The Texan Podcast - Our Favorite Stories of 2025: SMSS Ep. 23

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

In this episode of 'Send Me Some Stuff,' Cameron and Rob review major events of the past year, including Trump's inauguration, the nationwide redistricting saga sparked by Texas, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Cameron also gives a special announcement.Listen to more Send Me Some Stuff podcasts from our team wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review.

Hello, and welcome back to send me some stuff. I'm not sure which episode number we're on, but... I don't have it off the top of my head, but... But there's been a lot. There have been a good number of episodes. I've been doing this podcast for about a year and a half now. I think I've been part of it for about a year. Yeah.

The inestimable... Something like that. Brad Johnson. the uh yeah Brad Johnson was on send me some stuff with you Cameron um because he didn't have enough on his plate yeah and then we thought actually you know Brad can focus on smoke-filled room and I'll come on here and do this podcast and I think it's turned out pretty well yeah I think it was a good switch we've just moved our conversations in the office to in the podcast room toned them down a little bit removed some of our opinions but we still get to talk about

interesting things. Absolutely. I get to talk about all the happenings, you know, funny articles that have been published, think pieces, Twitter happenings, you know, all the stuff that wouldn't normally make it into an article at the Texan makes it in to send me some

stuff. Yeah. Well, we're going to do a little bit of a year in review some of our favorite topics. Most you know, crazy stuff that happened this year. It has anything of note happened this year? It's more than enough to talk about. But maybe we'll start

with you are someone who is a film bro. Oh, am I now? Am I a film bro? That's an inside office joke. Yeah, that's definitely, yeah. No, I do like going to the movies. Yes. So do you have a favorite movie you watched this year? Oh, man. There have been a lot of really, really good ones this year. I did just see there was a list. I think the American Film Institute put out their top ten movies of the year. And there were some of ones that I thought

deserved to be on their sinners, one battle after another. They put Wicked for Good on there. Wicked for Good is not one of the best movies of the year. Wicked for Good is not actually a very good movie. Did you see Wicked? I did. I thought that the first movie was good and I thought that the second movie was bad.

Now, from what I understand, you know, it's adapted from the play and in the play the people famously say like act one is good, act two is bad so you know if you're going to adapt a bad play into a movie I think you personally

I think you should make changes to make the bad thing better instead of adapting it straight and including all the flaws so and you know these movies are very long too like they turned two what is it like a two and a half hour play into like five hours of film

So, you know, they could have made more changes. Well, you were someone who watched, like, a lot of the big Oscar nods this year. Oh, what else did I watch? Like the Brutalist? Oh, the Brutalist. Yeah. You saw that. That was a long movie.

That was one of the longest movies I've ever sat through. Had an intermission in the theater. You don't see a lot of those anymore. No. But it was, I was about to say it was a fun movie. It's not a fun movie. It is a sad movie, but it was. an experience. It was itself like, you know, I saw people comparing it saying the brutalist

is like a brutalist building or something. You know, it's big, it's imposing. You might think it's a little bit ugly, but it has some worthwhile quality to it, the more attention you give it. Yeah. Well, I'll say two movies that were released this year that I really enjoyed, weapons. Weapons was great. Weapons was really good. Love weapons. Very funny movie. And then maybe like a more under the radar movie that I saw that's short. And it's unlike really any other movie I've seen just because of the realism and intensity was called warfare. Oh, I hadn't see. I did not see that one.

That was a, it's a really, really good look at what actual warfare looks like, where it's just a group of military members confined to an incredibly small space. exchanging gunfire. And yeah, it's very intense, but it's very well done. So those are my two picks for best movies. All right. Yeah, weapons, I really liked. I did not see warfare. I really enjoyed the long walk, which is the adaptation of the Stephen King book about a dystopian future where young men have to do this like death walk where they just, they start in one state and their goal is everybody walks as long as they can for days and days and days without stopping until there's only one person left. And if you stop walking, you die. So it is a harrowing movie. I remember walking out of the movie feeling like very affected by it, you know. I was thinking for about,

I was thinking, oh, you know, in the movie, I was like, oh, I'll go for a walk after this movie. You know, I want to stretch my legs after sitting in a theater. I didn't even want to go on a walk because it felt so horrible the thought of walking after seeing a movie where they don't stop walking for the entire runtime. So that was great. What about TV shows? Did you catch any? Oh, I did watch all of the Sopranos this year for the first time.

Watch The Sopranos, which is an amazing show. It's a great American novel. My favorite television show of this year was Severance. Okay. See, I never watched Severance, so I've got to watch it. Yeah, severance was good. I thought you were going to say stranger things. You never stopped talking about strangers.

