The Texan Podcast - (Corrected) Weekly Roundup - June 2, 2023

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundup The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week, the team discusses the biggest hits of the 88th Legislative Session, including the impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, where political priorities like school choice and border security stand after sine die, and the start of the first special session of summer 2023.

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, the team discusses the biggest hits of the 88th legislative session, including the impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, where political priorities like school choice and border security stand after sine me die, and the start of the first special session of summer 2023. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Folks, howdy. Mackenzie here with Brad, with Cameroneron with matt with hayden and rob rob's in the back

there's not enough room at our podcast table so he got relegated to the very back of the room how's it going rob it's going fantastic we are on our 10th consecutive work day we're having a great time the coffee the coffee machine has been used far more in the last three days than i've ever seen it used i i saw a caught up uh wow i can't even a cot of coffee a pot of coffee brewed uh two separate times within 20 minutes of each other today i counted i did the math i set a timer that's fun it was so how are y'all doing hayden well i'm feeling a little squeamish after our conversation right before we started recording yeah but other than that i am not too bad now you did introduce the subject matter i did however

spur you on you did because as soon as i started telling the story i said wait maybe i shouldn't tell this and you said that's that's a surefire way to make me want to hear the story it's true um matthew how are you holding up i'm doing pretty good good um you don't want to know the story about the guy up in i don't that's correct i do not we learned today that i was not meant to be a physician or work in the medical field. I'm very squeamish. Bradley, how are you doing? I'm here. Contractually obligated. If you have not, that reminds me, folks, if you've not listened to our podcast about the

Paxton impeachment proceedings, Hayden, Brad and I last week on Friday, as everything was going down, we have so much, I don't even know where to begin with how much has gone on in the last week but that might be a good place to start is listening to that hour-long twitter spaces the three of us did about the whole proceedings and Brad saying he's contractually obligated well actually you said it made me think about that because I said it in the podcast if you'd let me finish my sentence it would all make sense oh sorry I was trying to preempt you yeah as you tend to tend to do. Cameron, how are you? I'm good. This is my first Texas legislative session.

It's been wild. It's been crazy. Has it been? Because we tried to tell you how crazy session is. Was it worse, better than you expected it to be in terms of workload and time spent? Well, initially, you guys were hyping things up. Oh, it's it to be in terms of workload and time spent. Well, initially you guys were hyping things up. Oh, it's going to be crazy. Midnight, 10 days in a row. Like that was, that was real. But the amount of things that have gone on this session that have been out of the ordinary, that I wasn't anticipating that. Yeah. Nobody was, nobody was there. And I think we did try to preempt. We're like like okay cameron this is this is gonna be a heck of a situation heck of a job but we didn't

know how much would be going on you know impeachments and first time in a hundred year proceedings pretty wild but let's go ahead and jump into that folks we are basically just going to uh look back at the at the legislative session what passed but particularly talking about the last week what has all gone down policy wise but first hayden um the attorney general's uh historic impeachment was on saturday ken paxton no longer holds the office of attorney general here in texas tell us what the main arguments were for impeachment speaking of once in a century proceedings attorney general warren kenneth pa, also known as Ken Paxton, was impeached Saturday by a vote of 121 to 23. Sorry, I raised my hand. Did anybody know his

first name was Warren? I did not. I want to call him Warren Paxton so bad and just leave out. I did not know that was his name. Sorry, continue. And the only reason I say that is because when the impeachment vote came up, it was Warren Kenneth Paxton really big on the screen and that's what they called him in this official proceeding he was charged with 20 articles of impeachment they ranged from bribery dereliction of duty a disregard of official duty, and many of the charges related to his relationship with a real estate developer named Nate Paul, who had contributed to his campaign and had requested that the OAG take certain actions to protect him from litigation by a nonprofit foundation that had sued companies that he

controlled. I'll break down the charges that were in the indictment. There were seven counts of disregard of official duty, one count of misapplication of public resources, two counts of constitutional bribery, two counts of obstruction of justice, three counts of false statements in official records, one count of conspiracy and attempted conspiracy, one count of misappropriation of public resources, one count of dereliction of duty, one count of unfitness for office, and one count of abuse of public trust. He was said to have accepted bribes. One of the bribes that he is accused of accepting is a job offer that Nate Paul extended to a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

And he is also accused of obstructing the criminal proceedings in his security fraud indictment case. Chairman Andrew Murr, the chairman of the House General Investigating Committee, said there was enough evidence to bind Paxton over for trial. And that was the purpose of this proceeding, not to declare him guilty or not guilty, which is the Senate's job at this point. They were merely saying that there is enough evidence for a trial. And there were many arguments on the floor, including Ann Johnson, the vice chair of the committee, who said that all of the circumstances should be taken into account. She used an interesting analogy. She said that if you were in a grocery store, you would be able to tell if someone had accidentally hit you with a shopping cart versus hit you with a shopping cart on purpose. And she said all the circumstances in this case point to Ken Paxton knowing what he was doing and choosing to break his oath of office.

That was her statement in favor of impeachment. And at one point, she even called him Ken Paul and paused and said, oh, Ken Paxton, sorry, Freudian slip. So that was just an illustration of how she views this case and the evidence that the committee presented against Paxton, which was the entire record that they presented to support impeachment was a transcript of investigators testimony to the committee based on interviews that they had conducted with approximately 15 witnesses. And that was the entire record that members had available to them before being asked to cast a vote in favor of impeachment. That is a very broad view of what happened on Saturday in

terms of arguments for impeachment. Yes. And I will say, folks, any documents we mention in our podcast today are either linked in the stories we've covered at the Texan or embedded. I know the report, the transcription is literally embedded on our site, as well as the articles of impeachment. Hayden, who opposed Paxton's impeachment and what were the main arguments against it? Well, I will say that there were only 23 votes against impeachment. So it's a pretty easy list to read. But before I say this, there were Tom Oliverson had an excused absence. And then there was one Republican, Richard Hayes, who spoke against impeachment, but then he ultimately voted present. But the members against impeachment were Doc Anderson, Cecil Bell, who spoke against impeachment, but then he ultimately voted present. But the

