{"id":306101,"date":"2026-05-23T16:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T16:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/306101\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T16:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T16:36:08","slug":"prosecutors-in-democratic-southern-cities-focus-of-gop-actions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/306101\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecutors in Democratic Southern Cities Focus of GOP Actions"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is The Marshall Project\u2019s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Sign up for future newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ever since the Supreme Court\u2019s decision last month in Louisiana v. Callais further weakened the Voting Rights Act, national headlines have focused on a renewed Republican push to redraw congressional maps across the South<\/a> and dilute the voting power of Black and Democratic voters in major cities. But another fight over urban political power has been unfolding more quietly: who gets the authority to prosecute crimes in some southern states.<\/p>\n

In Texas last week, Gov. Greg Abbott announced a package of criminal justice proposals, including a bill to create a new, unelected statewide prosecutor’s office<\/a> that could bring charges when local district attorneys decline or fail to do so. While the office would theoretically have jurisdiction over the entire state, Abbott\u2019s pitch has centered heavily on one target<\/a>: Travis County D.A. Jose Garza, the Austin-area Democrat whom Texas conservatives have spent years casting as \u201csoft on crime.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Garza is often described as a progressive or reform-minded prosecutor, loose labels generally applied to district attorneys who argue that public safety does not always mean seeking the harshest possible punishment. Many have run on promises to reduce the harms of mass incarceration, limit prosecution of low-level offenses, expand diversion programs, or declining to enforce laws they view as unjust, including abortion bans.<\/p>\n

Since the first wave of reform prosecutors began winning office in the 2010s, opponents have tried to restrain their power<\/a> through recalls, suspension, impeachment efforts,<\/a> and various forms of state oversight<\/a>. Texas Republicans have already tried one route for reining in prosecutors like Garza. In 2023, Abbott signed a law allowing D.A.s to be removed from office<\/a> for refusing to prosecute certain categories of crimes. A county resident later used that law to seek Garza\u2019s removal, but the case was ultimately dropped<\/a> by the outside prosecutor assigned to the case.<\/p>\n

Abbott said at a press event that his latest push was largely based on Garza\u2019s office having failed to file indictments by the state\u2019s 90-day deadline<\/a> in over 200 cases in 2024, leading to the releases of some people accused of violent crimes. Garza acknowledged that his office had previously missed deadlines, but in 2025 said his office was no longer failing to file indictments<\/a>, and last week called the governor\u2019s proposal a \u201cpolitical stunt.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Abbott may not be done trying to get Garza out of office either. Another piece of the governor\u2019s proposed legislation would make D.A.s eligible for impeachment<\/a>. That\u2019s a bigger legislative lift, however, as it would require an amendment to the state Constitution.<\/p>\n

Abbott\u2019s proposals represent a kind of blunt instrument: Remove local prosecutors, or create a state official who can override them. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill on May 12 that takes a subtler approach. HB 369 changes the election rules for district attorneys<\/a> and other local officials in a small group of metropolitan Atlanta counties \u2014 a move that critics say is aimed at weakening Black political power in the heart of the state\u2019s Democratic base.<\/p>\n

The new law purports to make prosecutor elections non-partisan \u2014 meaning that all candidates would run in one primary and without party designations on the ballot \u2014 and only applies to \u201cconsolidated law enforcement counties\u201d where the office of the county coroner has been abolished. This means it affects prosecutors in just five of Georgia\u2019s 159 counties.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering what the absence of a county coroner has to do with prosecutor elections, you\u2019re not alone. Fair and Just Prosecution, an advocacy group that represents reform-minded D.A.s, said in a statement, \u201cThere is no clear connection between the absence of a county coroner\u2019s office and whether prosecutor elections should be partisan or nonpartisan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics see the move as a thinly veiled effort to boost Republican chances in Democratic stronghold districts. \u201cThis is a blatant attempt by Republicans to give their candidates an edge in Democratic counties by hiding their party affiliations from voters,\u201d Sherry Boston and Fani Willis, two of the D.A.s in the affected counties, said in a joint statement earlier this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The change would also have a disproportionate effect on Black Georgia residents. The five counties are home to roughly 45% of the state\u2019s Black population. Boston and Willis have said they plan to challenge the change in court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While not all the D.A.s affected by the new Georgia law would neatly fit into the \u201cprogressive prosecutor\u201d basket, they do share another characteristic that research suggests can make prosecutors disproportionately vulnerable to political backlash: The D.A.s in all five affected counties are currently Black women who are Democrats.<\/p>\n

Research published late last year by the Cambridge University Press found that Black women make up less than 7% of locally elected prosecutors nationwide<\/a>, but represent 20% of those facing what author Allison Goldberg calls \u201cextra-electoral\u201d challenges to their authority.<\/p>\n

While HB 369 alters an electoral rule rather than bypassing voters entirely, critics argue it operates in a similar extra-electoral logic: changing the baseline structural rules of a public office from the state capitol because the local electorate didn\u2019t deliver the preferred partisan outcome.<\/p>\n

Goldberg also found that, depending on how \u201cprogressive prosecutor\u201d was defined, they were 19 to 35 percentage points more likely to face extra-electoral challenges than their non-progressive counterparts.<\/p>\n

Those challenges have historically come from Republican-led state governments, but in Virginia \u2014 where Democrats now control the legislature and the governorship \u2014 extra-electoral pressure is now coming from the feds.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice\u2019s Civil Rights Division announced it was launching a civil rights investigation into the office of Fairfax County Commonwealth\u2019s Attorney<\/a> Steve Descano.<\/p>\n

Descano ran on a progressive platform that included promises to \u201ctake immigration consequences into account<\/a> when making charging and plea decisions.\u201d He said that certain felonies can trigger severe immigration consequences<\/a>, including deportation, for undocumented people under federal law. Descano argued that those consequences can function as a kind of unequal, double punishment.<\/p>\n

In announcing the inquiry into Descano\u2019s office, Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division, flipped Descano\u2019s logic on its head<\/a>, arguing that the investigation would examine whether the office is \u201coffering preferential treatment only to illegal alien criminal defendants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Descano\u2019s approach drew renewed scrutiny after several high-profile cases involving undocumented defendants<\/a> accused of violent crimes, including the February killing of 41-year-old Stephanie Minter by an undocumented immigrant from Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n

During a congressional hearing last week<\/a>, critics argued the cases reflected a broader pattern of leniency toward undocumented defendants. Descano defended his office, arguing that many of the charging decisions were constrained by witness cooperation and evidentiary issues common in criminal prosecutions.<\/p>\n

The federal investigation appears to make good on a Trump campaign promise to use the Civil Rights Division \u2014 which was founded to combat racial discrimination amid the early days of the Civil Rights Movement \u2014 as a tool for investigating what the president called<\/a> \u201cradical leftist prosecutor\u2019s offices\u201d that \u201crefuse to charge criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is The Marshall Project\u2019s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,73839,110902,109802,110903,16616,30366,50441,110905,26821,110904,27,3142],"class_list":["post-306101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-backlash-on-reform-due-to-concerns-about-crime","tag-civil-rights-division","tag-district-attorneys","tag-fani-willis","tag-georgia","tag-harmeet-dhillon","tag-jose-garza","tag-progressive-prosecutors","tag-prosecutors","tag-steve-descano","tag-texas","tag-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}