It didn’t come as too big of a surprise when the NAACP issued a travel advisory for Florida this past weekend. After all, the state’s Republican policymakers, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, have taken a series of steps related to education, voting rights and diversity programs that moved the Sunshine State in a sharply regressive direction.

A day later, however, Sen. Ted Cruz thought it’d be a good idea to admonish the civil rights organization in a tweet:

“This is bizarre. And utterly dishonest. In the 1950s [and] 1960s, the NAACP did extraordinary good helping lead the civil rights movement. Today, Dr. King would be ashamed of how profoundly they’ve lost their way.”

Yes, the far-right Republican from Texas wants Americans to believe that he knows what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be thinking right now, and the iconic leader of the civil rights movement would be “ashamed” of the NAACP. We’re apparently supposed to take Cruz’s word for it......

If the Texas Republican were eager to prove otherwise, he could drop his deceptive take on history, start denouncing his own party’s voter suppression efforts, and even endorse measures such as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. What do you say, Senator?

Both Trump and Cruz defended the long-indicted Paxton by pointing to his recent reelection and attacking his attackers. Both cited his opposition to Biden and MAGA credentials without addressing any of the allegations against him.

Trump posted this on Truth Social:

“The RINO Speaker of the House of Texas, Dade Phelan, who is barely a Republican at all and failed the test on voter integrity, wants to impeach one of the most hard working and effective Attorney Generals in the United States, Ken Paxton, who just won re-election with a large number of American Patriots strongly voting for him. You would think that any issue would have been fully adjudicated by the voters of Texas, especially when that vote was so conclusive.”

About an hour earlier, Cruz threw down for Paxton on Twitter as a victim of the Republican-controlled “swamp in Austin.”

“For the last nine years, Ken has been the strongest conservative AG in the country. Bar none. No attorney general has battled the abuses of the Biden admin more ferociously—and more effectively—than has Paxton. That’s why the swamp in Austin wants him out. The special interests don’t want a steadfast conservative AG. Virtually all of the information in the articles was public BEFORE Election Day, and the voters chose to re-elect Ken Paxton by a large margin.”