The Texan Podcast - Top 5 Moments from the 89th Legislative Session: Smoke Filled Room Ep. 17

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

In this episode of Smoke Filled Room, Mackenzie and Brad dive into the top five moments of the latest Texas legislative session. From the pivotal ESA bill vote to the unexpected Senate vs. House showdown over judicial pay raises, they cover the key turning points and surprise elements that defined this session. They also discuss the potential for a special session focusing on congressional redistricting and the ongoing scuffle with Texans for Lawsuit Reform. Plus, they share funny highlights like the infamous 'Gavel Gate' and Ms. T's rousing speech against pimpsListen to more Smoke Filled Room podcasts from our team wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review.

Yeah. Got it. If you could clap when you start, would that be cool? Okay, perfect. Yeah, man, clap like a seal. Like Slappy the Seal. Did you ever see that movie? No.

I don't even remember the premise other than these kids found a seal and they named him Slappy and he became one of their gang. It seems like an appropriate name for a seal. Yeah, but he would... constantly. Okay, are you ready? Let's do it. Let's do it. Three, two, one. Howdy folks, it's Mackenzie and Brad on another edition of Smoke-Filled Room. Bradley, happy end of session. Happy sinead. I was a couple days ago, but yeah, I'm still wishing it. I just thought wishing good things to you would be received with maybe some more warmth, but I should have known better. That's not me.

That's very, very true. You clearly don't know me after six years. Do you feel like you have, your general mood has improved since the end of session or do you feel the same? Do you feel burnt out? Do you feel the same? Because nothing, everything continues to happen. Yes.

There's been no downturn. It's been nonstop ever since the gavel hit. You weren't sunburned though from your boat excursion on a Sine or post Sine die. So that's a win. I am sunburned. Just not as bad as I have been before. Okay. The dang cloud burden got me to the point where it's causing you pain or just a have been before. Okay. The dang cloud burden got me.

To the point where it's causing you pain or just a very low level. Okay. So pain. Yeah. Not nothing unbearable. I can ignore it fine, but yeah. Well, it's better than the previous time. And I did put sunscreen on this time. And I still, I don't remember.

That's, that's important. I was a few cores banquets in. I don't recall the number on the sunscreen bottle. Your SPF? Yeah. Well, next time maybe just opt for a little bit of a higher level of protection and you'll be fine. I should.

Well, folks, happy end of session to all y'all too. This has been a wild one, but also a little bit less wild than maybe... Kumbaya session? Should we coin that? Yeah, I think we should coin that. It's definitely not gonna, you know, we're not gonna get in trouble for copyright and for being that that is certainly

has been thrown around in the past. Well, it very nearly wasn't at the end. Does the Kumbaya session, like the first coined one from, was that 2019? 2019? Does that feel like forever ago to you? Well, that was my first introduction to Texas politics, so it's always rooted as a point of, you know, relativity to me with all this stuff. But does it feel like forever ago? It feels like, relativity to me. Yeah. With all this stuff. But does it feel like forever ago?

It feels like forever ago to me. It feels like a lot more hair ago. Oh, should I read our, no, that's going to be hard to find. We've been texting so much the last couple of days, but I did say that we should do like a before and after of Brad, like how he fared during session from start to finish. And one of the, one of the litmus tests I threw out there as evidence of your stress levels was a before and after picture of the back of your head from January to June. Oh man.

Nobody looks at the back of my head more than you do, thanks to the situation in the office. So I literally have a window in my office that looks out onto the back of Brad's head, which is just a bummer for him. Yeah. It's like your own personal little art gallery. Art gallery. Oh boy.

But it's exciting. Sessions ended. We'll talk a little bit about the possibility of potentially legislating more this year, but for now it's over. 89R, regular session complete. Well, and I guess we'll just say this now before we forget, but thanks to everybody for following

and reading, watching, listening to all of our stuff. It's nice to know we're not just screaming out into a void. It feels that way sometimes. Yeah. When you record and publish and do so from the confines of an office or wherever it is, it does feel like that sometimes. But there's been so much engagement from folks. That's been incredibly encouraging.

But it's great walking around the Capitol and hearing people come up to us even if I've never seen them before, don't know them, talk about how they like the show or they like our writing and that kind of thing. So we really appreciate it and we're glad to have an audience. A friend of Rob's came up to him and said, oh my gosh, you work at the Texan? Do you know Brad Johnson? And Rob, I don't think I think I think his eyes rolled out of the And he said yes, he tells me to go

Explodive he's he basically made a point that you lob plenty of excellent. Yes This person lobs expletives at me every single day. I do know Brad Johnson which well and I was just doing him a solid and loosening him up. And now he lobs it right back at me. So it's great. Great office dynamic. Yeah. You guys definitely do so the most. I would rather it be that way than everyone walking on eggshells and I stomp on all the eggshells. Yeah. But you also, Brad, cause people to walk on eggshells when you're in a bad mood. No, that's true.