No. I know you're not a, you're not a, I know you don't dislike the show. I don't dislike it. It's not like a show you're a big fan of. No, no. Well, let's get into some of the big topics from this past year. The way we're sort of setting this up is we each picked three topics. One of them being a Texas focused issue that came up over this past year that we really thought was,

important. But let's start, I'll start with, I think, what is probably maybe one of the more obvious picks is Trump's inauguration at the beginning of the year. That's a good one, yeah. And I remember writing quite a few newsletters leading up to this. But after he was inaugurated, I did write a redacted, number 45, golden escalator to golden age. Yeah, that's what it was, because that's what he said, right? He wanted a golden age America. That was his rhetoric. Yeah, and so what I did in this newsletter was I sort of compared previous inauguration addresses to Trumps.

Like I started off talking about Thomas Jefferson when he took the oath of office in 1801. I talked about Ronald Reagan. I mentioned George Washington's address. I mentioned some of the more dramatic ones with William Henry Harrison, delivering his address being the longest in history. And then he got sick and died because of it. And so, yeah, going through this as we are thinking about, like the biggest stories of the year.

I really think the inauguration was a seminal moment because leading up to it, it was probably one of the more intense presidential elections we've seen in probably the past decade just because of the media focus on Trump over the past decade as well, really hyped everything up. there was so much undetermined because if we remember as well,

we saw Joe Biden step down, Kamala Harris be put into the candidate, become the candidate for the Democrats. And there was so many different storylines swirling. And no one really knew what was going to happen. But when he stepped up and seated behind him, again, interestingly, was all these different tech executives. That was a big one. You remember there were a lot of think pieces

about the tech bro. The tech bro. About the brologarque. Yeah. You know, this fear of technology, which I think an American political life had been associated with liberals in the left in like Obama era liberalism in the early 2010s.

Now in the minds of left of center, think piece writers has this hard right association. Yeah. these these tax dodging tech billionaires manipulating everybody with their algorithms well and similar sinister now well similarly at the inauguration there was all the podcast bros you know there was joe rogan a lot of bros right yeah the ovan yeah uh the paul brothers the kind of people who trump um knew how to use leading up to the election to increase his popularity especially with people who might not follow traditional media outlets, you know, but they will watch Joe Rogan or they'll watch

the O'Von. You know, the Trump, the Trump Rogan podcast appearance, you know, racked up how many millions of views in the first day? It was popular. It was very huge. I also want to point out, it is interesting, the inaugurations you chose to highlight, right, in addition to Trump, because all of them represent like a very politically transformative moment. Thomas Jefferson in 1801 is the president who moved away from the federalist policies of George Washington and John Adams as he was the, it was called back then the Republican Party. We now call it the Democratic Republican Party to emphasize like that it's different

from the current Democratic and Republican parties. But this starts, you know, what's called the era of good feelings. feelings. Or no, I'm sorry, that was a little bit later. But it starts what's called the Virginia dynasty, which, no, that was. Anyway, the point here is that that was a moment. That was a big political transformation because the Democratic Republicans controlled the White House for a long time after that. William Henry Harrison, first Whig president, the Whig party existed in opposition to Democrat Andrew Jackson. And now Harrison, of course, didn't last. And, you know, his, his What was the president after him was Zachary Taylor, right, right after William Henry Harrison.

And, you know, that Taylor didn't really, or no, am I getting it? The point here is that I didn't memorize all my historical knowledge before I came on this podcast. I'm unprepared. I didn't study. But the point here is Harrison represented a big change. Reagan represents a big change, you know, introducing this really, like, conservative spirit into the presidency that obviously, you know, people had said like Nixon was conservative in the sense that he was opposed to like 1960s liberal radicalism. But it was Reagan who really brought in that like ideological conservatism, you know,

and now Trump represents also pretty big change from Biden. You know, these are all moments, these are all elections that are represent like a really like a new thing coming to power. You know, like it's kind of the end of an era. Because Trump getting elected the first time, you know, a lot of people, you could easily write it off as a fluke. Trump getting reelected by a bigger margin than the first time and outright winning the popular vote for the GOP for the first time since 2004, that's not a fluke. Yeah. That's, that's history. Well, and in this newsletter, I highlight a lot of what you just mentioned talking about how these sea changes in our political consciousness through these individuals in their inauguration addresses, as they each represented sort of

a meta-political figure where they're outside of a representation of a single individual more as a representation of a movement. And I think you hit it right on the head when you're talking about when Trump is being inaugurated for the second time in non-consecutive terms. First president since Grover Cleveland to do that. Well, and it's, I think it's indicative of what we're sort of seeing in regards to how the electorate is sort of shifting as well, where it seems as though people are more ambiguous and have a bit of the ability to shift on issues depending on what's currently being talked about. Because, you know, as we've seen in the past, you know, it's going to be

