The Texan Podcast - Daily Rundown - July 1, 2025

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

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Howdy folks, today's Tuesday, July 1st, and you're listening to the Texans Daily Rundown. I'm the Texans Assistant Editor Rob Lauschus, and here is the rundown of today's news in Texas politics. First up, former Congressman Colin Allred announced his second candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2026, less than a year after his first one ended in a defeat to Senator Ted Cruz. Allred, who raised over $100 million in his 2024 challenge to Cruz, is the first of the rumored high-profile Democrats to jump into the midterm race. Democrats had high hopes of knocking off Cruz, whom they nearly defeated in 2018,

but Allred ended up losing to Cruz by 8.5 points. Republican gains in South Texas and among Hispanics across the state ended any Democratic hopes of turning the state blue. Next, the U.S. Senate passed the budget reconciliation one big beautiful bill on Tuesday afternoon after a marathon of a voting session including key provisions authored by the Texas congressional delegation such as border cost reimbursements, universal school choice, and the relocation of a space shuttle to Houston. It passed with 51 votes to 50 against with ViceD. Vance breaking the tie. If approved by the House, the bill's current form will reimburse Texas $13.5 billion for

border security incurred costs under the Biden administration, per Senator John Cornyn's legislation. Cornyn authored the provision while working, quote, hand in glove with Governor Greg Abbott, after the latter in January, formally requested federal reimbursement for Texas's border wall costs. Abbott sent letters to congressional leadership in Washington, DC, where he broke down the operating costs

of the border security focused Operation Lone Star under the Biden administration, estimating it to be at $11.1 billion. In other news, ahead of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful bill being passed by the Senate, members overwhelmingly voted in favor of stripping a wide-ranging artificial intelligence provision. By a vote of 99 to 1, members removed a provision to the bill that would have placed a 10-year pause on state-level AI regulation.

The introduction of the provision was spearheaded by Senators Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn, who appeared to have come to an agreement on modifying the language of the amendment before it reached the floor that would have cut the moratorium in half along with other accommodations. The moratorium faced both parliamentary and partisan pushback ahead of Monday night's vote. A group of 17 Republican governors issued a letter to voice their concerns with the amendment. Additionally, state Senator Angela Paxton expressed her opposition in a letter addressed to both Cruz and Senator John Cornyn, asking them to, quote, remove

the AI moratorium provision from the one big, beautiful bill. Also, a Supreme Court of Texas opinion issued Friday rejected a nonprofit group's efforts to force Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton to turn over requested records, but left unanswered a question about whether any court can force the state's executive officers to comply with the Texas Public Information Act. Authored by Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock, the opinion addressed a dispute over records requested by American Oversight,

a left-wing nonprofit that specializes in requesting and obtaining open records. American Oversight successfully obtained writs of mandamus from a Travis County District Court judge ordering Abbott and Paxton to comply with the requests and those orders were upheld by a state appeals court but the Supreme Court disagreed. Last but not least the state of Texas has secured 286.6 million dollars via a settlement from a pharmacy it sued for the company's role in furthering the opioid

crisis bringing the Lone Star State to nearly $3.3 billion collected from such cases. The lawsuit included 55 attorneys general from every eligible American state and territory. Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, agreed to a $7.4 billion settlement to be distributed between all involved states and territories in varying amounts, so as to resolve litigation, quote, for their role in creating and worsening the national opioid crisis, end quote, and allow the various defendants to begin their recovery process. In October 2023, the US Supreme Court overturned Purdue Pharmacy's bankruptcy settlement that would have made the company immune to lawsuits such as these.

Purdue and the Sacklers filed for bankruptcy in 2019 after various lawsuits pushed them towards financial turmoil, an order that, although accepted by the bankruptcy court, was appealed by a federal district court. Thanks for listening. To support The Texan, please be sure to visit thetexan.news and subscribe to get full access to all of our articles, newsletters, and podcasts.