The Texan Podcast - Quorum Busters, Trump in Alaska, and Marijuana Behind Schedule: SMSS Ep. 19

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

In this episode of Send Me Some Stuff, Cameron and Rob dive into the Texas redistricting saga, discussing Democrats' quorum break and potential legislative impacts. They also explore Trump's upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska and its implications for the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Lastly, the hosts tackle the topic of marijuana rescheduling and its potential effects on the cannabis industry and legislation. 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.

And the issue that's kind of swept the country is the redistricting and the quorum break from... Not talking about redistricting. This podcast has had a quorum break. Well, no. See that? All right, fine, I've returned. Hello, and welcome back to Send Me Some Stuff. Best podcast from the Texan, maybe.

Weekly round looks pretty good. It's in the top three. It's in the top three podcasts. I like that, yeah. Well, I'm Cameron Abrams reporter here at the Texan. I'm assistant editor Rob Laus. And we're going to get into all sorts of things, redistricting. We have the D.C. takeover.

We have Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska. We have, what else? Potentially rescheduling marijuana. That's another story. Ties into, of course, a big Texas. issue with the whole THC, which we, you know, we naively a few months ago thought was going to be the biggest issue of the special session. But that's been put on the back burner.

But to start things off, I thought we'd do something fun. Talk about this Sidney-Sweeney ad, the great genius. I did not know what Cameron was going to. He's told me, I have a fun topic to talk about. And I was like, all right, I'll trust you on this one. Well, this ad caused a big stir. It certainly did. Online, lots of reactions.

Somehow it was a dog whistle to the alt, right? Some people decide this is classic Americana, you know, attractive women selling jeans, you know, throw back to the 90s. No, exactly. The way that the jeans ads looked, yeah, about 30 years ago, I mean, what are your thoughts on it, Cameron? What do you think about the set? going to bring up they actually ran a poll the the economist really uh 39% said they viewed the ad as clever oh okay well jeans jeans very clever wordplay there 12% called it offensive oh 40% said it was neither 8% were unsure about this ad um if you only viewed the ad through social media you would

thought that offensive number would be much higher. Well, I think if you would have seen the way some people described it, you would have thought it would have been a lot worse than it was, you know. But is, you know, are we seeing a C change in how companies advertise now? Because we went through a period where every ad was kind of a multiculturalism representative where it was like the census was on your screen or something. Well, in the period after, yeah, 2020, when a lot of these companies were like, you know, they have to show their bona fides, right?

So in all the advertising, you know, every company was listing their like DEI policies on their website and a lot of that has now been, you know, quietly removed after the 2024 election. But do you think it's here to stay? Do you think that... Nothing is ever here to stay. That's the thing about politics. Nothing lasts forever, you know, a lot of the, as we've talked about on this show multiple times, Democrats during the Obama era, but especially after Obama's reelection, started to convince themselves, especially a lot of young people, that the Democrats would never lose another election. The country would only get more liberal and progressive from this point forward, and it would be like the victory of liberalism forever. And that wasn't true. And then the same thing is going to happen with, um,

for example with Trump and you know this has been a lot of talk about this rising like you know that America's in a conservative moment right and I would say that to the extent that that's true if it is true it's not going to last forever it's going to change as it always does you know the 80s the the conservative moment of the 80s also didn't last forever you know you have all this backlash against it in the 90s and then it became you know switch back the 2000s 22 it's just this is the The only thing that doesn't change is change. Well, so are these cycles just going to be shortened where we get turnover in the tide? Because of social media, because of the frequency.

It's going to be every four years instead of every decade. So I'm not sure if the cycles themselves are growing or shrinking or if merely we've become hyper aware of the existence of these cycles, right? I mean, because of things like social media, you can comment on everything and talk about everything with everyone. one all the time without end. And so I think I think some people when it comes to like cultural analysis and whatnot are getting a little as seen perhaps in this in this jeans ad are getting a little bit they're like they're hyper aware of political or cultural trends to the point where they're seeing patterns that might not actually exist.

I think that there is a yeah, I think that the metaphor I like to use with some friends just when I was talking about this topic is that if the next. 90s was characterized as like an era of sleepwalkers. You know, you think of movies like the Truman Show and The Matrix and Fight Club and American Psycho. And they center on this idea of a country of people who are like, everybody's dreaming, nobody's really awake, nobody's really paying attention to what's going on. Well, the 2010s and 2020s is an era of insomniacs where people can't just like relax a little

bit and take a breather, you know. Everybody's hyper aware of everything. And also, of course, depending on who you ask, it matters a lot because your curated Twitter feed is going to determine if you think America is in a conservative moment or a liberal moment depends on what your algorithm shows you. And your algorithm shows you what you want to see. Sure. Well, what does that mean? How do you represent our current age then in this turnover of representation being, I feel like it's been shrunk to? to the point where the turnover is happening, you know, every week now.

