little bit more of why this law was different than, for example, the Alabama law in 2019?

00:04:27.000 What was the way that the legislature and maybe your office advised that this law was created?

00:04:34.000 Well, it makes it much easier for a federal court to enjoin or stay or stop a law that puts a state in the position of prosecuting somebody.

00:04:46.000 In this case, because these are individual claims, it'll be individuals that will be suing doctors or anybody involved in the abortion procedure if they violated this law going past six weeks or the heartbeat.

00:05:00.000 And so it makes it much harder for a federal court to step in and join it now.

00:05:05.000 And now these cases can be tried not just in, so we would normally get sued in a pretty liberal county, maybe not have the best record to go defend.

00:05:13.000 Now individuals can choose their own place where they want to sue in state district court and potentially get a better record to take up if there's a challenge to this, which of course there will be when one of these cases actually gets filed.

00:05:27.000 Well, that's a brilliant way of going about it.

00:05:29.000 It's almost a workaround, right?

00:05:33.000 Which is what the left has been doing to us for the last 40 years is kind of saying, how can we, you know, in a clever fashion, try to find the right case to try to compromise whatever, you know, conservative policy we don't like.

00:05:46.000 So what you're saying is that this Texas law was written with the intent to try to not have it be overturned by unelected federal judges, basically.

00:05:55.000 Yeah, that's exactly what's happening here.

00:05:56.000 It was, I thought, a very smart, maybe clever way of empowering individuals who are potentially harmed by abortion and by doctors and other providers who perform abortions to have a cause of action to go seek some type of legal redress.

00:06:13.000 And I'm not saying there won't be federal questions that come up, but they aren't there right now.

00:06:17.000 It's literally there's no case.

00:06:18.000 And so the Supreme Court hesitated.

00:06:20.000 They didn't say they were resolving this issue once and for all.

00:06:23.000 Obviously, you know, we still have Roe v. Wade in place, but now there is going to be a collision at some point with our law and the precedent that was created by the courts, you know, back in 1972.

00:06:36.000 Well, and I just want to compliment you and your office for being wise enough and also having perseverance because we've been told there's nothing you could do.

00:06:46.000 Roe versus Wade is the law of the land.

00:06:49.000 And Texas has just said, well, let's see if that's true.

00:06:52.000 We're going to have this maybe a new way to go about it.

00:06:56.000 And so the Supreme Court issued an opinion yesterday, which they didn't reverse Roe versus Wade.

00:07:04.000 People on television are just lying.

00:07:06.000 That's not what they, I wish they would have, honestly, but that's not what they did.

00:07:09.000 Instead, they said that they're not able to intervene on the state law.

00:07:15.000 Now, there were four dissenting justices.

00:07:18.000 I think Roberts was alongside Sota Mayor and Kagan and Breyer.

00:07:24.000 I was pleased to see that President Trump's selections, all three of them ruled correctly here, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.

00:07:32.000 And then, of course, Alito and Thomas.

00:07:34.000 I just want to say President Trump deserves credit for this.

00:07:37.000 I hope everyone listening really resonates with that because without him, the court would have just been in terrible liberal hands.

00:07:43.000 So where does this go from here then, Attorney General Paxton?

00:07:47.000 It might go to a federal court.

00:07:48.000 And are you guys going to be representing the Texas law if that's the case?

00:07:52.000 So absolutely, we're going to represent the Texas law.

00:07:54.000 My job is to represent the legislature, the governor, whoever gets sued over this law, we will represent.

00:08:01.000 And even if it ends up being an individual claim, if there's a way for us to intervene on behalf of the Texas law, we're going to be there to do this.

00:08:09.000 You know, I think you're right.

00:08:10.000 It was a very, it's a very exciting moment because it was a very creative approach to dealing with the abortion issue, which we have thought from the beginning shouldn't have been taken away from the states.

00:08:20.000 These are state issues.

00:08:21.000 They are not federal issues.

00:08:22.000 And we all know that the precedent that was created by Roe v. Wade was made up and that their constitutional right to an abortion doesn't really exist.

00:08:31.000 And so there's a whole nother case we're involved in, the Mississippi statute that we're actually challenging Roe v. Wade head on.