members against impeachment were Doc Anderson, Cecil Bell, Travis Clardy, Tom Craddock, Charles Cunningham, Mark Drozio, Sam Harless, Caroline Harris, Brian Harrison, Kerry Isaac, Terry Leo Wilson, Jeannie Morrison, Dennis Paul, Fort Price, Matt Schaefer, Nate Schatzlein, Mike Schofield, Shelby Slauson, John Smithy, Valerie Swanson, Ed Thompson, Tony Tenderholt, and Steve Toff. Those were the votes against impeachment. And the speakers against impeachment were led by John Smithy, who said the process was flawed and they were being asked to impeach Paxton on hearsay evidence. Tenderholt raised concerns that the investigators were politically motivated, that they had worked in Harris County and voted in Democratic primaries. And then other opponents said that it was a rushed process and that they should have had more than the time between Tuesday and Saturday to consider the impeachment, which,

in fact, that was the entirety of the time because they did not know before Tuesday that matter A, the general investigating committee was considering was Ken Paxton. Everyone thought that might have been something different. So those were some of the arguments that they made against impeachment. Yeah. So what was Paxton's reaction to being impeached? Obviously, he lashed out at the legislature and he thanked his supporters. He said, quote, I am beyond grateful to have the support of millions of Texans who recognize that what we just witnessed is illegal, unethical, and profoundly unjust. I look forward to a quick resolution in the Texas Senate where I have full confidence the process

will be fair and just, end quote. And he also said that Phelan used a, quote, coalition of Democrats and liberal Republicans, end quote, to impeach him and put the state of Texas in the same category as Biden's pro-abortion, anti-gun agenda. Which was the argument that House leadership was making on Saturday. I mean, Saturday was when this all happened as well, saying like behind the scenes, OK, we need more Republicans than Democrats to show up in this vote because, you know, we, and it ended up being 61 Democrats to 60 Republicans. So pretty negligible difference there. But that was a concern from Republican house leadership was that they were to be more, more Republicans that would be, or excuse me, fewer Republicans and Democrats that before impeachment. Well, we've already seen since the vote, the branding of it was a democratic led impeachment out there from critics of House leadership take

defend Texas liberty run by former representative Jonathan Stickland. You can expect to see that phrase on mailers a lot once we hit 2024 primaries. Yeah, this is going to be a big primary election issue. Okay, Hayden, the big question we've been asked many times over by listeners and readers, what does the law say about what happens next to Paxton? There is a series of people who can set the trial date at this point. Once the articles of impeachment have been delivered to the Senate, which they are, Abbott has 10 days to set a date. If he doesn't, Patrick has 15 days. If he doesn't, the president pro tempore, which I believe is Senator Schwartner at this point, has 20 days. And if he doesn't do it, then a majority of senators can set the trial

date. The Senate, I believe, is set to consider the rules for the trial in late June. So it will probably be after that that they set the trial date, but that could change at any time. So they have not written that in blood. A two-thirds majority is required to convict. Senator Paxton is obviously Attorney General Paxton's wife, so it is unclear at this Constitution says that she is not allowed to participate in matters of personal interest to her. So we have conflicting laws. The constitutional provision obviously is superior, or she can—I'm sorry, I got those switched. She can violate the Constitution and be in a matter that concerns her personally and be in the position of judging her husband's guilt,

or she can recuse herself and potentially— Violate the statute and she would also lower the vote threshold for conviction because if she's not present then only 20 votes are required for conviction as opposed to 21 because it's a two-thirds vote of those present so that's the bind that she faces at this point the catch--22. Which is a big difference too, in that the House only required a majority versus the Senate needing a two-thirds vote for conviction. Now, this was an all-hands-on-deck day at the legislature on Saturday. All of us were there, at least during some portion of the day. Let's talk really quickly. I want to

dedicate a couple of minutes here to talk about what it was like on the floor. I think the thing I noticed most while y'all noodle on this is at the very beginning of the impeachment proceedings, I think it was very clear that the momentum was in impeachment's favor. It was very, you know, the general investigating committee laid out its case and did so with all five members. Fairly convincingly, you know, members were listening very closely. And I think even leading up to the trial, the rhetoric surrounding impeachment was very favorable to the motion. And then you kind of started to see the tables turn a little bit, just in terms of the speeches that were given from members of the House who I think were unexpectedly opposed to impeachment. And the argument talking about how the proceedings were rushed,

how precedent had been set previously from members like John Smithy, Representative Matt Schaefer, were very fascinating. And I think immediately made certain Republicans in the House who were in favor of impeachment sweat quite a bit, wondering, okay, are we hemorrhaging votes here? So speak to that for those of you who were on the floor um about what the environment was like leading up to the vote well it started off with the impeachment managers um the general investigating committee laying out their case and then we saw members um who are critical of the prospect give up and give their side of the story. especially by representative John Smithy's speech, throwing, questioning the speed with which this has been brought up.

They announced the articles, the recommendation of impeachment on Tuesday and voted to impeach on Saturday. So a matter of days. And again, most people in the Capitol, I believe even members, thought Matt Array related to something entirely different than Kim Paxton. Yes, we did too. So I know at least there were some members that that Smithy speech was persuasive for. And it was interesting to see some of the commotion going on. There was one point where a member of Democratic leadership

went up to members of Republican leadership and said, you're hemorrhaging votes. Get them in line or something like that. You know, it was all a big question mark. Nobody knew exactly how it would shake out, especially as these members are kind of trying to poke holes in the arguments.

Yeah. And so ultimately it was a very lopsided vote, but it could have been more lopsided, especially because nobody on the floor defended Paxton against the merits of the charges. They criticized the process and questioned the speed with which it was done. I think Brian Harrison was the only representative to go up there and say that Ken Paxton's record as attorney general was praiseworthy, saying that he'd fought President Joe Biden in court. I think he was the only member to go that far. But his primary argument, if I remember correctly, was still on process grounds. Well, and it was even that it wasn't about saying that what Paxton did was right. And that's the extraordinary part about this case is Paxton doesn't deny the facts laid

out in the articles of impeachment. He denies that it was illegal what he did. So the argument against impeachment was not that he didn't have an affair or that he didn't have this close relationship with an 8-paul or that he didn't make these policy choices. Paxton said in an interview on Newsmax the night before, I stand by what I did. We thought they were good policy choices. And he said he hadn't been perfect, but he doesn't regret his decision making. And then on the floor, members were saying, this is politically motivated. He's going after Biden. And we're stymieing one of the strongest attorneys general in the country against an out of control federal government in a way that is offensive to due process and our constitutional republic, because he was overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly reelected in 2022, just months ago. And that was that was primary, primarily the points they were making.

