AUSTIN (Nexstar) – Former U.S. Congressman Colin Allred officially launched his campaign for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.
The former NFL player said his campaign will focus on “lowering costs and fighting the corrupt politicians rigging the economy against hardworking Texans,” according to the news release announcing his campaign.
“Everything’s backwards. Folks who play by the rules and keep the faith just can’t seem to get ahead,” Allred said in his campaign launch video. “But the folks who cut corners and cut deals – well, they’re doing just fine.”
This will be Allred’s second attempt at the U.S. Senate after a high-profile campaign in 2024 against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Cruz defeated Allred by almost a million votes in November. In the video, Allred compared his long-winded path to the NFL to his second attempt at running for Senate.
“I’ve been a lot of things in life, but I’ve always been a fighter,” Allred said. “I went undrafted, I got a chance to go to training camp, where I played well, but I still got cut. In a lot of ways though, I was undrafted in life too. Raised by a single mom on a teacher’s salary, I never had the option to give up. So I came back to Dallas and took a job at the YMCA. I picked up towels. I swept the floors. And when my shift was done I stayed late to put in the work in the weight room. And when I got another chance, I didn’t just do our team workouts, I did my own workouts at night too. I made the team.”
Allred said he will roll out a series of plans in the coming months during the campaign. The first plan is what he calls an “anti-corruption plan.”
“It’ll be the first of many steps we’re going to take to finally get Texans the leadership that we deserve,” Allred said.
Allred is running for the seat currently held by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. The incumbent is already facing a difficult challenge in the Republican primary against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Allred’s entry into the race has drawn immediate criticism from Paxton, who posted on X: “Welcome to the race, Colin! Texans have already rejected your liberal values once…now it’s time for Texas voters to say no to your vision and your values one more time.”
In a follow-up post, Paxton criticized Allred’s record on transgender military service, youth sports participation and border security, writing: “Transgendered military, Boys in girls sports (he flipped flopped a few times) and stood against securing our border from illegal immigration, calling the border wall racist. <- That is Allred’s record. Can’t wait to see Texans reject his radical ideas again.”
The Cornyn campaign also responded to Allred’s announcement, but started with an attack on primary opponent Paxton. “Crooked Ken is a fraud and walking talking ethics disaster. John Cornyn has voted with Trump 99 percent and is the only candidate conservatives can trust to beat progressive Colin Allred,” said Matt Mackowiak, Cornyn campaign senior adviser.
Allred joins Terry Virts, a former astronaut and fighter pilot, in the Democratic primary.
“I wanted to welcome Colin Allred into the race. His entrance should be celebrated because democracy is awesome,” Virts said in a video on X. “I wish Texas had elected him, but we didn’t. Congressman Allred ran against one of the worst senators in the country, and Texas chose Ted Cruz by over eight points. That’s the hard truth.”
Virts said he believes Texas democrats need a different kind of candidate to break the party’s decades-long losing streak in statewide elections. He said that’s why he decided to launch his own campaign.
“I’m not a typical politician. I think I’m a common sense mission-oriented, you know, get the mission done, get the job done kind of guy,” Virts said. “You know, the same old politician is not necessarily what folks want or need. That’s not what this moment demands, that’s for sure.”
The final Democratic field for the Senate race is expected to be crowded, with several prominent figures considering runs. Former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke addressed the strategic challenge facing Democrats in positioning their top-tier candidates across multiple races.
“My concern is making sure that everyone is in the right position,” O’Rourke said, citing the need for candidates in governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general races. He also emphasized the importance of fielding Democrats in every congressional and state legislative district to help drive turnout for statewide candidates.
Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at The University of Texas, noted that Allred brings both advantages and disadvantages to the race. “One thing that Colin Allred can say, and he’s already saying, is that he’s done this. He knows the ropes. He’s a proven fundraiser. He knows what it takes to campaign, and he’s learned from his experience,” Henson said.
However, Henson also pointed to potential challenges. “He has run statewide, but he lost, and he lost by a lot in a year that people came out of the 2024 race with kind of a bad taste in their mouths about Democrats,” he said. “The general sense of 2024 was a big losing year for Democrats and anybody that ran that year has a little bit of a whiff of that failure on him, and he’s going to have to shrug that off.”
A recent Texas Politics Project poll found neither Paxton nor Cornyn were polling favorably among Texas voters. The poll of 1,200 registered voters showed 29% of Texans had a favorable opinion of Paxton while 43% had an unfavorable opinion.
Cornyn’s numbers were even worse in the same poll, with only 23% saying they had a favorable opinion of the current U.S. Senator while 46% had an unfavorable opinion.