00:08:39.000 But this is a way that this law is in place now and we can protect.

00:08:43.000 This allows the unborn to be protected if they're in this situation of at least six weeks or have a heartbeat.

00:08:51.000 I want to read about the Mississippi law.

00:08:52.000 The next critical moment will arrive this fall when the Supreme Court takes up Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban in a case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

00:09:03.000 Are you helping the Mississippi Attorney General?

00:09:05.000 Is that right?

00:09:06.000 Yeah, so it's their law.

00:09:07.000 She's defending.

00:09:08.000 We filed an amicus on behalf of Amicus Brief, which is a brief in support of the Mississippi law with 23 other states.

00:09:15.000 There's 24 of us, along with Mississippi.

00:09:18.000 So you've got 25 states.

00:09:19.000 This is pretty amazing because this is the first real direct assault on Roe v. Wade.

00:09:25.000 It's basically arguing.

00:09:26.000 If you read our amicus brief, it's pretty well done.

00:09:28.000 It just discusses the precedent, how it's constantly been changing, how states don't have any certainty as to what the law is.

00:09:35.000 And this idea that somehow there was this constitutional right doesn't make a lot of sense since that constitutional right and that standard keeps changing from trimesters to the KC rules about undue burden to women.

00:09:48.000 And so it's all very confusing.

00:09:49.000 They should just get out of the business of changing the law, the Supreme Court, that is, of changing the law every couple of years and just let the states regulate abortion and let each state make that decision.

00:10:01.000 I totally agree.

00:10:03.000 And according to the Washington Post, nine out of 10 women in Texas get abortions in the first six weeks of pregnancy.

00:10:10.000 This will save lives.

00:10:11.000 And also, Ken, you look at the polling, it's also popular.

00:10:15.000 If you look at the people in Texas, 60% of Texans believe they're right in that kind of middle ground where they say that we want more restrictions on abortion and that six weeks or a heartbeat is a good place to land.

00:10:29.000 Now, obviously, I would like to see abortion go away completely as a grassroots conservative, but Texans want this.

00:10:37.000 No, there's no doubt.

00:10:38.000 And that's the way it should be.

00:10:39.000 I mean, we had abortion restrictions before the Supreme Court came in in 1972 and struck them down, not just in our state, but every state.

00:10:47.000 And the reality is, you know, these legislators who make these laws are elected by the people.

00:10:52.000 And we ought to let those people debate and decide what's best for their citizens and not have some court in D.C. tell us, you know, make up a constitutional right that never existed before in the history of this country.

00:11:05.000 So, you know, I'm encouraged because we're making progress and we've continued this fight and we're going to continue the fight until we are in a position where our state controls these decisions and we can have the opportunity to save some of these unborn children.

00:11:18.000 Well, the Biden DOJ is going to do everything they can to go after it, which means they're doing the right thing.

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00:13:25.000 So I want to get to many other topics here, but let's get into election integrity.

00:13:32.000 You see, the other side, they're not just upset about the Texas pro-life law.

00:13:37.000 They're also upset about the law that they say it's the hardest state in the country to vote in.

00:13:43.000 And tell us what's really going on in the fight for election integrity in the great state of Texas.

00:13:47.000 So we almost ended up in the same situation as Georgia and Arizona and some of these other states where we would be counting votes.

00:13:54.000 What we did differently in Texas is we defended 12 lawsuits that were aimed in pretty liberal counties, Travis, which is Austin, Houston, which is and then Bear County, which is San Antonio.

00:14:08.000 And in those counties, we were sued over our laws related to mail-in ballots and signature verification.

00:14:15.000 We were fortunate.

00:14:16.000 We had 12 of those lawsuits.

00:14:17.000 It was a major onslaught.

00:14:18.000 We won every single one of those lawsuits.

00:14:20.000 So instead of counting votes on election day, we had already protected our elections.

00:14:25.000 Now what we're doing is we're actually expanding voting hours and we're limiting some of the little tricks that were attempted in Harris County and some other places to go beyond what the legislature authorized as far as it relates to voting.

00:14:40.000 And so we've tried to tighten up mail-in ballots by requiring a photo ID, which I think is very significant because my office prosecutes voter fraud.

00:14:48.000 It's the only thing we prosecute.