There's a new thing to get outraged about it. People, they were insomniacs, and now they drank too much Red Bull. And so they're... Now we're straight up, like, seeing colors that don't exist. Yeah. It's a, it's like you can, it is possible to follow, like, stuff so closely that you're actually, well, you're, you know, you're, like, cataloging every tree, but you can't see the forest anymore, you know. Yeah. It's, yeah. So I think that that's happened to some people as evidenced by, you know, go on Twitter for five minutes and read about any popular topic. You know, I mean, it's, it's, there's all kinds of people, of things, of course, people just, people do see what they want to see. So the people who believed that Trump's election signaled the rise of, you know, the new fascist movement in America has won. They will only interpret the Sydney Sweeney ad through that lens.

If this had come out in 2022, people might have a totally different interpretation of it, you know. Or, of course, in 2022, there would have been a boycott against American. And American Eagle would have come out and said, oh, we apologize, we take full responsibility, we know we did the bad thing here. And they didn't do that this time. They're like, oh, you guys are interpreting the ad wrong. And the other big thing, of course, that relates to all this is that wasn't it revealed that Sidney Sweeney is a registered Republican in the state of Florida? I didn't fact check it, but I did see that. There's some Sydney, I think it was Sydney B. Sweeney in Florida, which was a Republican.

And I remember seeing people like, oh, vindication, we prove that she's MAGA and all this. And, you know, people on both sides were like, I told you she was MAGA from both Republicans and Democrats. Well, I'd love to talk about this more because I have a podcast of its own. Because I have so many opinions about and so many thoughts about how we view our. cultural figures now is either being on the team or off the team or we have to view them through a political lens instead of just being entertainers so but we'll digress from that topic move on to what's going on here in Texas and the issue that's kind of swept the country is the redistricting and the quorum break from not talking about redistricting this this podcast has had a quorum

break well see that all right fine I've returned all right well so we had the quorum break we've had the house attempt to gavel in multiple times not have a quorum there's been an issuance by house speaker dust and burrows civil arrest warrants we've had multiple lawsuits be filed a quote warranto petitions by the attorney general and the governor. We're waiting on the Texas Supreme Court to rule on if a seat can be being vacant based upon the parameters that are present with this current cornworm break. We've had lawsuits with the Attorney General against Beto O'Rourke for alleged bribery. Beto always comes back. He's always going to find his way into every big political issue

in Texas law. Yeah. But we saw this week, today's August 13. And it was this week the House and the governor and the lieutenant governor have all said that if there is no quorum present on Friday, we will see both chambers adjourned signy die and a new special session be immediately called with the same items on that special session call. which is interesting because they would have had to adjourn anyway on Tuesday the 19th so in less than a week's time so all they're doing here is instead of waiting until the very last day of this special they are just going to end it and call another one immediately and after that news came out about the signing die call and another call for a special session I'm reading from a story from ABC News that says they spoke to sources that have said that the Texas House Democrats who left the state to prevent a vote on new congressional maps will return to Texas feeling they have accomplished their mission of killing the first special session, raising awareness and sparking national backlash about the mid-decade redistricting multiple sources confirmed to ABC. I'll read a little further here.

A source told ABC News that the House Democrats loosely plan on returning this weekend. plans could change, the source noted, if Republicans go back on the word to begin a second special session on Friday. So lots of caveats president in there. But what do you think about the strategy from Texas House Democrats that have led us to this point in their potential return? So the chair of the Texas House Democratic caucus, Representative Gene Wu, said when they broke quorum, this corrupt special session is over. Those were his words. And if this happens, and they are forced to adjourn signy die and, you know, the special session is over, then yes, they will have succeeded in killing this corrupt special session. Now, if the next special session also has redistricting on it and then the map passes, you know, you can say that it would be a kind of symbolic victory.

Like, we killed the redistricting special session, but if they come back and the map passes, then the map still passes. and that not only has consequences for Texas, but for the rest of the country, because unlike, I mean, you know, the 2021 quorum break was still big news, but that was more of a Texas central issue over the reform of election security and voting rules in Texas. This is what would affect the rest of the country because it's changing the makeup of Congress. So a lot of other states have even like really a lot of investment in this issue. Well, and I'll mention this as well that the Texas House Democrats, after this ABC News story was starting to become circulated on the Internet, we saw Texas House Democrats come out and say on X, members are still assessing their strategies going forward and are in meetings to make decisions about future plans. Currently, if and when Texas House Democrats, Brick and Quorum decide to go home, is squarely dependent on the actions of the governor's speaker in Texas Republican.

in charge make with regard to prioritizing flood victims over redistricting that hurts Texans. Well, this was something else funny we saw is that it was not until the Democrats left that suddenly all the flood stuff was put in committee hearings and then was being sent to the floor and they're like, oh, where have the Democrats gone, right? It's like there was a, they're kind of holding that in their back pocket and, you know, and then the Democrats broke a quorum and then they were able to put it out and then claim the rhetorical victory there.

