The Texan Podcast - Interview: Rep. Cole Hefner talks Ban on Hostile Foreign Nations Buying Texas Land, House Speaker Race

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Rep. Cole Hefner (R-Mount Pleasant) sat down with The Texan’s senior reporter Brad Johnson to discuss the Texas House Committee considering a ban on hostile foreign nations buying Texas land. Be sure to subscribe to The Texan for complete access to all of our content on state political news: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/

Hi everyone, this is Brad Johnson, senior reporter here at The Texan. Today I have State Representative Cole Hefner. Welcome sir, you are chair of the Select Committee on Securing Texas from Hostile Foreign Nations. That's quite a mouthful. Yes. But that's a select committee that was appointed I think in May, right? Yes. Named by Speaker Phelan. You had quite a marathon hearing yesterday. Well, first of all, welcome, and what did you think of the hearing yesterday? Yeah, well, thanks, Brad.

Thank you all for helping me. I appreciate the work you all do here at the Texas and giving us pretty honest and fair coverage of what happens over at the Capitol. So, yeah, we had our first hearing yesterday on the Select Committee on Securing Texas from hostile foreign organizations, and we think it went really well. We spent a lot of time and effort in who we invited to come testify. We wanted to get several different aspects and views, and we think we did a good job of, you know, beginning to kind of expose the breadth and the depth of this issue and the seriousness of it and, you know, how we're going to begin to work towards finding effective solutions to eliminating threats to our state and, you know, what we can do as a state, actions that we can take as the state of Texas to to our state and you know what we can do as a state actions that we

can take as the state of texas to protect our state and so uh yeah we think it was a great uh great start um great beginning to a lot of good work that's going to come come in the future what were the biggest takeaways for you you know to me it it's that when the issue was kind of new last session, and the focus was kind of on agricultural land, to me, one of the biggest takeaways, while that is extremely important, we're talking about food supply, we're talking about food security, we're talking about land being owned near critical infrastructure or military installations, things like that. So it is a hugely important part of this issue. But to me, the kind of eye-opener was it expands into so many other areas,

cybersecurity, intellectual property theft, research institutes, supply chain disruptions, where we're buying our technology for drones and electric cars, crane operating software in our ports. It's kind of mind-boggling where some of these threats may be. And so the purpose of the committee is to take a detailed and deep dive into these, not just gloss over and take things that may be in the fight over TikTok in the state. Also nationally, social media apps. Timu, the Chinese version of Amazon. All of it's selling data back to the Chinese Communist Party. What can even be done, do you know? You know, and that's, you know, some things, you know, we may not be able to do as a state. And that's the purpose of the committee is to determine what we can do as a state.

Bringing in subject matter experts on technology. You know, this hearing focused on land and kind of an overview. We're going to have one or more hearings in the future where we're going to focus on cybersecurity, intellectual property theft, and we're going to dig into broader issues. And so that's what we're here to do. That's what our job is, is to determine where the problems are and what we can do. Do you envision a multi-bill approach to this? Yes, I do. I think there will be, you know, we're going to have two or three hearings. We'll issue a report on our findings. And then I believe out of that will come, I think, several ideas for legislation. And so we look forward to – we'll probably start.

In fact, as these hearings are happening, we're not going to wait to the end of the year. We're going to start probably putting in drafts and getting ahead of this deal. And when things do come to light, we're going to be getting to work. So we're going to be having the hearings, collecting information, and trying to get our bills in for draft early so we can hit the ground running. A lot to deal with all at once. Absolutely. Yeah. You mentioned it during the hearing. Obviously, there was a high-profile bill last session. It did not. It passed the Senate after a lot of frenzied discussion in the public sphere. And then it didn't go anywhere in the House.