00:14:50.000 We have more voter fraud cases going now than we ever have.

00:14:53.000 We have, I think, over 500 cases in court, another almost 400 cases that we're investigating, and more than a majority of those relate to mail-in ballot fraud.

00:15:02.000 So what the legislature was trying to do was expand ours, give more opportunity to vote.

00:15:06.000 We already have two weeks of early voting in Texas, so it's pretty significant.

00:15:10.000 But at the same time, we realize we still have some voter fraud issues, especially as it relates to mail-in ballots.

00:15:15.000 So I want to kind of zero in on something you just said.

00:15:17.000 There's 500 cases that you've brought to indictment.

00:15:23.000 Is that right?

00:15:23.000 Around voting fraud.

00:15:24.000 No, no.

00:15:24.000 So we have over 500 counts that we're prosecuting right now.

00:15:29.000 We have not brought them into indictment because COVID actually shut the courts down in Texas for quite a while.

00:15:35.000 And we're now waiting in line behind violent offenders to get those cases in.

00:15:39.000 But we have more cases going right now related to voter fraud than I think we've had in the entire history of Texas.

00:15:46.000 So if you add up the number that we're investigating plus the number that we're prosecuting, I think it's a larger number than all the cases ever prosecuted in Texas.

00:15:54.000 Can you give us a taste or an example of some of these cases?

00:15:58.000 Because we are told every day with almost religious incantation, voter fraud doesn't exist. 0.96

00:16:04.000 If you believe it, you're a racist bigot.

00:16:06.000 Just give us one or two of the examples that your office uncovered and that will eventually get to trial. 0.91

00:16:11.000 Yeah.

00:16:12.000 So we had one in Greg County, which is we had a county commissioner win by like a few votes.

00:16:18.000 And we determined through our investigation that there had been over 300 mail-in ballots that were fraudulently filled out.

00:16:24.000 And so we prosecuted that commissioner or we are prosecuting that commissioner.

00:16:29.000 We had another mayor win in South Texas in a town in South Texas, and it was the same type of issue.

00:16:36.000 Mail-in ballot fraud, people voting that weren't supposed to vote.

00:16:40.000 We prosecuted one person who was illegal and she voted 10 different times.

00:16:46.000 Clearly a violation of law.

00:16:48.000 And so those are the types of things that we prosecute.

00:16:51.000 And I would argue that it actually has increased voting in Texas because people vote when they have confidence in the election being credible.

00:17:01.000 And so this is really important because we're told that voter fraud does not exist.

00:17:05.000 But you're also setting an example here, Ken, that if you violate the law, you will also prosecute it.

00:17:12.000 It's not just like pay a fine that you could go to jail.

00:17:15.000 And I think that's important because that also sends some fear into some people that might be thinking that they can institutionally break our laws when it comes to voting.

00:17:24.000 Yeah.

00:17:26.000 We also are prosecuting a woman that admitted on tape that she had committed 7,000 violations of the laws, gotten over 7,000 votes that were illegal.

00:17:35.000 Yeah, and I will say this.

00:17:36.000 We're one of the few states that are actually doing these prosecutions.

00:17:39.000 You hear the narrative over and over.

00:17:40.000 I read it every day in every article.

00:17:41.000 Oh, there's no proof of voter fraud.

00:17:42.000 Well, that's just not true.

00:17:44.000 In my state, when I started, we only had one person prosecuting voter fraud, one attorney.

00:17:49.000 I asked the legislature for more, and we now have three.

00:17:52.000 Those people are busy.

00:17:54.000 If I had more lawyers, if I had more lawyers allocated to this or could get more money, we would be prosecuting even more voter fraud.

00:18:01.000 And what I think is going on is most states don't dedicate the resources to go find the fraud and then prosecute it.

00:18:08.000 Well, I just think it's terrific what your office is doing with that specific issue.

00:18:12.000 So many other states are not doing that.

00:18:15.000 In Arizona, Attorney General Mark Bernovich, it looks like he's going to really zero in on this in Arizona, which we're cheering for him to do that.

00:18:24.000 And we're actually going to see him sometime soon.

00:18:28.000 He has a big opportunity right now in Arizona to go after a lot of this.