a year now once this podcast goes out that Trump's been in office that there has been shifts and how many of the people that helped Trump get elected have moved away from some of his positions now that he's in office and you see many of these quote podcast bros be a bit hesitant to support some of the things Trump has been supporting and they're echoing those sentiments to their audience, does that mean there's going to be a shift later when we see someone run in 2028? It's, you know, I know we're a little far out, but we sort of saw, I know it's, there's precedent where during midterm elections usually goes to the opposite party. Right. People usually vote against the president's party. Yeah, but is, are we going to see a larger or a more

you could say violent shift back to the other side after Trump has been in office for a full four years. I think it'll be interesting to see depending on what the personalities that are sort of shaping the consciousness of the electorate being these podcasters and people who are cultural commentators. Well, not just the podcasters. You think people like Rogan or Theo Vaughn, who you think come at it from a slightly more like, at least an originally apolitical. perspective versus some podcasters and commentators on the political right, whose problem with Trump is that he's not conservative enough. There are lots of the people who came from a more liberal background, but they're like

liberal but anti-leftist background, I think, which I think it would be fair to say that someone like Rogan fits into. He has more like the libertarian streak, right? But then you have people like, for example, I don't know, Candice Owens. or, you know, figures like in her kind of mill you who might be more critical. I don't know actually if Owens in particular is critical of Trump. Now we're getting into different nuances of the political commentary, right? Because there's portions of it that are explicitly focused just on conspiracy theories.

Yeah. Yeah, everybody, you know, conspiracy theories are an American pastime. That they're a feature, not a bug, if you will, of American political life, you know. Whenever you have a society where people are actually able to participate in government and politics, you know, a truly a democratic society, I think you're going to have conspiracy theories. Ancient Rome was racked with conspiracy theories. That's what you get in a society where, you know, ordinary people can participate in politics. You're always afraid that there's some elites who are going to take that right away, right?

So it makes sense. But speaking of commentary, that's I think my, I'll bring up my next thing that I wanted to bring up in terms of the big story was the post-election reflection that the whole country seemed the soul-searching that was happening right after the election, I think, is very interesting. Yes, the Jake Tapper book. The Jake Tapper book. The Jake Tapper, Jake Tapper. This is interesting because you not brought this up before.

No, yeah, I'm kind of blindsiding you a bit. But Jake Tapper published a book called Original Sin earlier this year. The full title is Original Sin, President. Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again. It has this super gritty photo of Biden covering his eyes like this. And he co-authored it with a Bloomberg journalist. What's his name? Alex Thompson. Yes. Yeah. And so this book, published in May. No, it not Bloomberg, Axios. Okay. But this book came out in May and it kind of rocked the political world, right? Because for a very long time, you'd had like, you know, back in

2024 before Biden dropped out. The White House was saying Biden is as strong as ever, sharp as attack, right? Smartest person in the room. Then the debate happens between Trump and Biden. Biden severely underperforms. The difference between his 2024 debate performance and his 2020 debate performance is startling. Right. You beat Medicaid. And then Trump's line, you beat Medicare. Medicaid, you beat it to death, right? Was one of his best zingers of the night. But, you know, after that, immediately you have all these people. You can only imagine all the conversations that are happening behind the scenes between democratic operatives and donors and activists.

But, you know, we're not in the room where it happens. We didn't actually have that full. If only we did, it would make for great, great for the historical record. But, yeah. Well, I wrote quite a few newsletters about what you're mentioning, not specifically about the Tapper book, but about some of these closed doors conversations. that were happening, I'm just remembering off the top of my head here, there was a lot of leaks

happening prior to Biden stepping away from the nomination. It was Nancy Pelosi was there was leaks happening, or it was Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, there were leaks happening like they were expressing concern about Biden's fitness, about being able to win, saying he should step down. those things were happening, of course. But I know we, this is something we definitely brought up before. Yeah. That how Biden decided to step away was through posting a letter to Twitter. Not going to CNN, not going to the New York Times, not a televised, but a Twitter post. And that summarizes how media has changed in the last 20 years because any president you can imagine, it would have gone out New York Times. It would have gone out on live TV, but it was a Twitter post.

Well, I think something that I think is still floating around people's minds about how that whole process sort of came about as well. Because if we are to take all the conversations cumulatively and think, okay, if Biden's mental fitness really wasn't there, who helped him make this decision? Yeah, that's, well, oh, then you have, have Trump now coming out and saying that because Biden, what is it, he Trump claimed 90% of Biden's executive orders and bills he signed or whatever signed via an auto pen, you know, like the little machine that just signs his name, that 90% of everything he signed is invalid, which I'm going to be honest. I don't think that's going to hold up. I think that's just Trump, once again,

always pushing the envelope. But this is, and he also signed up a picture of a pen in, in the hall of the presidential portraits. You know, Trump is. milking this one for all it's worth. But getting back to the topic that you brought up is, I think with the chaos surrounding the Biden-Harris switch and then the Harris loss, and now we're almost a year later, the Democratic Party is still on this soul-searching journey, trying to identify. And this brings up the next thing I was going to bring up. Okay, go ahead. topic. 107 days. Kamala Harris's book about the election, which, you know, the original sin book