Well, everyone's holding different cards here. Although, you know what is interesting, really interesting about this time around, is that it seems Abbott, Patrick, and Burroughs are in lockstep. And the relationship between the big three was not great in the last regular session, especially between Patrick and former Speaker Dave Feelein. Yeah. And this time around, it seems the three are working really closely. They seem to be, you know, collaborating on.

all this stuff. And this is something that Brad wrote about, I believe in his most recent fourth reading, about how Burroughs has been faced with this challenge of basically, does he court the Democrats who have traditionally made up that like moderate Republican Democratic alliance that constitutes House leadership? Or does he court the more conservative Republicans who are more critical of that, of that whole, you know, establishment alliance? And it's a really good fourth reading, as all the fourth readings are. But this is the challenge here, and it seems, you know, Burroughs is, well, we'll see, of course, if there's any long-term consequences, you know, some more conservative voices in the Texas House have called for removing the Democrats

who have vice chairs and committees from those committees, you know, and say, we need to completely strip them of everything, you know, take away their committee chairmanships, take away their pay. They've already, of course, they're not getting paid unless they show up in person, so. Well, and they're also getting fined $500 a day for being absent, unexcused. Because they strengthened the penalties for quorum breaking after the 2021 break. Yeah, and they're also going to be charged for all the costs that are incurred by DPS, trying to locate them. So there's going to be a large bounty that they're going to have to pay here once they return but um what i think is also interesting with what you mentioned about the um delaying of placing flood relief on the

on um on the calendars and the committees is this was telegraphed by republicans though this was all part of the plan we saw governor gray gabbitt tell us during the interview we had with him that he didn't believe democrats were going to leave um without uh addressing flood issues and you know they ended up leaving without addressing flood issues and there's all these uh representatives like i said have different cards to play here the democrats they could just not return you know let's say the supreme court you know this is dependent a lot on what the texas supreme court says here in regards to deeming a seat vacant if someone has broken quorum right um but let's say if uh falls in the democrats's favor

they could just sit out the entire special session how many you know um they could just not return right and abbott could just keep calling special sessions and you know we're just here until the next regular session comes up so this is a chance for me to plug my most recent edition of precedented times everybody's favorite texas history theme newsletter at the texans But I wrote about the most number of special sessions ever called for a single legislature, which was six between 1989 and 1990. And Governor Bill Clements called six. Two of them focused on workman's compensation and four of them focused on public education funding because this was around the time of a major lawsuit. It was Edgewood versus Kirby, I'm pretty sure.

that's the name of the lawsuit. But this is the lawsuit that challenged the way that Texas education funding was done and eventually over the course of several years of fiddling led to the creation of the Robin Hood program in order to have a more equitable like funding for various Texas schools. But six is the highest number of special sessions

that have ever been called. So it's, you know, is Abbott going to have, is Abbott going to beat that? Is Abbott going to have seven? And yes, it was Edgewood versus. Kirby. This is like a landmark Scotix decision that eventually prompted the creation of Robin Hood. But yeah, could we have seven specials? If we just keep calling them one after the other, what if we keep adjourning early and just keep them going? I mean, we could. Just keep it going.

So we're talking purely on a, on a procedural basis here, what could happen. But in terms of the larger narrative regarding how both the Democrats with their quorum break are reacting to this and then also Republicans and what they can do how the public views either side and their actions here because you know they're the Democrats again they're holding up legislation from being passed by not being here right is that is the public sentiment eventually really going to turn on them depends on who you ask of course because If you are a Democrat, then this is amazing. I was in the Texas House on Monday, and, you know, sitting up in the gallery, and when the house adjourned, because, of course, they didn't have a quorum, a bunch of people stood up and started shouting, cheaters, which was great, because they had to wait, of course, until they adjourned, because otherwise, you know, Burroughs were to clear the gallery.

Yeah. But I think it was those same people. It might have been other people who were singing, do you hear the people sing from Les Miserab on the first floor? the Capitol and you know when you're standing under the dome and you know echoes throughout the whole building but yeah I mean there's a lot of people who would argue that they should hold the line and should you know not do anything and they because they view the congressional redistricting as like an existential threat that is more important than anything else well it and then what about I could see it turning on the Republicans as well because we see a lot of energy from those

in the base of the Republican Party, wanting Republicans to do more, in essence of acting in such a way to remove the two-thirds requirements somehow or using some sort of extra procedural maneuvers to start to pass legislation. I don't know how that would happen, but there's been sort of signaling that people want that to happen or actions from the governor to, you know, is there any way by the stroke of his pen to be able to just say these seats are vacant and call? Well, because that's the big thing. That's what the whole Supreme Court of Texas battle is over right now is can, the governor

is asking them to declare these quorum breakers seats vacant, saying, well, they vacated their seats, they're violating the call of the house, which is what Burroughs has called basically legally mandating your attendance and signed civil arrest warrants for the ones who are who are quorum breaking. So are those seats declared vacant? This is going to be a big Supreme Court of Texas decision. You've already seen some of the more conservative activist types posting tweets about this and saying like, oh, the Supreme Court of Texas is, you know, we're watching you. You have to make the right decision here. So yeah, it's going to be, it would be huge if they can declare their seats vacant for.