A recent report from Punchbowl News said a poll from the Senate Leadership Fund, which supports Cornyn’s reelection, found Cornyn was down 10 points to Paxton in May. That same poll also showed Paxton trailing Allred by one point in a general election.
ACLU files suit against Texas Ten Commandments law
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Wednesday against a Texas law requiring schools to display the Ten Commandments, the second lawsuit filed against the law in just over a week.
Senate Bill 10, passed during this year’s legislative session, requires all public school teachers to accept and display any donation of the Ten Commandments that is a 16 by 20 inch poster or framed copy that is clearly readable. The law is set to take effect Sept. 1, but is expected to be tied up in court — a challenge Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP invited.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs accuse the law of violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
“By mandating that a state-sanctioned version of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public elementary and secondary school classroom in Texas, SB 10 impermissibly prefers a set of distinct religious beliefs and dictates and will impose those preferred religious beliefs and dictates on Texas’s public-school children, including the minor-child Plaintiffs,” the plaintiffs wrote.
But Republicans who supported the bill say it has nothing to do with religion, and is merely displaying a text of historical significance.
Texas saw a similar challenge to the display of the Ten Commandments at the State Capitol Building in 2004, which the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled did not violate the establishment clause. The Court has also struck down laws requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools in the past, using the “Lemon Test” — a three-pronged test that the Court used to determine if laws violated the establishment clause.
The Lemon Test had three requirements: the law must have a secular purpose, its primary effect must not promote or inhibit religion and it can not create “excessive government entanglement with religion.” But the Court ruled that the Lemon Test would no longer be used in a 2019 school prayer case, and states like Texas and Louisiana decided to give Ten Commandments another try.
The senator who sponsored the bill, Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said that he is not surprised by the lawsuit and expects any court to uphold the law.
“If you don’t know the Ten Commandments, you don’t know the basis for much American history and law,” King said. “We want kids to understand what shaped our history and culture. Few documents have had a bigger impact on western civilization than the Ten Commandments.”
The senator added he is very confident the state will prevail in the lawsuit.
Eric McDaniel, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, said now that the Lemon Test has been abandoned, states are attempting to change the way the high court evaluates religion.
“This is an attempt to try to have the Supreme Court redefine the way we think of the separation of church and state,” McDaniel said. “You now have seen this movement on the part of several states to see if we can actually put religion in schools.”
Like SB 10, Louisiana’s House Bill 71 aimed to put the Ten Commandments in schools, but was struck down by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in June after the ACLU sued. While the 5th Circuit Court is typically conservative, two of the three judges who heard the case were appointed by Democratic presidents.
The appellate court pointed to a 1980 Supreme Court case which struck down a similar law in Kentucky. Now, the ACLU is bringing a challenge in Texas.
The bill’s proponents emphasize that the Ten Commandments should be on display purely for historical reasons. The teachings of the commandments, including instructions not to lie, cheat or steal, are good values that everyone should agree on, Republicans say.
Sen. King said in a floor speech that children need to be taught the values in the commandments.
“Every child needs to walk in everyday during school and see on the wall that it is wrong to kill, it is wrong to steal, that you’re supposed to respect and honor your parents,” King said. “It’s part of our tradition and needs to be part of our educational system.”
The intent of the law and its constitutionality will now be up to the courts to decide. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said she intends to fight for her state’s law all the way to the Supreme Court.
McDaniel said he thinks if the ACLU or Texas takes the law to the Supreme Court, the state may find success, even if the Court limits the law’s effect.
“The Supreme Court will probably limit when it can be used,” McDaniel said. “[The state has] a Supreme Court that is open to some of their goals, but I don’t know if they’ll be open to allowing religious documents everywhere.”
Still, McDaniel said that at the end of the day, the state promoting one religion may have an unintended effect.
“When nations start getting involved in religion, or start backing a certain religion, all of a sudden religion starts to lose its importance, because it’s no longer seen as something separate from the state, but just an aspect of the state,” McDaniel said.
‘True MAGA attorney’ Aaron Reitz joins race for Texas Attorney General
After Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he would challenge incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, the election to replace him is heating up.
Aaron Reitz, former U.S. assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy, said he is running for attorney general to increase cooperation between Texas and the Trump administration.
“The first two years are going to be characterized by very deep integration with the Trump administration,” Reitz said. “President Trump … praised my record litigating on major issues with Attorney General Ken Paxton, and then he specifically called me a true MAGA attorney and a warrior for the constitution.”
Reitz previously worked under Paxton, serving as a deputy attorney general before leaving for the Trump administration. He said he stood by Paxton during his 2023 impeachment trial, and defended “lawfare and weaponization” against him.