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00:20:28.000 So I want to get into your Google lawsuit.

00:20:31.000 So talk about your lawsuit against Google.

00:20:33.000 What is the status of that?

00:20:35.000 I think it's the most brilliant complaint I've seen written up against this tech oligarchy.

00:20:40.000 Tell us about it.

00:20:41.000 So I was inspired to do this after I won re-election.

00:20:45.000 I had talked to a lot of my constituents.

00:20:46.000 They were concerned about big tech and how it was affecting their lives, how data was being taken from them.

00:20:53.000 They didn't even know what these companies knew about them.

00:20:56.000 And so we started doing our research.

00:20:58.000 We spent a lot of time talking to professors who knew a lot about tech and obviously antitrust experts and just all kinds of different people.

00:21:06.000 And we really came down to this case against Google.

00:21:08.000 We thought there are plenty of other things to look at, but that was where we thought we should start.

00:21:13.000 And our case is complicated in a way, but it's also simple in another way.

00:21:17.000 We have an obligation to protect consumers, make sure that there's competition.

00:21:21.000 And so an antitrust case is designed to make sure that one company doesn't take over the entire market through unfair trade practices.

00:21:28.000 And we believe that Google has done that.

00:21:30.000 And they've done it in what's called the ad tech market, which means that they control almost all the advertising on the internet.

00:21:36.000 They represent the buyer.

00:21:38.000 They represent the sellers.

00:21:39.000 They represent the exchange.

00:21:40.000 It would be like watching a baseball game and the umpire, the batter, the first baseman, the pitcher, everyone was on the same team.

00:21:50.000 And in this case, that's what's going on.

00:21:52.000 And they're able to profit in ways that they shouldn't profit.

00:21:54.000 And there's no competition.

00:21:55.000 They either buy them out or they crush them.

00:21:58.000 And so we have sued them over this.

00:22:00.000 And we too think we have a pretty good case.

00:22:02.000 Although, as you might imagine, Google has a lot of resources.

00:22:06.000 One, to try to, you know, go up against me in elections, but also to fund lawyers really however much they want because they make so much money.

00:22:16.000 Well, I want to just kind of mention something here that might be missed on most listeners.

00:22:22.000 Attorney General Paxton, how many people do you have working for you in the Attorney General's office in Texas?

00:22:27.000 So it's a total of about 4,200.

00:22:30.000 4,200.

00:22:31.000 And you're saying that Google has a lot of resources.

00:22:36.000 I want you to understand how big these companies are.

00:22:38.000 You have, do you understand the point I'm making?

00:22:40.000 I mean, you're the third largest state, right?

00:22:42.000 Or the second largest state?

00:22:43.000 We're second.

00:22:43.000 We're actually second.

00:22:44.000 That's the census data, the second largest state in the country.

00:22:47.000 Attorney General's office is saying, hey, look, we're going to try our best, but like, we're no Google.

00:22:52.000 It goes to show the size of it, right?

00:22:54.000 I mean, that's amazing.

00:22:55.000 The money that they have.

00:22:56.000 I mean, we have budgets and, you know, my entire budget for a two-year period is $1.3 billion, which sounds like a lot of money.

00:23:02.000 It's $600 and something million, but a year, which is a lot of money.

00:23:06.000 And we do a lot of great things with that money.

00:23:08.000 However, if you think about Google making, you know, $135 billion a year in profits, they could hire every attorney in Texas if they wanted to and every lobbyist in Texas.

00:23:18.000 And we have to go up against that.

00:23:20.000 There's no limit to what they can do, the experts they can hire and what they can do to try to go into a legislative session like I just went through where they try to lobby to have my budget cut by 25%.

00:23:32.000 So it's a force.

00:23:33.000 They are a force, and that's just one company.

00:23:37.000 That makes sense.

00:23:38.000 Yeah.

00:23:38.000 So Google, being its own government, basically, within our own country, never should have been allowed to be this big or powerful, comes in and says, oh, we don't like the attorney general's office in Texas because their lawsuit is so brilliantly written.

00:23:51.000 Let's go cut their budget because we have offices in Austin and somehow we can justify that.

00:23:57.000 And that's what they're willing to do.

00:23:59.000 Absolutely.