Right. Why, you kind of touched on it during the hearing, but why do you think that happened last session? You know, we're in contact with the Senate, with Senator Kohl's office, and, you know, I've expressed to her and her to me that we look forward to working together collaboratively to find the right solutions to this problem. And so, you know, the Senate works a little bit different than the House, and we know a lot more now than we did then. And so, you know, we're kind of focused on what we're going to do going forward, working together to get a good, strong, effective bill. And,

you know, I made that commitment to her and her to me that we're going to figure this out as a team and get some good things done for our state. You know, different things happen during sessions. And so we're focused on what we're going to do in the future and getting it done. The instance that kind of brought this issue to the forefront was the Chinese billionaire buying land in Val Verde County, pretty close to Lackland Air Force Base. And then on top of that, trying to put a wind farm on it and getting approval from ERCOT to connect it. Now, I don't think that happened ultimately, but it did go through some initial steps. Overall, though, it's kind of a rare circumstance, but it does happen.

So currently what we know, what we know, which is we don't believe we know everything, there's a process that the federal government has. It's called CFIUS. It's a committee that's made up of different federal agencies, and they're the ones in charge of approving or not approving these types of land acquisitions. The problem is we don't have a good picture because that process is, the reporting process is voluntary. There's not a lot of teeth, even if it does happen. And so what we do know is it is relatively rare. We know a few instances

around the country, you know, and in the state, you know, but we don't have an accurate picture. Some experts would say that we know that it's probably double what we think it is, what we know about. And so that's another challenge. The federal government, while they have taken actions, and it's what I found fascinating, too. I went to Washington. I met with several different committees on this issue, and it is very bipartisan. It's not red and blue. Democrats and Republicans are working together. The Biden administration, the Obama administration have both taken executive actions in the past, various actions.

And so it is an issue that goes across the spectrum. But anyway, so getting that clear picture is a challenge. And so the federal government is not very good at being proactive. They kind of wait for a catastrophe to happen, and they react. And so that's why a lot of experts, a lot of people look into the states because we're more forward-thinking, we're more proactive. And flexible. More flexible. And that's what's designed.

I mean, the states are supposed to be different laboratories of thinking and ideas. And we, you know, some may work for Texas and may not work for other states. And so I think, yeah, it's not as huge of an issue. It is increasing in the past, you know, decade. You know, you look at the rate of foreign-owned land. It has kind of accelerated in the last 10 or 15 years. And so it is increasing based on, like I said, what we know. And so it is important that we get out ahead of it now

before they have too much control of farmland or whatever critical infrastructure. One thing that struck me during the hearing you kind of just alluded to is the lack of information, specifically not being able to really tell who owns a land deed. It's very difficult just at the state level. You can layer shell companies. You can layer LLCs. And so, yeah, it sounds simple on its surface, and I said that in my opening statement. It sounds like, oh, yeah, it's easy.

Just ban this. But the way business is set up and laws in the United States, it's not that simple to identify. And then when we do pass a bill, and we will pass a bill, we'll pass a strong bill, we're going to pass a good bill, it's still identifying those and making sure that people aren't finding loopholes. It's going to take some thinking, and that's why we bring in different subject matter experts to make sure that we get down to the deep end. I don't want to pass a bill that has words in it that said we banned something and it not actually do it. And so that's why the House has taken this long approach for the rest of this year to really dig into it, to make sure that what we do is strong and effective and gets

the job done. At root of this issue are competing interests. You know, you have the national security interests. That's a pretty big one, right? But then you also have the private property, the ability to do with your property what you want, the ability to sell it to who you want. How do you balance these? It seems pretty difficult. Yeah. And, you know, I was talking to my wife this morning in this country are the right to own property and freedom of religion. If you lose either one of those, we're done. And so those are vital.

