By Calder McHugh

Members of the public enter the Senate Chamber at the Texas Capitol for day three of the impeachment trial for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today. | Eric Gay/AP Photo

IMPEACHMENT IMPACT — It’s said that everything is bigger in Texas, and that’s certainly true when it comes to a bitter political fight that is currently dividing the state’s dominant Republican Party.

At issue is the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been embroiled in legal issues since a state grand jury indicted him on criminal charges including securities fraud in 2015. Eight years later, that case is still bouncing around Texas courts. But that’s not all. In Oct. 2020, multiple whistleblowers came forward detailing additional improprieties in Paxton’s Office, including abuse of office and bribery.

Paxton agreed to a $3.3 million settlement with the whistleblowers in Feb. 2023, but after asking that the state use taxpayer funds to pay the settlement, he was impeached by the state House in May. Now he faces 16 articles of impeachment in the Texas Senate, where a trial to determine whether he will remain in office began earlier this week.

Republicans control both chambers of the legislature and every statewide office, so this is a fight that doesn’t break down along party lines — it’s largely taking place within the GOP.

Since May, when the House voted 121-23 to impeach, the pro-Paxton faction of the party — both in Texas and nationally — has turned up the heat on Republicans who oppose him. Former President Donald Trump has defended Paxton, calling the impeachment in the House “ELECTION INTERFERENCE” while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s up for reelection in 2024, said on X (formerly known as Twitter) “what is happening to Ken Paxton is a travesty.”

A super PAC called Defend Texas Liberty has also been targeting pro-impeachment Republican lawmakers, spending $3.5 million on billboards and television ads, mostly donated by Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks.

Allies of Paxton have sought to nationalize this fight as well. As podcast host Steve Bannon said on his show Bannon’s War Room earlier this month, “We want the entire MAGA movement to understand that what’s going on in Texas is not just about Texas.”

On the other side of the ledger, veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove penned an op-ed critical of Paxton in the Wall Street Journal in August and former Texas Governor Rick Perry wrote his own piece in the Journal arguing that the attacks on fellow Republicans were “delegitimizing the impeachment process.”

Whether Paxton manages to remain in office or not, the issue has caused deep enough rifts to raise questions about its effect on the state party in the 2024 election cycle and beyond. There is the risk of depressed fundraising, depressed turnout and damaging optics in a state where Democrats continue to harbor dreams of a “Blue Texas.”

A splintered party doesn’t bode well for Cruz, who must go before voters next year after narrowly winning reelection in 2018. And his decision to throw his hat in with Paxton could easily come back to haunt him.

For a party that needs to project cohesiveness ahead of its attempts to retake the Senate and the presidency in 2024, Paxton’s case has done just the opposite.

Hardline conservatives may argue that Paxton has been the best state attorney general in the country, but his divisive impeachment trial — still only three days in — is already raising questions about whether he’s worth the high price the GOP is paying.

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— Navarro convicted of contempt for defying Jan. 6 select committee: Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser to Donald Trump, has been found guilty on two contempt-of-Congress charges for defying a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 select committee. A jury returned the unanimous conviction today after a four-hour deliberation, which followed a two-day trial featuring testimony from three former Jan. 6 committee staffers. Each count carries a one-year maximum sentence, and Navarro intends to appeal the verdict. Navarro faced the two charges for what prosecutors say was his brazen defiance of the select committee’s effort to obtain evidence about his knowledge and involvement in Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election. Each charge carries a maximum of one year in prison.

— Anti-affirmative action group drops admissions lawsuit against Yale: Students for Fair Admissions dropped its lawsuit challenging Yale University’s race-conscious admissions policies after the Supreme Court gutted the practice in June. The anti-affirmative action group and the Ivy League school voluntarily agreed to drop the case after Yale agreed to make several updates to its admissions process ahead of the fall 2023 undergraduate admissions season.

— Trump’s border wall caused ‘significant’ cultural, environmental damage, watchdog finds: The border wall championed by Donald Trump harmed the environment and trampled on Native American cultural sites, according to a report released today by the Government Accountability Office. The 450 miles of barrier constructed during Trump’s time in office — one of his highest-profile actions — proceeded by waiving or disregarding environmental and historic preservation laws. But it’s now clear the wall interfered with endangered species, diverted water sources and caused other environmental damage, the federal watchdog said.

— White House officially nominates new FAA chief: President Joe Biden today tapped veteran regulator and airline executive Michael Whitaker to be the next head of the Federal Aviation Administration, nearly 18 months after the last Senate-confirmed administrator left the post. The year-and-a-half-long vacancy at the top of the agency has sparked significant concern from lawmakers amid a spike in aircraft near-misses, flight delays and cancellations and chronic staffing problems at air traffic control facilities — all as travel soars out of its pandemic-era trough.