00:24:00.000 And think it's pretty smart.

00:24:01.000 I mean, if they get my budget cut by 25%, which was the strategy, that makes it very difficult for me to carry forward.

00:24:07.000 I actually asked also for money for the Google case.

00:24:10.000 I asked for $43 million to go fight Google.

00:24:12.000 Well, they obviously were trying to fight that as well.

00:24:15.000 But imagine I don't get the money to fight them, but I also lose the rest of my, you know, a high percentage of my budget and I have to lay off a bunch of lawyers instead of ramping up to go fight them.

00:24:25.000 That's nearly what happened.

00:24:27.000 It's incredible.

00:24:28.000 I think only California has a larger attorney general's office, if I'm not mistaken, than Texas.

00:24:32.000 And they're not fighting Google anytime soon.

00:24:34.000 I can tell you that.

00:24:35.000 They're not going to do anything in that regard.

00:24:37.000 So now I want to shift gears here to the southern border.

00:24:42.000 There's some conversation that the southern border might be privately constructed.

00:24:47.000 Talk about the legal parameters that a state has to secure an international border.

00:24:53.000 Well, it's pretty challenging from the standpoint of first just cost.

00:24:57.000 I mean, it's billions of dollars.

00:24:59.000 You know, we're a large state.

00:25:00.000 We have a budget.

00:25:01.000 I don't even know what it is.

00:25:01.000 It's $260, $270 billion, somewhere in that range for a biennium.

00:25:06.000 But it costs billions of dollars to build this wall.

00:25:10.000 And so the governor has put up $250 million.

00:25:12.000 We're trying to raise money privately, but that's just a drop in the bucket to what it's going to take.

00:25:17.000 Our border is over 1,200 miles long.

00:25:19.000 And so obviously we're not going to put a wall along the entire range of that.

00:25:24.000 But we do have some challenges funding that wall, even in the places that we absolutely need it.

00:25:32.000 Yeah, I mean, I think that with all due respect to Governor Abbott, a $250 billion biennial state budget, you guys can peel off some more money for border security.

00:25:42.000 I think it's incredibly important.

00:25:44.000 So, but what are the legal parameters here around kind of restricting flow of people through international passageway?

00:25:52.000 Can a state do that?

00:25:53.000 Well, I think we have the power of eminent domain.

00:25:55.000 And one of the things I think we're trying to do is a lot of these property owners are afraid.

00:26:00.000 I met with several of them last week, ranchers who are afraid they're having to move their cattle because they're afraid that their cattle are going to be harmed, their property is being harmed.

00:26:09.000 They're worried for their own safety.

00:26:11.000 So a lot of them may be willing to donate some of the land instead of the state having to come in and pay them based on some legal proceeding.

00:26:18.000 But we also have that option.

00:26:19.000 If it's for a public purpose, just like roads, the state can come in and pay landowners through an eminent domain process for that land.

00:26:28.000 And that's the process that we'll have to go through in some places if we're going to construct a wall that actually works.

00:26:35.000 So now I want to talk about other attorney generals that many listeners on the show will have access to or know personally.

00:26:42.000 What can some of these other attorney generals do to push back against the Biden regime and be helpful to what you're doing?

00:26:48.000 I'm here in Fargo, North Dakota right now, kind of two very high energy producing states.

00:26:54.000 What would be helpful, in your opinion, to start to win in the courts?

00:26:58.000 Do you think we need to be more aggressive?

00:27:00.000 Do you think that we need to play offense more?

00:27:02.000 What's your opinion?

00:27:03.000 No, we're trying to play offense.

00:27:05.000 We're playing a lot of defense too, because we've got a Biden administration that doesn't follow federal law in all kinds of ways.

00:27:11.000 But I think that we definitely need the resources of not just my state, but every attorney general that's willing to defend the Constitution.

00:27:20.000 We need to align.

00:27:22.000 We need the forces of all of these states fighting together and not necessarily going off on their own little tangents.

00:27:30.000 We need to join forces and join as many causes together because, you know, just like this abortion case I talked about, 25 states, that's pretty significant when you've got 25 states banded together saying, hey, Supreme Court, this isn't right.