So Brad is absolutely correct that there was no debating really the facts that were alleged by the committee. They were just by the committee. They were just saying the process was very inadequate for something of this magnitude. And another thing that I didn't mention specifically in questioning the process was the fact that the General Investigating Committee hired a team of investigators to then interview witnesses. I think it was 15 witnesses, including the four whistleblowers that used to work for the office of the attorney general all of whom are conservative attorneys who were hired by paxton um that so that was one of the other criticisms was that the committee itself didn't even hear direct testimony um it was like hearsay the line they kept repeating was hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay like third-hand knowledge presented to the House. Yeah, because they were literally third- or fourth-hand accounts of what had happened. Now, to counter that, Murr said then and has said since that each of those witnesses promised to go under oath if a trial happens.

So at least as of that, you can expect to hear these people testify in the Senate. And that was Canalys' point was that hearsay is prohibited at trial, but it's not prohibited in an investigation. So cops, officers can ask you, what have you heard about this? What is your sense of what's going on? And so in the course of the investigation, they accepted hearsay, but that was Canalys' point. And by the way canalis is one of the house managers who will be serving as a quasi prosecutor and we use this criminal analogy it's a flawed analogy but it's the best one for this situation so he's not really prosecuting paxton because they can't impose criminal sanctions but he'll be presenting one

of the people who presents the case against paxton in the Senate. And to be fair, again, the whole team was there. Matt got there early, saved a desk at the press box. Press were lining up early to make sure that they had a desk in the house. Cameron was there walking around, taking photos, observing everything that was going on. It was a wild, wild day. And I think one thing, I can't remember who brought up this point, maybe it was Cameron, as he was walking around, was tourists come to the capital and droves on the weekends and they had no idea that a historic impeachment proceeding was happening just in the house they were like why can't we walk out on the house floor today it's like well the attorney general's getting impeached that's something that hasn't happened in 100 years is happening yeah and a lot of people

come from out of town these aren't all texans yeah the the gallery was packed and who was the gallery packed with was it primarily pro-paxton supporters after his call for peaceful protest well that's the thing it was a mix of people the tourists supporters people in opposition what was interesting though is you guys are talking about how there was a feeling on the floor about the impeachment was going to go through. That was the feeling amongst lawmakers, it seems. Is that correct? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, if you were just paying attention to social media, you would have thought it was the complete opposite because you were seeing national figures, Texas figures, all over social media going up and defending Paxton. And it was really interesting seeing the dichotomy of the situation. If you were just paying attention to social media, like many regular Texans do, you would have a completely different perspective on what's going on if you weren't actually watching the proceedings of the impeachment go on on the floor. Yeah, that's a great point. And noteworthy, too, I mean, we have so much to get to today, so this will be the last point before we move on.

By the way, I said I was going to try to keep this to five minutes. I said good luck. Yeah. But I also did not help with that. I was very naive. Noteworthy in that Senator Ted Cruz came out that morning of impeachment in support of Attorney General Ken Paxton. Now kind of former Attorney General Ken Paxton, if you really get down to technicalities here. Suspended.

Suspended Attorney General. Temporarily former, potentially. Temporarily former, but that's quite a title. Potentially temporarily former but that's quite a potentially temporarily former um and uh former president donald trump also came out about 30 minutes before the floor vote as well with support for the attorney general which was something we were really watching for and again for folks who want to know more about the procedure going back and listen to our twitter spaces and read our coverage we have all sorts of coverage of the texas news that runs through all of this um i do

want to plug really fast brad has an interview coming coming I believe it'll be out by the time this podcast is public with Chairman Andrew Murr the first interview with the chairman since the investigation has been made public so make sure to go and check that out at the texan.news we'll have a transcription of that interview up for folks who want to know a little

bit more about the house's thought process and all of this yes perfect short and sweet Cameron we're a little bit more about the House's thought process in all of this. Yes. Perfect. Short and sweet. Cameron, we're going to come to you. School choice, huge policy issue this legislative session. We've spent no time of the last 20 minutes talking about it. Let's start now. What happened with school choice? It seems there was a very big push this session and then nothing happened. Tell us what went down over the weekend. Well, HB 100 became this last ditch effort to pass meaningful school choice legislation.

But those hopes just died in the last moments over the weekend. There was a conference committee. That's where both chambers from the House and the Senate, they have people come in and try to come to some resolutions, but they failed to come to an agreement. HB 100 died. And some of these lawmakers took to social media to really voice their dismay, particularly Ken King, who was the original author of HB 100. He said, what the governor and Senate have done is inexcusable. And he called the process and what has been done to students as they have been used as political hostages. Those are his words. And then also Brandon Creighton, who has been leading on education issues in the Senate, he came out on social media and called what the House did a mockery.

And he pointed to what they did with his SB8 and SB9 bills as they didn't pass through the House. So it's been a long process, this legislative session. And we'll see what happens this summer though. Yeah, we have a special session. Well, I don't want to get too much into it, but we're expecting some sort of special session with school choice to be announced at some point, potentially, just considering the governor's previous statements and his support for the issue. Give us a little bit of a preview of what could happen next. Well, that's right. We really don't know what's going to happen. We might expect something.

We did hear this week, Dan Patrick, during a conversation with the Texas Public Policy Foundation said that the ideas for reformulating HB 100 actually came from Dade Phelan. And so we can see there's some cross-chamber agreements on school choice that they want something to happen, but we can only speculate to know what's going to happen this summer with a special session. The two chambers working together. Intriguing. We'll have to get back to that at some point later in this podcast. Matthew, let's talk about the Senate. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick named 30 priority issues for the Texas Senate to pass this session. What percentage passed? And give us some details of what will become law and what will not. Well, early this year, Lieutenant Governor Patrick

outlined 30 different pieces of legislation, noting that many would pass with bipartisan support and that many also carried the favor of the conservative majority of Texans. Now, I think it's probably easiest to start with the ones that didn't make it, to kind of give you an overview. Senate Bill 2, which was restoring voter fraud to a felony level offense. That one was one of the big ones they were trying to bring through this session. There was a lot of talks like it would make it. Didn't survive the regular session. Senate Bill 6, adding new natural gas plants. Senate Bill 8, as Cameron just discussed, was the school choice priority measure in the Senate.