Yeah, it is a terrifying moment. But seriously, in all seriousness, we do so appreciate everyone tuning in. I think the longer we exist each session, it becomes more and more fun for us to do our jobs because our team, one, they are just increasingly talented and great at what they do and I'm so proud of y'all, but also our audience, I think, becomes more and more engaged with what we do, which provides so much fodder and encouragement

for us to just kind of plug away at what we do. Yeah, so to everyone inside and outside the building, cheers, happy Sineadie. Happy Sineadie. Well, this today, we're gonna talk about all sorts of different things. First of all, and this will take up the vast majority of our time, we're going to talk about top five moments of session, pivotal key points that changed the trajectory of what happened legislatively or politically. So we'll walk through those. We'll also talk about the potential of a

special session and what that might look like this summer. Brad also alluded to all of this, I don't know, just internal craziness happening that hasn't really stopped since Sunday night happened that there has been really no reprieve. And so we'll get into exactly what we're talking about there. We also want to talk about the new president pro tem and his speech on the Senate floor this week. So lots to get into today. But Brad, why don't we go ahead and start off with our top five moments of session. I'll start with number one. We wanna get into, obviously the speaker's race

was a huge, huge deal at the beginning of session. But I think- Historic. Absolutely. And we've waxed eloquence about that for probably far too much at this point. But a specific moment we wanna talk about during session that was a key turning point in how speaker boroughs Perceived by the house or by those outside the chamber

Was the motion to vacate walk us through what happened So when we were talking about this first, I said, you know the speaker vote itself That was literally the first day and there was a lot that happened in between. Um, but I think the, the dividing line between what we thought session might look like and what session turned out to actually be was the motion to vacate. Um, the motion to try and oust the speaker by representative Brian Harrison in the middle of session. And he got a whopping two votes for it with him and one was even half-hearted

we saw what the other person that voted with him issued a statement afterwards and kind of representative David Lowe walked back at least some of his commitment to this general attempt right right? The reason I think it's kind of a dividing line is there was a lot of still lingering irritation and enmity between the two sides of two factions of the Republican Party in the House caucus. You know, always, which was such a brutal political fight before session, you're going to have the natural gravity of people just like, all right, let's get this past us. He's the speaker.

I'm not going to throw bombs anymore. I want to get my stuff done, right? I'm going to work with the speaker. The speaker reached out to almost all the members to try and get them at least somewhat on board with the plan going forward and trying to march everyone in unison one direction at least vaguely one direction right but this moment and how much it ended up backfiring seems to be the thing that unified the caucus more than anything we thought could

actually happen in this session now it's not to say it was all hunky-dory throughout, it's not to say there weren't little gripes here and there between members or between leadership and certain faction, but this is the moment when we saw what was left of the reform group become less of an outwardly opposite force, right? There's only one person that was really trying to throw bombs all session in the house and that was Representative Harrison. Most of his, at least previous friends up until that point,

largely abandoned that general attitude toward leadership. At least that pointed toward leadership. There were certainly policy instances where they would take to the back mic and make their point on conservative issues or GOP priorities. And we saw it kind of boil up even after the speaker vote in the rules fight, right? That caused a lot of abrasion between the camps. And you know, I get it. Rules are supposed to be debated, right? Like that's what was said over and over again.

We're gonna have commitments were made about we're gonna debate these things, have it out on the floor and see where the votes fall. It didn't happen because the question was called on the rules about an hour, hour and a half in. Which means that the vote was rushed essentially. That was ended. All the amendments that were going to be attempted to be tacked on weren't. And they just, they voted the rules through.

So at that point, from my perspective, oh man, this thing can go really off the rails. And based on how brutal the speaker election was, both behind the scenes and publicly, it was hard to see anything happening other than just constant fights throughout session. And the speaker struggling to maintain a majority even more than speakers already do under normal circumstances.

Right. So, um, that was that point, but then the motion vacate happens and you get two votes for it. One was halfhearted and that is just an entirely different dynamic. And a lot of that, I think, in due, you know, specifically talking about the reform group and their reticence to continue to lambast house leadership. I do think in large part is due, and we talked about this before, is due to the fact that there was not necessarily the same retribution tactic levied by House leadership against

those members who were opposed to borough speakership saying, okay, you voted against me or you're in the top, you know, X percent of the conservative majority. I'm not going to allow you to have amendments that pass or bills that are filed and heard on the house floor like that did not That and certainly behind the scenes there were conversations that we are not privy to right But on in large part you'd see members who are very adversarial Toward boroughs and the speakers fight and even in the first couple of months of session Find their way to the front mic and pass bills months of session, find their way to the front mic and pass bills, tack amendments on, and you didn't see these kind of votes where folks were just

voting against someone because of who, what their name was in the same way that we've seen in previous sessions with different leadership. Well if you, I watch, there were about five, six members that I spent a lot of time watching on the floor because they were the ones doing a lot of the stuff. One of those was Tony Tinderholt who is now not returning to the Texas House. He has announced his retirement and he is instead running for Tarrant County Commissioner in that newly drawn Republican precinct. Which if you are interested in some local scuttlebutt that has incredible political implications go follow Kim Roberts reporting about the Tarrant County Redistrict Unified because it is fascinating. Very much so. But he was one

of the ringleaders of the opposition group of conservative members on the right flank of the caucus and I did there was a photo I took of him or of the group generally huddling I think it was on deadline night and Tinder Holt's you can see him easily because he's bald and sticks out like a sore thumb but you look at the photo and everyone's eyes are locked on him he's the one strategizing which in a lot of the speeches surrounding his retirement the folks were honoring him with they said said the exact same thing, like, or Tony, when we went, or Democrats would go to Tinder hold to be like, Hey, I need your help on this bill.

