The Texan Podcast - Special Edition - Top Stories of 2021

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

This week on a special edition of The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses some of the top stories of 2021 — from the freeze to the quorum bust, the border crisis to redistricting — we cover all this and more as the year comes to an end.

Happy Friday and Happy New Year. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here bringing you this week's News Roundup. Today, our team runs through the top stories of 2021, from the freeze to the quorum bust, the border crisis to redistricting. We cover all this and more as this year comes to an end. Thanks for listening. Have a wonderful weekend. We are so glad you tuned in today and we'll see you in 2022. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Brad Johnson, Daniel Friend, and Hayden Sparks on an end of year podcast. A lot of us are still home with our families. We're doing remote today, looking at each other on a computer screen here. And Brad is already in rare form, has us all in stitches for better or for worse. And we're going to have to see how this podcast goes.

But gentlemen, thank you for joining me and post Merry Christmas. Don't set unrealistic expectations for me. I'm not sure we were in stitches. I think the things Brad was saying were moderately funny. That's true. And also, I think they elicited more eye rolls. They elicited more eye rolls than anything else. So I think that you're probably right.

I gave him a little bit too much credit there. Yeah, yeah. I think it was mostly you who's doing the eye rolling. That also sounds about right. Thank you all for correcting this perception I had of what happened in the last 15 minutes. They'll get stuck in back of your head, so careful. You sound like all of our moms at one point in our lives. Well, let's go ahead and get into the news. We've got a lot of topics to get into, but we're basically going to go through

the top stories, a year in review of 2021. And Brad, we're going to start with you. Last February, Texans lost power across the state when a very unexpected winter storm hit and temperatures dropped. Can you recap this for us? I know you've never talked about this on the podcast ever before. Yeah, I'm really grasping at straws for content on this one. But, you know, as everybody in Texas knows, as they experienced it for about five days, the power was for many people out. It came after an unexpected and abnormally frigid winter storm swept across the state and across other states, too. Let's let's not forget that this affected other states as well. And that also compounded the problems that Texas faced. But as, as the temperatures dropped and Texans, uh,

you know, set their, their thermostats to, um, higher and higher levels, um, to try and offset the cold spell, uh, that created a higher demand on the power grid. And so the more people you have pulling from the power grid and the more, um, more power each person pulling from the grid, uh, happens, you know, that the stress on the grid itself, uh, accentuates. And so we saw that occur. And I think it was, um, it was the night of Valentine's day, actually, that things kind of came to a head and, um, the, the demand issue was, um, uh, was added onto by supply issues that stemmed from the cold weather. And so we saw a lot of power plants go out of commission because of cold weather issues, you know, whether it was feed water freezing in pipes, not pipelines, that's different or the inability to access roads that led to generators or well heads it just was an amalgamation of a bunch of different problems that all compounded into this

one issue and that morning the state actually you know the one bright spot was the state avoided a catastrophic collapse a black start event. The frequency of the grid dropped below its average, about 60 hertz. It dropped 0.6. I think it was roughly hertz. And while that sounds like a very small number, it is incredibly important. And it's a wide gap, gap actually in terms of the frequency. And that if it had lasted a few minutes longer, that could have caused an outage that lasted weeks or over a month.

And so they avoided that, but the problems continued throughout the week. We saw issues with utility bills jumping if you were on a wholesale index plan where it's tied to the wholesale cost of the electricity. You know, we saw obviously the cold weather issues of these plants occurring, but gradually they got power back on. And as soon as that happened, you know, the things started kind of turning to the fallouts and who was to be blamed and, you know, how we would move forward and try and avoid another such problem. Yeah, absolutely. What was the legislative and regulatory response to all this? So first and foremost, the legislature issued a weatherization mandate to protect against cold temperatures down to zero degrees Fahrenheit. And so there was that, how to go about doing that. You know, you can really, it involves either heat tracing, tracking the temperature of pipes or other infrastructure where things are necessary to the operation of generation, or putting enclosures, either small or large, over important pieces of infrastructure, whether it's control panels or sensors or things like that.

So that's the practical way they're carrying that out. Those efforts are still underway, although, um, based on an update from about a month ago, uh, earlier this month, actually, um, the, there's the progress on that is, is coming along pretty swimmingly. Um, but, you know, we'll see how effective it is against another, you know, cold snap. Uh, next time we have one of those, um, we also saw a, uh change the market incentives of the ERCOT marketplace. One notable thing was to incentivize more dispatchable generation that's nominally more thermal generation sources like natural gas, coal, nuclear is in that as

well. It's important to note that we saw everything, all sources fail across the board here during the storm. But during the storm, natural gas, while it accounted for the most megawattage lost. We saw it provide the lion's share of the generation during this event. We also saw renewables. They produced electricity at a fraction of their installed capacity. And at a couple of points, actually, they were pretty down close to producing nothing. Solar actually outperformed wind during this, throughout at least a lot of the event. Another part of the market reforms is to change the pricing mechanism. So I mentioned the drastically high electricity costs. Well, ERCOT is a marketplace for electricity. It's not a, you don't negotiate prices up front

for a set amount of generation. Generators get paid for how much electricity they supply. And so when scarcity in this situation jumps, so does the price. And so that's where we saw prices in the thousands up to $9,000 for a megawatt hour of electricity. And that led to a lot of costs tumbling down the supply chain, down to various companies throughout the process. And one way that resulted in a lot of debt, one way the legislature and the Railroad Commission tried to assuage that is by securitization, providing these above market rate loans to these companies so they can defray the cost over years and not months.