And, of course, that was ultimately a school choice version had been tacked on to HB 100. And as we later learned or as Lieutenant Governor Patrick claimed this past week, that tacking a school choice on to HB 100, the teacher pay raise, was an idea given to him by Speaker Phelan. We have not heard Speaker Phelan confirm that or not, but I thought that was an interesting little post-session factoid. Senate Bill 9, the teacher pay raise. Senate Bill 11, keeping our schools safe and secure. Now a House version of a school security bill, HB 3, did pass, and there were quite a few differences between the two proposals and

where they came from. Senate Bill 13 was the obscene books in libraries. 16, banning critical race theory in higher ed. 21, removing judges who refused to follow the law. And Senate Bill 23, creating a 10-year mandatory 10-year prison sentence for criminals committing gun crimes. That one I was really surprised didn't pass because it seemed like there was a lot of bipartisan support for it in both chambers. Now, that being said, about two-thirds of the 30 priorities did pass. Lots of major social issues this session, ending child gender modification, banning children's exposures to drag schools, banning DEI offices in higher ed. There's also removal of district attorneys who refuse to follow the law, expanding alternatives to abortion, banning local COVID-19

mandates by local governments. That was SB 29 by Brian Birdwell. Birdwell had another one that would have reined in Governor Abbott's ability to issue disaster declarations relating to COVID and that sort of thing as well, but that one did not pass the Texas House of Representatives. It did clear the Senate though. And then just another number of other ones, like I said, right over 20 actually will become law. And Lieutenant Governor Patrick is calling on Governor Abbott to add a lot of those issues that didn't survive during the regular into subsequent special session calls. So we'll keep an eye on them and see if by the end of the year, however many more don't become law as well. That's exactly right. Thank you, Matthew. Bradley, there was just so much that happened this weekend on property taxes that kind of

became the hallmark issue negotiated between state lawmakers. But also nothing really ended up happening. So give us a rundown of what actually went down this weekend. Yeah. So property taxes is probably the main thing that sparked the special session that we'll talk about here shortly. But going into the weekend, lawmakers clearly did not want to have to convene a special session, especially immediately. And so they were trying hard to find a compromise between the two chambers on property tax legislation. And so a brief rundown of what the two chambers positions were throughout the session. The House, both chambers agreed largely on rate compression. The Senate wanted a homestead exemption increase.

The House wanted appraisal cap reduction and extension to all real property. Those negotiations kind of broke down. The House, as a last-ditch effort, passed a version of Senate Bill 3 that included all three. The Senate did not do anything with that. So entering the weekend, basically the only option was passing the Senate, passing, approving the House's Senate Bill 3 or triggering a conference committee. Conference committee did, the conferees were appointed, but nothing ultimately occurred. There was a, I think it was on Sunday night, the house conferees set forth a, they signed a compromise plan that laid out compression, a $70K homestead exemption for standard homeowners, and a $30K homestead exemption for elderly and disabled homeowners, which was exactly what the Senate passed in

their first version, plus a 7.5% appraisal cap, a reduction to 7.5% in extension to all real property, which was higher than what the House originally wanted. That was left basically on red. The Senate did not budge. And so we hit the midnight deadline on Sunday, just expecting this to all be dead. We enter Monday. Negotiations start back up, including between Dan Patrick, Dade Phelan, and Governor Abbott. But ultimately, nothing was agreed upon. And so

by about five or six o'clock on sine die on Monday, everyone realized that this wasn't happening. And so both chambers adjourned sine die and they didn't have to wait long to see when they would be called back into session no kidding that's a good teaser and for those wondering i think sine die i just googled it to remind myself it's latin for without a day it's basically just meaning that you've run out of days yes ending it all sine die was monday so let's get to that that was our thank you gentlemen for Monday. So let's get to that. That was our thank you, gentlemen, for covering the weekend. Let's get to Sinead Eye. After that impasse, Brad, the two chambers eventually just gave up and both adjourned Sinead Eye.

Tell us about that. Yep. So they did that. Everyone went to their customary Sinead Eye parties thinking, finally, we're done with this. At least we have a little bit of a break well sure enough at about 8 55 the governor's office put out a release that he would be calling a special session to start at 9 p.m and to be fair usually traditionally sine die is ceremonial everything's locked loaded wrapped with a bow nothing is on the table anymore

legislators adjourn signing die by you know noon 1 p.m early afternoon right and they go off the staff goes out into austin the legislators go home to their families or they go out that night and party with their families whatever it is celebration starts very early in the day had the house was in the floor until 5 30 p.m senate was on the floor until 5.30 p.m. Senate was on the floor until 6-ish. I'm ballparking it, but they were until the evening. I think it was 6.30 Senate was on the floor. It was very untraditional just because neither chamber could adjourn in good faith knowing negotiations on property taxes were going on behind the scenes.

Yep. And so they waited and waited and waited. And eventually they just decided we're just banging our heads against the wall nothing's happening and let's just stop this charade and so they did and then while i'm sure everybody is enjoying a cocktail or two or ten um the governor issues his call to reconvene well that night but they didn't come back until the next day, midday on Tuesday. Absolutely. Wild.

