{"id":79342,"date":"2026-09-30T05:55:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/30\/ken-paxtons-christian-identity-politics-obscure-a-history-of-scandal-sidney-blumenthal\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T05:55:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:55:56","slug":"ken-paxtons-christian-identity-politics-obscure-a-history-of-scandal-sidney-blumenthal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/30\/ken-paxtons-christian-identity-politics-obscure-a-history-of-scandal-sidney-blumenthal\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Paxton\u2019s Christian identity politics obscure a history of scandal | Sidney Blumenthal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Texas Senate candidate rose to power as a culture warrior. His record is a marriage of hypocrisy and cynicism<\/p>\n<p>Ken Paxton\u2019s political career, more than that of any other Republican candidate campaigning in this cycle, charts the arc of the religious right. The most influential of its activists and donors engineered his rise as a culture warrior at each of its phases from his creation through every disgrace. His race for the Senate, the culmination of his ambition, has become not only his last stand, but also the Alamo for Christian nationalists in Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Paxton\u2019s rap sheet explains his Christian identity politics as a shield to distract from the liability of his own record of financial and sexual scandals scrolling back decades. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2023\/05\/25\/ken-paxton-20-articles-impeachment\/\">20 articles of impeachment<\/a> against Paxton, adopted by the Republican-controlled Texas house of representatives in May 2023, were double the Ten Commandments that Paxton <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/sep\/07\/texas-ken-paxton-christians-muslims\">insists<\/a> should be displayed in every Texas classroom.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2026\/sep\/30\/ken-paxton-christian-scandal\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Texas Senate candidate rose to power as a culture warrior. His record is a marriage of hypocrisy and cynicism Ken Paxton\u2019s political career, more than that of any other Republican candidate campaigning in this cycle, charts the arc of the religious right. The most influential of its activists and donors engineered his rise as &#8230; <a title=\"Ken Paxton\u2019s Christian identity politics obscure a history of scandal | Sidney Blumenthal\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/30\/ken-paxtons-christian-identity-politics-obscure-a-history-of-scandal-sidney-blumenthal\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Ken Paxton\u2019s Christian identity politics obscure a history of scandal | Sidney Blumenthal\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}