Now, he wants to take Paxton’s job as the state’s top lawyer. He pointed to his experience litigating conservative priorities — namely against diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools — in Paxton’s office and will do the same as attorney general.
“We had all kinds of lawsuits … ensuring that our children were protected in schools, and that woke indoctrination was not happening in our public school system,” Reitz said. “I have a record that shows I know and have successfully litigated, sued, appealed, and defended on those issues.”
Reitz was asked about the recent lawsuit brought by the DOJ against Texas for the Texas Dream Act, which gave in-state tuition to undocumented students who met certain requirements. But Paxton’s office settled the case within a few hours, and the law was struck down, with some accusing the two entities of colluding to take away the program.
Working at the DOJ at the time, Reitz made it clear that he was likely involved in some capacity.
“If you saw any headline making news coming out of the Justice Department, you can guarantee that I was in some way involved with it,” Reitz said.
Reitz will face two state senators in the March 2026 GOP primary — Joan Huffman, R-Houston, and Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston. Huffman has served in the Senate since 2008, and Middleton has served since 2019, along with being president of the Middleton Oil Company.
Middleton’s campaign website touts his work to pass the Save Women’s Sports Act and a ban on COVID vaccine mandates. Huffman served as a district judge and attorney in Harris County before being elected to the Senate. “I am the best-qualified, most-experienced candidate who understands the intricacies of every function of state government,” Huffman wrote in her campaign announcement.
Reitz said that his legal record sets him apart, and that anyone who claims he is not experienced enough is making a “loser critique.”
“I think that is the sort of low energy mentality and approach that Joan Huffman and Mayes Middleton are going to bring to this race,” Reitz said. “When you look at my record, litigating, investigating, suing, defending and appealing on all of the major issues from the perspective of this executive branch legal role, I think my record beats theirs every single day.”
Reitz discussed his record of investigating and pursuing litigation against the Biden administration. He said that if Republicans retain the White House in 2028, he would be an ally to that president. But if the Democrats win the presidency, he made it clear he would be ready to fight, even without knowing which person or policies he would be fighting against.
“If you see a changing of the guard, you’re going to see what I did for my three years under Attorney General Paxton, and that is suing the federal government under Democratic control to ensure that Texas liberty is protected here at home,” Reitz said.
In a GOP primary in Texas, races to the right are not uncommon. Reitz’s brand as a MAGA warrior would be a continuation of Paxton’s tenure as attorney general — something he proudly advertises.
“When Texans are looking to support or elect their next Texas AG, somebody who has the proven battle tested experience to be ready on day one to continue fighting the fights on behalf of Texas and all Texans — It’s me,” Reitz said. “We’re going to continue to put our foot on the gas and press hard in those directions.”
Texas ends paper license plates, following years of fraud
Following years of widespread fraud and abuse that touched every state, Texas is eliminating most temporary paper license plates and replacing them with new color-coded metal ones. The change starts July 1.
“This is huge,” said Sgt. Jose Escribano, who drove the fight to stop paper tag fraud. “It’s almost like I’m taking a breath of fresh air.”
In February, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles unveiled four new limited-use metal plates which motorists will soon start seeing on the road. Escribano carries around a laminated “cheat sheet,” as he calls it, to familiarize himself with the new system:
- Temporary Registration (Red): Replaces 30-day and one trip paper permits. Issued by TxDMV or Texas county tax offices for temporary registration.
- Buyer Provisional (Purple): Issued by Texas dealers when a specific plate type is not available in their inventory. Valid until 7 days after a permanent plate is assigned.
- Out-of-State Buyer (Green): Issued by Texas dealers when selling vehicles to out-of-state buyers. Valid for 60 days.
- Dealer Temporary (Blue): Issued by TxDMV to dealers for business-related uses such as transferring a vehicle between dealerships/auctions/mechanics; loaner cars and test drives; charitable organization usage.
- General Issue License Plate: Issued by Texas dealers to buyers at the time of sale as a replacement for paper Buyer’s Temporary Tags.
Scroll through to see Texas’ new temporary license plates. (Courtesy: TxDMV)
The TxDMV has dedicated a section of its website to offering resources on the transition for consumers, auto dealers, law enforcement and county tax offices.
Customers who buy a vehicle from a dealership will receive metal plates they can immediately display. If a customer trades or sells a vehicle, dealers can transfer those plates to another vehicle of the same class sold within 10 days. For private sales, the seller will still remove their license plates and registration stickers. Those plates can be transferred to another vehicle they own, if appropriate for the vehicle class, by going to the county tax assessor-collector’s office, according to the TxDMV.