And actually decades and not months. And so there's going to be a lot of ramifications to come for that. We'll see how things work out. I wrote a piece on the market reforms, so it's very technical. But if that interests you, I would recommend go checking it out. It gets into a lot more depth than we can here. But the legislature and state agencies responsible have implemented a lot of, a lot of reforms and we'll see how how they work

out how long they take to materialize texas has seen for example one more thing texas has seen a dramatic loss in natural gas and coal generation we haven't seen any new plants built in the last six seven seven years or so. And we've seen a lot more renewable energy generation built. And so they're trying to at least even that out some by through these incentives for building generation based on source. And that itself is going to take a while to materialize and balance out. But we'll see how it goes. Let's talk real fast about the political portion of this

because we're already seeing this become a huge talking point going into 2022. But talk to us about, like I said, the political ramifications of the freeze. Well, Governor Abbott has been hit on both sides of this, on this issue. Democrats have made it their top issue. And it's kind of, you know,

the success of that is kind of dependent upon another disaster, maybe not quite as bad as what happened, but something similar. And then you have on his right flank, his Republican challengers who are also hitting him on this as well as uh the state's affinity for renewable energy sources um but uh politically i think it's going to be it's going to amount to probably not much uh considering how much air time it's going to be given because like i said it would require another hundred year storm to really become effective, really show the lack of if there is a lack of reforms in adequacy to show that. And so I think it's going to it's going to eventually be supplanted by other issues. But once up until we get through this winter, you know, it's still going to be talked about. Absolutely. And it'll be, I think this is so fascinating in so many ways because we spent, you know, in Texas, a lot of time and money talking about this issue. And for obvious reasons,

it was top of mind for legislators and Texans after, you know, such a tragic event happened and so many folks were left high and dry. But what are the chances that this happens again this year? Very, very low, right? And even though this needs to be fortified and folks are very concerned about it, there are so many reasons why this may not be an issue for 10, 20, 40, 50 years. We just don't know, right? and it could happen again very soon and it could not um so interesting to see it politically um in that case and um again just it being top of mind for legislators and a lot of money and an effort being pushed on this is again it made sense but it also is something that may not be an issue for a while so yeah and and one more thing that, you know, Democrats see this as a more independent type of issue. It's less partisan or strictly partisan like election reform or, you know, abortion is.

And so they're really hanging their hats on this to try and be the bridge between their Democratic Party and independent voters. Yeah, absolutely. These kinds of issues are easy to capitalize on and for good reason. Okay, folks, well, let's go ahead and talk about the regular session. So, this year, the legislature here in Texas met and covered a variety of issues. There were some big landmark GOP bills that were passed. Hayden, we're going to get into the first one, kind of talk through the heartbeat bill. Now, this is Isaiah's beat. Usually, he's covered this extensively. Isaiah's with his family and is not on the podcast with us today. So, you're covering this for him. Thank you, Hayden, for doing that for us. But let's talk about what exactly was this heartbeat bill

and what are some of the unique aspects of this new law? You would be hard-pressed to find an issue that evokes a more emotional, passionate response than abortion and the rights of an unborn child versus the rights of a pregnant woman. This heartbeat bill calls into question the centerpiece of the abortion debate in this country for nearly a half century. That is the Supreme Court decision on Roe versus Wade, which of course purported to make it legal nationwide for a woman to have an abortion on the basis that it is her constitutional right to privacy. And that includes abortion, which the Supreme Court precedent considers a personal health care decision. What was unique about this particular act, which was authored by Senator Brian Hughes and sponsored by Representative

Shelby Slauson, I believe, in the House, is it answered a question in the abortion debate that isn't usually discussed very often, and that is whether abortion should be illegal without being criminal. Because there are several different questions in the abortion debate. One, is abortion wrong? Another one is, is abortion murder? Another one is, should abortion be criminalized? But this one answered, should abortion be illegal? Because it doesn't criminalize abortion. In fact, it doesn't allow the state to punish people for providing an abortion or procuring an abortion at all. It allows people to be sued for assisting in providing an abortion to someone. But these are merely lawsuits. They aren't criminal complaints. They aren't criminal charges to challenge Roe v. Wade. But this one goes directly to the core of the Roe v. Wade decision.

And that is, is an unborn child who has a heartbeat prevent abortion from being a legitimate service in the state of Texas. mechanism is not a criminal process, but a civil process of lawsuits being initiated to impose civil penalties on people who aid the process of a pregnant mother procuring an abortion. Yeah, so talk a little bit more about that enforcement. I mean, the enforcement mechanism is really the part of all of this that is the most unique, right? In terms of what this actually does, many other heartbeat bills across the country have been passed into law. And this is kind of a unique take on this enforcement mechanism. It is. And I think one of the reasons for that is it's, again, designed to not circumvent, but to fit the Supreme Court's precedent on this issue. And in the past, we've had state legislatures pass laws that have sought to define personhood at beginning a certain time, a certain period of certain point in gestation. But this law, instead of defining personhood or putting something on the statewide ballot to establish a right to life for a fetus or an unborn child, instead, it seeks to prohibit abortion when there is detectable cardiac activity in that unborn child.