comes out in May 2025. Rocks the political world. You have people, a lot of people coming out and saying, this is great. Biden, the cover up was terrible. No wonder the Democrats lost because of this ridiculousness. And then Harris comes out and shares her side of the story in 107 days where she talks about, it looks like an interesting book. I actually do want to read it. I've put out. to hold on the Austin Public Library. I really want to read it. There is, you know, there's this one passage I remember seeing on some site where it talks about she, you know, when Biden famously where he was, I can't remember where he was, he was speaking to some group of people and he took a guy's make America great again. The symbol of the Trump's entire movement. And he put it on his head and he

was like, there was a really funny interaction actually where he was, yeah, he was talking to this Trump supporter and he signed, I think, the Trump supporter's hat for him, like as, you know, President Biden signs the hat. Yeah. And then Biden goes like, you got to give me that hat and he takes the MAGA hat. And the Trump supporter guy's like, you want my signature? And Biden's like, hell no. And that was probably the funniest thing I've ever seen from Biden.

Yeah. But, yeah, it was, she talks about this where she's like talking about how she's like, oh, please don't put on this hat, please don't. And then he puts on the hat. And it's like, it's show, I mean, because, yeah, it's so interesting to see these people come out, write these kind of tell all books and tell everything, and then the other people come out and they're like, that's not true. Josh, not Ben Shapiro, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania is mentioned in 107 days as somebody they were thinking about to be Harris's

vice presidential running mate. But the book alleges that he was kind of more interested in like how he would decorate the White House or how he would decorate the vice presidential residence. He's like, can I bring my art? And Josh Shapiro responded to this. There was an interview of him in the Atlantic where he's like, this is nonsense. Like, this is not true. Yeah. So it's interesting to see the way that they, you know, every, to be fair, everybody has

their side of the story, you know, but I think that the kind of collective national soul searching that the Democratic Party in particular and the U.S. as a whole has been under for about a year now is in and of itself one of the most interesting stories of the year. Yeah, I definitely think that's true. Well, I'll turn to the Texas-focused story. What do you think the biggest story of the year in Texas is, Cameron? The quorum break? The quorum break?

Well, I was going to say redistricting as a whole, but yes, this is one where we're going to lie. Because the redistricting saga is itself. That deserves a podcast of its own. But that is definitely the biggest story of Texas. Yeah, well, there's so many storylines tied into this one, issue here because it was the quorum break and the Democrats going to all these different states and holding press conferences, fighting back against the map, and then coming back and there's all the discussions and argumentation surrounding the process of passing the map in these

committee hearings and then eventually on the floor. Then there's been the national fallout where other states have taken up this similar redistricting tact and places like California even put it on their November 4th ballot and it passed. And so there's been that political fallout, but then also there is an ongoing Supreme Court issue surrounding. Well, that did just get settled. No, Texas Supreme Court issue. Oh, the Texas, which Supreme Court were we talking about here? Texas Supreme Court issue involving the vacating of their seats, specifically Gene Wu, and there's been opinions filed from the governor's office in that regard. But then, like you just mentioned, there was the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that just came out that upheld the map.

And then even prior to that, there was the two-to-one decision in the lower court. Oh, by a federal judicial panel in which the dissenter was just blistering. Incredible dissent where he went after, he's like, you know, and one of our reporters, Matt Stringer, who is also studying law, was saying this is not a normal dissent. You do not see dissidents that are normally this, as you said, blistering is really the only way to describe it, against the majority saying, oh, they didn't give me enough time. oh, the lines are great, where he's like, Judge X believes this, he is wrong, you know, and it was, it was aggressive, to say the least. So I've covered a bunch of different angles to this. What really stood out to you about this whole redistricting thing? I mean, in general, the quorum bust was, I was about to say exciting, but that's not true. August is just an entire haze in my mind, like of how they came back, it was nonstop every day trying to get this. Well, the funniest thing is, of course, at the end of the legislative session at Siney Dye,

we're all like, okay, you know, it would probably be a special session, maybe. And I, you know, who would have thunk that they were going to do this redistricting maneuver, which then creates not just, it's not just Texas news, it's national news. Yeah. It sparked a wave of redistricting across the entire country, sparked a national conversation about gerrymandering. So, yeah, after that happened, um, that would, It's just so funny how these, the issues that you don't anticipate are what become the biggest one. You know, we were all like, man, the legislature, they got education savings accounts.