They're vital to the existence of our way of life. They're foundational. And so that's why we're taking this this in-depth approach we want to stop foreign adversaries from owning our land we do not want to violate legal landowners private property rights because that is a foundational principle of being an American and what America is all about and there is a way to do that there is is a way that we, and we'll find that way, we'll find that technical, you know, we'll get down and get that legislation passed that protects the rights

of private property owners while banning hostile foreign adversaries from owning our land. We're going to get it done. The way the Senate bill was fashioned at its final stage when they passed it, there was a carve outout for nationals who are also U.S. citizens or possess legal status in the U.S. Do you think that's a starting point for this? You know, I think we need to be careful that we don't penalize people that are coming here the right way. That's key. We want people to come here. We want productive people that, because there's people over there that are, they don't have freedom of religion. They don't have that right to pursue happiness like we do. And so there are

people that want to come here the right way for the right reasons, and we don't want to penalize that. And I think there is a way, and we're going to get it done to where we protect that American way and stop the hostile foreign actors from owning property. If Republicans take the White House and both chambers of Congress next year, this might be an issue that they address. What, in your mind, do you think the federal government needs to do in order to? I think there needs to be a more comprehensive process of approval of land acquisitions coming here. I think the CFIUS needs to have more authority. They need to have teeth. They need to be able to do something. And a lot of things that they can be doing on a national security level. And there's quite a bit of conversation going on there be doing on a national security level.

And there's quite a bit of conversation going on there. They just – I don't know why they move like they do because it's – just because Republicans take over, I mean, like I said, it's a bipartisan issue. I mean, there's Democrat senators, Republican senators that are working together. And so – but we're not going to wait on that. We're not going to depend on that. We as a state are going to move forward to protect our state. Florida has passed something like this, but they're kind of tied up in court on that issue about how you deal with these individual landowners. I'm not sure how you can avoid that. It might be headed for a court fight either way.

But is that something you're thinking about when you guys fashion whatever comes out? Sure. We'll be looking at that. We'll be looking at their law, Arkansas's law. Nebraska has won several states. And so, yeah, that's something we'll be working through. Like I said, we don't want unintended consequences. But we want to make sure we get the job done.

Okay. Moving on to a different topic, you know, obviously the heated primary is over with. Yeah. You had a bit of a primary, but not as frenzied as some of your colleagues did, entering a kind of strange, unforeseen situation in the Texas House. It starts at the top of the speakership. And you're an ally of Speaker Phelan. I've heard you back him on other podcasts. Do you think he keeps the gavel? Yes. Look, we as conservatives, we campaign on policy. We campaign on saving babies, Second Amendment rights, private property tax reductions,

and hopefully elimination of part of that someday. We talk about results. That's what we say. That's what we say in our campaigns. And look, I think the results are undeniable. We have banned abortion in the state of Texas. The amount of abortions, medical abortions taking place in our state are in the couple of dozen. That's down from 56,000, 56,000 annually. That is a legacy win. That is something that no other state has done that happened under the current leadership in the Texas House, and that was a legacy win. That is something that no other state has done that happened under the current leadership in the Texas House. And that was a House bill. That was a House bill that banned abortion.

Constitutional carry. We've been campaigning and running on passing constitutional carry for decades. That was a House bill that passed out of the House in 2021. We've banned kids at drag shows. We've banned dirty books in our schools. We've passed record property tax relief that no other state in the history of this country, including Texas, has ever done. We've passed the most aggressive border security bills of any state in the history of our country. We've spent record amounts of Texas taxpayer dollars on border security more than any other state ever has.

All that happened in the last two sessions. And that's a direction that I want to see us to maintain. Those are wins. Those are legacy wins, Brad, that this is not some crumbs. This is not some little things. These are legacy wins around the country. The strongest election integrity bills in the nation passed in 2021. And so it's not hard. It's not difficult. There are a lot of people out there that make their living lying about what happens in that building. They make a living. Their livelihood depend on the lies they tell about what we do in that building. And the facts are simple. The policy is there. You know, where I think we should have done a better job as a house is we have not done a good job of telling the story. We are busy with our families and our businesses and with making these policies happen. We're not doing a good job of going back and making sure people know that some of these were House-led. And look, Senate-led on some too.

