The Texas Legislature meets for just five months every other year to pass a budget and get through whatever other business the state needs.
It’s now attracting attention for the wrong reasons after House Speaker Dade Phelan was accused of stumbling his way through a recent session.
The state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton, a fellow Republican who’s been at the center of his own controversies, demanded that Phelan resign at the end of the legislative session.
“Texans were dismayed to witness his performance presiding over the Texas House in a state of apparent debilitating intoxication,” Paxton said in a statement Tuesday on Twitter. “While I hope Speaker Phelan will get the help he needs, he has proven himself unworthy of Texans’ trust.”
Phelan’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The only task lawmakers must achieve during the session, which started in January, is the biennial budget but there are thousands of bills that politicians haggle over from education to border security.
Paxton’s tweet, for instance, referenced election security and “preventing Chinese spies from controlling Texas land.”
The house and senate are often at odds with one another, with the senate viewed as the more conservative chamber, led by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Phelan is considered a relatively more moderate Republican.