I think you actually might be amenable to it. You know, you can sway some votes. Yeah. Um, also, uh, anyway, so, so he was the ringleader. They're one of the couple of ringleaders. Another one I would say is probably Mitch Little whose voice carried a lot of weight in that crowd. There were some votes that his opinion swayed people one way or the other because they trusted

him. They trusted his assessment on things. But Tony was talking with the speaker a lot. We'll just watch from the floor. He's constantly going up and talking with boroughs on the dais negotiating stuff, right? They were having negotiations in the back hallway on getting certain policies across the line. And the needle was moving. It was. It was. And you know, I think one thing you can, you can cite on that is Texas GOP put out a statement on Sine Die touting the apparently 37 legislative

priority bills that passed. Which I believe is the most. And which is a lot. Yeah. Right. Um, now the legislative priority committees did you know put their weight behind hundreds of bills this session which is a pretty hefty task to try and get all of those well finish yeah well they they had like

broad categories rather than specific ones right and then each legislative priority committee if I'm not mistaken chose a myriad of bills that aligned with that priority that one broad category right so but it was still a lot of bills that passed the finish line that were priorities of the Republican Party to your point originally about bringing people in and working with them you know you look at the the 287 G program AJ louder back who voted against the speaker was one of the chief negotiators on that and designers of the final bill on that program around that legislation SBA specifically like federal authorities and local sheriffs being able to work in coordination but it's like that that's what that bill was

aiming to do yep you look at bail reform and whose face was up there alongside Chairman Smithies the entire time, Mitch Little. Who was also the GOP caucus freshman of the year. Yeah. Which is a lot. To your point on that, the leadership here, it was not all smooth sailing but they did not just go on a retribution tour against members who voted against them. Really the only one that they maintained consistent opposition to was Harrison and that was

going in both directions. That April Fool's mentioned by the speaker will go down in infamy when Harrison was on the back of my I forget what he was What he was aiming for in that exchange, but the speaker said you're not recognized even on April Fool's. Mr Harrison Like that tells you everything I think about their dynamic Yeah, um, which was the nature of the beast even David cook who was the candidate that all these members were supporting In the speaker's race as opposed to Burroughs certainly had his time where he was at the front mic passing bills like he was very influential on different issues. I think he was involved in the bail reform stuff as well.

Absolutely. So anyway that's the moment I see where things really changed in the House and Burroughs had already been working well with the Lieutenant Governor. You know, they weren't fighting openly like the last speaker did, like Dave Phelan did, with the Lieutenant Governor. And that inner chamber harmony became, for the most part, intro chamber harmony after this vote. It's very true. And of course, Burroughs knew the lieutenant governor is a favorite of the sect of the party that he was being criticized most heavily by. And so working with him and having a good relationship with the lieutenant

governor was a huge deal in all of this. And we've seen that continue even post signing diet bill signing ceremonies, the lieutenant governor saying very, you know, affirming things about the speaker and his role in different policy fights like bail reform. So Fascinating to watch all of it. Absolutely. Okay. Should we move on to number two Bradley? Let's do it. Wanna lead us in? Sure, the policy we were almost watching going into this session was of course school choice, ESAs, vouchers, whatever you want to call it. Brett always does this when he leads on this. Two of the terms are very much marketing based terms.

They have connotations either positive or negative. The most neutral one I think is ESA's, education savings accounts. Mostly because you ask any random person what that is and they're like, I have no freaking idea. Which is why we also throw in the others to make sure everyone knows what we're talking about. So that was the most anticipated vote of the session,

I think, after everything that happened last year and Governor Abbott going on the full-scale primary war against a lot of House incumbents and winning defeating a lot a good amount of them. Except for two. Yeah. He managed to flip enough seats that this thing passed and it didn't just pass by the narrowest of margins they ended up getting was it 86 votes? yes every Republican including the speaker except for two voted for this thing on the floor and I think that's probably the second the second top moment

that vote that vote yeah in the house and to your point that you were you know referring to earlier about Tinder Holt and his influence, his influence increased in large part also because he has been around for a long time at this point, six terms and there was a slew of freshmen coming in who aligned with his ideology. And so his his group got bigger and he became the ringleader of that group, right?