So pro-choice advocates, of course, would say that that's an undue impingement on a woman's right to procure an abortion, even if there is cardiac activity detected in the unborn child. And pro-life advocates, of course, would respond that once someone, born or unborn, has a heartbeat, then it should be unlawful, if not criminal, it should be at least unlawful to cause the death of that unborn child or fetus, whatever terminology you want to use. So that's what makes this different makes this different, different is it doesn't purport to define personhood, but it merely in medical terms states that once the unborn child or fetus reaches this point in development, it is no longer legal for a clinic or a doctor or healthcare provider or whatever agency is wanting to perform the

procedure, it would no longer be legal for an abortion to be performed on that fetus or unborn child. Well, hey, thanks for covering that in Isaiah's absence. Definitely a huge, huge bill that it's, you know, its passage sparked a lot of outrage across the country and a lot of support as well. Daniel, let's move on to guns, another completely uncontroversial topic. But constitutional carry has been something that grassroots activists here in Texas have been pushing for many, many years. This is kind of the landmark pro-Second Amendment bill that a lot of folks have been wanting ever since open carry was passed. But talk to us about what led up to this passage and how constitutional carry became law. Yes. So constitutional carry, which essentially just gets rid of the requirement for you to have

a license to carry that permit that you have to go through a process, pay a fee and take a short class in a shooting proficiency test. You don't have to go through all that anymore with constitutional carry. Essentially, if you can legally possess a firearm, for the most part, you're able to carry that in Texas, in most places in public without a permit. Now, there are some exceptions and caveats. And if you want that, you have to go look at the law. But broadly speaking, that's what constitutional carry did. Now, as far as how it passed, that is definitely an interesting story. It was one of the most intriguing parts of the regular session, in my opinion. And I think the reasons for its passing is just a perfect storm of factors that blew together to create an environment where it was able to pass.

If you rewind the clock back, not this previous regular session of 2021, but a couple years ago, there was another similar bill that nobody would call it constitutional carry, I don't think, but essentially what it would do is in a state of emergency where people are evacuating, they have seven days that they are legally allowed to carry a handgun without a permit. So if there's a hurricane and you're trying to evacuate from your home to get somewhere safe, you can carry your handgun with you. That was a new law that was passed by the legislature in 2019. And if you look at the bill author of that, it's really interesting because it was a Republican from Beaumont, Dade Phelan, who became the Speaker of the House earlier this year. So, with him being at the head of the House, that was definitely a huge factor, I think, to why it actually passed. Now, of course,

there are a lot of other inside stories that even I cannot figure out. I'm sure there are a lot of things behind the scenes that nobody will talk about. But there are other people put in place by Phelan, especially Representative James White, who is put in charge of the Homeland Security Committee, which these types of bills usually go through. And he has also been a proponent of constitutional carry for several years. He had a bill a few sessions ago that was similar to the one that passed this year that had some progress made in the House a couple of years ago, but not as far as this one. So with James White as the chairman of this committee, with Dave Phelan as the Speaker of the House, you had a lot more likelihood of it succeeding in the House. And so as it passed through the House, I think there was also some tension between the House and the the Senate, which usually is seen as the more

stalwart conservative chamber of the legislature because they don't have quite as much political tension, so to speak, inside of that. The Republicans have much more firm control of the Senate than the House. So usually that's where bills like this would tend to see a little bit more success. But there was a lot of opposition from even Republicans in previous years. And so with its passage through the House, then there was a ramp up in public pressure from grassroots activists and people just calling and flooding phone lines. And you also had groups like the NRA and Gun Owners of America putting more pressure on these public officials in the Senate. And so with that pressure, it ended up going through the Senate and made it through. So that was quite an interesting story. If you want

to learn more about it, you can go look up an article that I wrote after the end of session, which is titled How Constitutional Carry Made Its Way Through the Texas Legislature, and go into a little bit more detail on that. Wonderful. And we will have, by the time this podcast is out, a piece up about all of these topics, basically running through the top stories of this last year. And we'll have all sorts of articles linked in that as well for you to reference. Daniel, thank you for covering that for us from start to finish. We appreciate it. Brad, let's talk about the budget. Every year that is the constitutional duty or every legislative session that is the constitutional duty of legislators to pass the state budget.

What does that budget look like? So after an interim full of concerns about how much revenue the state was going to bring in, if there was going to be a budget deficit, things like that, it ended up pretty good in terms of fiscal outlook. But the legislature passed a $248.e. not spending above that unnecessarily. But that didn't include the $16 billion in ARPA money that was given from the federal government that the legislature later appropriated. It doesn't include that, but it did include $1.1 billion for continued property tax compression. That was a continuation of the 2019 legislation that was done to lower rates, lower property tax rates at the local level. It also included $3.1 billion for student enrollment growth. This occurred despite how we saw some trends in various parts of the state of declines in enrollments.

We saw homeschooling skyrocket. We saw other trends at other ISDs of just losing students. So we'll see how much of that 3.1 billion is actually necessary for what growth did happen, but that was there. And then another thing that it wasn't as talked about as much was that the state set a stricter spending cap increase, essentially to go above the population inflation line. They would need a three-fifths vote from both chambers. It's just harder to do, harder to accomplish. So it still can be done, but it would be more difficult. So that's the budget highlights. Awesome. Thank you, Brad. Well, let's pivot

and talk about arguably the biggest legislative moment of this year as a whole, the election integrity bill that sparked a lot of controversy and division in the legislature. Hayden, we'll start with you. Tell us a bit about the fight over this election integrity act and the fate of the law. Anyone who has listened to this podcast for an extended period of time knows that we've talked about the Election Integrity Act a lot. It is a law that stemmed from the 2020 presidential election and a lot of suspicion and frustration over the way that election was executed and some of the lack of transparency that was perceived on the part of especially larger counties. This law survived a barrage of criticism. It survived two, really

three quorum busts and made it to its effective date earlier this month on December 2nd. But ironically enough, it was ultimately undermined by a court that is composed entirely of Republicans. And of course, we'll talk more about the quorum bust, but the quorum bust is not what undermined this law. It made it in the end, even though it was stymied during three sessions, it ultimately passed on the third try and a ruling by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that a state statute that was passed years ago was unconstitutional ultimately is what undermined this law. The Attorney General legally has had the authority to prosecute violations of the election laws for decades. And the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in an eight to one decision that the statute