So special session began. It did. And he put on the special call two issues, property taxes. And for that one, he specifically mentioned rate compression, which is interesting in that he basically said, throw away your dispute over appraisal reform and just focus on this one thing and let's get that done. That has not gotten done. A few days later, and they're still at loggerheads. Both chambers expedited their both bills, their border and their property tax proposals for the special session. The border one, which Hayden, I'm sure, will talk about in a sec, was focused on increasing the penalty for human smuggling and operating a stash house. But on property taxes, which was the bigger of the two issues, I think, because it had been such a fight, the Senate, which often speeds things up really fast, passed its version, just rate compression, $12 billion in new rate

compression, and then immediately adjourned, sine die. So the House is no longer in session. The Senate, they're coming back on Friday and we'll see what they do. But the House's maneuver was essentially to just force this to the Senate and say, you're you either accept this or that's it. You know, we're going to have the governor would have to reconvene another special session. And so Lieutenant Governor Patrick has not really given in rhetorically yet on that. I don't know if he will at any time soon but uh yeah you know a lot has happened but not much has changed we're still at loggerheads between the house and senate on property taxes so basically post sine die at whatever 6 30 p.m on monday night a special session has been called the house had a 24-hour session decided they'd pass a couple of bills

that pertain to the special session call. Reminder to folks that Governor Abbott specifically states what is on the call and only bills germane to the call are subject to passage. You can't just, you know, go in and pass an unrelated bill during a special session. It's based solely on the topics the governor chooses. And they adjourned. And the Senate recessed till friday so we'll see what happens um the podcast will be released on friday we'll find out a lot more then but that's where we're at and speaker felin said that the senate's version with homesteads

would be not germane to the call and that it would not be referred in his chamber and that was right before they adjourned um but read a statement read a statement twitter went ablaze yeah they adjourned like what 30 45 minutes later probably not even yeah pretty wild and uh the senate is figuring out what it's going to do so matt let's talk to you about a little bit of the political dynamics at play here and some accusations being logged across chambers give us a rundown of what you have been covering on this this week. Yeah, so our listeners will get a little bit of a sneak peek of a story that we're still putting the finishing touches on. But it kind of all started this past week with Lieutenant Governor Patrick giving a speech at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, basically

recapping the legislative session. And he really focused on this feud over property taxes. So as kind of Brad highlighted, the Senate has really been pushing for a proposal that provides property tax relief through homeowners exemption. The Senate or as they had been wanting to cap appraisals. A lot of our listeners are probably familiar with the problem across the state right now, where people are getting extraordinarily high appraisal estimates. And the higher the value of your property, the more taxes you're going to pay on it.

So during the negotiations. Can I stop you real quick? Just to mention that if you have a homestead exemption, your appraisal is capped at 10% every year on the taxable value of your property. But businesses, all other properties do not have that. So that's the reason that the House pushed for that. And obviously it's going nowhere now. But yeah. Yeah. Patrick elaborated that during the discussions, Speaker Phelan was wanting an 8% appraisal

cap on all homes and businesses. And he wasn't going for the businesses part. He was just going to say he was giving a counteroffer on Holmes' loan. But that's where his PowerPoint presentation took kind of an interesting, slightly personal turn. He said during the negotiations, he took the 8% appraisal cap off the table for everyone. And so Phelan turned around and said, well, then I'm taking the homestead exemption off the table. Patrick said, I couldn't figure out why Phelan was just so adamant about this cap for everybody, including businesses. And then he says it hits him that during these discussions, Phelan mentioned that he owns

lots of commercial property. And just the tone of the way Patrick describes it as sort of an aha. And so he literally calls out Phelan's commercial property investment company, Phelan Investments, points to their website online and elaborates how with these proposals coming from the house direction, if you had a company that owned shopping centers and commercial real estate and everything like that, you stood to gain more out of this particular deal. Now, then Patrick says, I mean, he described it as a whopping, whopping profit. And then he turns around and he says, no, I'm not saying he's doing this to benefit himself, but I never figure out exactly why he wanted to do that.

And then he kind of went on and on again about the economics behind the rationale. And so essentially implied that Phelan had a bit of a conflict of interest in his business. So as we were live tweeting that event going on, we got an interesting response from State Representative Justin Holland, who pointed to a member of the Senate with an interesting business situation, and that is Senator Paul Betancourt. And Betancourt is generally regarded as somebody who has Patrick's ear whenever it comes to advising on property tax-related issues. He was the author of the Senate's plan. Yes. Yes. And he owns Betancourt Tax Advisors, which Holland pointed out.

If your professional service is negotiating down people's appraised values, then a statutory cap might harm your business service just a little bit there. So it was a very interesting comment that we got from that direction. So we're kind of running these two angles down. And ultimately what we're kind of finding is with regard to Phelan's position, ultimately Phelan is a taxpayer. On the other hand, with Betancourt's service, he provides a service that is more or less in some fashion affected by what deals are on the table. And it's probably fair to say with the Senate proposal, his services are impacted less. Than if there was an appraisal cap. Correct.

I think it's also important to note that this is a part-time legislature. Absolutely. And every member, almost every member, has their own career. And they're affected by state policy. And they're generally leaned on to take the lead on issues that are germane to their professional expert capacities. So Dr. Oliverson taking the lead on child gender modification, you know, and Brian Hughes, an attorney, being leading judicial reforms and that sort of thing in the Senate, et cetera, et cetera. So you're almost expected. And that's why it was kind of an interesting

way for Patrick to go down this rabbit hole. He sort of opened up the door to look at these professional capacities in a way that they've never been viewed before. Yeah, definitely opened a Pandora's box on that and i wonder if he a lot of things are fair game now yeah i mean politics is a closest weapon to hand kind of thing but you know just because you say just because you deploy a rhetorical um you know weapon doesn't mean it can't be used against you yeah and so you know if he asked if he raises the question it can come back right at him yeah and so that's what happened but it's a crazy situation it's wild it's it's one that's literally it's making my head spin and trying to unpack them and give a fair characterization of the status of

of of both but also to remind our readers and our listeners to take a step back and look at it through the lens of how it always has been viewed, is these are part-time lawmakers who make very little money, $7,400, $7,500 a year, something like that. They are expected to have a full-time otherwise occupation where they make their living. And those professional capacities are usually looked at as a benefit and are tapped to take the lead on these particular issues. Providing expertise in arenas that may be more difficult for other lawmakers to attack. And it does, which is why we're covering this, you know, make sure that there have been abuses of

power right that certainly is something that happens and so um we're just reporting on what's going on here interesting to note nonetheless hayden let's talk border it's kind of been um because of all this property tax negotiation and the rhetoric being thrown around by you know minimal minimally important state leaders like i I don't know, Governor Abbott, Dan Patrick, Speaker Phelan has kind of basically the dog catchers. Yeah, has kind of taken a backseat to property taxes. But give us a rundown. I think we'll hear much more about it as special sessions continue to be part of the discussion this summer. But give us a rundown of what are the bullet points of the border policies on the table. Representative Guillen reintroduced a bill that was scuttled at the end of the regular session because the conference committee did

not produce a report in time. It was to increase the minimum sentence for human smuggling offenses and for operating a stash house. And it would more or less be a mandatory minimum of 10 years for smuggling offenses. And then if there was significant cooperation between the defendant and the law enforcement involved, then that mandatory minimum could be dropped down to five years. It also provides for penalty enhancements for a list of crimes that I don't want to take up everyone's time reading. But it was a difference between this bill and HB 800 is it allowed the mandatory minimum to be reduced to five years if there's significant cooperation, which I don't believe that was in HB 1800.

