State Attorneys General

Montana’s top legal officer is flying under the national radar, but his scandals and policy agenda mirror his more infamous peers.

A deeper dive into the facts and figures responsible for the latest immigration standoff between Republicans and the Biden administration.

In 2022, Biden’s EPA opened an investigation into Louisiana’s Departments of Health (LDH) and Environmental Quality (LDQ) for failing to sufficiently protect residents of “Cancer Alley”—a strip of predominantly poor, Black communities suffering the dire effects of pollutants spewed from nearby petrochemical plants. To their credit, LDH and LDQ cooperated with the investigation and worked to craft more stringent standards and oversight protocols. Former Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, however, had other ideas. His office filed a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s (clear) authority to pursue its investigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which allows the government to terminate federal funding for an agency found to have engaged in discrimination. Liz Murrill, Landry’s successor, is picking up the torch to carry on his malevolent agenda. 

Jeff Landry’s time spent helming Louisiana’s Attorney General office was defined by a litany of ethical failings. Over the course of 15 years spent running for public office, Landry funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign dollars back into the coffers of his own staffing company – whose staff lists are not public – in an apparent circumvention of standard public transparency practices. During his time at the AG, Landry was also accused of giving preferential treatment to a pedophile with political connections, which ultimately led a former prosecutor to sue the Attorney General.

Alabama’s Attorney General, Steve Marshall, has spent his time in office funneling tens of millions of dollars to outside counsel in order to defend the state’s litany of laws prohibiting gender affirming care and Alabama’s notoriously violent prisons. Alabama, under Marshall’s stewardship, earmarked no less than $14.9 million to a single attorney to represent the state against DOJ prison suits over the next two years, even though that same attorney has already received $17.8 million from state coffers over the past five. That single attorney, Bill Lunsford, also donated $1000 to Marshall’s campaign in 2018. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been scandal-plagued for years. Paxton’s most recent slate of scandals include his impeachment in May of 2023 – which resulted in his removal from office for more than three months – due to alleged bribe-taking and Paxton’s questionable relationship to Texas GOP mega-donor Nate Paul. Paxton was ultimately acquitted by the Texas State Senate, after his billionaire backers threatened to primary anyone who voted against him, leading to none of his impeachment articles receiving the 21 votes required to convict. Relatedly, Paxton was also previously accused of retaliatory firings relating to FBI whistleblowers, and the resulting $3.3 million settlement from that inquiry (a number that Paxton wanted Texas taxpayers to foot for him) is what triggered the impeachment inquiry in the first place. That money has not yet been approved by the Texas legislature, and its withholding re-sparked whistleblowers’ lawsuit against Paxton to continue in November 2023. 

The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) is a national organization dedicated to electing and reelecting state-level Republican Attorneys General. It is a partisan political  organization, but it also functions as a dark money influence machine selling access to AGs, their staff, and their offices. 

In efforts to reduce average emissions across the incredibly pollutive transportation sector, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new tailpipe emissions standard. The new rule functionally mandates automakers to electrify portions of their fleets in order to comply with a reduced average emissions standard for vehicles starting with 2027 new vehicle classes. The proposal, while one of the most significant of the administration’s forays into regulating pollution reductions, has also faced steep criticism from some environmentalists for not going nearly far enough in achieving the 75 percent pollution cut necessary to actually address the climate crisis. On July 11, 2023, however, the American Petroleum Institute (API) led a sign-on letter campaign asking the EPA to roll over to industry on the rule. For far too long corporate feedback has been hugely – and disproportionately – influential for regulators. It shouldn’t be.