allowing the Attorney General to do that is inconsistent with the separation of powers. There was only one dissenting judge from that decision. Of course, he was a Republican too, because all nine judges on the court are Republicans. So we'll get more into the quorum bust, but it is ironic that this bill, which is the GOP's signature legislative accomplishment of 2021, possibly competing with the Heartbeat Act because power begets power. And this law allowed the GOP to set the terms for elections and set up stringent requirements in some cases and more lax requirements than others for the conduct of elections. But some of the criminal statutes that were put into place by this law now would need to be prosecuted by county attorneys and district attorneys because the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has taken away the Attorney General's ability to convene grand juries and prosecute

these cases himself. So this law now relies on Democratic officials in the larger Texas counties, Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Travis, and the like, to prosecute offenses under this act. And of course, Democrats aren't necessarily going to be thrilled or very motivated about enforcing the GOP signature election law, especially because they believe it is an outgrowth of President Trump's claim that President Biden lost the election in 2020 and that he was inaugurated illegitimately. So the quorum – Certainly. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, yeah. Well, I said certainly. That's kind of the whole crux of this. And Daniel, I know Daniel had something 24-hour voting and drive-through voting. through voting, measures like that, which the election bill has kind of put into place to

kind of restrict them from doing that and tying the hands of county governments in changing the election procedures in that manner. So those things are still not affected by the Criminal Court of Appeals ruling, but the voter fraud prosecution is certainly an interesting turn of events. Absolutely. Well, Hayden, thank you for covering that for us. Brad, we're going to stick on this topic of the quorum bus. Let's talk about the legislative funding veto. Now, a couple weeks after the initial walkout killed this election reform bill when Democrats left the House in opposition to its passage, the governor retaliated with this veto. Talk to us about how this all went down. Yeah, so I think it was either the day or two days after the initial walkout, Governor Habits said that he threatened to veto the Article 11 funding, I think, whichever one covers the legislature. And he eventually followed through on that. He vetoed it a couple of weeks later. And then we kind of had this, you know, back and forth on

would the legislature pass this election reform bill specifically before the new fiscal year started in September? If not restored by the start of the new fiscal year beginning in September, then the legislature would have no money to pay staff or fund the legislative adjacent agencies that help it do its job during session and special sessions. Throughout this, Democrats appealed, they appealed to SCOTUS to invalidate Abbott's veto, but that was rejected by the court. When September came, when it came near, this was in August, state legislative leaders extended the funding a month to give them extra cushion by moving money from one part of the budget to the legislative budget. And then in the end, it wasn't really needed because the final election reform bill was passed and the funding was passed

just before the new fiscal year took hold. I think it was right at the end of August. Yeah, absolutely. Big moves there made by Democrats and the governor retaliating was certainly something that a lot of folks had concerns over whether it would actually come to fruition or not. And it was interesting to watch the timelines of all those things. Let's go ahead and talk through the next steps on this.

On July 12th, Democrats took the fight over election reform to another level and flew to the nation's capital. Tell us more about that, Brad. Yeah, initially 58 House Democrats met at Austin-Bergstrom Airport and took a privately chartered flight to Washington, D.C. The idea for that was being out of state, they were out of reach of Texas DPS and anyone that could be deputized by the Speaker of the House to arrest the quorum breaking members and bring them to the Capitol, to the House chamber, in order to enforce a quorum. Gradually, though, over the summer, tensions arose. The various factions within the Democrats disputed different strategies, and we saw various members end up coming back. I think everyone knew what was going to happen, especially when Representative Joe Moody and Representative James Tallarico returned to the House chamber.

That was really, I think, the turning point in speeding up a return and restoring a quorum. But throughout this, the House stood at a standstill because nothing could be done. You couldn't hear any bills in committee. The only thing that you could do was to see if there was a quorum and there wasn't. And so that lasted for a couple months before they restored it. Yeah. And then August came around and what happened? Eventually, enough people returned to set a quorum and then they started passing legislation and moving things that they had been waiting to for a while. But there was still a contingent of Democrats that remained in D.C. for a substantial amount

of time after a quorum was restored, despite them not being able to prevent things from moving. But once the quorum was restored, things started getting passed and they eventually, the Republicans got what they wanted. Yeah. So let's talk through what kind of punishment efforts or attempted rule changes happened there to prevent this from happening again. Yeah. So there were a lot of calls from Republican members of the house, especially, and also the Texas GOP to remove members that broke quorum from committee chairmanships, any other roles they possessed, formal roles. But those were the big ones. And there were two proposals that were put out, neither of which got anywhere. One by Representative Cody Vassut, and then the other by Representatives Drew Darby and Hugh Schein.