They got a lot of conservative red meat legislation. Republicans are probably going to be happy with this. And maybe it won't be that tumultuous this of fall. And then the redistricting happens. And you see lawmakers get into, you know, these, you know, there were moments where they looked pretty angry. They look pretty upset. I'll, you know, seeing Todd Hunter where he was like, let me finish, you know, and in all the back and forth. I think I was, I remember one night that stood out to me was, I think it was a Friday night, and it was you, me, and Brad were preparing for Senator Carol Alvarado's filibuster.

Oh, yeah. Remember that one? Yeah. She was going to filibuster it in the Senate. And if I recall correctly, her last filibuster was like 15 hours. So you and Brad were like, let's all go to bed and wake up in the morning. She'll probably still be going. But, you know, I am late to bed, late to rise, right?

So it was like, what is it, 12 o'clock? I was on the phone with a friend and I was just, you know, watching this stuff. And I'm like, wait a minute, hold on. They just came back. Rewind. They overrode her filibuster. So I had to get off the phone. We quickly put that article.

out, but she had sent out an email earlier in the day saying she was going to filibuster and asking for donations. And they were like, well, you can't filibuster if you're using Senate resources for your campaign. So you're not allowed to filibuster. No, that's a good little tidbit of information, something I completely forgot about. Well, I was sitting there like, you guys were gone. I was like, I got to put this article out, you know? That was exciting. Yeah, they moved, what they did is they moved the previous question on final. passage. And as you know, moving the question in the legislature means we are immediately jumping to taking our vote. We're not. We're bypassing all of our debate, which normally

you don't want to do because it doesn't look good. So it's bad precedent. People do actually want to debate stuff. Lawmakers like to do debates where they can share their opinions on things, get nice clips that they can post online. It is good for everybody to be able to have debates, even if something like in the Texas Senate, you know how that's going to go down. But in this instance, they're like, we're not sitting around until 10 in the morning. We're not going to sit here for 15 hours, you know. So that was, that was a crazy night. Well, I think the biggest thing we're going to have to look forward to with these maps is do

they actually produce what they're intended to? Probably not. Because, as we know, these maps were drawn based on Republican political performance. In 2024, when Trump was on the ballot, if you look at the Texans, Texas Partisan Index, you will see that congressional district, I believe it's 28, is projected to become more democratic, not less, but Trump overperformed over all the other Republicans in that district. And when Trump is not on the ballot, it hurts Republicans. We just saw this in the 2025 November election. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see what happens. They probably should have drawn the maps if they want to increase Republican political political performance overall, probably should have been done maybe with more than just

2024. I don't know. I mean, of course, these are lawyers who are, you know, trained and paid to do this. They probably have more information than I do. But I will say, if you look at our partisan index, then it shows the TPI rating goes from D-51%, meaning compared just Democrats and Republicans, Democrats win 50. 51% of the time to D-53%. So, yeah, it'll be very interesting to see how those maps turn out.

We know that they're here now for 2026. Yeah. And can you imagine if the maps had not been upheld? And all of these people who'd announced for congressional seats, all the signs that have been printed, all the people that have been hired, all these lawmakers, all this the shuffling around would have to be undone. It would have been crazy.

And the filing deadline is Monday, December 8th, which is when this podcast is going out. So the SCOTUS needed to address this before then so that everybody who wanted to jump in could do so. Yeah. It was a race against time. Yeah. And let's jump to your next story here. What was the biggest thing for you over this past year? In my opinion, so we've moved from the beginning of the year to kind of the middle of the year.

Now something that happened at the end of the year that I think is also a nationally transformed. event, which was the assassination of Charlie Kirk. That was my pick as well. That was your next event? Yeah. Yeah. That was an extremely transformative event. A personal, like, tragedy, of course, for Kirk and his family and everybody who had to see it.

But also, you know, something that, again, sparked a lot of soul searching across the country. You had, like, hundreds of people who lost their jobs because they were posting. these, you know, explicit comments where they were celebrating Kirk's assassination. You've had, I mean, people signing up for Turning Point USA in droves. Yeah. You have all of these, you know, a million, billion think pieces about, you know, oh, Charlie Kirk wasn't actually that good of a guy. You shouldn't, you know, you shouldn't.

Donahisi Coates. Yeah. You know, it's just, it's one of those things that, you know, you. Yeah, I mean, and of course, talking of conspiracy theories, an endless trail of conspiracy theories about who really committed the assassination, which I think is, again, inevitable when you have high profile events like this. There's always going to be some people who have to speculate on it, and you're always going to have people who, whether they believe it happened like the official sources say did or not, they know how to make a buck. So they're going to, you know, they'll create their own controversy in order to. to have things to talk about on their podcast. Yeah, well, I'm one of those people who wrote think pieces about this.