And actually, I was incorrect a moment ago. It was HB 800 did not go to conference, but it was sent back to the Senate for further action, and they did not act on it. So it just did not. on it so it just um it did not wished yeah it was defeated and by for lack of action um but that was it was basically rushed through yesterday again within a 24-hour period and um abbott narrowly tailored the special session call so it just include that uh matter yeah absolutely well um were other border security measures included on the call anything else after a

very strong border rhetoric type session what else was included in the regular session the main proposal to invoke the invasion clause and create a state border protection unit, those were lost to points of order. And after HB 20 was lost to a point of order and Republicans tried to salvage some of what was in HB 20 and put it in HB 7, HB 7 did go to conference, but they did not reach an agreement. I think one of their differences was the Senate wanted a provision that said local governments could not limit the jurisdiction of the border force in their counties, whereas the House had put in a provision that county commissioners courts could make their own decision. And the Senate wanted to take that version out or that provision out of the House's plan. So I don't know all of the differences between the two bills, but that was one of them. So the conference committee did not produce a report by the deadline,

and it was not included in Governor Abbott's border security call. Now, he said that that was special session number one, so he could put border security on another special session call. But the invasion declaration, the border force was not included. Although in the regular session, they did pass $5 billion in border security funding, which is a huge victory for Abbott and Operation Lone Star. Money, money, money. Absolutely. Makes me think of that Lone Star. Money, money, money. Absolutely. Makes me think of that Pink Floyd song.

Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Okay, well, gentlemen, for the rest of the week, what can we expect? The House is adjourned. The special session for the House is done. What's going to happen next? We don't know.

Well, the Senate will reconvene at noon Friday, and then we'll see what they do. I think that's about as much as we can say. No. I think the senators and the lieutenant governor are game planning on what their next move is. Because right now they're pretty much boxed into a corner. About the only thing they can do is kill this special session and require the governor to call them back in and redo what just happened. Is that what they do?

I don't know. Maybe. Maybe they give in, although with Dan Patrick's record, probably not. Or they could come in and recess for another week and continue the standoff. Yeah. I liked what Brad said at the end of his article last night about the sine die he said i don't remember your exact words but it was words to the effect of this has to be the most drama-packed 24 hours in the ledge in history or one of the most drama packed and we weren't even talking about the impeachment yeah it wasn't even the impeachment and it was still insane with just the the back and forth

was out of this world yeah absolutely i was getting whiplash trying to keep track of it yeah it's like watching yeah watching a tennis match yeah the statements flying from everybody was uh were difficult to follow that was half the battle was just following the statements being lobbed via email or twitter by state officials okay let's do a look back quick on this session um the regular session and talk a little bit about our takeaways what was the biggest shock for y'all of the legislative session i think for me it was um I was pretty surprised because I was really convinced that item A was not Ken Paxton. Yeah. Yeah.

Can I say who I thought it was? Yeah, we've talked about it. I think before on the pod. Yeah, so I was thoroughly convinced item A was Representative Jolanda Jones. I'm sorry. You were hesitant, so I thought Mae was Representative Jolanda Jones. I'm sorry. You were hesitant, so I thought I would be correct. I think everybody did. Everyone thought that was what it was.

The whole staff did the whole mass resignation thing. It happened chronologically before Slayton. Lots of, you know, and there was a complaint. Everybody knew that there was a complaint to GI on it, everything like that. As a matter of fact, we don't even know what, why was there no investigation? What happened? Well, we don't know if there is one or not. We don't know.

There's been no announced matter C, so. Yeah. And you would think that they would have tried to resolve it before the end of session, right? And they were a little busy this session, so who knows? Yeah. So, I don't know. Well, I'm going to continue to keep my eye on that and see what happens. But it'd be very interesting if that whole saga is just over and done with. Someone needs to start a Twitter account called Matter C and just speculate on who the next person is that the committee is going to take down. Speaking of spoof text ledge Twitter accounts, I think the thing that shocked me the most

was the fact that we all discovered that Speaker Phelan has a six pack. Oh boy. And there is a Twitter account called Matagorda Dade's Abs. Yeah, but I mean the fact that not only the

fact that the speaker and the lieutenant governor feuded over Twitter on an issue, but the ammo in that feud was memes. Surfing, abs, Photoshop. Yes. Terrible Photoshop. Yeah. This is how state policies craft. California Day.

Name calling. And I think to top it all off, the cherry on top of this, is that it was over appraisal caps. Something so convoluted and in the weeds. That's what draws out this deeply personal feud between the lieutenant governor and the speaker. It's crazy to me. But that's where crazy to me but that's where we're at that's where we're at hayden thoughts biggest shock if you had asked me before the session if they were going to let the border bills die i would have said no way do

they let that do they let do they gavel out without passing the border bills die, I would have said, no way do they let that, do they gavel out without passing the border bills? Because that has been such a big issue and it is by far the top polling issue for Republicans and the general public overall is border security because even Democrats don't like what's going on at the southern border. So if you had asked me, are they going to push gender mod through and let the border bill die, or vice versa, I would have said no way. They will let the gender mod ban die way before they let the border bill die. And that's not what happened,

because the gender mod thing is very controversial. It's a wedge in the culture. And I did not expect the legislature to gavel out without some kind of major border security package, not just these criminal penalties being adjusted. So that was a big shock to me that we ended up after Siney died without a major, an omnibus, not an omnibus, but some kind of landmark border bill in the third year of Biden's administration after a record number of illegal crossings. I thought we would see more border policy. Yeah. And I think if we said that the two items not decided during the regular were property taxes and border security, the two top polling issues in Republican primaries and for many voters

in the state, regardless of partisan affiliation, I think we would have, well, I think we would have been surprised and also not surprised because that's usually where the most contention will be is on the big issues. But it's still shocking that those two huge issues outlined as priorities of both chambers were not addressed or irregular i will say though like broadly neither of those issues is really that content like the idea of a property tax cut is not contentious in the republican party same with any any matter that would help secure the border. Heck, Democrats voted for the... Why are you laughing? I just like to hate going, heck.