The switch from paper to metal is the result of a 2023 law, known as House Bill 718. The law aims to stop the widespread proliferation of fraudulent tags that had ballooned, by law enforcement estimates, into a $200 million underground market. Since 2017, KXAN has investigated concerns over Texas’ temporary tags. Illegally counterfeited paper plates — or real ones accessed by infiltrating the TxDMV system — are frequently bought and sold online.
The new metal plates are meant to deter counterfeiting and be easier for law enforcement to trace.
For years, the state’s paper plate problem has been a thorn in the side of law enforcement, who complain it’s given criminals anonymity by allowing them to turn their vehicles into untraceable “ghost cars,” able to effectively hide in plain sight. Beyond toll scofflaws, bogus tags have been tied to organized crime, human smuggling, drugs, burglaries and killings, Escribano said.
‘Paper’s gone and it needed to be gone’
A sergeant with the Travis County Constable Office Pct. 3, Escribano is considered one of the leading experts in the country on this type of fraud. For years, he blasted Texas’ paper tag problem as “a big mess” and a danger to law enforcement and the public — not just here but across the country, including New York City, where police were warned to be on the lookout.
“Paper’s gone and it needed to be gone,” Escribano stressed during a recent patrol of Austin.
Driving near North Lamar Boulevard, Escribano noted he isn’t seeing as many phony tags as he used to, especially during the height of the problem.
“Sometimes, I would drive down here and just about every car you saw had a paper tag on it, which was crazy,” he said. “You guys put the word out, and you don’t see as many, which is good.”
“I think we accomplished something,” he added.
Over a stretch of a handful of blocks, Escribano stopped to inspect several paper tags — one fixed to a car with blue masking tape.
None, he said, were legitimate.
“That’s an altered tag,” he said after typing a plate number into his laptop and catching a different expiration date than the one listed.
“That’s a fake,” he said of another.
“It’s a year expired and he shouldn’t have it. You’re not a dealer. You can’t have that authorized agent tag on your car,” he said of a third plate tied to Houston, “or you’re going to have to do some explaining.”
Because all of the cars were parked, he moved on.
His concern now: How criminals will pivot away from paper and if authorities are ready. Anecdotally, some in law enforcement, like Central Texas deputy David Kohler, told KXAN in 2022 that they were seeing an increase in the theft of “hard” aluminum license plates following efforts to crack down on temporary tag abuse.
“We have victims who call and report their license plates — either the front, or the back or sometimes both — have been stolen off their vehicle,” Kohler said at the time. “The primary reason [for the theft] is to conceal their criminal activity.”
Some paper tags still valid
Temporary tags issued as of June 30 are still valid for the next 30-60 days. The TxDMV said they will remain valid until they expire on Aug. 29. After that, there shouldn’t be any on the road except in limited circumstances, such as 72-hour and 144-hour permits issued to commercial vehicles, Escribano said.
For now, he feels “very positive with this change.” He worries some law enforcement agencies may not be properly trained yet on the new tags and wishes his team could have had input on the new plate designs.
“The department has collaborated with all impacted stakeholders for more than two years to implement the House Bill 718 requirements, ensuring the smoothest possible transition,” said TxDMV spokesman Adam Shaivitz. “Given the complexity of the process changes, unique operational challenges may arise following the implementation date. However, the processes and systems have been carefully designed to provide maximum flexibility, enabling the department to address any challenges quickly and efficiently.”
Approximately one million new plates were received by auto dealers, or were in transit, as of three weeks ago, Shaivitz said. Under the new law, those plates are required to be securely stored. This year, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1902, which is now in effect, to help dealers “streamline plate management and storage,” according to the TxDMV. Under the modification, when a customer sells or trades in their vehicle, dealers can now transfer those plates to another vehicle sold within 10 days — or be disposed of if not — as long as the plates match the appropriate vehicle class.
Last year, the Texas Automobile Dealers Association — which represents 1,200 franchised dealerships in nearly 300 communities — voiced concern that dealers would not have enough metal plates on hand after the law takes effect.
More than 32,000 auto dealership employees were trained on the new system as of last month, Shaivitz said. Asked if dealers statewide are prepared and ready for the new change, TADA told KXAN weeks ago: “We aren’t going to comment at this time.” The Texas Independent Automobile Dealers Association, which also expressed concern last year, didn’t respond to a similar request for comment.
Escribano, meanwhile, has another concern dealing with the continued rise in fraudulent vehicle inspections. Between May and December last year, his agency investigated 585 cases of emissions fraud reported in Travis County, data shows. Between January and May 31 of this year, that number was 305.