Yeah, exactly. Again, everything we've talked about, you've written a lot of great redacted's on. Yeah. And I think the Charlie Kirk assassination was really, remains and will be a seminal moment in our political consciousness for all the reasons you just described, but just be the visceral nature. in which it was spread across social media. That's the thing, yeah. It's not like, for example, the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination took, what

was it? Wasn't it months or was it years before it was finally released to the public? And everybody could see Charlie Kirk bleeding to death within an hour. Yeah. There's no distance between the event and the kind of visceral details. You get it all at once. Get it all at once, and you get it in lots. HD footage and I think us experiencing that event together in this office was something that

really shook me as well because we were all huddled behind my computer as we were scrolling through X and seeing the video being put out and we had to we published a story because there were a lot of Texan politicians who were responding to it you know and and of course I mean it's it was especially shocked because Kirk was not a politician. Exactly. He was a political activist. You know, he was, he had a very good relationship with the administration.

And to see, yeah, something like that just, yeah, that's transformative is really, you know, it doesn't do it justice, but it's the only word that I think approaches it in terms of, I think, how much it changes the, maybe not changes, but maybe exposes the way people, think about stuff because I mean you I saw lots of you know conservatives and liberals who came out and they mourned Charlie Kirk they said this was such a terrible thing you know people on both sides of the political aisle who were genuinely distressed about it and wanted to you know become better than that and of course you had this number of very vocal radicals who were celebrating it and praising it and of course a lot of those people were you know punished for it by losing

their jobs, you know, which again, probably shouldn't celebrate murder on a public social media account linked to your job, probably not a good idea. And then you had great center-left think pieces about why cancel culture is bad, which is funny. You know, it was, it's just one of those things that, you know, flips the script, you know, and you're like there was a time before and there was a time after. Well, it really turned politics existential. and really brought that into the focus for many people who didn't view our, you know, modern discussions about issues in that frame. And I'll just read this portion of my newsletter because you know this,

that I've written a lot about violence. Right. And the issues I see about the escalating nature of that, and I say that explicitly here, the memetic escalation of violence becomes a crisis in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. His life and more hauntingly his death will remain a symbol of an olive branch extended to the other side,

but violently snapped by those who seek to sow chaos. Kirk's absence is now a present reminder that the abyss which once seemed distant has opened beneath our feet and the shadow of violence that was relegated to a frightening nightmare now stalks our politics as a living reality.

Harrowing stuff. Well, there is an element where I say this in the newsletter. I didn't want to write this because it was something I've been nervous about that things could be taken to this level. And we saw after the Kirk assassination continued actions of violence, most explicitly with the shootings at ICE facilities. For which now you're actually seeing people being charged under a anti-terrorism law for being members of an alleged North Texas Antifa terror cell.

Yeah. And so this is something that was my biggest issue during 2024 and something I think everyone's going to have to keep an eye on in 2026. Well, as we've seen, continued, like I mentioned, shootings, riots, protests. And they're not probably going away anytime soon. Not going to be going away anytime soon. But so I've covered all my big things. What was one last thing on your side?

Well, I'll be honest with you. The Kirk thing, I think, was the big last thing on my side. Okay. That was, those are my three, those are my three big issues that I think were the most transformative events was Trump's inauguration and the kind of national soul searching that went on because of that. You know, this, the Democratic Party has. having to ask, how did we get here? How did we lose to this person who, again, we thought we were going to beat in 2016? We were happy we beat in 2020, and we surely thought we would beat again, right? And no, you know, Trump won. He won with a greater majority. That's, you know,

if you actually look at the vote counts, right? Biden's, if, you know, from 2016 to 2020, Biden, you know, Trump's vote count grew, but Biden's vote count exploded, right? Probably because COVID had changed voting regulations, which made it a lot easier for a lot of people to vote who otherwise might have not. A lot of those people voted for Biden. The difference is, though, if you look from 2020 to 2024, Trump kept about the same number of voters that had turned out for him in 2020. Harris has dropped dramatically. So it's not the, you know, it's the case that Harris simply could not, the Biden Harris campaign, right, in a grant, because people say, you know, Well, Trump, you know, Biden, Trump never defeated Biden, ever.

Trump defeated Harris maybe, but he never defeated Biden. But in a sense, the 2024 campaign is kind of a Frankenstein of Biden Harris, right? You know, I think it is fair to say that Joe Biden's legacy was kind of on the line in that election. But this whole national soul searching after the inauguration and the loss in these books coming out. And then the next big one, the next big issue being the redistricting, starting in Texas and then rippling out across the whole country. and then the third big thing being the Kirk assassination. I think that those are the three, if I had to pick three defining events of 2025,

I would say that those are it. Yeah. Well, maybe looking forward to 2026, what do you think is going to be the biggest thing on the radar for people to pay attention to or maybe? That U.S. Senate primary in Texas between Ken Paxton, John Cornyn, and Wesley Hunt is going to be, phenomenal to watch.