I'm censoring. This is a family-friendly podcast. Otherwise, I would use different words. I don't think you would, but... Democrats voted for the border wall funding in the last session. Yeah. Or maybe it wasn't the last session it might have been in a special session either way democrats in the senate voted for the border

funding last session this isn't the border funding or the border legislation was controversial but not nearly to me as controversial as the the gender mod ban yeah Yeah. So yeah. Social issues tend to carry a lot of that controversy burden. Let's get to that, Cameron. I'm going to ask you, did we expect so many social issue items to be passed this session? I mean, we had DEI office bans. We had tenure reform, which is like, take it. It's just a higher ed issue, I guess. Child gender modification bans. What else am I missing? Save women's sports. Save women's sports. Oh, that was a huge one.

HB 900. Yeah, the Reader Act. Explicit materials in school libraries, public school libraries. Do we expect so many social issues to be passed to this legislative session? You know, not knowing anything about, really, Texas politics before coming here,

this legislative session. All I knew about legislation was things that I would read on social media, a lot of the individual research I would do on my own before I came here to Texas. And what I saw this session was the culture war issues have made it onto the legislative floor. And I think that's really interesting to watch. We're seeing the trans identifying people in sports, males playing female sports, or a lot of these sexually explicit books, things that have been exposed through these activist organizations. And they use social media. They use Twitter to get these things out. Well, now we're seeing them become legislation and we're seeing them pass. So I just thought that was really interesting.

And it seems like there's a want for that in the Texas legislature with the lawmakers. So I'm sure we can continue to see some of these things. Well, I was just going to say that last session you know the past constitutional carry the heartbeat act and the abortion trigger ban and those are massive more social issues and um i think there was a lot more time legislative oxygen to tackle these other things now with those two things off the table. And so that's probably at least an aspect of why we saw this, the legislature rush for this.

But also, you know, things happened between 21 session and this session that brought other issues to light, you know, specifically the Reader Act, discovery of these, of certain books in libraries, like All Boys Aren't Blue, Gender Queer is another big one. You know, that Representative Jared Patterson was the one who authored that bill and spearheaded that effort. You know, the discovery of these books happened between the 21 session and uh this session and so that's another reason why especially that issue became you know so so important to republican legislators well and we saw the battle with gender mod this entire session and that seems

so long ago i know that seems like months and months ago. Yeah. But that was another thing that really exploded on social media over the past year or so is what's been what's been going on with these hospitals and doctors prescribing a lot of these treatments. And it's it was exposed on social media. And again, it makes its way from the culture war into the state house. Yeah. And so that's been interesting. Absolutely.

Let's move on to this portion. Can we expect other items to be added to a future special session call? The governor has been vaguely clear in saying that there will be other sessions happening this summer. Vaguely clear. But we don't know what they'll be about sounds like a paradox it is it made me feel like potentially temporarily or former you reminded me of that i'm really hitting it out of the park today with my freezing really hitting it out of the park um yeah but what other items can we be expecting to see on a special session call? School of choice.

Exactly, that's what we've been thinking. Well, school of choice has been something. We interviewed Corey DeAngelis. We did a full interview with him. And he has been partnered up with Governor Greg Abbott, it seems, for the past year, trying to get school of choice into Texas. We interviewed Senator Brandon Creighton. He was pushing for school choice.

We saw HB 100 get reformulated, last-ditch effort, and then it fails. So this has been a national call for school choice. Texas was attempting to be a leader on this issue, but we saw it die and it's, it's a priority issue for Abbott. It seems he went on an entire bus tour. Yeah. Um,

talking about this. So, and it said that he'd be willing to call a special for school choice. Like he said that too. Yeah. Well, and he said if a watered down school choice bill even got to his desk, he was going to veto it.

Yeah. So we can only speculate, but I think a special session for school choice will be called. At some point at the very least. I think the better question is how many special sessions for school choice will the governor call? How many? Let's guess. Let's speculate wildly. Hayden's favorite thing.

I just, i hate speculation after we did our twitter spaces she messaged our chat and said i'm sure y'all loved it when i asked you to speculate wildly and i said no i didn't i knew that hayden specifically hated it i think there will be three. That's my guess. When's the second one coming? Immediately. Well, yeah, I think it'll be pretty, like there'll be two right away and one in September.

That's my guess. Okay. Any other guesses? Speculation? Four. This is not a requirement to answer this question, Hayden. You can back up.

Rob says 10. I think between now and january of 2025 there will be somewhere between 1 to 10 special sessions why don't you just say 1 to 100 just to save you i do 100 there you go yeah save i'm proud of you for at least answering the question. I did, even though my answer gave Zippo information. Yeah, Zippo information is right. I'm looking through the LRL right now, and it looks like... The legislative resource.

Legislative reference library. Reference library. And the most special sessions occurred in the 71st legislature. What year was that? 1989. occurred in the 71st legislature. What year was that? 1989. And there were six special sessions. And five of the six lasted almost the entire 30 days allotted for a special session.

The very last one only lasted four days. So that must have been a very irritated bunch of legislators having to be in Austin for them. Watch him call a special session for school choice and Republicans break for him. The ones who really don't want to see the vouchers or education savings accounts. Pick your term. Yeah. That's, I mean, you want to talk about wild speculation. That would be. Yeah, Hayden.

You're doing it of your own account. Look at you. I'm so proud of you. I'm not speculating that that might actually happen. I'm just saying. No, but can you imagine? Can you imagine if there was some off the wall thing? Yeah.