Both had varying takes on how to set punishment and recourse. Vesute, notably, though, the difference was it would have retroactively punished members that broke quorum rather than just set standards for going forward. But like I said, neither got very far at all. None passed, neither passed. And then Speaker Phelan's main response throughout this episode was after a SCOTIX decision was sided with him and Governor Abbott, he issued some arrest warrants for, I think it was 52 members. And he also called on the quorum breakers to return their per diems or legislative per diems that they earned while away in DC. But

it really amounted to not very much. And we'll see if there's any support in the next legislative session to set a punishment for breaking quorum. But based on how the last one ended, last special session ended, I would think they probably, that probably won't return. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for covering that for us. Hayden, we're going to come to you and talk about the border crisis. Certainly a big story over the last few years and even more so this year. But let's talk about what was different this year about the border and border coverage. It was the sheer number of illegal crossings. That's the takeaway from this year. In fiscal

year 2021, which was from October 2020 to September 2021, there were 1.15 million plus enforcement encounters with illegal immigrants in Texas border patrol sectors. And it's notable that there were an average number of about of nearly 96,000 apprehensions in Texas border patrol sectors each month. And the number of Honduran nationals who were apprehended each month was nearly as many as the number of Mexican nationals apprehended each month. And of course, that includes unaccompanied children and family units. So when we talk about the border, it's important to remember that we're also talking about Central American individuals coming here, not just Mexican nationals. And this year was a record-breaking year. The fiscal year 2021 saw more apprehensions

than any other year prior. And that doesn't even include the number of gotaways, which border security professionals tell us were likely more than usual because border agents are preoccupied with tending to humanitarian issues such as dehydration and people being abandoned by their smugglers. So talk to us about the Biden administration's response to this and the state of Texas, how those two are kind of compared in contrast. The Biden administration began by ending the Remain in Mexico policy, seeking to end the Remain in Mexico policy and seeking to end the border wall project, which they stopped construction on. Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been placed in charge of border and immigration issues, has been seeking to find or identify what they keep calling the root causes of migration. That phrase, root causes of migration, has been their

mantra from the beginning, but clearly it's not effectively reducing illegal crossings. They are taking a broader policy approach, and of course the courts have forced them to implement some of the policies that they tore down, such as the Remain in Mexico policy and the border wall. They have even started back up on the border wall, closing gaps while maintaining their reasoning that the border wall caused environmental damage and that they're going in to repair that. So they've had to walk back a little bit and a lot on some of their policy decisions, but illegal crossings are still high. In terms of the state response, Operation Lone Star was launched by Governor Greg Abbott in March, and through December

9, there have been 8,900 plus criminal arrests and more than 82,000 referrals of illegal immigrants to federal authorities. Operation Lone Star also includes a state border wall project that commenced in recent weeks, construction on a state border wall that is funded by Texas taxpayer dollars, as well as a crowdfunding effort launched by the governor's office that was bankrolled in part by a Wyoming billionaire named Timothy Mellon, who has supported Republican candidates in the past. So federal government's policies, not exactly very effective. We're still seeing a record high number of illegal immigration. However, they argue that the Trump administration's policies were cruel and inconsistent with American values.

The state has supplemented federal efforts and is hoping to get a border wall up and continue to use state resources to reduce illegal crossings. Well, thank you for covering that for us, Hayden. Always our border guy. Daniel, let's talk about another legislative issue here. Redistricting happens every 10 years after each census. And it took place this year, which ended up being definitely something that Democrats used to negotiate their way through the election reform bill process. And Republicans also did as well, saying, hey, if we don't get this done, it's Democrats who are making this happen. And definitely something that had to be addressed in that

final special session. But talk to us about what happened with redistricting and where we're at here in Texas. Yes. So normally what happens is the census happens every 10 years. So 2010, 2020. And then they release the data the following year in the 2021-2011, that odd numbered year. And the data kind of rolls out in different stages, but usually Texas ends up getting the data around February or March of that year. Now, because of the citing the pandemic, the Census Bureau actually did not release the data. They did not have it available until later than usual. So Texas wasn't actually able to complete the redistricting process during the regular legislative session when they normally would have. So because of that, it was kind of this thing that was left up in the air. Lawmakers were left wondering when the Census Bureau was

actually going to release the data, how long this delay would be, and when they would actually be able to get to this. Now, ultimately, what happened was it did come during the fall. This happened after the second special session back in August, September, was when the data was actually released to the public and lawmakers could start actually getting in there and looking at what the new maps could potentially look like. So once they got the data, then after that, Governor Greg Abbott called another special session for lawmakers to address the issue in September. And that went from September to October. Now, this was a 30-day special session, but the lawmakers still managed to get through all the maps they needed to during that time. There were four different maps they had to address, the State House, the State Senate, the Congress congressional map, and the state board of education. All four maps passed through both chambers and were signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott. So they did that all in the 30 days. In terms of changing the political landscape, that's always

the big question about redistricting. How much is the party in control going to swing things toward their favor? What we saw this year, of course, and this happens usually all the time, is lawmakers tend to draw the maps not necessarily to favor their party so much as they are trying to draw it to favor themselves. And so it really does favor the incumbents, prioritizes that much more above the party itself. And we saw the same thing happen this time where incumbents, with a few exceptions, were basically drawn to have more party support shore up for them in their districts rather than trying to build everything up for the Republicans. Now, that being said, the maps did shift toward Republicans slightly. So Republicans are expected to pick up some more seats in the state house and state senate and probably a congressional seat or two as well. And so with those changes, it does favor the Republican Party slightly. But broadly speaking, it does kind

of shift the voting population so that districts become a little bit more heavy toward one side of the other. So that's kind of other. So that's the basic takeaway. The basic rundown. Now, Republicans had control like you were talking about here, but who, if any, Republicans actually were affected negatively by redistricting this time around? Yes. So there were a few Republicans who were affected negatively. The first person that comes to mind is Representative Jeff Kasin in Tarrant County, who definitely got the rough end of the stick with the redistricting maps that were drawn. Now, he has kind of blamed several of the other members in the Tarrant County delegation. So, Tarrant County is broken down with a little bit