quorum breaking. Maybe there will be a certain amount of time before their seats are declared vacant. Maybe it'll be like 90 days or something. I don't know. I'm completely just speculating here. Well, I have something here from James, from James Berrigan over at Texcapt tonight. Formerly, he was at the Texas Tribune. He says the Texas House Democrat caucus will release demands on Friday, saying, quote, Abbott can choose to go. for Texas families or he can keep serving Trump and face the consequences we've unleashed nationwide. Well, maybe let's talk a little bit about what's happened nationwide. Yeah, actually, that's a good point. There's been a number of other states that have reacted to what the Texas

House Democrats are doing and what Republicans in the state are attempting to do with the mid-dict mid-decade redistricting. We've seen California say they want to redistricting. They want to redistricting. That's going to be tough since California. They're an independent redistricting committee and they can't. Well, it's funny. They created an independent redistricting committee and they're like, well, you're going to redistrict every 10 years. And now Newsom's like, okay, how do I get around that actually?

How do I not do that? Well, and it's already, the maps in California are already drawn to the point where it, uh, squeeze out as many Democrats. And then look at like Illinois where it's, it's, it's, it's, if you look at the total vote count, it's like below 60% are, um, it's somewhere around. It's like 58% or something are Democrats, whereas Democrats control like over 80% or almost 80% of the congressional districts. You know, so a lot of these other states, if we're going by pure representation, well, first of all, if we're going, basically every state is gerrymandered, right? Almost every.

Because as Brad has pointed out, this is, it is purely partisan. It's purely political. You know, like we can't, we need to take the politics out of this. You can't take the politics out of this. This is about political power. And there is no real, I'm sorry, but I don't believe you're going to find a commission that is truly independent who's just going to draw the lines for a completely, in a spirit of complete public service. And even if they do, of course, anybody can interpret public service to just mean whatever they think is right. Well, and I think that's a larger question about, is the idea of political neutrality just a myth?

And we're finally come to realize that. There can be, of course, political neutrality. But when it comes to something like drawing congressional maps, I think you are not likely to find it for the people drawing the maps. Yeah. You know, the best, the people who are probably going to be the most politically neutral are the, ones who probably don't read the news as much, you know. I doubt anybody truly follows politics that intensely, but is also like totally neutral. But speaking also of another issue, you know, with Trump, but not in a state, but still in the United States, is what Trump is doing in

Washington, D.C. Trump announced that he would federalize the D.C. police. If I recall correctly, they're now under the control of the federal government. He intends to take over local police after former Trump administration staffer was assaulted by a mob during a carjack. I'm reading from a daily caller story here on August 3rd. Legacy media outlets and Democratic lawmakers responded to Trump's complaints about violent crime in D.C. by reporting it had decreased by 35% in 2024, citing local police data that leaves out crimes such as felony and aggravated. assault there by making DC's crime problem appear better than it is since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020 because we saw the reaction after the announcement that Trump was going to attempt to clean up D.C., deploy National Guard, start, you know, arresting people who are breaking the law, you know, and people were throwing up all these crime statistics and, or, you

even just anecdotal experiences about how they can walk the streets and feel safe. And they're not sure why Trump is doing this when I can go jogging down in the park and be okay. But it's one thing to present these anecdotal stories, but then it's also another thing to just make up anecdotal stories. Well, yeah. I mean, because it is true that crime has been falling in D.C. over the last couple of years because there was, of course, as throughout the rest of the country, a pretty decently big crime spike at the onset of COVID. And then that crime spike

is now kind of, you know, it's declining in D.C. as it has declined in a lot of places in like 2022 to 2024, right? Crime went up really quick and then went down really quick. But it doesn't change the fact that D.C. still has a much higher than average crime rate. And according to this article from the Atlantic titled Trump is right that D.C. has a serious crime problem. Crime was rising before the pandemic, even though, of course, violent crime is at, I believe, a 30-year low in the United States, right? Crime starts to rise in like the 1960s, kind of peaks in the 90s, and then it starts to go down. It's been going down since then, despite, you know, wobbling and, of course, a big wobble during COVID. But as you've also pointed out, some of these places have their own.

own unique reporting rules I was just about to bring that up because it's kind of softball yeah well because all crime statistics are are made up in some way where there is no centralized reporting system for for crime everything is done locally but then you have to take in information on a officer by officer precinct by precinct basis and you have to understand you know if anyone has seen the wire, there's a very, there's a famous scene where they're transferring felonies to misdemeanors to try and help juice the crime statistics in this, in, in Baltimore, in the movie. In the movie?

