A member of the Republican Party , he served from to as the 50th attorney general of Texas and from to as a justice of the Texas Supreme Court. Abbott is the longest-serving incumbent governor in the United States. Abbott was the third Republican to serve as attorney general of Texas since the Reconstruction era. Before becoming attorney general, Abbott was a justice of the Texas Supreme Court , a position to which he was appointed in by then-governor George W.
As attorney general, he successfully advocated for the Texas State Capitol to display the Ten Commandments in the U. Supreme Court case Van Orden v. Perry , and unsuccessfully defended the state's ban on same-sex marriage.
He was involved in numerous lawsuits against the Barack Obama administration , seeking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act and the administration's environmental regulations. Elected in , Abbott is the first Texas governor and third governor of a U. Roosevelt and George Wallace. As governor, Abbott supported the first Donald Trump administration and has promoted a conservative agenda, including measures against abortion such as the Texas Heartbeat Act , lenient gun laws, opposition to illegal immigration , support for law enforcement funding, and election reform.
In response to the power crisis following a February winter storm , Abbott called for reforms to Electric Reliability Council of Texas ERCOT and signed a bill requiring power plant weatherization. During the COVID pandemic in Texas , Abbott opposed implementing face mask and vaccine mandates , while blocking local governments, businesses, and other organizations from implementing their own. He has also made a priority of fighting illegal immigration , starting Operation Lone Star in In his sophomore year in high school, his father died of a heart attack ; his mother went to work in a real estate office.
Abbott's judicial career began in Houston , where he served as a state trial judge in the th District Court for three years. Bush appointed Abbott to the Texas Supreme Court ; he was then twice elected to the state's highest civil court—in two-year term and in six-year term. Hawley of Dallas. Abbott resigned from the Texas Supreme Court in to run for lieutenant governor of Texas. Abbott expanded the attorney general's office's law enforcement division from about 30 people to more than In a speech to fellow Republicans, when asked what his job entails, Abbott said: "I go into the office in the morning, I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home.