BALLOT BRAWL — A new lawsuit filed in Utah by a long shot Republican presidential candidate attempts to bar Donald Trump from appearing on the 2024 presidential ballot, arguing the 14th Amendment disqualifies him from office, reports the Deseret News.

John Anthony Castro, a Texas tax attorney who is running for the 2024 Republican nomination, filed the lawsuit Wednesday afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah. Castro is listed as the plaintiff, while Trump and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are the defendants. Utah’s lieutenant governor serves as the state’s chief election officer. A spokesperson for Henderson declined to comment until they had “time to review the lawsuit.”

RAFFENSPERGER SPEAKS — Some legal scholars are arguing that secretaries of state should remove Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states that a public official is ineligible for public office if he has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” America. But Georgia law contemplates a legal process that must take place before anyone is removed from the ballot. Anyone who believes in democracy must let the voters decide, writes Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the Wall Street Journal.

Invoking the 14th Amendment is merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box. Since 2018, Georgia has seen losing candidates and their lawyers try to sue their way to victory. It doesn’t work.

A ship arrives with three new ship-to-shore cranes in Antwerp, Belgium this April. | Nicholas Maeterlinck/Belga/AFP via Getty Images

DRUG PROBLEM — Home to Europe’s second-largest cargo port, Antwerp, Belgium has become a major entry point for drugs, especially cocaine coming from Latin America, and the turf wars have spilled into its streets, reports Pieter Haeck.

In 2022, there were 81 drug-related shootings and explosions in Antwerp, according to numbers shared by the city with POLITICO, and another 25 in the first five months of this year, including a shooting in January that killed the 11-year-old niece of an alleged drug criminal.

For Antwerp’s mayor, Bart De Wever, the rise in violence is both a crisis and an opportunity. As head of the nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), it provides him with a club ahead of next year’s national election with which to bash the Belgian federal government, which he accuses of dismissing the issue as a local problem, or worse, gumming up the response in the country’s famously sticky red tape.

In an interview in his office, the mayor described the threat posed by drug smuggling as “much bigger” than the 2016 terrorist crisis. The violence in his city, he said, is only the tip of the iceberg, as criminals re-invest their illicit money into the formal economy, spreading their influence in countries across the Continent.

“Europe’s got a problem and should wake up,” he said.

FIGHT FOR EXISTENCE — A century after it was founded, Interpol, the world’s only global crime-fighting organization faces an existential question: Does the world still need it?

Rising geopolitical tensions including between the United States and Russia and China are challenging the agency’s operating model, which relies on voluntary information-sharing among its members’ police forces, write Nicholas Vinocur and Elisa Braün.

Add to that persistent claims that its Red Notice alert system is subject to political manipulation and accusations of complicity in torture against Interpol’s Emirati president, Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi, and the crime-fighting organization faces a perfect storm.

In an interview with POLITICO, Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock said the institution faces numerous difficulties, including over its funding situation. But he argued an agency that spans the globe is needed now more than ever amid international child sexual abuse, environmental crime and mafia groups like Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta.

“The challenges are huge. I cannot say we are sufficiently resourced,” Stock said as the agency marks 100 years since it was founded in Vienna.

“We are overwhelmed by cases of online child sexual exploitation. We are overwhelmed by cases of cybercrime … We are overwhelmed by drug trafficking,” he said. Such international operations are extremely resource-intensive, added the German former high-ranking police official.

His pitch is that the global community can only tackle these kind of crimes through cooperation. “That is why a global platform is more important than ever. Can you consider if Interpol would not exist? People would say, we need such an agency.”

Enter the “room where it happens”, where global power players shape policy and politics, with Power Play. POLITICO’s brand-new podcast will host conversations with the leaders and power players shaping the biggest ideas and driving the global conversations, moderated by award-winning journalist Anne McElvoy. Sign up today to be notified of the first episodes in September – click here.

CRASH WARNING — When is the next big housing market crash? It’s a question that keeps people up at night — especially those who clearly remember the last one in 2008. A new class-action lawsuit against an influencer who’s been buying up rental properties around the country might give us a hint into some of the pitfalls in our economy. A Louisiana-born salesman and Scientologist named Grant Cardone began blasting out to his followers how to make passive income quickly in real estate. But his entire business model relies on rapidly increasing rent prices. And now, the class-action lawsuit against him alleges that he’s misled some of his investors. For The New Republic, Josh Gabert-Doyon digs deep into Cardone’s charm, how he built his empire and how it could all come crashing down.

On this date in 1943: Rescue crews dig through debris of the wrecked Pennsylvania Railroad's Congressional Limited in search of victims of a train derailment. The train, which had 541 passengers on board, derailed in Frankford Junction, Philadelphia, killing 79 passengers and injured 117 others. | Murray Becker/AP Photo

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