00:27:42.000 And so instead of just having Texas on some of these lawsuits, like Texas and Missouri sued over the migrant protection protocols, and we just won at the Supreme Court.

00:27:51.000 We stopped the Biden administration from keeping asylum seekers in the country indefinitely when they don't really qualify for asylum.

00:27:59.000 And two, they're not having their hearing.

00:28:00.000 They're disappearing.

00:28:01.000 So it would, it was Missouri and us, it would be nice to have other states join lawsuits just like that. 0.81

00:28:07.000 And in some cases, that is happening.

00:28:09.000 And so I'm encouraged by that.

00:28:10.000 I would be more encouraged if we were doing more and we were joining more.

00:28:16.000 And so one of the other issues that we're getting emailed a lot about is this refugee resettlement issue.

00:28:22.000 Right now, it looks like Texas is planning to receive in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston Afghan refugees.

00:28:28.000 Is there anything your office can do to get more clarity there or challenge this seemingly massive infusion of foreigners into the state of Texas? 0.98

00:28:36.000 Look, I think it's pretty purposeful they're bringing them to Texas, just like I think it's purposeful that they are leaving so many illegals in our state and allowing hundreds of thousands to come across every month. 1.00

00:28:46.000 There's a purpose behind that. 1.00

00:28:47.000 Yes.

00:28:48.000 Unfortunately, this happened.

00:28:50.000 We had a lawsuit over Syrian refugees a few years ago.

00:28:53.000 We did not win.

00:28:54.000 And because the federal government has this control over people coming into the country, we've lost that lawsuit.

00:29:01.000 So it's very frustrating because they don't vet these people that we know of.

00:29:05.000 They don't tell us anyway.

00:29:07.000 So we don't know their background.

00:29:08.000 So it's hard for local law enforcement to prepare and to track people or even to know who to track because the federal government brings them in.

00:29:16.000 They may know something about them.

00:29:17.000 We don't know and they don't tell us.

00:29:19.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:29:20.000 And so I appreciate your office trying to do what you can in that regard, but it seems to be not a losing issue, but a difficult one.

00:29:30.000 Now, around vaccine mandates, this is one that a lot of our listeners are asking about.

00:29:34.000 What is the state in Texas around this issue?

00:29:37.000 A lot of people are asking for representation.

00:29:39.000 I know there's limitations at times in what the court can do.

00:29:42.000 Other states are passing vaccination status as a protected class.

00:29:46.000 What is the state of this in the state of Texas?

00:29:49.000 So right now we're involved in, I don't know how many, I'd have a hard time adding up the number of lawsuits over masks.

00:29:54.000 And then we also have one over San Antonio ISD, the school district, trying to force employees to get the vaccine.

00:30:03.000 We are suing all of these counties and cities and other governmental entities that are trying to do this because we have a disaster relief act.

00:30:14.000 And under that disaster relief act, the governor can issue these executive orders.

00:30:18.000 And he's done that as it relates to the pandemic.

00:30:20.000 And he said no governmental entity can require a vaccine or require a mask.

00:30:25.000 And so we've sued over that.

00:30:27.000 I don't have any authority to do anything about businesses or individuals.

00:30:30.000 Individuals can make their own choices.

00:30:32.000 The business issue is a little harder because they feel, I know that they feel some risk related to liability if they don't have their employees vaccinated.

00:30:40.000 And so there's a little tension between liability and individual choice, which I certainly believe in because I don't want to be told to get the vaccine if I feel like that's not in my best health interest.

00:30:49.000 And so that's an issue I think our state is still struggling with as it relates to businesses and the liability versus individual choice on health.

00:30:58.000 Well, I applaud you for that because so many states are not taking that stance.

00:31:02.000 And while I can understand that at times of the businesses' liability, they're operating from a false premise.

00:31:09.000 The data is showing that the vaccine is actually potentially contributing to more people getting infected, as Israel is the most vaccinated country in the world with some of the highest COVID rates, even higher than what happened last winter.

00:31:21.000 Well, and I think you're right about that.

00:31:22.000 And I think if you look at the Swedish model, they took a totally different approach.

00:31:26.000 They have vaccinated the high-risk people and left everybody else alone or encouraged the high-risk people to stay out of the public.

00:31:33.000 So, their approach is actually, I think, seemingly worked the best.

