Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Tuesday that he is seeking the arrest of Democrat Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke over O’Rourke’s alleged violation of a court order requiring him to stop fundraising for the AWOL Texas Democrats.

Paxton accused O’Rourke of “blatantly” violating a temporary restraining order “by continuing to fundraise and pay for the personal expenses of runaway Democrat legislators.” Last week, Tarrant County, Texas, District Court Judge Megan Fahey barred O’Rourke and his political group, Powered by People, from funding the group of 50 Democrats who fled the state to stop a vote on a GOP-backed Congressional map.

Paxton alleges that O’Rourke violated the restraining order immediately after it was issued by telling a crowd of supporters that he would continue fundraising for the runaway Democrats. O’Rourke also told the crowd that Democrats should “f*** the rules” and “win whatever it takes,” calling on Democrat-led states to redraw Congressional maps to take seats away from Republicans, The Daily Wire previously reported.

“There are no refs in this game, f*** the rules, we are going to win whatever it takes. We’re going to take this to him in every way that we can,” O’Rourke said.

In a press release, Paxton said that O’Rourke “is wrong on both counts.”

“There is a referee—the Honorable Megan Fahey—and there are rules—namely, that a person violating a temporary restraining order can be fined up to $500 and jailed for up to six months,” the Texas attorney general added. “Given Robert Francis’s vulgar disdain for the rule of law and immense personal wealth, imprisonment is absolutely necessary to persuade him to obey the lawful restraining order issued by the Tarrant County court.”

BREAKING: I’m taking action to hold Robert Francis O’Rourke in contempt for violating a court order and scamming Texans.

Beto is about to find out that running your mouth and ignoring the rule of law has consequences in Texas.

It’s time to lock him up. pic.twitter.com/JZO4cbBkt1

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) August 12, 2025

“Beto told me to ‘come and take,’ so I did and beat him in court. Now, he still thinks he’s above the law, so I’m working to put him behind bars,” Paxton continued.

O’Rourke shot back at Paxton in a post on X, accusing the attorney general of “lying about me to try to silence us.”

“We alerted the Court that the AG’s office blatantly lied in its filing. We’re seeking maximum sanctions in response to his abuse of office,” O’Rourke added. “Taking the fight directly to this corrupt, lying thug.”

He’s lying about me to try to silence us.

Here’s the full clip. I mean every word.

We alerted the Court that the AG’s office blatantly lied in its filing. We’re seeking maximum sanctions in response to his abuse of office.

Taking the fight directly to this corrupt, lying thug. https://t.co/JAfKR3xyH3 pic.twitter.com/uQFCG3Jmsg

— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) August 12, 2025

Paxton launched an investigation into O’Rourke’s group last week after it was reported that Powered by People was bankrolling the Texas Democrats who shirked their responsibilities in the state House and fled to Illinois to block a vote on the new Congressional map. The group of Democrats faces a daily $500 fine, along with living expenses in Illinois.

Powered by People focuses on organizing volunteers to help Democrats win elections in “competitive Texas battleground districts.” The leftist group says it is also “focused on creating long-term changes to the Texas electorate that will outlast any one candidate or campaign cycle.”

The Democratic legislators remain out of the state this week, defying last Friday’s deadline that Speaker of the Texas House Dustin Burrows put in place for their return. The Democrats vowed to stay out of Texas past the 30-day special session, but Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott said on Sunday that he would continue to call special sessions.

“I’m authorized to call a special session every 30 days. It lasts 30 days. And as soon as this one is over, I’m gonna call another one, then another one, then another one, then another one,” the governor said.

“If they show back up in the state of Texas, they will be arrested and taken to the capitol. If they want to evade that arrest, they’re gonna have to stay outside of the state of Texas for literally years,” he added. “They might as well just start voting in California or voting in Illinois, wherever they may be.”

The last running hotel-turned-migrant shelter in New York City is set to close in April.

The Row Hotel, which was also the first to be converted into a migrant shelter in 2022, is located a block away from Times Square. Housing migrants in the luxury property’s 1,300 units costs the city $5.13 million a month.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday that the city would not renew its contract with Rockpoint Group, which owns the establishment.

He called the closure a “major milestone in our administration’s recovery from this international humanitarian crisis,” in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

“Three years ago, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers began streaming into our city every week — and the Adams administration stepped up.”

“We opened hundreds of emergency migrant shelters to ensure no family slept on the street. Since then, we have successfully helped more than 200,000 migrants leave our shelter system and take the next step toward self-sufficiency,” Adams continued.

At its peak, New York City was running 220 migrant shelters. In 2024, 80% of its 193 operating shelters were former hotels.

“We have skillfully and humanely managed a national humanitarian crisis — and have done what no other city could do,” he added.

The Row has become a hotspot for crime and chaos, with numerous recorded incidents of attacks against NYPD officers by residents who are members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

City residents are celebrating the closure and the end of mass sheltering.

“Hallelujah. I’m happy that it’s happening,” said a resident of The Camelot apartment complex across the street. “We pay a lot of money to live here, and it doesn’t seem fair.”

“There are people sitting here all day, littering, leaving food waste, water bottles,” the resident said. “A lot of them have children, and there are women sitting around here smoking weed all day, the children are just playing on the street, on the bike lanes.”

One security guard said he started wearing a wedding ring because he’s been propositioned twice by migrant prostitutes staying at the hotel.

The closures come as President Donald Trump’s immigration policies have reduced illegal border crossings by over 99%. CNN recently predicted the United States will reach negative net migration in 2025, for the first time in 50 years.

The 3,400 current residents of the Row will be moved to the city’s traditional shelter system, according to the New York Times.

A spokesman for the mayor’s office noted that the city government has also “purchased more than 65,000 tickets to help migrants exit the shelter system and reach their preferred destinations.”

The mayor’s office also noted that of the migrants already in New York, 110,000 asylum applications have been processed so far, accounting for over 90% of those eligible.

That levels out to $3950 a unit, a few hundred dollars above the average monthly rate for a single room in NYC.