So when we're talking about, I mean last last session, that sect of the party was much smaller than it was this session. And so when that new class of freshmen came in, Tinder Holt and his crews influence became far more broad. Yeah, also though, a lot of, not every member that came in, even if they came in as an Abbott candidate, or at least on the Abbott wave, was fully

throated behind ESAs. There was a lot of hand-wring behind the scenes about the way the bill looks and what does it actually do, what's the effect. On both sides of the Republican caucus. Yeah absolutely yeah in Tinderhold's group too right. Eventually everyone jumped in line and voted for it except for Dade Phelan and Gary Vandeaver. But one of the biggest things that I think pushed people that way, even if they had some hesitation, was the Trump call in the caucus. The day of. The day of.

They convened the Republican caucus meeting and Governor Abbott was in there. He got President Trump on the line. The president said, basically, if you vote for this and pass it, I will endorse you in your primary election next year generally. And obviously that is, especially after the effect that the Trump endorsement had last cycle, that is a massive get for any of these people. Especially if they're projecting another difficult primary fight, right? You know, we're already seeing today, today's Wednesday, we're recording on Wednesday, I've already seen three members of the House who are, you

know, not in that further right wing of the caucus announcing for reelection and they are, they announced as Trump endorsed candidates because the president gave them their endorsement. Why bury the lead? Yep. So that's how big this was for them. And they got, so they got the votes on it. But it wasn't just that that didn't, that was provided a good bit of cover. But then Buckley, Patrick Creighton, Abbott, the speaker, they all negotiated this deal with rural Republicans. You know, the Drew Darby's of the world, the Jay Deans, guys like that who either voted explicitly against

this last session, voted to strip, voted for the Rainey Amendment, voted to strip the ESAs out, or they have not been, you know, super supportive of it in the past just generally. But they got all of them on board except for those two, Phelan and Vandeever, they negotiated some some additions to SB2 itself and then negotiated some promises about school funding that would come later. Now that was a bit of a contentious thing in the moment when we saw different plans crop up. Specifically these rural Rs, according to them, were told that a lot of this money would go towards the basic allotment increase. Well ultimately that's not the

BA increase the house adopted did not get put into the final version. Now they found a different way around the same thing, but, um, but it wasn't so cut and dry. It was not what it was negotiated. Right. And so that caused some heartburn among these guys. Uh, they still voted for SB2 and now we're going to see this thing. This thing's not done as an issue.

This is going to be every little bump in the road that this program goes through in implementing it. It's going to be a huge political issue. Right. And not only that, but you're going to have a new comptroller actually establishing this. Hager, Glenn Hager's gone in 20-ish days, 25 days or so. So not only do you have a campaign being run to replace him, but there's a lot of talk about who Abbott is going to appoint to fill the seat. And that being so directly tied to his top legislative priority. Right.

So, um, that I think has to be the number two, number two moment. If you would have told us six months ago that Drew Darby would be on the list of members voting for this ESA bill, we would have thought you were absolutely out of your mind. Well, yeah, both on this podcast and at our event, we had him on and he did not hold back. He was very, very critical of anything looking like a voucher.

And took the lead on being critical. Like he was, he was the voice for a lot of these rural Republicans. And in the end, he felt like he got enough to justify, you know, not stepping on the live grenade that would have been, you know, torpedoing this ESA program again. Um, yeah, we'll see if we'll see what happens down the road, but at least for now they, they felt comfortable enough to take the job. Absolutely.

Well, number three, if you have anything else you want to add on school choice. No, take us to number three. Number three, I think, um, we'd be remiss to not talk about the lieutenant governor and some of the priorities that he laid out at the very beginning of session. Some were very surprising for sure. We were like, wow, this seems out of left field. But a moment we specifically want to talk about today is the THC presser where the lieutenant governor made it a very, he was very ardent about passing a THC ban in Texas and after the bill passed, again, after the bill passed, he held a press conference where he advertised that there would be snacks that press should

come be there and, uh, you know, our guys got there. I think Cameron and Mary Elise were the ones who got there and were covering that for us and there was a you know Blanket over a table where the snacks were like a dead body. I wasn't gonna say it but it did and Come to find out underneath there a bunch of THC laden products that the lieutenant governor was specifically aiming at banning with this legislation and Really the lieutenant governor took aim

at the press in this press conference and lambasted them for their coverage of the issue. And it was very interesting to watch this happen. Because like I said, the lieutenant governor had some very interesting policy fights that were part of his ethos this session. I think film incentives, THC ban and theia Prevention Research Institute are top of mind for me when I think about those. And- Not very stereotypical, Patrick, at least that we've seen the last couple. And very big, for lack of a better word, projects that were kind of like feather in the cap

for him in some ways. Like, hey, I want to get these things across the finish line. These are big projects and certainly not inexpensive projects either, which I think is very notable. But this press conference specifically sticks out to us just because of how it happened. The posture that the lieutenant governor had, it was very adversarial. And he literally threw a bag of edibles at a reporter. And clips made their way all over social media. When, you know, questions were posed by the press that were the lieutenant governor's answers were very ardent and very adversarial

confrontational. And he made no qualms about that. It was very interesting to watch. And again, this is all after the bill had been passed. Now it is important to note that there was and interesting to watch. And again, this is all after the bill had been passed. Now, it is important to note that there was and continues to be significant pressure put on the governor to veto this piece of legislation. He was responding to that's what he was really responding to. And

