With Tylenol lawsuit, Paxton helps Trump (and himself), not Texans | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Paxton filed a high-profile lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson over Tylenol and autism.
- The Texas attorney general will do anything to win Trump’s backing in Texas’ Senate race.
- Spending taxpayer money, interfering with business: None of it is conservative.
For all the headaches Attorney General Ken Paxton creates for Texans, you’d think he’d at least let us have a little Tylenol.
But Paxton has decided that Texas must lead the way on a lawsuit taking on the venerable pain reliever — presumably because Donald Trump, that noted scientist, says it’s bad for you.
Paxton filed suit Oct. 28 against Johnson & Johnson and its spinoff, Kenvue, alleging that the drugmaker “betrayed America by profiting off of pain and pushing pills regardless of the risks.”
Paxton is in his third term as attorney general. Remember how he campaigned on a promise to take on Tylenol? You don’t, because he didn’t.
Trump, acting on the advice of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently urged pregnant women not to take Tylenol because of a supposed link between the drug and the rise in autism diagnoses in recent decades. Doctors disagree.
The president enjoys the fervent backing of his party in nearly all that he does. But every now and then, he says something goofy or suspect enough that many Republicans look at their shoes, change the subject or merely go quiet.
Not Paxton. He needs Trump to know that he always has the president’s back — inserting Texas into other states’ elections, taking on vaccine manufacturers whose products have saved and improved countless lives, or providing a thin legal veneer for a crusade against acetaminophen. (That’s the generic name for Tylenol, manufactured by many more companies than just the name brand.)
Trump’s endorsement could be key to Texas’ U.S. Senate primary
Paxton’s most recent suck-ups come at a crucial time for his political career. He would benefit greatly from Trump’s endorsement for U.S. Senate, a tough three-way Republican primary fight against incumbent John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt from the Houston area. Trump has had good things to say about all three and so far seems reluctant to harm any of them — or endanger his record of picking winners in Republican primaries — by weighing in on this race.
There are some legitimate questions about Tylenol but little firm evidence that it has anything to do with autism. We’ve learned more about the condition in recent decades, and odds are that rather than seeing a new epidemic, we’re simply better at recognizing it in its various forms.
If Paxton really cared about whether acetaminophen was harmful, he’d warn Texans about the well-established risk of liver damage associated with over-reliance on it.
But that’s not what Trump cares about. So, Paxton instead marshaled the resources of his office to drag yet another American company into court.
For decades, that was a liberal move. So, when Paxton campaigns as The Most Conservative Guy Ever for Senate, he’s pulling an old lawyer trick known as “lying.”
What’s conservative about going after a company that makes a useful product at an affordable price? What’s conservative about using government power to implement a policy agenda that you can’t or won’t win legislation on?
And if Paxton claims he’s the one to crack down on government spending, keep in mind that he’s hiring yet another outside law firm to handle the case. So you, Texas taxpayer, get to write a big check to a trial lawyer and pay for the lawyers who already work in Paxton’s office. Feel the fiscal conservatism!
It’s not uncommon for officeholders to seek private sector expertise. But it’s clear that after a decade in office, Paxton cannot marshal a staff capable of doing the very things he sees as the state’s business. Why should we believe he’ll do any better at building an effective Senate office?
Ken Paxton warns of securities fraud by planned Muslim community. RIP, irony
Paxton’s legal thuggery isn’t limited to large corporations, either. Paxton recently extended his crusade against a proposed Muslim planned community in Collin County by charging that the Plano mosque behind it had engaged in securities fraud.
Paxton … securities fraud … if it rings a bell, it should. He spent years fighting charges that he had violated state securities laws when he failed to tell business partners that a company was paying him to recruit them as investors.
He admitted no guilt in a 2024 settlement, but remember, this is what he did to a group that included people he called friends. The settlement required him to make a six-figure restitution payment in 2024 to keep the case from going to trial after nearly a decade of legal drama.
“The bad actors behind this illegal scheme must be held accountable for ignoring state and federal regulations,” Paxton said, while looking in a mirror.
OK, not really; that was his tough talk about the Islamic center. But he could have saved us all a lot of trouble if he had.
If irony wasn’t already dead, it surely melted into a puddle at the sight of Ken Paxton seeking righteous enforcement of securities laws.
The whole thing signifies all the ways that Paxton is hypocritical, wasteful and ineffective — and reminds us that the only good thing about his Senate run is that one way or the other, he’ll finally be out of Austin and unable to do more damage to the office of attorney general.
Voters, especially those who consider themselves conservatives, should seriously consider whether they want him to repeat that performance in Washington.
