The Texas Legislature already made one historic move with its impeachment of Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Another one is coming.

The GOP-led House of Representatives on Saturday approved 20 articles of impeachment on sweeping allegations of wrongdoing that have trailed the state's top lawyer for years, including abuse of office and bribery. The vote immediately suspended Paxton from office.

But the intraparty brawl in the nation's largest conservative state, one that even drew political punches Saturday from former President Donald Trump, is far from over. The Republican-controlled Senate will hold a trial of Paxton next, and he and his allies hope conservatives there will save him.

One member of that chamber is his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, and she could cast a vote on her husband's political future, which is now in jeopardy in part because of bribery allegations linked to his extra-marital affair.

THE SENATE

Impeachment in Texas is similar to the process on the federal level: After the House action, the Senate holds its trial.

It is yet to be scheduled.

The House needed just a simple majority of its 149 members to impeach Paxton, and the final 121-23 vote was a landslide. But the threshold for conviction in the Senate trial is higher, requiring a two-thirds majority of its 31 members.

If that happens, Paxton would be permanently barred from holding office in Texas. Anything less means Paxton is acquitted and can resume his third term as attorney general.

Paxton bitterly criticized the chamber's investigation as “corrupt,” secret and conducted so quickly that he and his lawyers were not allowed to mount a defense. He also called Republican House Speaker Dade a “liberal.”

The Senate is led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Like Paxton, he is a Republican who has closely allied himself with Trump, and he has driven Texas' right-wing political and policy push for the last decade. Patrick has yet to comment on the impeachment or the House's allegations.

The Senate will set its own trial rules, including whether to take witness testimony and what reports and documents to consider. It could also consider whether to excuse Angela Paxton from voting due to conflict of interest.

The impeachment charges include bribery related to one of Paxton’s donors, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, allegedly employing the woman with whom he had the affair in exchange for legal help.

State law requires all senators to be present for an impeachment trial.

REPUBLICAN ON REPUBLICAN

Paxton's impeachment has been led from the start by his fellow Republicans, in contrast to America’s most prominent recent examples of impeachment.

Trump’s impeachments in 2020 and 2021 were driven by Democrats who had majority control of the U.S. House. In both cases, the charges they approved failed in the Senate, where Republicans had enough votes to block conviction.

In Texas, Republicans have large majorities in both chambers, and the state’s GOP leaders hold all levers of influence.

Paxton called for Republicans to rally to his defense during Saturday's vote in a peaceful protest at the Capitol. That echoed Trump’s call for protests of his electoral defeat on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Paxton spoke at the rally in Washington that day before the insurrection.

Trump joined the fray in Texas on Saturday, posting on social media a warning to House members that “I will fight you” if they voted to impeach. A few hundred Paxton supporters came to watch from the gallery.

House Republicans didn't seem to care. Sixty of them, 71% of the chamber's GOP caucus, voted to impeach.

Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi, a Paxton ally, said the party would have to rely on the “principled leadership of the Texas Senate to restore sanity and reason.”

The move to the Senate could give Paxton's grass-roots supporters and national figures like Trump time to apply more pressure.

YEARS IN THE MAKING

The impeachment reaches back to 2015, when Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges for which he still has not stood trial. The lawmakers charged Paxton with making false statements to state securities regulators.

But most of the articles of impeachment stem from his connections to Paul and a remarkable revolt by Paxton's top deputies in 2020.

That fall, eight senior aides reported their boss to the FBI, accusing him of bribery and abusing his office to help Paul. Four of them later brought a whistleblower lawsuit. The report prompted a federal criminal investigation that in February was taken over by the U.S. Justice Department’s Washington-based Public Integrity Section.

The impeachment charges cover myriad accusations related to Paxton’s dealings with Paul. The allegations include attempts to interfere in foreclosure lawsuits and improperly issuing legal opinions to benefit Paul, as well as firing, harassing and interfering with staff who reported what was going on. The bribery charges stem from the affair, as well as Paul allegedly paying for expensive renovations to Paxton’s Austin home.

The fracas took a toll on the Texas attorney general’s office, long one of the primary legal challengers to Democratic administrations in the White House.

In the years since Paxton’s staff went to the FBI, the state attorney general's office has become unmoored by the disarray. Seasoned lawyers have quit over practices they say aim to slant legal work, reward loyalists and drum out dissent.

In February, Paxton agreed to settle the whistleblower lawsuit brought by the former aides. The $3.3 million payout must be approved by the Legislature, and Phelan has said he doesn’t think taxpayers should foot the bill.

Shortly after the settlement was reached, the House investigation began.

TEXAS HISTORY

Paxton was already likely to be noted in history books for his unprecedented request that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Biden’s defeat of Trump in 2020. He now is one of just three sitting officials to have been impeached in Texas.

Gov. James “Pa” Ferguson was removed in 1917 for misapplication of public funds, embezzlement and the diversion of a special fund. State Judge O.P. Carrillo was forced from office in 1975 for personal use of public money and equipment and filing false financial statements.