it is notable to that, yes, or recording Wednesday yesterday, the governor was in Houston signing some bail reform legislation, pivotal. We'll talk about that in a minute. But he was asked about Senate Bill 3, the THC ban, and whether he would veto it. He said, I have a thousand bills on my desk. I'll evaluate each one. Very open-handed in that response. But we'll see what happens. The overall, my impression of Patrick and the reason things looked at the outset and throughout the way they did is you look at his list of priorities and it's there are a couple red meat conservative things but not like we've

seen in the past. It was a different kind of priority list for Patrick and you mentioned DIP rate, you mentioned the Hollywood thing, THC. I think my read on it was this is a very legacy focused. Feather in the cap. Yeah, stuff he can, whenever he is done, whether that's before he seeks reelection next time or he has announced for reelection or like through another term or whatever it is. And he's been very vocal that he's running for reelection but jury's out till that happens. Yeah and it smacks to me of this is stuff he can point to when he's out

of office in a rocking chair just chilling on his porch with his grandkids and point, you know, I did that. You know, maybe he gets his name on Dipper whenever that's constructed. Or maybe he is watching a movie, a Texas made movie and he says, we did that right. It's kind of stuff that will scratch that itch I think it's not this it's not the putting ten commandments in schools This stuff there's a reason it was so heavy on this kind of thing and which entailed a lot of pretty difficult political fights for him, especially from the outside and he Weighted into that without a second thought, you You know there's a lot this THC

thing there's opposition on both sides of the political spectrum to this. It's not just left-wingers that hate this. I think it's very safe to say that if you look at that vote on SB 3 in the House specifically and if it were to be we've talked about this at length in the office if it were to be, we've talked about this at length in the office, if it were to be a secret ballot, I think you may have the same result. It probably would pass, but the political makeup would be so different. So different.

Why do you say that? Because I think so many of those Republicans would have voted against it. Secret ballot, there's a lot of them that would be opposed to this kind of thing on a simply a libertarian bent in some way, right? Well, then would there be those who voted against it publicly who voted for it? I think potentially. Okay. Yeah, if you said it would probably come out to about the same That's my hypothesis. I think it would be a little bit less, but I think it would still pass

I think it was is 80 something that um, it was pretty much a partisan vote. Yeah Um, I think it would be a little bit less, but I think it would still pass. I think it was 80 something that it was pretty much a partisan vote Yeah, I think it would be a little bit less, but I think it would still pass Yeah, I don't remember any Democrats voting for that But I don't think they were it was like Richard Raymond and Sergio Munoz exactly the typical characters in that in that play. Yeah, but My point being that there were certainly members who received a ton of pressure from losing a governor Heading into that vote who received a ton of pressure from those in a governor heading into that vote who voted a certain way in a name to say okay well if I vote for this I'll get this. Now we're also federally in a very different political climate. I think that's worth noting too. It's not just in Texas where these kinds of arguments are being had or this kind of policy is making its way through the process with very little Republican opposition. But a few sessions ago, I think it would have been a very

different makeup. A secret ballot, a very different makeup. Well, and you mentioned federally, Trump is at least in stated positions on social media, which I know that's not exactly bulletproof and that can change by the day with Trump. But he has put out opposition to things like this. But he has put out opposition to things like this and so that puts The president and his most avid supporter in Texas at loggerheads on that now does the president want to die on that hill? It doesn't look like it so far but It's an interesting dynamic and

it's fascinating to see the lieutenant governor go out on a limb so much and realize he's behind the eight ball in a PR fight because he was. He still probably is. Doesn't mean he's not going to win and he looks like he's winning right now. But there is- Which say what you about the lieutenant governor, but he tends to win these kinds of- Yeah. governor, but he tends to win these kinds of things. I mean, when you have, but when you have veterans coming out and saying, you know, intimating that Dan Patrick doesn't like veterans or whatever, or he intentionally

wants to make it harder for them to live their lives, that's what they were saying at their press conference. That's the angle. That is, that is, that is very pointed and, um, that is not, not an easy PR hill to climb. Nor a demographic that the Lieutenant Governor wants to find himself at odds with. Exactly. Exactly. But yeah, the press conference was a big deal and continues to be and I think it really boils down to that moment for me even on other issues where like this is where the

Lieutenant Governor was at behind the scenes on all of his big issues this session. It was a very competitive, we're going to make this happen. We're going to win this political fight. He did not back down at all. Absolutely. And it still hasn't. And this was one issue where it happened in front of the public eye, specifically in front of the media.