00:31:38.000 And it's been less governmental intervention and more choice.

00:31:42.000 And as you said, you've got Israel that's been highly vaccinated and doesn't seem to have worked as well.

00:31:48.000 And it seems like the vaccination may end up being, it could end up being more of a problem because it's not been fully tested.

00:31:56.000 Yeah, Sweden has just banned travelers from Israel, which they don't want people from the most vaccinated country in the world coming to Sweden.

00:32:04.000 I do want to say your website, Ken, is what?

00:32:06.000 Because people should know how to support you.

00:32:08.000 Kenpaxon.com.

00:32:10.000 It's easy to remember.

00:32:11.000 So, kenpaxon.com.

00:32:13.000 And also, I want to say people say, Charlie, how do I keep liberals out of my state?

00:32:16.000 Well, when you start to pass laws like Texas is passing and defend them, liberals are not going to want to go to your state.

00:32:22.000 In fact, you're going to get more conservatives that move to your state.

00:32:24.000 You're going to get more Americans that move to your state that want to actually be represented and be able to own firearms and have pro-life laws.

00:32:32.000 And I think that's so important.

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00:33:52.000 All right.

00:33:52.000 So Attorney General, talk about the new Second Amendment bill that was just passed that has everyone freaking out of what's happening in Texas.

00:34:01.000 Well, it's a long time coming.

00:34:02.000 I've been in favor of this forever.

00:34:04.000 You don't have to have a permit for free speech.

00:34:06.000 You don't have a permit to go exercise your faith.

00:34:10.000 I don't think you should have to have a permit to carry under the Second Amendment.

00:34:14.000 And so in Texas, we now have that.

00:34:16.000 We have constitutional carry, which allows people to carry concealed or out in the open without going through the government to get permission.

00:34:25.000 Well, that's terrific.

00:34:26.000 And so are there any possible legal challenges to this?

00:34:30.000 I'm sure some groups are going to try.

00:34:32.000 I mean, Robert Francis O'Rourke, who calls himself Beto, is making all sorts of videos about this and saying this is the worst thing ever, but I don't think that's going to hold up in court.

00:34:40.000 No, I mean, I have no doubt we'll get sued.

00:34:43.000 We'll end up defending that law.

00:34:45.000 And we'll, you know, that's one of those cases that could all the way to the Supreme Court.

00:34:49.000 Who knows?

00:34:50.000 Either way, I think we're on obviously solid legal footing with the Constitution.

00:34:54.000 It's kind of the basic of our country.

00:34:57.000 So I feel I'm encouraged.

00:34:59.000 It took a long time to get this through.

00:35:01.000 I was in the legislature for 12 years.

00:35:03.000 We were never able to get it through.

00:35:04.000 And finally, this session, you know, it happened.

00:35:07.000 So I'm really grateful.

00:35:08.000 So let's talk more broadly now just about Texas.

00:35:11.000 Is Texas at risk of going blue?

00:35:13.000 Harris County seems to be a blue county now.

00:35:15.000 Dallas County is whatever it is.

00:35:17.000 What are you seeing on the ground?

00:35:19.000 And how can people help?

00:35:20.000 We're absolutely at risk of going blue.

00:35:23.000 Would have happened this time had we not fought these lawsuits.

00:35:26.000 It's all about whether we can protect the integrity of our elections.

00:35:29.000 And that is a constant battle.

00:35:31.000 And that's why this election bill was passed.

00:35:33.000 And we've got to be vigilant.

00:35:35.000 I think there's another bill they're considering on looking at potential type audits like you guys are doing here.

00:35:42.000 I think we've got to do that to make sure that our elections are fair and that people can trust them.

00:35:47.000 Because once you lose, if we lose control in Texas, I'm not sure that we'd ever get it back because if they open up mail-in ballot elections, we're going to end up with a lot more fraud and we may never be able to take it back.

00:35:59.000 And so it's pretty important that we secure our elections now because you go to California, there's a lot of mail-in ballots.

00:36:07.000 And I don't know if we'll ever know if there's a fair election in California or Oregon or Washington.

00:36:11.000 That's right.

00:36:11.000 If you're a conservative, you can move to Texas and be part of keeping it red.