more Republicans than Democrats in the district. And those Republicans, the Republicans who had been there for a much longer time than Kaysen, who's a freshman representative who replaced Representative Stickland, who retired at the end of his previous term. So in this district, they redrew his seat to actually be favorable toward Democrats, which was kind of an interesting turn of events, but that's what they did. So that was one Republican incumbent who was not given a boost. Another person who probably was also affected, or he also blames the new maps as a reason for his retirement is in the Senate, Senator Kel Seliger. He's a West Texas Senator. He's up in Amarillo, but his district goes from Amarillo down to the Midland Odessa region. There were several more counties down by Midland Odessa that were added to his district and some of his panhandle counties were actually taken away. And so he was arguing that that was shifted

to favor one of his opponents who actually ended up getting endorsement from former President Trump and as well as, I believe, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick now as well. So that is another person who in the Senate, where his district was taken from East County and then some of the central Texas area, and now her district is no longer there. But she's running for land commissioner, so it doesn't affect her anyways. So those are some of the changes that happened. Got it. Now talk to us about retirements. Have we seen a lot of retirements in light of redistricting this year? Yes. redistricting this year. Yes, a lot in terms of redistricting and then also just other factors

that play a role in people's decisions to not run for office again or to run for a different office as well. So in the state house, there are actually 26 members who are not running for re-election to the house. Some of those are retiring. Some of them are running for a different office. In the Senate, there have been, I believe, four retirements and then one, Don Buckingham, who's running for a different office. So five total members who are not returning. And then in Congress, you also have four members of Congress who are not running for reelection as well, which is actually a little bit lower than it was last time. But there were a lot of other factors at play last time that led

to some Republicans leaving then. And then of course, with the primary races ahead of us, there's, I believe, about 30 primary challengers just in the GOP side in the state house. So it'll be interesting to see how those races shake up. That's more than there was last time, about as much as there were a couple election cycles ago. So we'll see how those turn out. We could expect a few more incumbent members to not return as well, but we'll see. Very good. Well, thank you, Daniel, for covering that. Let's move on to lawsuits. These always seem to be an issue. Big stories all around this year in terms of how different bills, either bills that were passed were challenged in court or just general lawsuits battling between state officials. Let's talk about the Heartbeat Act. We already spoke about this a little bit earlier, Hayden, but briefly tell us about some of the litigation targeting the heartbeat bill. The heartbeat bill itself was allowed to go into effect on September 1st,

much to the dismay of many people who were hoping the Supreme Court would strike it down using Roe versus Wade as the basis and Planned Parenthood versus Casey and other relevant case law. But it did go into effect on September 1st. And there were other lawsuits against it, I believe, naming some of the defendants were pro-life activists, people who were potentially going to be the ones initiating suits against abortion providers. Again, the law allows anyone in the state of Texas to, any adult, I suppose, to initiate a lawsuit against someone who assists in the process of an abortion. So the lawsuits that were filed named some of these activists as defendants. Lawsuits that are against states, um, or between states originate in the Supreme Court, I believe, but not necessarily where one state is a party. Um, sorry, that was a rabbit trail, but Biden filed suit against the state of Texas and that lawsuit

was thrown out by the Supreme Court earlier this month. And the high court also whittled down some of the lists of defendants for the other lawsuit. So the chances of the lawsuit succeeding were diminished in that regard. Long story short, the litigation against the Heartbeat Act is not looking good. And I, it's been reported before that this law, because of its enforcement mechanism, not necessarily defining personhood and leaving it to lawsuits, um, is not, doesn't necessarily go to the heart of Roe versus Wade. Um, the same way that the Mississippi law does, uh, which, um, is, as I understand, has more of a personhood element to it. And so we're still awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court on that case. And that will be a little bit more informative as to how the Texas Heartbeat Act, whether it will ultimately have staying power.

Awesome. Thank you, Hayden. Let's talk about other lawsuits that basically just sprung up after the legislative session. Daniel, what are some of those and where are they at in the process? Yes. So whereas the rest of the year was focused on a lot of the legislative process, and then you had the whole quorum break during the summer. The fall has really been defined as just another lawsuit season along with deer season. So you've got lawsuits being filed after lawsuit, after lawsuit, after lawsuits in courts, challenging everything you could possibly imagine, I think. It seems like there's just been so many. So some of the big ones that we've been paying attention to, of course, uh, Hayden mentioned this earlier when he was talking about it, uh, with the election

bill, uh, there is a lawsuit challenging the election bill more broadly than just what the criminal court of appeals had ruled, uh, regarding the, um, the ability of the attorney general to prosecute voter fraud. Um, but there's also been a lot of challenges to the other aspects of the attorney general to prosecute voter fraud. But there's also been a lot of challenges to the other aspects of the election bill as well that is still pending in court. Of course, after redistricting, usually these court cases would move a little bit faster because the redistricting process is done sooner in the year, but it's kind of been slow and drawn out past the filing deadline for the redistricting lawsuits.

Without any changes to the maps yet, there haven't been any orders to delay the election or anything like that. So things are moving along without any successful challenges to the maps there, but they're still pending in court and something could potentially happen. Another bill that had been passed during one of the special sessions this fall that has also been challenged in court and actually has an injunction against it now is a social media censorship bill, which has essentially established a bunch of new protocols for social media companies who have consumers in Texas to have more transparency and different mechanisms as far as what they do to censor content, especially of a political or opinion nature to it. So that lawsuit is also pending, but there is an injunction against that bill from actually being enforced by the state. And then the other big issue that we've been seeing this fall is after President Joe Biden issued his executive order and mandates pushing for vaccine mandates in various different capacities.

