The Texan Podcast - Daily Rundown - April 6, 2026

Starting point is 00:00:04 Howdy folks, today is Monday, April 6th, and you're listening to The Texans Daily Rundown. I'm the Texans managing editor Rob Lauchess, and here is the rundown of today's news in Texas politics. First up, newly surfaced text messages allege that U.S. Representative Tony Gonzalez engaged in a separate incident of sexual harassment involving a female staffer. Years before his widely reported scandal with his late district director, Regina Santos-Avillas occurred in 2024. According to messages obtained by the San Antonio Express News, Gonzalez shifted a late June 2020 conversation with his then political director from professional to explicitly sexual in tone. The text reflect behavior similar to that displayed in

Starting point is 00:00:53 his communications with Santos-Avillas, including repeated requests for nude photos and sex even after being told to stop. The revelations come after Gonzalez was forced to drop his re-election bid in the face of fallout from the earlier scandal involving Santos Avila's, where messages revealed that he had pressured her into an inappropriate relationship. After initially denying the allegation for months following reporting by current revolt, Gonzalez ultimately admitted to the affair. Under growing political pressure and a pending congressional ethics investigation, Gonzalez announced he would not seek re-election. Next, the Texas Education Freedom Accounts, or TIFA program, ended its student application window with 274,183 applicants, following a federal judge extending the deadline from

Starting point is 00:01:45 March 17th to March 31st. Two federal lawsuits were filed against acting comptroller Kelly Hancock and others, alleging that the TIFA program has excluded Islamic schools. U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett said he found it troubling that no Muslim schools had been approved for the program. He extended the deadline and ordered the comptroller's office to send applications to schools that had not received them, resulting in some Islamic schools being accepted into the TIFA program. On March 31st, the Texan spoke with Tifa spokesman Travis Pillow, who said that all eligible schools that the comptroller's office is aware of have, quote, received links and been invited to the program. According to an April 2nd press release, the Comptroller's office reported that three

Starting point is 00:02:33 quarters of the applications came from low and middle income families. In other news, amid a national debate over whether Congress should require states to verify the citizenship status of voters, the Texas Secretary of State faces a federal lawsuit over its use of a revamped database to flag potential non-citizens on the state's voter rolls. Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced that the SOS had used a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database, known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or Save, to scrutinize the roles and had identified 2,724 potential non-citizens registered to vote. Counties were then instructed to conduct investigations into the data found, quote,

Starting point is 00:03:21 as part of their statutory responsibilities to remove ineligible voters from the roles under Chapter of the Texas Election Code. The county election divisions were then to notify Texas voters identified as potential non-citizens and give them 30 days to provide proof of citizenship before their removal from registration. Voters removed for a failure to respond may renew by showing proof of their citizenship at a polling location. Originally designed to check an immigrant's eligibility for publicly funded benefits, Save was revamped by DHS last year to integrate data from the Social Security Administration. Last but not least, a Texas man is headed to federal prison for several child pornography-related convictions, following an investigation conducted by the Federal

Starting point is 00:04:10 Bureau of Investigations Houston Branch. Joshua Jerome Finney, who was originally arrested in July 24 for receipt of child pornography, will spend over 13 years in prison, 160 months, for counts including distribution, receipt, and possession of child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. He was originally flagged by the FBI as they investigated a case involving the sexual abuse of toddlers, recorded and distributed by a Houston Galleria mall employee who was arrested in December 2023. The FBI was able to link the two as they allegedly shared CSAM online. The FBI's continued investigation of, the CSAM found on a quote dark web forum end quote after the latter's arrest led them to

Starting point is 00:05:01 finney's activity on said forum where he was communicating with various predators thanks for listening to support the Texan please be sure to visit the texan dot news and subscribe to get full access to all of our articles newsletters and podcasts

The Texan Podcast - Daily Rundown - April 6, 2026

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