Now what the House got out of it was an expansion of teacup. And there's some fights over the language. I think ultimately what they settled on was acceptable to all sides. There are still those who don't like it, and those who say, like Chad Hasty, who you're on his radio show every week, he's very much against this. And he said, I heard him say that the other day

that well, okay an expansion of teacup is great, but it's still gonna cost a lot more money to get enrolled in that and Then more money to buy this stuff the compassionate use program compassion is program then to just go buy it at one of these shops Over the counter right over the counter. It's not you know It's kind of used as like a medicine, but not explicitly so. Right. So, it's gonna be fascinating to see what Abbott does. My, I don't know if I'm too confident on this anymore,

but my running bet had been in my own head that Abbott would just let it go into effect and not sign it. Because if by what, 60 days later, some amount of days later, if he doesn't sign or veto a bill, it goes into effect. I believe it is 60 days.

60? I'll confirm. Okay. So 60 or 90. So that was kind of my hunch that Abbott would do. I don't know if that's the case anymore. You know, he could do something like veto the bill and then apply similar restrictions or oversight through like executive off agency actions, right? But I think right now it's kind of up in the air what the governor's gonna

do and he is he's getting pressured from all over the place on this to veto the thing and I'm sure he's getting pressured from lieutenant governor to not veto it to sign the dang thing right so where does governor Abbott actually himself fall on this issue? I don't know. Which also we did not mention at that press conference, the lieutenant governor was specifically asked about the governor's position on the bill. This was before Governor Abbott made those comments

at the bill reform presser and was like, I got a lot of bills, we'll evaluate each one. And the lieutenant governor said, oh, I know the governor's heart, I think was the exact phrasing he used to start off and said, I'm not worried about the governor. Very interesting. Yeah. Like even how the onus was placed. Well, he's gotta say that whether it's very interesting.

Yes. But knowing the governor's heart, like it's, yeah, it's the implication. It's very, it's always very deliberate wording. And I think that was very interesting. It was, and I think that's also notable in all of this is how emotional this topic seems to be for the lieutenant governor Even just mentioning the governor's heart in a press conference is not typically the language we're accustomed to. Yeah Moving on let's go. Okay, let's talk bail reform. We've talked about it a little bit Sprinkled throughout the podcast already but going into this session other than school choice We knew this was top of mind for the governor.

And there were a slew of bills that made their way through the legislative process that were either explicitly bail reform or kind of bail reform adjacent. Some passed, some didn't, but we are wanting to specifically talk about the deal struck on a constitutional amendment, which requires a hundred votes in the house and two thirds in the Senate as well. So it does require a higher threshold for it to make its way through the process and that's where everyone's eyes were. Okay, who among the Democratic caucus is going to cross over in order for a bill like this

to pass? I think this is the one place where Democrats really got a notch to win I would say. Now Abbott got something. He got the base of what he wanted with SJR 5, but there was more to the package than that. Um, the various items, there were a couple of enabling legislation. Um, but the big ones, three constitutional amendments, SJR 1, which would deny bail automatically to, automatically to illegal immigrants accused of crimes, serious crimes, certain, like they call it the Abbott 9, I believe. That one died and did not go anywhere in the how, like it advanced to the floor, but it was never gonna get the votes on the floor because you need 12 Democrats that

never I don't think even came up for a vote until a last-minute Hail Mary after SJR 87 died and so that one I think mandates judges withhold bail for repeat offenders of certain crimes. So that was a tougher thing to reach. And that had the probable cause language that was such a fight in the SJR5 negotiations that I'll mention in a second, but a much stronger law from a Republican point of view and that didn't get the votes. I think they, did they implement, was that the one that got 97? There was something with SGR 1.

I know. No, no, no, no, no. I got it wrong. They subbed in Jocelyn's Law as the name for SJR 87 when SJR 1 did not advance. So 87 comes up. It had been postponed multiple times over the course of multiple days. This is, again, the stronger language from the Republicans point of view and it did not get to get the votes they fell three shorts. I think if they had

gotten two more the speaker would have been the hundredth but as it was he was not going to vote on it. The prevailing wisdom was that they needed to in all actuality. Yeah. Right. And they couldn't get it. Um, which is, you know, such a, if I were on Abbott's team, I would be pretty miffed about that and despondent about, about it because you came so close, right? It's like almost winning the championship and it almost makes it worse being the runner-up. Yeah, so they didn't get that but they did get SCR 5 which had it would this was the big deal negotiated or the centerpiece of the deal negotiated in the criminal jurisprudence committee between Republicans and Democrats.

I think in committee only two Democrats voted against this, pushing it through. And it allows judges to deny bail under certain circumstances. So less stringent language as the other, as 87, but still a huge difference from where current law is, right? And so they were negotiating this back and forth for a while. Chair Smithy had said he'd been negotiating not just with the members of the committee, which included Joe Moody, who was kind of the ringleader of the Democratic side, but also with the governor's office in the Senate, and they settled on this language. One of the changes in committee was moving the finding language from probable cause up to clear and convincing

evidence. I think it's probable cause. to clear and convincing evidence. I think it's probable cause. It's either, or there's preponderance of evidence. I don't know. They made it, the Democrats negotiated in a higher standard for a judge to done eye bail. That's the long and short of it. Which it's always interesting hearing Joe Moody at the mic on these types of

