The Lone Star State has long been a red bulwark for the national GOP due to its formidable size, 40 electoral votes, and conservative influence. Everyone from Tom DeLay to Rick Perry to either President Bush has called Texas home. Yet just a year before another presidential election, the state’s Republicans find themselves fighting one another.

On Saturday, Sept. 16, in Austin, the Texas Senate voted to acquit Attorney General Ken Paxton of all 16 articles of impeachment, to the cheers of the Texas Republican Party and the chagrin of the Texas House managers who levied these charges against him, thereby splitting the Texas legislature and Republicans, perhaps more than ever in modern memory.