I mean, in the show. I'm sorry. In the show, okay. I got stuck in season two. I never got past season two. And so this is one of the problems when it comes to crime statistics is that it's so muddied. Because it depends on how it's collected and published at the city level. Then what do you report to the FBI?

Exactly. Yeah. So it's not like, for example. There's no uniform system for crime reporting. So you really have to believe what your eyes are seeing in a lot of these cases, where crime statistics could be all over the place in these different cities and different reporting outcomes and different spikes here and drops here and there. But when you are thinking about if you feel safe in a city or not, it's just about when I walk the streets, what is the general overall feeling? And some of the things you can't even calculate, like general vagrancy, like people just mulling around that seem threatening. You know, that doesn't count in a crime statistic, but it makes people feel unsafe.

No, it's true. And there's no way to quantify that. And so when thinking about a place like Washington, D.C. as well, is this is our nation's capital. And this is where many of the representatives from other countries are staying as being their, what's it called? You know, we have people in different countries, ambassadors. Ambassadors, diplomats, yeah. They are located in D.C. as well. So we want this capital city of ours to be an example for other countries as well.

Well, this is one of those things that you can tell Trump cares about a lot, right? Is in the sense of he is a strong believer in like a powerful first impression, right? He wants to wow people. That's something. It's why he had his famous like golden penthouse. That's why there was this little like micro cycle around. Do you remember this that Trump has put up like gilding? in the White House.

Like, there's just like, or in the Oval Office, there's like some, some gilding that's just on the walls now. And I remember seeing, you know, some people like, this is so beautiful. He's making it so good. Other people who are like, he's ruined the Oval Office. But, yeah, I just, Trump is a strong believer, I think, in demonstrating power and wealth and stuff like that. And I think to him, the concept of the nation's capital having, for example, the 2024

homicide rate for D.C. was about, it says, 26.4 for every 100,000 residents. That's seven times New York City. It's closer to Memphis or Detroit or other cities that have much higher crime problems. So, you know, for the fact that, and now, of course, it also says here, it's concentrated in certain neighborhoods that, according to this Atlantic Ardle, there are 10 blocks in DC that are home to 14% of all homicides, right? And this is often the problem in American cities is that you usually have specific areas with a lot of poverty, a lot of gang activity, where most of the violence is concentrated. You know, it's like, if you look at a map of the most violent cities in America,

it's really like in each city there's like neighborhoods that specifically have lots of problems. But this is the thing, of course, is now the question is, you know, even if a lot of these people, even if a lot of people agree that Trump, that the problem exists, of course, they don't trust Trump to handle it because they think he's going to, who, you know, I mean, of course, you have the people who are claiming that Trump is, of course, instituting martial law with the intention to, you know, kind of test out federalizing the police so that he can make himself a permanent dictator of the U.S., right? But even the people who agree the problem exists will say, oh, he's not going to handle the situation correctly. And, you know, I mean, I don't know. I'm not an expert on D.C. policing, but. Well, I'll read another section here from the Daily Caller article. Go ahead. the FBI's numbers also show that homicides have remained higher than pre-pandemic levels

in the year since 2020 with the exception of 2021 a year when DC submitted incomplete data according to Axios additionally DC saw 12% more aggravated assaults with or without a weapon in 24 than in 2023 37% more than in 2022 per the FBI and here they're citing a research from Rochester Institute of Technology showing D.C.'s murder rate in 2024 was the fourth highest in the country above Chicago, Illinois, Atlanta, Georgia, Compton, California, New York City. And so, and then there's the high-profile incidents where two Israeli embassy workers and a congressional intern were murdered this year. So just the examples that make headlines like that, but then also the

underlying issues that don't make the headlines, like you're saying, there's these isolated pockets of criminality in many of our major metropolitan cities. Well, and this relates to the concept of hotspot policing, which is specifically that police should concentrate their efforts in these very high crime areas in order to, like, prevent it from happening or prevented from spilling out, you know, outside of those areas. So, yeah, it remains to, now I believe, is Bondi now in charge of the D.C. I remember there was also one of the reporters asked, if I recall correctly, the DC chief of police, you know, what's the chain of command right now?

And she said, what is that? And I, you know, some people are saying, oh, she doesn't know what the word chain of command is. She probably knows what the word chain of command is. She might have been like, what's that? Like, she can't hear. I didn't see the full context of that. But I know that this was a big issue as people were saying, Oh, what is the chain of command?

What is the situation right now? Yeah, so there's been a meeting between Mayor Bowser and the city's police chief traveling to the Justice Department on Tuesday to meet with Bondi about the National Guard operating in D.C. We also see here, I'm reading from a Fox News article that, this comes after Trump on Monday announced plans to use a 1973 D.C. Home Rule Act provision to send National Guard trips to D.C. as part of an effort to reestablish law and nor in public safety and temporarily federalize the city. I don't see necessarily here that Bondi is going to be the one directing people, but maybe like...

