Luke Macias

The Enterprise Built the Shield. Now Republicans Are Paying $100 Million to Hold It Up.

Luke Macias says nobody should be blamed if November goes badly. Three years of public record say otherwise.

Shadow Seeker

04 Oct 2026 • 17 min read

How does the Republican party end up spending $100 million to defend a Senate seat in Texas?

Senate Republicans' flagship super PAC booked its Texas ad buy to $100 million on September 22. Senate Leadership Fund had already spent nearly $70 million. Texas PAC, the connected entity, was booking another $30 million. The $100 million in the title is that reservation. Total Republican spending in the general election is already past $140 million, with six weeks to go. Punchbowl News reported in 2025 that Senate Leadership Fund estimated a Paxton candidacy would cost $200 million to $250 million to hold the seat. By October 1, FEC independent-expenditure reports showed Texas PAC had spent $131 million, Republican groups had spent $122 million in September alone, and AdImpact showed another $66 million reserved through Election Day. Politico reported on October 3 that outside Republican groups were on track to top $200 million, with MAGA Inc. and its affiliates expected to spend near $45 million through October 12. Sen. John Thune called backing John Cornyn in the primary a business decision, a way to spend in Michigan and North Carolina instead of Texas. Texas, it turns out, is where the money went. Cook rates the race a toss-up, in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in more than thirty years.

That is the cost to prop up a nominee whose survival became a three-year project, run by people who spent the same three years making sure no Republican who objected would be around to say so. But first, a sermon.

The Sermon

On October 2, Luke Macias posted a video titled "Who Will You Blame If November Goes Badly?" Macias became Defend Texas Liberty's president in October 2023, and the PAC's website still lists him in the job. His consulting firm, Macias Strategies LLC, has collected $2,490,989 from Texas campaign committees, through the Transparency USA payee ledger. Asking him who is to blame is like asking the stagehand about the trapdoor. He did not build it. Stickland ran the price-to-pay pressure. Macias was the director during the billboards, and he became president in October 2023, after the acquittal and after the Fuentes meeting. He inherited the machine. He still invoices it.

Who Will You Blame If November Goes Badly?

Today we need to have a conversation about who’s at fault if thing don’t go well and Democrats sieze power. pic.twitter.com/KuSvYHotEV
— Luke Macias (@lukemaciastx) October 2, 2026

He answered inside of three minutes. The person you blame, he told viewers, is "the person that you do not like." Then he handed out names. John Cornyn, who is "spending more time attacking Republicans." Karl Rove, whom unnamed sources supposedly have working the phones against Paxton and Bo French, a claim offered without evidence. Glenn Rogers, the former Republican now cutting an ad for a pro-Talarico super PAC, whom Macias says he spent about eight years opposing. The moderates. The "black-pilled" online voices he would like to blame, because that is "what my flesh wants to do."

Then the lecture. Blame "hides any root cause." People start "putting stories before facts." He urged viewers to watch Jocko Willink's talk on extreme ownership, and said the three things you control are "your actions, your perspective, and who you trust." (He has not read the book. He watched the TED Talk and assumed the 300 pages elaborate. It is the one part of the sermon about which he is fully transparent.)

Fine. Take ownership. Put facts before stories. Macias offered the standard; he refuses to apply to himself or The Enterprise.

Over twenty-three minutes and fifty-nine seconds, the word impeachment does not appear. Neither do Tim Dunn or Farris Wilks, the $3 million Defend Texas Liberty sent lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, the Fuentes meeting, Bryan Slaton, or the $6.6 million judgment against Paxton's office. That is a lot of root cause to leave on the floor. He did concede that the race is "very, very tight," that Republicans are "more discouraged," and that his party holds "complete and total control" of every statewide office. Total control comes with total ownership. He declined the latter.

At 22:03 he telegraphed Texas Scorecard's post-election strategy: "I could weave a story for you that convinces every one of y'all of the five most responsible people in Texas, if Texas goes blue even a little bit. And honestly, you would believe me." He did not say who the five would be.