It is already super dramatic. It's going to be exciting. Yeah. The U.S., I'm sorry, the Texas Attorney General Race is also going to be very exciting that Paxton's leaving the office between Chip Roy, Mays Middleton, Joan Huffman and Aaron Wrights. You know, this is the thing is when the people at the statewide level leave office, right? it kind of, everybody kind of shifts up, right? And this new congressional map also does kind of the same thing.

You have a lot of, you have state lawmakers like, for example, Briscoe Kaine, who's making the jump from the Texas House to the U.S. house. So the primaries will be very exciting to see just how many people are shifting around, right, into new and different offices. Yeah, I think on the Texas, what the Texas focus, what people should be looking at. You mentioned that Senate race, and you talked a lot about the Republicans that are going to be, I think the Democrats are,

it's really going to be an interesting test case for what type of personalities are going to rise to prominence and how they're going to search for that identity in that primary because obviously All Red is running again for Senate, but we also have James Salarico and then possible. possibly Jasmine Crockett, who is, I believe, making her announcement on Monday. Is that right? She's making a big announcement, which most people expect to be her running for Senate. But yeah, I mean, all right. But three very different personalities. No, it's true. I mean, you don't talk about the podcasters. Tala Rico was on Rogan. Rogan liked Tala Rico. He said, oh, you're the kind of guy who should run for president, you know. Crockett is a much more controversial figure. She is one of those figures that, you know, Democratic Party loyal to love her because she's like no nonsense, she'll stand up to people. You could argue in a kind of a Trumpian way, right? She's willing to insult people. She's willing to, you know, play dirty, right? Now, that might make her less popular with the general electorate. And that's kind of a problem

you have in both parties, right? Is your primary voters are always way out here compared to your general election voters. General election voters might not even know that they have an election in November until they see it on Twitter. Whereas, you know, party faithful primary voters know every candidate and all their details and all their scandals. Yeah. You know, there's, there's a mismatch there sometimes, but. But for me on a, the Democratic side is going to be very exciting. Yeah. Another thing I think people should look for on a macro level, gosh, I wish I could, if I could say two things. One would be AI data centers. Oh, yeah. You've written a lot about AI data centers. I think that's going to cause a huge split between not just Republicans and Democrats, but also between the electorate and what's being signaled at the top of the party.

Obviously, Trump and the people he's brought into his administration have been going full speed ahead on AI and going and putting tons of tons of money, you know, trillions. To the point, trying to override, they're trying to, in the one big beautiful bill act, they want to override state preemption. Or I'm sorry, they want to preempt state regulations on AI. And a bunch of Texas senators just wrote a big letter to the Trump administration saying, don't do this. Don't do that. We need to be able to regulate AI. But also on the infrastructure side, there's been tons of local pushback, not just here in Texas, but across the country. And it also brings in a number of other issues, including water.

and energy, but then also workforce considerations and also the downstream effects of the proliferation of AI within the workforce and the types of jobs that are going to become available and jobs that are going to sort of wash away because they're being replaced. So that's one big thing. Another big thing, again, I'll say this. Most people probably don't realize that this entire podcast was generated using Google AI. No, I'm kidding. If you see us sprouted, no, I have five fingers here. No, this is not nano, what is it, nano banana pro?

Yeah. Those photos are creepy, but no, we do not generate. This is a real video. This is not AI generated. But then the other thing is geopolitically. There's still a lot of shifting going on. We still have the Ukraine-Russia war going. there is a tentative...

I thought Trump said he was going to end that, day one. He's tried. He's definitely tried. Oh, man. Zelensky's meeting with Trump is another thing we could have brought up. That's a whole man. We were thinking in terms of the country, but that was also a crazy turn of events. You know, that entire the say thank you mean that J.D. Vance referenced in his own Halloween costume this year.

So Russia, Ukraine, still going on. on, there's tentative negotiation peace plans with Israel, Gaza happening still. There's the involvement with the Saudis and investments on their end coming into the United States, but also there's China still lurking around Taiwan. There's also the ongoing speculation about regime change in Venezuela. Oh, there's the other big thing, of course, is Trump. the Trump administration attacking these boats that they claim are carrying drugs and killing people and claims that this is illegal, people calling this war crimes, Trump claiming that

the, what is it, Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, is funding the drug trade. Yeah, that's a whole other can of worms. We could do another whole podcast just on foreign policy. But you see how in politics you can get hyper-focused on the local, but you can also spread out and look at these huge geopolitical moves that are happening. That's what's so fun about talking about these things. No, of course. You never start for content. Yeah, the deeper you go, the more you find. You know, you realize it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't get more, what would you call it? It doesn't get any less interesting, the more, the more specific you get. You just find