issues, because he is not, not only on the Democratic side the ringleader for criminal justice reform, but he is just a criminal justice reform Expert in the house and has held many different leadership positions on that committee in that in those discussions I mean this this is his bread and butter and so when he gets on the mic It is very indicative of how something might turn out now with Jocelyn's law specifically that did not yield that many votes in the end but still it's very notable when he gets on the mic just because of the position he holds and the expertise that he has. But when that deal was announced in that criminal jurisprudence hearing that was remarkable. These two sides have been at such loggerheads on this issue with neither wanting to budge,

and they managed to hash out a deal. And they got it. They got SGR 5 across the line. The governor held a press conference yesterday on Tuesday in Houston, spiking the football on getting this across the line, indicating, I think, probably he's not going to come back for another bite at the apple in a special session on this Also, it would probably be foolish because the votes aren't changing. I Don't I don't see votes changing two votes. I don't you really don't I don't think so. I Don't think so. You don't think an arm could be twisted I just I just think there are two members whose arm could be twisted. They were already twisting arms. They were already twisting arms. It just was unbelievably

close. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I don't think so. I'm not full. I'm not fully disagreeing. I'm kind of with you, but I also don't. If anything, you lose votes. That's true. It totally could go that way too. Yeah. But regardless, I highly doubt this is going to come up as a special session topic. The governor at least is mostly happy with what he got after these many cycles of trying to get this across the line. And they finally did. You know, what legislating is often, everyone wants to go throw a Hail Mary on the first play, but incrementalism is the better option almost in every case because you need time to build consensus and to hammer out details of things. And I think this is a, the takeaway of this is the win for incrementalism over Hail Mary throw. Yeah. And, uh, or I guess I should say a win for a West Coast offense rather than just Hail

Marys on every play. I don't get that at all. A few people will. Okay. Yeah. Do you want to explain it for me? West Coast offense is where you do short, quick passes. Oh, why is it West Coast offense?

Did it just originate in the West Coast? The 49ers I believe. I think the 49ers invented it back when Joe Montana was quarterback I think. Okay. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that's not. Screw the 49ers. Screw the 49ers. You want to say that one more time? I just want to make sure people know that I'm very adamant about it. Oh yeah, you're a Seahawks fan. That makes sense. Yeah. I feel like the rivalry has died down a little bit, but in the height of the Legion of Boom, that was like our number one adversary. And then they had Richard Sherman and we all were so mad. Number five.

Number five. The thing that almost derailed. The, I'm the only really like Senate versus house debacle or conflict that made its way onto the public square. Yeah. Everything else wasn't like there were disagreements, but they came to a consensus on it and they eventually came to a consensus on this, but it wasn't really clear that that would happen until the 11th hour. But they came to a consensus on it and they eventually came to a consensus on this but it wasn't really clear that that would happen until the 11th hour and this

This was kind of an unforeseen Break between the yes. Yeah and very surprising and again a moment where people were like What is the lieutenant governor doing and they could have gotten this done so much earlier in session? But I think they just procrastinated on it. Oh, of course we're gonna give judges a raise, right? I don't think they saw any problem would arise, yeah. Yeah. But there was, and the big issue,

the reason judicial pay raise, trying to give judges a 25% raise from $140,000 to $175, thousand dollars a year at least base salary is That it is tied to legislative pensions and that has torpedoed this in years past including last session but That is That's a political third rail because voting to increase your own pension is a bad look. Regardless, yeah, to put it lightly, regardless of the reason it's actually happening, which

is to give judges a pay raise. So then the question came, can we delink this and keep this, solve this problem now without having to, and prevent us from having to deal with it down the road? And they finally did, but it went back and forth. And Friday before signing die, the Senate did, employed a maneuver that I hadn't seen before and no one had seen in a long time where they took the bill, the House committee report that had the House, what they did was they struck language that just said the pension, the retirement benefits are a factor of blah, blah, blah times the base judicial pay.

They struck the base judicial pay and just put 140, which was times the base judicial pay. They struck the base judicial pay and just put 140, which was the current base judicial pay. So they anchored it to that number, right? And then they were giving judges a pay raise on top of that. Now the Senate opposed it, and they declared this not germane. Especially based on how they finally did this, I don't know how you can make a case that it's not germane Because they did something very similar

But they declared the Senate declared on Friday night late Friday night that that section anchoring the anchoring to $140,000 explicitly of the pension was not germane to the bill. And so they pulled this parliamentary thing where they passed a resolution directing the house to telling the house that they agree on everything in the bill except this not germane amendment, pass that and strike this with, or replace it with some language.

and strike this with or replace it with some language. Now that language itself was interesting because it pushed off the effect, the effective increase on their pension to by giving judges $175,000 pay based salary, it pushed it off until the 90th legislature, until they act. Now the reason that that was done is because there's this little thing called the emolument clause in the Constitution where if you vote to increase your salary or any financial benefit you cannot run for another office that you have increased that emolument in the same term