The Indictment

No one named here has been criminally charged with anything connected to the matters below. The exhibits are public records. Texas voters can judge for themselves if they should be.

The Enterprise did not buy Paxton's nomination. Through the primary, pro-Cornyn spending topped $70 million against $4.4 million for Paxton. Texas Monthly reported, citing a source, that when Paxton asked Dunn about backing a Senate run, Dunn told him to stay out. Dunn put $5 million into a Michigan Senate super PAC instead. Trump endorsed Paxton, an endorsement Sen. Thom Tillis called a colossal mistake.

The Enterprise spent three years building the apparatus they believed would make Ken Paxton's nomination survivable. And demanded everyone stop asking questions or face consequences.

Count One: The Gavel

In June 2023, a PAC funded almost entirely by two oil billionaires handed the man who would preside over Ken Paxton's impeachment trial $3 million. Defend Texas Liberty's records show a $1 million contribution and a $2 million loan to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Transparency USA now shows $1,100,000 in contributions from the committee to Texans for Dan Patrick, plus that $2 million loan. The $3.1 million is those two lines added, not a third check. Texas Monthly noted the amount was thirty times what the PAC gave Patrick in 2022, and that Dunn gave the PAC $1.8 million and Paxton $150,000 that same June. A Tribune graphic dated October 12, 2023 put Dunn at $9,696,000 and Wilks at $4,760,000, about 90 percent of what the PAC had raised by then. Transparency USA's cumulative ledger now shows Wilks at $4,660,000 to the same committee. The $4.8 million figure was a rounding of a snapshot the later ledger does not support.

Texas Monthly put the legal line where it belongs: strictly speaking it was not a bribe, it was legal under state law, and Patrick denies any quid pro quo. But "legal" is a remarkable word to need in a sentence about a $1 million contribution and a $2 million loan to the judge. Patrick's defense was that he had received just as much from the other side, which the Tribune noted is difficult to verify. After the verdict, rather than return the money, Patrick announced on October 23, 2023 that the campaign was buying $3 million in Israeli bonds. The Dallas Morning News noted the purchase was an investment, principal and interest recoverable, not a gift. Rep. Ann Johnson, an impeachment manager, told Texas Monthly that the speech Patrick delivered after the acquittal made it clear the fix had been in. That is her view; many share it.

Then there are the phone records. During deliberations, Patrick spoke with Sen. Joan Huffman for about fifteen minutes at roughly 10 p.m. on September 15, and twice with Sen. Brian Birdwell, who placed both calls, according to logs his office turned over to Hearst Newspapers. They were the senators who shaped the trial rules: Patrick put Birdwell in charge of the rules committee, and Huffman was instrumental in writing the package. Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, a Democrat, wrote into the Senate Journal that the rule letting articles be dismissed by simple majority was "unprecedented" and favored Paxton.

Nobody outside those calls knows what was said. In a courtroom, a judge who took $3 million from the defendant's chief backers and then phoned the jurors mid-deliberation would face a recusal motion and a long afternoon with an appellate panel. In the Senate, the rules were drawn by his appointee, the deliberations were closed. Whether anything improper happened remains unanswered. Nobody has been made to answer under oath.

Count Two: The Threats

Before the trial, Jonathan Stickland, then Defend Texas Liberty's president, tweeted that anyone who voted to oust Paxton would face "one helluva price to pay," and told senators a vote against him meant "risking their entire political career." The PAC texted Republican voters urging them to call their senators and stop the trial before it began, and put up billboards in Rep. Glenn Rogers's district reading "Glenn Rogers Joined 61 Democrats to Impeach Ken Paxton." Macias, then the PAC's director, said they were looking at billboards across the entire state.