Isn't it funny, though, how Trump can keep finding these, like, oh, this one provision of the Home Rule Act, Oh, the Alien Enemies Act, you know, Alien Enemies Sedition. It's like he has this team of crack lawyers, I guess, just going through and finding all these little obscure provisions of love so that he can do, he can exercise more of his presidential power. So it's funny how this stuff just keeps happening. Well, I think this is representative of the difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2 when Trump 1 went in there without any, you know, government experience. hiring a lot of people based on recommendations who were maybe acting against his agenda. And then now that he has a second go-around in the Oval Office, there's a cadre of people who were and are continuing being appointed to positions

that actually want to move forward his agenda. Yeah, he's convinced this time around. It's like, he's like, I have to get my people. They have to be loyal to me. Well, and they have four years to prepare as well. And so they're coming in with more foreknowledge about how government actually operates, but also having time to look into government codes and statutes and things to where they can say, okay, we can use this, we can use that to move the Trump platform forward.

So it's been definitely something interesting to watch because it seems like there's always another card to play in a lot of these situations. It's true. And speaking of cards to play, now we've moved from the state level to the national level. Now we're going to the international level. We're going to Alaska. So put on your winter coats because the president and Russian President Vladimir Putin are going to meet in Alaska on Friday. So Friday's going to be a very busy day. Not only is Texas possibly going to have a second special session. But if you ask some people, the Russo-Ukrainian war could end on Friday. if Trump is going to schmooze Putin into ending it. Other people think nothing's going to happen. Other people think Putin is basically going to win the war because Trump is going to concede on major issues. Cameron, what is going on? What's happening in Alaska?

Well, there is supposedly going to be a meeting between Trump and Putin about negotiating some sort of end to this conflict. Like a ceasefire specifically. A ceasefire, but because, what are we what year three of the conflict now yeah it was i believe february 22 when russia invaded ukraine and it you know it seems like there's been a bit of a stalemate in the movement from either side and seizing different uh territories but there's still thousands of men on both sides of this conflict being killed and that has been one of the things that trump has continued to point to is

that young men are dying, Ukrainians, Russians, and there has to be some sort of resolution to this. You know, obviously Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would end it on day one. That didn't happen. He's... What?

No way. But it seems like there's, you know, this is one of the things about foreign relations and geopolitics is we comment we read about what's happening in the front facing negotiations but that's only a microcosm of what's actually happening because there's so many things happening in the background behind the scenes that never get leaked out to the public yeah we're not in the room where it happens well exactly and so like there was uh in the over the past month you know everyone remembers the big blowup between Trump fans and Zelensky in the Oval Office.

Oh, yeah, yeah. The memes were amazing for a while. But it seems like over the past month or so, Trump has said, oh, we're going to send more weapons. They have sent more weapons. And saying that Ukraine needs to defend itself in all these different things, and America was going to help them. But that could just be a posturing maneuver on behalf of Trump to try and get Putin to the

negotiating table so they can. trying come to some sort of resolution right um you know i was uh looking at here um i don't know how familiar you are with seymour hirsch the legendary reporter journalist um and he has someone on background telling him that putin talks to to steve wukov steve wukov is like the main uh negotiator in many of these foreign conflicts not just russia ukraine but uh on the israel gaza conflict as well He says Putin talks to Whitkoff because he understands he's got power and speaks for the boss. A knowledgeable U.S. official told me he said it was Whitkoff who understood that the way to get Putin's attention was to cut off his access to the oil markets in India and China by increasing the U.S. secondary tariffs on both buyers. Interest rates in Russia have risen to 18 percent and the economy hit hard by the cost of the ongoing war is limping along in part due to Putin's ability to keep on selling government bonds to Russia banks.

That's the thing is also, is their ability to export oil. Like, Russia is essentially a gas station masquerading as a country, right? Economically speaking, they have to sell that oil. And this was the big thing is that right after the war started out, the U.S. and later Western Europe, we're like, oh, we're not going to buy as much Russian oil. Then they started selling it to China. But if Trump's going to be using this tariff strategy, he could kind of break that up. With this meeting between Trump and Russia going on in Alaska, we actually saw Vice President J.D. Vance give some comments on the entire situation with the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He said this during an interview that America was done with the funding of the Ukraine more, and he addressed the likely contours of a peace deal.

I'm reading from an article in the American conservative saying, Vance said a likely settlement would take as a starting point the quote current line of contact between Russia and Ukraine suggesting the belligerents could halt the fighting and retain most of the territory that they control militarily going on here. Vance said we're going to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and Russians can live with where they can live in relative peace where the killing stops. He added that Trump was on the verge of getting Putin in Ukrainian president, Vladimir, Zelensky, to meet in person. This was during a Fox News interview that aired on Sunday.