that there was more complexity than you ever realized. Yeah. So. But anything else? Uh, worth mentioning in terms of what happened this past year, things people should look forward to 2026. Let me think here. Anything specific. Um, in 2026, there are movies I'm looking forward to in 20206. Let's hear it. I want to see the new Dune Part 3. Okay. I love Dune Part 1. Dune Part 2 was awesome. And, uh, I've rewatched Dune Part 1 a lot now to the point where it's like one of those movies where I know all the dialogue. Yeah. but and you know that was and that was a new adaptation of the first dune novel which was adapted in 1984 for to a movie that is weird and i didn't like it that much um but you know it's one of

those movies that i think if you grew up with it you really like it but i like the new ones better and now they're adapting the second book in the dune series dune messiah into a third movie and this has never been adapted before as far as I think they might have made a TV show or something but never been adapted to film so that's going to be very exciting there's the new 28 years later movie that's coming out yeah 26

okay 2026 the new one that's a trilogy that they made it they're making this the new 28 years later it's a three part series they're trying to make it a three part series I saw the first one yeah I liked it was interesting yeah I think still that 28 days later still the best still well it was such an original sort of take on the whole zombie genre. Oh yeah. Yeah. Twenty-eight weeks later is

weird and not, not amazing. And they retcon it a lot in 28 years later too. They're like, because that was made, I think, by different people. Like the guy who did 28 days and the guy did days and years, I think is the same guy. And weeks, they were like, we're not. We're kind of excluding some of the events of that film. The Odyssey. That's going to be so very exciting. The Michael Jackson biopic they're making, that's going to be exciting. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff. The Devil Wares Prada, too, as Mac noted, in one of her from the editor's desks. Like, I was the one who told her about that because, you know, I follow movie stuff on Twitter.

Yeah. And the new Robert Eggers movie, Werewolf, his Nosferatu adaptation was good. I'm a fan of Eggers. Yeah. I like his films. The Witch, I think, is still probably his best movie. That's a genuinely creepy movie. Um, but yeah, no, I, I, he does good stuff.

The Lighthouse is one of those movies that I've seen. I never have to see again. Um, but yeah, that's, that's what I'm, yeah, the Northman was fun. Um, yeah, all good stuff. Yeah. What about you? Are you looking forward to anything in 2026? Well, I think this is the opportunity, uh, to say that this will be the last send me some

stuff. It will. The final episode of send me some stuff. Yeah. I'm moving on at the beginning of the year. So this will be our last send me some stuff. I will also be putting out a final newsletter next week. So the week that this podcast goes live.

Yeah. And it's been a terrific run on send me some stuff. No, it's true. It's been a terrific run at the Texan for you in general. Yeah, it's been great. It's a very bittersweet moment. Yeah. Yeah, I'll miss all our conversations on the podcast, but more the ones that happen off camera.

And I loved writing all those newsletters and everyone that got in touch with me over the course of almost three years here at the Texas. It has been that long, hasn't? Yeah. Man. Yeah. So it's it's been one of the greatest experiences of my life coming here. You know, you guys took a chance on me from California. Yeah.

came out here and it's still remember on your first day you were like man I was so backed up getting into work you know the I 35 was so crazy and everybody was like do not call it the 35 right call it 35 yeah but I have a lot more to say that I'll put into a newsletter that comes out the week this podcast goes live but yeah just thank you everyone uh for uh being a reader of mine here at the Texan and just reading all of our content, being a fan of my newsletter, being a fan of send me some stuff. I wish more people send stuff to us. We appreciate everybody who did. We appreciate everyone who did. Yeah. But is there anything else? Yeah. Anything I need to mention? Well, the send me some stuff, yeah, going on hiatus. Going on hiatus. Going on hiatus as Cameron is

taking his next big step in the world, putting one foot in front of the other. Yep. But, yeah, I will say it has been great to do this podcast with you. You've been a great coworker. You always have a tremendous optimistic attitude, which counteracts Brad fantastically. You can say whatever you want about Brad on this podcast. Oh, we can. Absolutely. Yeah, you know, the Texan is going to miss you.

And, oh, McKenzie's going to be crying when she watches this bad. that's going to be that's going to be great um but yeah i mean do you have anything else that you want to uh that you want to hit on uh i think that's it i i hope everyone um continues listening to the podcast the weekly roundup smokefield room uh make make sure you subscribe to the texas dot news so you get everyone's newsletters those have been fantastic like i i love those that come out every single day, even our monthly newsletters from Holly and Kim. Those are fantastic. And you, precedent at times.

Yeah, precedent times, yeah. And so. But of course, Holly's Ripples and Kim's Blue Bonnet Bulletin are also fantastic. I really enjoy reading those as well. But I think that's it. I believe so. Well, do you want to do the honors and say goodbye? send us out on our last one well thank you everyone for listening to send me some stuff

temporarily on hiatus but in the meantime you can subscribe to the texan dot news if you enjoy all of our content here we have podcast newsletters articles obviously but um I think till next time until next time it's been a good ride's been a good ride all righty good night everyone All righty. Cut.