Bennett Ratliff, a Republican former state representative, described how the scorecard system works: vote the way they say or they will run against you. He called it "flat extortion." On the House floor, Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican on the investigating committee, told colleagues that several members had received personal phone calls from Paxton himself, threatening political consequences if they voted to impeach. Rep. Eddie Morales Jr., a Democrat, filed a statement in the House Journal asking investigators to add intimidation of members and "jury tampering" of the Senate to the articles. Geren later said threatening people before a vote is against the law. Sen. Robert Nichols, one of two Republicans who voted to convict, said he received about 1,400 threats of political reprisal.

No source ties any individual threat to Nichols to a particular sender; the pressure campaign had more than one author, and Geren's account concerns Paxton's calls to House members, not Dunn's money. The pressure was public, loud and funded.

On September 18, 2023, two days after the acquittal, Macias told NBC 5 that Speaker Dade Phelan had "basically made a decision to walk his members off of that plank." Four days later he told the Houston Chronicle to expect "well over 40" challengers. In 2024, a record 15 Republican House incumbents lost their seats. Most impeachment-yes incumbents survived, Phelan among them, and Abbott's voucher campaign hit many of the same members, so how much of the 15 belongs to The Enterprise is genuinely argued. The message was blunt: vote against the donors and your seat becomes a target.

Stickland met the white supremacist Nick Fuentes at the Pale Horse Strategies office for nearly seven hours on October 6, 2023. Macias was named president that month. In January 2024, Dunn and Wilks put $2 million into a new PAC, Texans United for a Conservative Majority, to go after the same impeachment-voting incumbents, $700,000 from a Dunn-tied firm and $1.3 million from Wilks, while Defend Texas Liberty curtailed its giving. The same work continued under a new letterhead. Pale Horse Strategies, Stickland's firm, is the top vendor on the committee's 2022-cycle payee table at $829,260.17. The vendor ring appears in public records.

Count Three: The Referee

When a political machine breaks the rules, somebody is supposed to enforce them. In Texas that is the Ethics Commission, and its lawyer is the attorney general.

In 2014 the commission fined Michael Quinn Sullivan, then president of Empower Texans and now publisher of Texas Scorecard, $10,000 for failing to register as a lobbyist. Sullivan fought the fine for more than a decade. The attorney general, whose job is to defend state agencies, declined to defend this one, and the commission spent more than $1 million on outside lawyers. When Sullivan asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case, his lawyer, Tony McDonald, thanked those who urged the court to hear it, Paxton among them. McDonald is Texas Scorecard's general counsel. The court declined in June 2025. Wilks's state ledger shows $425,000 to Paxton. Dunn and Wilks were the funders of the political action committee that spent the impeachment summer defending him. They are not the funders of Lone Star Liberty, the Senate super PAC now on the air. Calling them his biggest donors collapses those two books.

The man charged with enforcing the rules owes the network. The commission that tried to enforce them paid for the fight out of its own budget.

The shield protected this record. The House adopted 20 articles of impeachment in May 2023, including abuse of office on behalf of donor Nate Paul and whistleblower retaliation. The Senate acquitted Paxton that September. In April 2025, a Travis County judge found the attorney general's office violated the Texas Whistleblower Act and awarded roughly $6.6 million to four former aides. Paxton dropped his appeal in July. That is a civil finding against the agency, not a conviction of Paxton. The securities-fraud case ended in pretrial intervention and dismissal, with no plea and no admission. The Associated Press, citing anonymous sources, reported that federal prosecutors declined to charge him over Nate Paul. The Justice Department has not confirmed that on the record.

Courts and prosecutors have to be careful. Voters get to read the whole file. A Fox News poll released October 1, taken September 24 to 28 among 1,203 likely voters, has Talarico at 51 and Paxton at 49. That margin is inside the sampling error. Paxton is at 40 percent favorable and 58 percent unfavorable. Twenty percent of likely voters who backed Cornyn in the March primary now back Talarico. After Paxton won the runoff, Cook moved the race from Likely to Lean Republican. Cornyn made the electability argument in the primary and lost. The party is paying for the argument now.

Count Four: The Machine

The network also built ways to manipulate the public and distort reality.