So, Vance, he has historically been against the continuing funding of Ukraine in this conflict because it prolongs the conflict. Also, there's so many larger negotiations that have to happen alongside the meeting with Trump and Putin, where our European partners in NATO need to come to some sort of reconciliation with Ukraine, not necessarily joining NATO, but being some sort of preferred partner, maybe, who knows? But also the funding from our European partners in NATO, because right now America has outpaced them. Yeah. Well, a lot of them, until Trump started raising a stink about it, were not meeting their, it was like two or three percent defense spending goals. Because the whole point of NATO is not that the United States simply protects everybody, right?

It is a defensive alliance where these other countries are supposed to obligate a certain portion of their national budget to self-defense, right? Now, some of them haven't. And this was a big issue that Trump was saying. He's like, you know, what do you want us just do this for free? You know, he's like, you've got to spend money on protecting yourself and all this. But if Trump was skeptical of the concept of the United States as this world policeman and secure of the liberal world order, Vance might be called out right hostile to that belief. And he, this is an interesting example of how Trump is, I think, a fairly idiosyncratic thinker who doesn't define himself ideologically.

But I think Vance does view himself. as being a bit more ideological. You know, Vance has outright called himself a post-liberal, right? A term that some conservatives used to refer to their, you know, skepticism of the, like, classical liberal values of things like maximizing individual liberty, right? Vance would say, well, that comes at the cost of social good. Well, we can just say everything post-nastic. Yeah, it's pretty skeptical.

Yeah, exactly. So it'll be, advance, of course, is also considered. by many already to be the 2028 frontrunner for the Republicans, which again is crazy because it's only like six months into the Trump term. Yeah. But yeah, if this issue doesn't get like eventually solved or ended within Trump's term. And of course, even if the ceasefires agreed, there's no guarantee that the war is like over, considering the fact that, you know, people probably thought the war was over back in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea and then as far as most Americans knew that was the end of it. But if you view this as a long conflict, this is like an

eight-year-long conflict, really, that's been going on. It could continue going on for quite a while. But that's something I'm definitely going to be keeping my eye on what comes out of these meetings with Putin in Alaska. But let's move on to our last topic. We're going to talk about possible marijuana rescheduling. This is something that's been floated by President Trump himself. We have a story here from Axios saying President Trump confirmed Monday. His administration is considering reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump was considering the action after pot companies contributed millions of dollars into the president's political groups. Axios says, why it matters, rescheduling could be a big step toward allowing the interstate trade of

cannabis and would allow cannabis companies to deduct business expenses on their taxes, which would particularly help dispensaries that typically operate on very tight margins. And Axios has done quite a bit of coverage on these comments because there's been a lot of backlash, but getting into a little bit of what reclassifying means. Right now, marijuana is a Skiddle 1 drug, but reclassifying it, as a Schedule 3 drug would open the door to expanded research and deliver what Axio says is a major boost to the legal cannabis industry, which is currently constrained by a patchwork of state laws. A Schedule 1 drug is grouped alongside things like heroin and LSD as drugs with

currently no currently accepted medical use in a high potential for abuse. Where Schedule 3 would include drugs that are a little bit, you know, drugs that might have. It says here, according to the DEA, they're defined as having a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. For example, this would include ketamine, anabolic steroids, testosterone, and products containing less than 90 milligrams of codeine per dosage unit. For example, Tylenol with codeine would fall into this category. So you can get it. It's no longer considered to be. This is also interesting.

I didn't know, cocaine is actually a Schedule 2 drug. So is apparently methamphetamine. That is, and of course, methamphetamines have medical uses, obviously. But it is interesting to think, you know, something like heroin is obviously Schedule 1, but cocaine and meth are in Schedule 2. Yeah. It's a strange way categorization drugs this way. But we've seen a lot of push and pool on this.

on these comments from Trump, we saw, again, Axios collected a bunch of responses from the conservative commentariat, let's say. It's like every time we do one of these, we can have, like, Trump announced he was going to do something, and then all of the conservative members of the chattering classes all came out to give their opinion on it, you know, and the funny thing is, is they always don't like it, whatever Trump's doing, they're always finding some reason to be upset about it. Well, we see here Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire saying no country of potheads has ever thrived or ever achieved anything at all. Jack Posobic said on his podcast, America deserves better.

Our kids deserve better. I don't want to have to be smelling weed anytime I take my kids anywhere in a city or national park. They also have comments here from Michael Knowles saying weed is the, quote, liberal intoxicant of choice. voice. While tobacco and alcohol a more conservative coded argues podcast for Michael Knowles going on to say, we're all for cultivating virtue, either Stoic or Christian. But it doesn't mean we don't like pleasure. It just that we prefer traditional pleasures. I had a friend in college, you know, conservative Catholic friend who told me that his reasoning as to why marijuana is like inferior to alcohol and tobacco is that it smells bad.