And every bill that passes the House has to pass the Senate. Every bill that passes the Senate has to pass the House. We work together. We work a little bit different. There's a reason our founders put a House and Senate in place so that one kind of checks the House. We work together. We work a little bit different. There's a reason our founders put a House and Senate in place so that one kind of checks the other. And usually we get to a pretty good place on individual pieces of legislation. And so, but to me, it's just, look, I campaign on passing these things. And we've passed those things. Did we pass everything? No. We're never going to pass everything.

But we should always be striving to pass everything. And, look, we live in challenging times. I'm from one of the most conservative parts of the state. Therefore, I'm one of the most conservative members in the House by any metric you want to measure. And I'm not – I don't have to put my finger to the wind to see how to vote on an issue I know what my district believes I know what I believe and that's usually almost synced up completely and you know it's it's it's what I'm here for I'm here to make a difference and we have made a difference and I want to see us continue that momentum going forward. And so, like I said, not to beat a dead horse, if we want to talk about policy results,

we want to talk about legacy conservative wins that have never taken place anywhere in this country or this state. They happened in the last two sessions. It's not simple. That's something I am proud to stand on. I'm going to stand on that that boldly and i'm going to work to make sure we keep that momentum going ahead critics will hear that and then say well that's all well and good but things have died take the china land bill um what's your message to them on moving forward and getting those things through the finish line? You know, the legislative process is complicated. Even conservatives sometimes disagree on how a bill should be drafted or how we accomplish a certain goal. We live in a big state.

We're a very diverse state. And we're diverse from conservative to liberal, you know. And even in conservative circles, we're pretty diverse. We have rural versus urban conservatives, suburban conservatives. And so, look, it's not a perfect process. Speaker Phelan's not a perfect man. He's just a human like the rest of us. The members of the House, it is in the house, you know,

some would have you think that it is controlled by one person. The house does not work that way. The house is a member-driven body. That's the way it's designed to be. And so, you know, there's humans involved. It's like herding cats. It is. And some of them have egos.

No, I'm kidding. Just some? No. You do have, and I'm joking, I'm joking. But you do have strong personalities with strong beliefs. They come in ready to go to work for their constituents, be it Democrats, Republicans, conservative, moderates. They come in there hot, ready to go to work.

And so I just say keep up the fight. You know, we – some would have you – I'll use a football analogy, you know, some would have you think that if we don't return the kickoff or a touchdown every time, then we failed. And if that's all we're going to settle for, if we only settle for the touchdown, we're not going to win many games. So we've got to be working to get those 10-yard, 20-yard, 50-yard pickups. But the ultimate goal should always be the touchdown, right? We always want to win the gold. But we can't just say, they didn't make a touchdown.

We're going to start over. You know, so we've got to keep working. We've got to keep pushing that rock up the hill. We've got to keep digging and keep pushing forward. And so, look, I just think you can nitpick and say this didn't happen, this didn't happen, this didn't happen. Brad, we're saving over 50,000 babies a year. I'm happy going home at some point and saying I was a part of saving over 50,000 babies a year.

I was a joint author and had a constitutional carry bill of my own. We restore people's Second Amendment rights. Those are legacy wins. We're protecting kids. We're lowering property taxes. I mean, we're doing things that have never been done. And so, you know, like I said, you take away the people that make a living

off of pitting the House against the Senate, and so no matter what we do, they're going to make up stuff to say we didn't get whatever done or they're just going to take words that you say and just completely twist them into a lie. You know, I'm not going to do that. I'm not willing to stoop to whatever that is.

I'm going to tell the truth about what we've done. I'm going to stand on it. I'm going to acknowledge where we failed, where we've come up short. Because if we don't do that, we're not getting better. We're not improving going forward. And so I think it's important that we do acknowledge our shortcomings, but we also need to tell the story about the successes and how we got to where we are. In the speaker's race, obviously, there's two other declared candidates. The number that matters, of course, is 76, the majority in the House. But there's also the caucus vote.