On Thursday evening, a special investigative committee of the Texas Legislature officially filed charges of impeachment against state Attorney General Ken Paxton. As The Texas Tribune reports, the document includes “20 articles listing a yearslong pattern of alleged misconduct and lawbreaking.”

The chair of that committee has already announced that he will call for Paxton’s impeachment. On Wednesday, members of that committee voted unanimously that the attorney general should be impeached. If it happens, it will be a first: No attorney general has been impeached in the history of the state.

Paxton has issued a response calling the legislators members of the “corrupt political establishment,” and posted a statement on Twitter in which he called on the speaker of the Republican-led House to resign for, among other things, allowing “Chinese spies” to control Texas land. He’s also declared that Texas Republicans are tools of President Joe Biden and the Washington elite, all of which should make the upcoming hearings even more enjoyable.

Before you reach for the popcorn, here’s a reminder of some of the “accomplishments” that have marked Paxton’s career.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stood in front of the Trump supporters gathered at the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington and delivered a speech that made clear allusions to the Civil War. “One of the great things about the state of Texas is, we did not quit,” said Paxton. “If you look at Georgia, they capitulated, they consented. We kept fighting in Texas.” That’s not exactly a record to be brought up with pride, but then there’s little to be proud about anywhere in Paxton’s record.

Just hours after he urged Trump supporters to, like Texas, “keep fighting” and watched them march toward the Capitol, Paxton swore that it was not Trump supporters who smashed their way into the building. “These are not Trump supporters,” Paxton wrote on Twitter. Instead he blamed the insurgency on the forces of antifa. When Paxton was asked about his sources, he said he was only reporting what he heard from a “journalist,” by which he meant the fascism-friendly conspiracy site WorldNetDaily.

Paxton topped off his Jan. 6 escapades by refusing to turn over records related to his own appearance at the rally. As with so many things related to Paxton, that battle went to court, where he did what he is so good at doing: make irrational arguments and lose. But those Jan. 6 events were just one small item on the checklist of all things Paxton.

The Texas constitution states that if Paxton is impeached in the House, he will immediately be removed from office until his trial in the Senate. Should he survive that trial, Paxton could go back to misusing his office, as he has always done.

Why is Paxton up for impeachment? Take your pick.

• The FBI investigation into how Paxton used his office to illegally help a donor.

• The indictment for fraud that Paxton’s Republican supporters have stalled for years, in part by blocking attorneys prosecuting the case from getting paid. As the AP pointed out, it’s not many people who can avoid going to trial on felony charges for seven straight years—and they made that point last year.

• The $3.3 million that Paxton had to pay out to settle a whistleblower case after a group of his own deputies raised warnings about his actions, including “abuse of office and other crimes.”

• An affair with a woman he later promoted to a high-paying job in a case so tangled it’s hard to tell if it’s bribery or extortion.

• Multiple reports of bribery still under investigation that have not yet been detailed.

There’s also a state bar association investigation into lies Paxton told in court in an effort to overturn the 2020 election, but it’s unlikely the Republican-led legislature was upset by that point.

Both the legislature and the voters of Texas have supported Paxton over the years as he carried on a crusade of lies and distortions, becoming the poster boy for how a state attorney general’s office could be used to prosecute a political agenda. It's impossible to briefly list all the efforts Paxton has made to sue federal agencies, from the EPA and Homeland Security to Health and Human Services. However, among the “highlights,” Paxton has:

• Repeatedly had a go at overturning aspects of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

• Tried to enact a complex system for collecting child support payments, including another failed attempt to sue the federal government that ended up going hundreds of millions over budget and left children without support payments for months.

• Led the charge to try and keep COVID-19 restrictions on immigration even though he also led the charge to sue the federal government over COVID-19 restrictions.

• Sued hospitals for treatment of trans youth well before other Republicans got on board with the persecution.

• Sued four other states for failing to run their elections according to Paxton’s view of the law, an effort that garnered a scathing reply from the attorneys general of those states, as well as a blunt rejection by the Supreme Court, saying that Paxton had “not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”

Hard to believe he lost, considering that Paxton’s lawsuit included “evidence” from the debunked film “2,000 Mules.”

Somehow, through all this, Texas voters still put Paxton in office by a wide margin. That includes returning him to office in 2020 despite three felony indictments and a public investigation by the FBI. Paxton has the biggest selling point of any Republican candidate: He knows how to hate the right people. So don’t be surprised if being impeached is not his last act.

How can Democrats win the messaging war? It turns out there's actually a science to it, as strategic communications consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio tells us on this week's episode of "The Downballot." Shenker-Osorio explains how her research shows the importance of treating voters as protagonists; how Democrats can avoid ceding "freedom" to Republicans by emphasizing "freedoms," plural; and why it actually makes sense to call out "MAGA Republicans" (even though, yes, it's all Republicans).