Republican Ken King, who was the author of HB100, which was originally a teacher funding initiative, came out with a very spicy comment attacking the governor and um senate republicans for tacking on this and i mean we talked about it before saying this was a wildly irresponsible way to move any sort of education reform forward and saying school choice should not be um basically that the bill was using students as pawns let me back up half a step i literally just made that up so oh no 100 but there are republicans that are this opposed to school choice anything or that's somehow being talked about that was just my who knows crazy thing that i pulled out of nowhere crazy wild thing okay have we ever seen the big three at odds like this before

matt you've been so this is cameron's first legislative session rob's first legislative session with us matt's been around a while for many legislative sessions i can't remember these three being at odds like this i mean yeah these three specific these three specific officials you know i you know back in the joe strauss days you know i think there was you know interesting tension but i have as far as you know speaker feelingan goes, I've never seen open warfare like this. I disagree. Last session after the blackouts, there was a huge fight between the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor. And the Governor himself got some arrows thrown at him from the lieutenant governor.

Was that public facing, though? I mean, less so than this, but it was still public. Especially on the electricity repricing bill, the lieutenant governor was very pointed publicly about it. And we saw him go after the the former state affairs committee chairman chris patty i do remember that um over over the way they negotiated that electricity repricing bill and the securitization bill that followed and so yeah it hasn't been there weren't memes being shot back and forth at each other. There were California Day. There weren't childish nicknames being coined.

But there was a lot of animosity back then. And we saw that kind of lead the House to throw constitutional carry at the senate which it then passed and passed into law but i i think a wild session i will say that was like i agree in that we've seen these three at odds very publicly before with very pointed statements i think this is the worst it's gotten i personally do we are seeing them yield their legislative power in ways we haven't before where they're adjourning early and waiting like there's a lot of action being taken here that's not just like in the middle of a session like they're wielding procedural maneuvers at each

other and in attempts to get what they want across the finish line with very pointed public statements so i do think it's a little bit more heated it's easy to forget how heated it's been in previous sessions and it has been very heated i do think this session is like worse though yeah my opinion okay biggest takeaway from the regular session and then we will peace out biggest takeaway any final thoughts as i whack the wall with my chair i mean we're not done so with the regular session i specified it all kind of blends together though you know there's there wasn't really like a distinctive interim that's very it was two hours long it lasted less than our celebratory dinner i know with connie and phil i think connie's tweet was pretty awesome shout out connie burton the um what is it the saying

for april comes in like a lion goes out like a lamb well this was the opposite it came in like a lamb not a lot happened in the first two months and boy did it go out like a lion holy crap it was yeah um well the beginning of the session i remember dane patrick at our event said i'm not gonna start throwing arrows at the house this too early it's too early. It's too early. He was very cordial. That has changed. Oh, yeah.

Oh, my gosh. The difference in tone between chambers is unreal. He said, you know, I don't envy the Speaker. Talking about the way the Speaker was elected. Yeah. By the House membership, having to keep 150 people happy uh and now he is specifically calling for procedural changes in the house um you know specifically on the like the points of order points of order to prevent chubbing etc etc but you know we all back to the statement he made in january at our event

you know the the speaker has to keep 150 people happy. And one of the ways that Phelan has done that, according to all the members on the back mic on the first Sine Die Monday, was to create this level playing field of rules by which anybody can kill anything they want if they point out a procedural error that is valid according to the parliamentarians and fair call yeah you know there's we talked before about i wrote a piece on the points of order and issues some legislators have with it um but that is a way that the speaker has secured his majority and i don't think he's going to back away from that just because the lieutenant governor tells him to change the way things are run in his chamber.

Yeah. Well, Phelan as a second term speaker also has a different way of legislating than he did before running this chamber. Any other takeaways? Biggest takeaway? Cameron. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, no.

I was just going to say the biggest takeaway was the back and forth on the gender mod. At some points I was like, this is going to die. Well, it did die twice. Temporarily. Temporarily. And then it was arrived, yeah. Yeah. And I just thought that was so interesting because that's just been such a big issue online.

And I really pay attention to a lot of the things that happen on social media. And the fact that that got across the finish line, I thought that was huge. Yeah. That was really interesting to pay attention to that. Yeah. The Texas legislature is game for passing some big social issues, which has not always been the case with the legislature. And at the time, we probably thought that was going to be the peak of the drama of the session. I mean, you had the gallery cleared, right?

That was insane. Look where we are. And it was not the peak amount of drama there was at least two other things maybe three that topped it that topped it hayden what about you i think dade phelan and house leadership proved that they're not afraid to clean house because slate between slayton's expulsion which he was a folk hero for a lot of conservatives there for a while because he stood up to feel in in leadership and they gave him the boot like that i mean it wasn't they had no compunction about expelling him for what he did and then, or for what he was accused of. And then Paxton, that like we talked about before happened within a matter of days and they took a big political risk doing that.

Paxton is popular and someone at some point had to make the judgment. I'm not saying they based the decision on politics, but they made a decision that it needed to be done from their perspective and they went through with it. So two once in a century disciplinary moves by the House chamber against their own party. I think that speaks to Phelan's attitude a lot. And I think future Republicans probably are taking notes that, you know, they're not necessarily going to be protected unconditionally by Phelan and the rest of the team. your point um in that we don't know the motive behind this it's not that paxton and slayton were allies of the speaker but they were republicans right they're part of his right and that's what that's what i mean they were popular um with people outside the speaker's office yeah um who the speaker arguably um i mean needs to be aligned with at least some of the time on policy so absolutely matthew anything to add? Big takeaway from the session? Well, nothing comes to mind.

Nothing comes to mind. It's just all kind of a blur now. It's a blur. Everyone is bleary-eyed and sleepy, and it's only Wednesday. Well done, team. Well, folks, we appreciate you listening. We will certainly be on top of the special sessions as they come,

and we'll be continuing to watch everything that goes on in the legislature and across the state of Texas. We have already kind of pivoted. Some of our reporting back to just general Texas news as well. So keep an eye on all of that. Thank you for listening, and we will catch you next week. Thank you to you for listening and we will catch you next week. and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at thetexan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you, so thank you again for your support.

Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you, and God bless Texas.