And as it stands right now with the amount of pledges opposed to Democratic chair appointments and Speaker Phelan's to-date commitment to having Democratic chair appointments and Speaker Phelan's, to date, commitment to having Democratic chair appointments, he can't get to the number required to get the caucus. Well, one of those declared members is the chairman of the caucus, and he has declared that he is going to ignore caucus rules and take the vote to the floor. And so I was a part of adopting bylaws change to have the speaker selected in caucus or the nominee, you know, kind of like a primary. And so I was there. I signed the letter asking for the meeting to discuss it. I was there when the committee was appointed to draft that bylaws

change and when the caucus adopted it. I was there in last session when a member of the caucus blatantly violated the rule. He was on the very committee that wrote the rule, that wrote the bylaws changes that year. And so, you know, I think some people are disingenuous about what they're claiming has happened, and some people are using that for higher political office, political gain, and they're willing to say things that aren't true to get there. Look, you know, I don't know what we're going to do with the caucus. I think we should honor those rules. We should go into caucus and we should choose a nominee. But we've got members of the caucus that have already violated that, that are now signing pledges to do something in

caucus. They've already violated a pledge that they made. And so how are we going to trust them to go into caucus and follow caucus bylaws when they either have violated those bylaws that they helped write, or they're openly declaring that they're going to break those rules? And so that's disappointing. And so working through that is going to be a challenge, but, you know, we're going to do that. The, you know, Speaker Phelan was selected in caucus. There's tons of misinformation about how that selection took place. How did it take place? It took place in caucus.

I mean, there were groups talking, members talk, all sides talk. And if they tell you or not, they're not telling you the truth. And so, but he had, you know, there was way more of a majority. There was a super majority in the, I don't remember what the number was, but there was definitely a strong majority of caucus members that had already pledged. And so we follow that caucus process with Speaker Bonnen and Speaker Phelan. That's going to be my question to you. With all these violations of the caucus rules, is it even worth having these rules?

You know, that's a discussion that we need to have. If we're supposed to be as Republicans and as conservative Republicans, we are supposed to be rule followers. And I don't know about you, but I've got a problem trusting somebody that crows about rules and being a conservative while openly violating the very rules that they sign. When you become a member of that caucus, when you become a member of that caucus, you're agreeing to adhere to the bylaws of that caucus. And there's a whole list of bylaws in there. We can share them. You know, they're not, it's not a secret. And so these members that are playing this holier than thou, you know, pure thing while violating the very caucus bylaws that they pledged to follow, I've got a problem with that. I'm not going to trust them. I'm just not going to trust them. And so, yeah, that's something we have to work through. And I think we will.

Republicans are obviously very divided right now. Maybe that changes whenever you solidify a speaker candidate, whether it's Speaker Phelan or someone else. But right now, the biggest cluster of votes in the House for speaker is the Democrats. That gives them a pretty good advantage, I think, right now. That can change. But what's your thought on that dynamic? You know, I don't know. I don't know what the Democrats are thinking. I don't know what they're going to do. That's not where my focus is. My focus is on what we as Republicans are going to do. We have the majority. And, you know, we're going to continue to have the majority and

to lead. And so, you know, it's a long time until January the 14th. A lot of things can happen. A lot of conversations are going to take place. Committees are working. You know, we're going to come out with a lot of good ideas. We'll get a good picture of where we're going to be going and where our priorities are going to go. And so that's kind of where my focus is. Going into next session, obviously the hostile foreign nations bill is going to be a priority for you. But other than that, what do you see as the top priorities for the legislature? Oh, I think it's always going to be border security. You know, SB4 is being challenged in the court system. Representative Spiller did a phenomenal job of carrying that bill through the process.

I had it in the regular session, and he picked it up in the special, and I worked with him. He's a great guy doing a great job. And so we're going to be looking at ways to strengthen our border. You know, it is a federal responsibility. They're not doing their job. And so Governor Abbott has done a phenomenal job leading on this issue, trying to come up with creative ways to work around, you know, the federal government and to protect our state. And so he's had us down at the border. He's done so much leading on that, you know, busing those folks to other parts of the country.