We've seen a lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit filed. Many of those been filed in Texas, some courts in Texas, uh, there, or that oversee Texas, like the fifth circuit, um, have issued, uh, different opinions and trying to, uh, block, uh, his mandates from going into effect essentially. So we've seen lawsuit after lawsuit. It, the lawsuits never end. I don't think, I guess it's part of living in a system where you have courts. Yeah. We're one of the three big branches of government are the you know involves the courts um well daniel thank you for that and um we'll continue to watch those this are definitely going to leak into 2022 they're not going away anytime soon so we may be talking about them next year at this time gentlemen let's talk about the biggest story

of 2020 was assuredly covet that just is the nature of the beast. And this year, it definitely did not go anywhere in terms of coverage and just affecting people's lives, businesses here in the state. Let's talk about it. Generally, Daniel, give us a rundown of where we're at with COVID this year and what some of the big stories were. So just a big overview of COVID. If you haven't been paying attention to the news, or it really hasn't just affected you because it hasn't affected as many people, I don't think, directly as it did in 2020. You haven't seen quite as many lockdowns and stuff, at least in Texas, as you had in previous years. So just a broad overview, you had the wave of cases that we saw starting in fall 2020,

and it peaked up in January. Then cases started to decline. Everybody really forgot about COVID when the freeze happened, and that just got pushed to the side. But a few weeks after the freeze happened, as cases declined and you had the distribution of the vaccine, the initial vaccine to anybody who wanted one really that was over, what was the age, 18 or 21. So the vaccine had been distributed, case numbers were going down, and that's when Governor Abbott kind of took a reverse stance that he had taken in 2020 and said that Texas was going to be open 100%. So he ended his restrictions on business that had limited capacity to 50 or 75% in most cases. And he also reversed course on his statewide mask mandate that he'd issued in July of 2020. And so that was kind of big news in March. He had a lot of pushback from Democrats and opponents like Beto O'Rourke, who were saying that this was too premature. But case numbers continued to decline after that. And we didn't really see

much else until the Delta variant kind of took off earlier this summer in around July, August. And then case numbers for that started rising. We saw an increase in hospitalizations again. And then, of course, in that time of July and August, people are going back to school. So we saw this issue be brought to the forefront of schools and ISDs who were then trying to issue more of their own vaccine mandates and mask mandates to the dismay of the state government. So you had some lawsuits going on there, just a lot of drama overall. So you had the wave of Delta cases spike, and then it started to decline again. So it didn't last as long as the previous wave.

And now we're seeing a new increase in cases with the Omicron variant, which it seems like it's not as severe as the previous variants, but it is affecting, it's spreading faster. And so we've seen, at this point, we've seen a little bit of an uptick in hospitalizations, uh, but not, uh, compared to the uptick in the infection rate that we've seen. Um, so that's kind of interesting. We'll see where it goes in a couple of weeks. Uh, if it goes as high as previous waves or not, um, that is yet to be seen, but that's where we're at. And then of course you have all the vaccine's where we're at. And then, of course, you have all

the VAX mandates that I talked about earlier. And then, you know, debates about whether private businesses could issue mandates for their employers, employees, so on and so forth. So on and so forth. What a wonderful way to end this portion of the podcast. Gentlemen, thank you for recapping 2021 for us and for our listeners. We appreciate you guys. And I appreciate you guys covering all the topics so that we don't have to follow them so closely. You guys report among the best of them. I would love now to talk about the new year. We are heading into 2022. We're just days away. And I think we all have varying opinions on the importance of the new year and just kind of what it means going forward. I know Brad is a Scrooge, not about New Year's,

just in general, but also about New Year's. Very true, yes. Yeah. But I would love to kind of start there. Gentlemen, new year's 2022. What are we looking forward to? I know one of our bullet points here that I'm looking at on our document literally just says why Brad is wrong about new year. So Brad, you want to tell us why you're right about new years and then we can pick it apart.

Wait, so we're not doing the predictions. We will. We're talking about new years. generally yeah we have a couple things to go over first we're going to flay me in front of our listeners okay yes that's correct this is first order of business as always i think that's best um okay i think we should have the opportunity to eviscerate brad and then we'll move on to other you know okay yeah i think it's a good protocol just in general and in all podcasts that we do agreed agreed tough but fair i'll give it to you um well i think new year's is an overrated holiday i think um if you talk about new year's eve people go out determined to have a good time and uh you can probably count the amount of people on one

hand that actually do have a good time because everyone's trying too hard. Personally, I like to be in bed by 10 o'clock on New Year's. I extend my bedtime about a half hour from its normal date or time. This year, I probably will be up later than that because Michigan plays the late game after I'm going to the UC game up in Dallas. So I will probably violate that. But anyway, New Year's itself is a pointless holiday. It shouldn't even be a holiday.

I guess the only benefit is that people get it off for work. It's pointless that we're moving from one calendar year to another? It's just entirely pointless? You can go with any number of calendars. There's the Julian calendar, which sets it in mid-January or something. There have been many different calendars across the entire length of human history that have set the new year at different points. And so I think it's kind of arbitrary. And to that point, I think this desire to new year, new me, I think, you know, just you can have a, you can transform your life at any point during the year. You don't need to wait

for the new year to do it. So that's my rant and I'm sticking to it. I don't care how much you guys disagree with it. Daniel, why is he wrong? Well, here's the point. Okay. You can say that new year, new me, you can do that at any point of the year and you could do that at any point of the year. And if you want to set your new year, new me at your birthday, which happens to fall in April instead of January, then go for it. But I think it is good to have a habitual time of year where you kind of take stock in your life and you look back and you say, okay, what happened in the past year? What do I want to change? What are the things that I need to do differently in my life moving forward? And so you reevaluate things and you do that on a habitual basis. And even if it is arbitrary, I completely agree. New Year's is arbitrary. We could go with