And what he means is that you can appreciate tobacco and alcohol for their taste or their smell, but not specifically for the intoxicant, right? Not specifically for its intoxicating feature. You know, like the whole you can smoke or you can drink without getting drunk, right? But his argument was, well, marijuana, it doesn't smell good. It doesn't like taste good. So you're only consuming it for the intoxicating powers. So he said that's why it was less moral to consume.

However, it should also be noted that in the 19th century when the U.S. was a very expanding society is basically a country of alcoholics. The average American consumed a staggering amount of ethanol in those days, which is why, of course, Prohibition happened in the first place, was because, again, staggering amount of alcohol people were consuming. Prohibition was not the correct response, but staggering. Yeah. So, well, this is interesting. as here in Texas, they're currently debating whether to ban or regulate the THC industry. Cannabis, marijuana, that's already banned. Well, unless you're in a big Democratic city where the DA does not enforce the laws, of course.

Right. But what they're negotiating currently is SB5. HB5, this is because SB3, which was a total ban on THC products was vetoed by the governor at just before midnight, veto night. So TASC- What a night veto night was. And so T-HC regulation was placed back on the special session call, and the House and the Senate both proposed bans. The Senate passed their ban. The House has, well, we're recording on the day they're taking it up in committee.

And so as we know, it ended up. up with a ban. There was tremendous amount of pushback after the SB3 was passed during the bailor session. Governor Abbott obviously heard that, felt that, vetoed it, asked for regulation over a total ban. We're not going to see any movement on THC during this first special session because this was the funny thing is everybody was like, man, THC, this special session is going to be crazy. And then not only do you have redistricting, and then, of course, flood stuff. I mean, the flood disaster relief. It's kind of become, if you will, it's been rescheduled itself from a priority thing to down a little bit further. Well, it's interesting also the arguments,

of course, you know, you can make your moral, political, philosophical arguments about individual liberty versus the good of society and all. But then you have the practical considerations, like, for example, when regulating it bring in more tax money for the government, or as a lot of the law enforcement witnesses have testified during these committee hearings, regulation would actually be more expensive for them to have to, you know, parse, well, who's legal, who's doing this legally and who's not, whereas a total ban would be much easier to enforce. They wouldn't have to spend additional resources trying to, you know, look at the differences here. And so there are a lot of like practical economic considerations that go into something like.

like this, beyond just the argument of, well, I can do what I want to, right? Or you shouldn't be able to because of the negative consequences or things like that. Yeah. You know, with every issue, the more you dive into it, the more complex it gets, the more considerations you have to take into account. But we saw some push-pulling be put out today that's showing people prefer to ban over-regulation. I say push polling intentionally because you can see when polls are done in such a way to produce a certain result. So anytime you see polling on issues like this, again, you have to look into how the question was phrased,

who was participant in the poll, who was conducting the poll. Was anybody who follows polling or anything knows? There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. You always got to be careful because, as you said, any poll can be constructed in any way to produce any particular outcome. that the pollster wants to see. Yeah. And so as we wrap up here, big things that I'm looking forward to in the last few days over the next

couple weeks, actually, is how Texas House Democrats are going to react on Friday with the adjourning sine-y die and Governor Abbott calling a second special session. What sort of demands Texas House Democrats are going to make to bring them back? back, if they come back at all. And then on the more global stage, what we talked about with the Trump-Pooten meeting in Alaska, that'll be really interesting to see what the outcome is there. Anything else you're looking forward to this week? I know I just said the two big things.

You pretty much did. Yeah, you've kind of left me with nothing here. But what am I looking forward to? I mean, yeah, besides what happens in Texas and what happens in Alaska, I mean, those are the big issues. suppose, you know, we'll have to keep track of, you know, every time somebody now gets arrested in D.C., it's going to be kind of, like every new arrest or video of a police officer arresting someone is going to prompt a huge convent. Like, it's like one guy gets arrested and you'll have the MAGA influencers come out and say how great this is or like, and then, of

course, you might have one cop do something bad and it'll be like, well, this is part of Trump's fascist takeover. And, you know, it'll be, that'll be something to watch. It'll produce a lot of content for the people who make the yeah for the people who make content simply by like slapping their opinion on stuff that have the professional opinion havers of society you know are which there is a lot of which there's an increase there's a great um i guess i can end with that speak on that topic there's a great uh document from ancient sumeria right one of the first civilizations in the world um of of course uh one of the the oldest documents we have is some guy complaining about like kids these days and he's like

oh nobody listens to their elders children don't obey their parents and everyone wants to write a book and that sticks with me yeah well thank you everyone for joining us for this latest episode of send me some stuff if you ever have anything interesting interesting stories you'd like to have us cover send it to us uh You can reach us at the texan.news. That's where we have all of our podcasts, articles, newsletters, everything, Texas politics. You can find us there. And if you've got ideas for us to cover, email it to Editor at the Texan.

And let them know that it's for the send me some stuff podcast. Thanks for tuning in him. I'll catch you guys next. Thank you.