When he first started doing that, I was like, you know, how is this going to work? What are we doing here? But it was brilliant because what it's done is it's brought a national spotlight to that issue where people in Chicago, I didn't care what was going on at the border, it wasn't affecting them. People in New York City, well, now they get it. And they're just getting a little bitty taste of what we deal with every day. And so I think the national mood is hopefully changing to that. And I wish the feds would do their job. And I hope, I look forward to supporting President Trump and seeing what he's going to do at job. And I hope, I look forward to supporting President Trump

and seeing what he's going to do at the border. I mean, it would be nice if we could take that $6 billion and give it to our citizens for property tax relief or give our teachers a raise or whatever that we need to be doing with it. But I think until the federal government does their job, we're going to be committed and focused to doing everything we can, thinking outside the box, being creative on how we can protect our state at the border. I think property taxes is going to be

a top issue. We took an $18 billion bite out of it last session. I foresee us doing more this session. I think protecting kids is going to remain a top priority. I think the hostile foreign ownership of our property, be it all real property, not just ag land, that'll be another priority. And I'm sure other things will bubble up that we need to address, but those are always the top three issues that I hear about from my district. Okay. Going into the next session, should the speaker remain the speaker, last year there was a lot of enmity between him and the lieutenant governor,

between the House and the Senate. There's always that rivalry, right? But it usually doesn't boil over like it did last year. How do you get back to working together on this stuff? You know, that's something we're going to work through, and I think we will. Look, there's important things to do for this state. The Senate and the House are going to have a disagreement on approaches at times, and that's a healthy thing.

We need to have those discussions. We're not supposed to be a rubber stamp for one side or the other. That's the whole purpose for having a House and a Senate. And our leaders are elected differently, they function differently, and it's on purpose. But I think at the end of the day, you know, we're going to come together and do what's best for the state of Texas. We're going to get the job done.

You know, those agreements are okay. And I think we just need to keep them at a professional level. And that's going to be my commitment is working with them when I can. And if I disagree, we're going to disagree. You know, I'm not going to just bow to one side or the other. We're going to fight for what we believe is good legislation. And I think we'll be successful. Last one for you. So this has been a crazy month in the presidential race. Just wild. I've never seen anything like it. Unbelievable. What are you hearing from your constituents about just this tumult at the top of the ticket? You know, I live

in Trump country. East Texas is Trump land. I mean, we have flags on the back of our trucks and out in the front yard, the American flag, the Trump flag. And so my people, they're pretty excited. There is a pretty strong distrust of the government. And so I think people are energized. They're optimistic about where we're going with Trump on the ballot. And I think it's unfortunate what happened in Pennsylvania with the assassination attempt. That is a big deal if it's any human. It doesn't matter. But being, you know, former president and the Republican nominee, that's an attack on our

entire way of life. It's not just an attack on Donald Trump or his family, and that's big, but it's an attack on our way of life. And so, you know, it's not good. It's not good that we have people that are willing to do that. And so, but anyway, I'm optimistic. I think he's going to win. Even despite this new enthusiasm? I do. Insurgence by Democrats after the flip of the ticket?

Yeah, I think so. I think people know Kamala. They know her history. It's not good. You know, it's not a positive record. And so people are tired of record inflation. They're tired of open borders. They're tired of people trying to take our guns.

And they're ready to see it. They're tired of being run over by other countries. You know, they're ready to have a strong leader that will restore that freedom, help get our economy on the right track, get the inflation down, leave more money in the pockets of taxpayers and more freedom to live under. And so I think that's going to win out at the end of the day. It will be interesting to follow both at the state level and federal. A lot to watch.

Chairman Cole Heffner, thanks for joining us today. You bet. Thanks for having me. Good visit.