00:36:15.000 And so also, I want to ask you about the 52 Democrats.

00:36:18.000 How many of Democrats left?

00:36:19.000 Was it 52 of them? 0.56

00:36:20.000 Was it right that many?

00:36:21.000 I think that's right.

00:36:22.000 That's about the number.

00:36:23.000 Are they going to be able to be arrested?

00:36:24.000 And if not, I don't understand how that's possible.

00:36:27.000 So, yeah, you know, we took that.

00:36:30.000 We were in court over that.

00:36:31.000 We had a local judge in Travis County tell us that those Democrats couldn't be arrested.

00:36:38.000 So we took it to the Texas Supreme Court and got that undone.

00:36:42.000 It was actually what's called an ex parte here.

00:36:44.000 We weren't even at the hearing to defend what we thought was state law.

00:36:47.000 And so we got that overturned.

00:36:49.000 So those Democrats are actually back.

00:36:50.000 And that's why we're able to have the quorum to go pass the election integrity bill and the other bills.

00:36:56.000 And I will say this, I give Governor Abbott a lot of credit.

00:36:59.000 He kept calling them back.

00:37:00.000 And it made it difficult for the Republican legislators and even the Democrat legislators that were actually there all summer, not being able to go work because they only get paid $600 a month plus their per diem.

00:37:12.000 But they weren't able to go back to their jobs.

00:37:14.000 They weren't able to be with their family.

00:37:15.000 They weren't able to take vacations.

00:37:16.000 It was very challenging for those who had to go beyond the regular session, which is five months.

00:37:21.000 And we have a citizen legislature, and these people, they work basically for free.

00:37:25.000 So it was very challenging and I think very unfair for the Democrats that left to put everybody else in that bad situation, especially the ones that left and then went on vacation to Europe and the Bahamas or wherever they were.

00:37:36.000 Well, they're back now and we'll see what I hope.

00:37:38.000 I hope they're back only because there's some more movement that needs to happen.

00:37:42.000 But it looks like Texas has done it.

00:37:44.000 It looks like Texas has signed these voter integrity bills into law.

00:37:47.000 And this has been one of the more productive sessions I've ever seen from a Texas legislature.

00:37:52.000 You know, I'd have to agree.

00:37:53.000 I was in the legislature for 12 years, 10 years in the House, two years in the Senate.

00:37:56.000 And I thought the best one I'd ever seen was 2003.

00:37:59.000 And this one, while not perfect, accomplished a lot of really great things better than a lot of sessions I've seen over the last decade.

00:38:07.000 Yeah, I was in Bass Drop, Texas.

00:38:09.000 You know where that is.

00:38:10.000 And people were complaining back in the spring that there wasn't enough movement.

00:38:10.000 I do.

00:38:14.000 They said, we've done nothing on election integrity.

00:38:16.000 We've done nothing on abortion.

00:38:17.000 We've done nothing on guns.

00:38:18.000 And it's like, well, you know, kind of put points on the board for all three of them.

00:38:21.000 I wasn't perfect, but I think the reason, though, Ken, is because the grassroots are really engaged.

00:38:26.000 And that's the lesson.

00:38:27.000 That is the lesson.

00:38:28.000 I think people speaking out and complaining when things aren't done, it creates action.

00:38:34.000 I totally agree.

00:38:35.000 KenPaxton.com.

00:38:36.000 You're doing a wonderful job.

00:38:37.000 God bless Texas.

00:38:38.000 It's about time that we got more states that are doing this.

00:38:41.000 And if you're in a red state that is not Texas, they need to introduce that pro-life bill now.

00:38:47.000 Carbon copy of it.

00:38:48.000 Exact same language.

00:38:49.000 Copy paste it because the Supreme Court will uphold it.

00:38:52.000 Email us your thoughts, everybody, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:38:54.000 Ken, thanks for joining us.

00:38:56.000 Hey, thanks for letting me be in your studio while you're not here.

00:39:00.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:39:01.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom, at charliekirk.com.

00:39:04.000 If you want to email us your thoughts, you can do that at freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:39:07.000 Support our show, charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:39:10.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:39:12.000 God bless.

00:39:16.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - September 02, 2021

'Roe on the Ropes' with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

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