Texas Scorecard, which Texas Monthly says is published by an Empower Texans spinoff that Dunn largely funded, generally publishes articles critical of the candidates Dunn opposes. It ran "A Witch Hunt" over the impeachment charges within a day of the House vote. It is not a neutral observer.

The fake local papers reached readers elsewhere. The Texas Observer, citing Columbia's Tow Center, reported that Dunn was named a managing director of Pipeline Media in 2020. Texas Monthly describes him as an officer of the same network, which runs websites designed to look like independent local outlets and publishes partisan articles that amplify the positions of special-interest groups. Columbia's Tow Center found the network attacking renewable energy and pushing property-tax cuts. Readers think they are getting the town's news. They are getting gaslit talking points instead.

A dark-money group created by the former CEO of Pale Horse Strategies blasted texts claiming Republican lawmakers had voted to fund transgender transitions. Texas Monthly called the claim hogwash: every targeted Republican had voted for the law banning gender-affirming care for minors. The only thing they had done to earn the attack was vote independently.

On May 19, 2023, Defend Texas Liberty paid a company the Tribune spells Influencable LLC and The Texas Voice spells Influenceable. Influencers told millions of followers that Paxton was the victim of a witch hunt. They called Phelan a drunk and urged followers to come to Paxton's aid. The Tribune reported they were paid and did not disclose it. In June 2024, the Ethics Commission voted 7 to 0 to require disclosure from anyone paid more than $100 to post political advertising. Its general counsel said the rule was not an invention of a new requirement. Groups funded by Dunn and Wilks called it a "secret speech police." Whether any 2023 post broke the law is a question for the commission and the courts, and we found no public enforcement action. After the $1 million the commission spent defending itself against this network, you may wonder who was going to bring one.

The network invested in machine learning, too. In April 2023, Hexagon Partners Ltd., a Dunn family investment vehicle, bought a 40.6 percent stake in AiAdvertising for $5 million, with an option for another $4.25 million. Brad Parscale consulted on the deal. The second tranche, $2.5 million, closed on January 30, 2024. Texas Monthly described the company's plan as building "hyper-personalized campaigns" tailored to voters' "interests, prejudices, and fears." The company's chief executive said it would sell primarily to commercial clients, and I have found no evidence it was used on Texas voters. A hearing could establish whether it was used.

The Enterprise funds a candidate and attacks their critics through outlets and influencers presented as local news and grassroots enthusiasm. All of it manufactured.

Count Five: The Ticket

Further down the 2026 ballot, The Enterprise's own choices are clearer.

Don Huffines is the largest recipient of Defend Texas Liberty money on the committee's ledger, $3,650,015, and the largest single client of Macias Strategies, which has taken $509,934.94 from his campaign. He won the comptroller primary with 57 percent after a late Trump endorsement, and Abbott appointed him on July 2, 2026, effective August 1. No scandal is alleged here. The PAC Macias presides over funds the candidate; the candidate hires Macias.

Bo French is where the loop meets the ballot. Through late February, the Texas Freedom Fund for the Advancement of Justice, the renamed committee, gave him $225,000 and spent another $150,000 on an ad in a conservative newsletter, and the Tribune called it the main benefactor of the March primary. Transparency USA's ledger for French's committee shows $923,500 from the Texas Freedom Fund and $100,000 from Texans United for a Conservative Majority. The Houston Chronicle's donor card, covering January 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026, matches the $923,500. Texas Monthly documented his posts, including slurs aimed at critics and one cheering the lapse of food stamps during last year's government shutdown. His campaign has paid Macias's firm. In a September Texas Southern University poll, French led his Democratic opponent for Railroad Commission by 2 points, while the other Republican statewide nominees led by 5 to 8. French is still the cleanest test of this thesis: the network chose and funded him, and he has the weaker number. On September 13, with the French controversy running, Macias wrote that Abbott was "1000% focused on keeping Texas red." He did not name French.

