The Texan Podcast - Daily Rundown - April 25, 2025

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

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Howdy folks, today is Friday, April 25th and you're listening to The Texans Daily Rundown. I'm The Texans Assistant Editor Rob Lauschis and here is the rundown of today's news in Texas politics. First up, biological males will be banned from using state-funded private spaces designated for biological women under proposed legislation, which passed the Texas Senate this week. The Texas Women's Privacy Act, Senate Bill 240 by Senator Mays Middleton, passed the Texas Senate along party lines on Wednesday, harkening back

to highly controversial legislation from 2017, where a similar so-called bathroom bill was buried in opposition after receiving a special session by Governor Greg Abbott to pass it. While Senate bill 240 was being heard on the Senate floor for its third reading prior to a record vote, multiple Democratic members stood to speak against the measure, which establishes a statewide standard for private spaces such as locker rooms or bathrooms in publicly funded facilities such as prisons or domestic violence shelters.

Next, Governor Greg Abbott directed Texas hospitals via executive order to begin collecting and reporting the cost of treating illegal immigrants. Now, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission has released its first report, detailing millions of dollars in health care costs. According to the report released today, Texas hospitals incurred almost $121.8 million in health care costs due to treating, quote, persons not lawfully present in the U.S., end quote, in the month of November 2024. The costs of health care provided came from more than 31,000 visits to hospitals by illegal aliens.

In other news, a cold war is becoming hot in the Texas House as yet another local and consent calendar of bills went down in a lingering dispute between leadership, conservative Republicans, and Democrats. A week ago, what is customarily a quick and painless process, passing a large amount of local and uncontested legislation on the local and consent calendar, which is designated for such bills, blew up in a broader clash over leverage in the chamber between warring factions. That episode was, in its immediate origin,

sparked by a resolution last week honoring former Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, who passed away earlier this year. Some of the conservatives in the house objected to that resolution, and the dispute spilled over into the local and consent slate, which requires only five members to remove a bill. In the end, the entire calendar was killed. On Friday, both sides were exercising their leverage again, resulting in another local and consent calendar meeting its demise. Also, during a formal meeting in the House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Veterans Affairs, members voted out a

bill that seeks to prohibit the purchase of property in Texas by foreign individuals or entities associated with designated countries. The House Committee substitute to Senate Bill 17 includes some key differences from the originally revised version, which was passed through the upper chamber last month. In the version passed out of the House Committee, the bill will bar a citizen of a designated country who is domiciled outside of the United States or who has unlawfully entered the United States at a location other than a lawful port of entry from purchasing real property. The version engrossed by the Senate included similar language but was more sweeping in nature than targeted, utilizing the language of the inner circle of the Tren de Aragua gang was indicted on terrorism and drug trafficking charges by the US Department of Justice and is in custody in Columbia following an investigation

conducted by Houston area law enforcement. Jose Enrique Martinez Flores received a superseding indictment from the Southern District of Texas which included five count charges of conspiring to distribute cocaine in the U.S. as well as materially assisting the TDA gang. Flores had initially been arrested by Colombian authorities in response to a warrant for his arrest issued by the U.S. on March 31st, after an investigation launched by the Houston Federal Bureau of Investigation and other public safety officials. On April 8th, a federal grand jury in Houston determined Flores' superseding indictment.

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