a different calendar. I don't care. But it is, I think, good to have a time that you just traditionally say, hey, what did I do wrong? What can I do differently? How should I change? So you have that on a regular basis. If you just say, I can just do it whenever, well, then you're not going to do it. Hayden, where do you land in this debate? Well, agreeing with Daniel, the arbitrariness argument is not unique to New Year's. Pretty much everything we do, every holiday we have is arbitrary. Jesus doesn't necessarily have to be celebrated on Easter or December 25th. You don't necessarily have to get up at what time you do. It's most everything we do has some element of arbitrariness and we do it anyway and it's useful anyway and i think brad's primary objection to new year's is going out and celebrating and having to stay up late which you can go to bed at a reasonable hour wake up

refreshed on the morning of new year's day and proceed with all of the wonderful goals that you set for yourself. And you can start fresh any time of the year. But there's just something special about that clean slate about seeing 1-1-2022 on your calendar and knowing that today is the first day of the year and it's going to be one for the ages. That's my argument in favor of New Year's Day. Wow. I would like to provide a rebuttal. Okay. Well, it won't be a good one, so we'd hate it. Hayden ended on saying that this year will be one for the ages.

Well, how many times have people said, you know, this year is going to be something different? And what ends up happening, it is the same thing as it always has been. Don't project your own failures on the rest of humanity. No, I'm just saying that things happen the way they do constantly because that's just how it works. And this idea that just because we change the clocks on a new

year means that this year is going to be dramatically different than every other year in human history is silliness. And I think it oversells the effect that man has on events that occur. I just think you're generally negative and scroogey and i think this is just more evidence of that fact regardless of what you think of new year's the takeaway from this is not whether or not new year should be celebrated but that brad is a scrooge that is the that that is the takeaway and i think hayden and daniel would agree with that based on the grins on their faces yeah that's fair um thank you good glad to hear it let's talk 2022 predictions boys anything that you think will happen either politically or otherwise let's leave if you have an otherwise

prediction feel free to throw that in as well but what do you expect come 2022 don't all jump at once more lawsuit i think a lot of people are going to be sued i'm suing dave right now i'm i'm literally i'm writing the lawsuit as we speak uh because of all the all the lame jokes that he makes on a regular basis and i just i think images are in the millions at this point and i think it's finally time that he's brought to justice. Hayden, that sucks. But it doesn't suck like a vacuum. Okay.

I've been hanging out with my dear Opa over Christmas. And the number of jokes that he makes that remind me of Daniel, it's off the charts. It's like Daniel has become an 80-year-old man in his brain already. I believe it. Okay, great. But more lawsuits, Hayden. That's awesome. Any other predictions from Brad and or Daniel? Well, I think there's going to be a lot of kicking and screaming coming out of Washington, D.C., as there always is. And it's one of the three constants in the world, death, taxes, and just people making a fervor out of a lot of things in Washington, D.C. So I think that's going to continue, and there's not really going to be much done here in Texas.

I think. Kicking and screaming over what? Give us something more specific than just that DC will go on as. It doesn't matter what. It's just going to happen as it always does. I need better predictions from you guys. I need better predictions. I'm sorely, sorely disappointed.

How about just politics in general? That's what they do. Yes. Give me something specific. Okay. I've got something specific thank you daniel um i think the elections will generally be boring um especially in this at the state level after redistricting there's not going to be too many interesting uh general election races there will be a few um in at the federal level i think things will be a little bit more interesting especially with the senate uh elections that's where i think we might see a little bit more uh drama to see which party might be able to pull uh up to 51 members in the senate or if they're going to stay split 50-50 like they are right now, or 50-50 plus one for Democrats. Now in the House, I think my most solid prediction,

I do think Republicans will take the House back. So I think gridlock will continue one way or another in DC, which I don't know. I like the founder's way of building in lots of gridlock. That's cool. Gridlock does prevent many things from happening, which is not a bad thing whatsoever. Okay, I've got a question. Will any statewide elected Republicans, not that there are any statewide elected Democrats, will any statewide elected Republicans be unseated in their primaries? Brad? No. Daniel? unseated in their primaries brad uh no daniel probably not but there's a chance are you talking about any statewide any statewide elected republican be unseated in their primary i seriously doubt it wow okay very interesting very what about you

i'm you know for kicks and giggles i'll say yes because you all said no somebody's got to take the other the other side of the coin here i uh something a prediction i have is dealing with energy i think we will start to see, um, the oil situation balance back out as, uh, the, the supply chain and the market readjust to, uh, basically restored demand by everybody. We saw it take, jump off a cliff, uh, with the pandemic. And that's why we saw, you know, the prices for oil fall well below zero into the negatives. Right now, prices are fairly high. But it's this constant supply and demand, this constant equilibrium. And I think we'll start to see the price for a barrel of oil

trend lower. But that's not necessarily a bad thing because, um, if you're hitting that equilibrium of, uh, consumption versus supply, um, you know, it's more profitable for everyone on all ends of the equation. Whereas right now we're in a point where things are costing a lot because the supply is, has not caught up yet. And so I think we'll see, um, you know, producers, uh, restore or adjust to the new, the new market, whatever that may be. And I think, um, it'll probably result in, in some, uh, good financial times, at least for the, the oil and, um, other, you know, oil and gas industry. Brad being as nerdy and dry as always. Three guarantees in life, death taxes and that. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much and Happy New Year. Listeners, we're so grateful that you stuck with us through another calendar year, regardless of what calendar it is that you subscribe to. But thank you so much. We appreciate you. Gentlemen, thank you for your coverage. And we will catch you next week on the podcast. Thank you all so much for listening.

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