In previous cycles, Bryan Slaton received the network's backing, too. The House expelled him 147 to 0 after an investigation found he had given a 19-year-old aide alcohol and had sex with her. Slaton's own contributor ledger shows $275,000 from Timothy and Terri Dunn, $160,500 from the committee now called the Texas Freedom Fund, and $98,500 from Farris and JoAnn Wilks, $534,000 on that page, all of it before the findings. Wilks's own contributor page shows $78,500 to Slaton, $20,000 less. The $534,000 uses Slaton's ledger, and the gap is unresolved. Empower Texans, the earlier Dunn and Wilks vehicle, shows another $150,038 on the same Slaton page. His campaign paid Macias Strategies $103,052.93. The network that scores every other Republican in the state put money behind a member the House removed unanimously.

The Verdict

In 2023, Macias named Phelan and the Republicans who voted to impeach. In October 2026, asked who is to blame, he named Cornyn, Rove, Rogers, the moderates and the online critics, then told his audience not to make lists. Tim Dunn was not on it. Neither was their nominee's record.

Macias' chorus of clapping seals, disguised as Texas GOP officers, took it from there. Abraham George, the ousted chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, shared the video nineteen minutes after it went up. Vice chair David Covey called it a knockout and said every Republican should listen. The next morning the Harris County Republican Party supplied the post-loss list: the Republican who stayed home, who skipped a text, who "invested time dividing Republicans and sowing discord during the general election." None of them named Dunn, Wilks, Defend Texas Liberty or Texans United.

To this point, none of these people have been charged with racketeering. The record describes a donor class, a vendor ring that pays itself, an attorney general who declined to enforce, a presiding officer who took $3 million, legislators who were threatened, and a media layer that fabricates narratives. Whether that shape has the elements of a crime turns on intent and agreement, and the people who can answer those questions have never been put under oath.

The election is November 3. The Legislature convenes in January. We cannot see inside Luke Macias's head, but we can read a calendar. He told Republicans to stop looking back thirty-two days before voters render a verdict, and about fourteen weeks before a chamber full of members who spent three years being threatened gets subpoena power and a reason to use it. That is not a coincidence.

Macias said he could weave a story about the five most responsible people in Texas, and that his audience would believe him. Texans do not need a story. They need a hearing room and a witness list, and legislators that would start with the people who were not on his.

"Don't blame anyone. Get to work." Fine. The work starts in January, under oath.

Near the end of his lecture, Macias finished retelling Jocko Willink's story, and he delivers the line twice. "Take ownership. Take ownership."

That is the sermon. Ownership for the listener. None for the man preaching it. Twenty-four minutes, and he does not own the impeachment, the $1 million contribution, the $2 million loan, the Fuentes meeting, Bryan Slaton, or the donors who paid for the machine he invoices. The Enterprise has run the same play since its inception. When the public record is the thing that would require an owner, they change the subject, rename the committee, or ask for a lawyer. Macias is doing it again, on camera, and calling it ownership.

At 20:17 he makes it a promise. "I don't wanna have an episode on the Luke Macias show that says let me tell you the five people that are most responsible for November not going well." If November goes badly, "I am not gonna blame anyone." The outlet that presents his show already did that episode, and more than once. In August 2023 that same outlet released The Texas Heist and named twelve Republican House members its Dirty Dozen, Phelan's lieutenants, then followed them in After the Heist. The shop that puts his show on the air published it. He is promising not to do the thing his own platform already has a history of doing.

Do not trust them. The sermon is a lie, and the record is how you know. Macias said take ownership, then left the impeachment, the loan, the donors, the Fuentes meeting, and Bryan Slaton off the tape. He said he would not name five people, on a show presented by the outlet that already published a "Dirty Dozen."

An Enterprise that will not own their own payee ledgers is not an institution whose word can be believed. The Enterprise has always pretended the objection to their conduct is the scandal and the public record that indicts them is the witch hunt. That is the lie. The public records are the correction.