Now there's a lot of legal Questions there like what is a term does a term end at the next election? All these statewide offices are up for reelect or up for election next year is at the end of it So it doesn't count here because we push it off to the 90th legislature. Or does it count like a four-year Senate term? There's a lot of senators, one of which is already running for a higher office, but others that are looking at it, and maybe by the time this thing goes out, a couple of them have announced, but

the maybe by the time this thing goes out a couple of them have announced but the that is a potential trap that they might have fallen into if they had not gotten clever with this bifurcated language kind of splitting the two things, the two, the pension increase and the salary increase. So that was interesting to me when I first, when that was pointed out to me and they eventually resolved it in a different way but yeah I've talked too much. You talk for a bit on this. You're watching this unfold on the last day from the office. What is going through your mind? Also full disclosure too, it started to boil over the weekend. And my family

was in town for a baby shower, my baby shower. So Brad texted me, he's like, this is crazy. And I was like, this, what could he possibly mean? And so I, of course, I just brought up Brad's Twitter. It was like, what is he talking about? And I just did not foresee this being the straw that could potentially break the camel's back. So got up to speed, came in Monday and oh my gosh. Um, I also think the reaction from, from staffers, from, um, folks in and around the Capitol was in large part like what is Dan

Patrick doing? Because Sunday night it got really wild too with all those parliamentary procedure kind of things that were going on too. Wasn't that Friday? Am I misremembering? It was Friday that they did that. They passed the resolution. You're right. I'm sorry. It was Friday. That they did that they passed the resolution. You're right. I'm sorry. It was Friday But then there were negotiations going on throughout the whole weekend and just watching and again this is why it's so politically interesting and I'm going to try and Weave this as carefully as I can and how I frame this but you have going into session and for many years now Dan Patrick being the darling of the right wing of the Republican party and finding himself on this side of this issue and a couple of other issues this session was very interesting.

Yeah. Now, did he have the political cover to make this kind of thing happen? I think it's very clear he doesn't did, but he also got earlier that week, got a lot of crap from that wing of the party over a couple bills that died in the Senate. It didn't didn't pass by the deadline. Was that Sunday? No, that was even before that was like earlier in the week. That was before. Yeah, that was a Wednesday deadline. Yeah, yeah. Where Senator Zafferini moved to adjourn in the Senate, not recess, and this happened in the 24 hours of Wednesday, the deadline.

And so when, and it was Senator Bob Hall, at least based on the journal, I'm sure it matches up with the video. Because it went under the radar at the moment. But Bob Hall was on the dais with the assistant parliamentarian, I think, not Karina Davis, the head parliamentarian and Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor. So Zaffroni adjourned instead of recessed. And so they ran out of, they couldn't then suspend things again to, to suspend the rules again to pass things on third reading like they normally do all in one day without four-fifths and Democrats did not they held their ground

and said no we're not doing that we're gonna kill these bills and they did they killed a few GOP priorities and that caused a lot of abrasion towards the lieutenant governor. And I think the bill that received the most attention in that was from representative Daniel Alders over in the house. It was a bill specifically dealing with content of libraries and what minors have access to, which was a crazy wild debate on the House floor when that went through the process. But that is where a lot of the ire was drawn. Yeah. OK, so over the weekend, they're fighting Jeff Leach and Joan Huffman.

By the way, Joan Huffman was the only PNV on that resolution maneuver that I was talking about. Everyone else voted for it. What's your read there? Well I think based on comments from Leach she had agreed to the House language. It was everyone else that didn't and I should say I mentioned the emoluments clause part and that's definitely part of this I think but the main reason the Senate the main position they stated that they're opposed to de-linking was because

Pension legislators don't get salaries. They get what seven thousand roughly seven thousand dollars a year plus per diems during session which is not that not a lot of money, so what a lot of them get is a nice fat pension and them get is a nice fat pension and that is a way to attract people to public service. Now some would argue that's not the reason you go into public service but not everyone in the building is or millionaires right not everyone's maids Middleton where they'll never has to worry about or Don Huffines never has to worry about yeah pulling a pension some never has to worry about pulling a pension. Some of them, even though they're not poor, that is something they're counting on down the road later. Right.

And so their position was we should not, we need to enable pension dollars to increase along with inflation, at least for the most part, like we're trying to keep judges' judge salaries in line with inflation so that more people can have the ability, even if it means putting a payoff off until way down the road, more people have the ability to take this, to try and pursue this, so we don't just end up with a bunch of very, very wealthy people running everything, right? So that was their position. They got a lot of crap for that from the right-wingers out in the Twitter-oddy. But that brings us to Sine Die and the compromise they hashed out was $175,000 pay raise plus eventually de-linking.

So in that original language where the house anchored it to 140, they ended up anchoring it to 175. So you get the immediate pension increase. So you get the immediate pension increase but the further increases will be subject to the Texas Ethics Commission. And I think the first review for that will happen in 2030. So they kind of split the baby on this and tried to find a way around it that makes everyone at least happy enough. Yeah.

And I think it's worth noting, too, maybe folks not familiar with this issue, why were conservatives so great with raising judicial salaries and so opposed to any sort of pension deal on this. And it really comes down to, I mean, we heard at the beginning, like the state of the judiciary addresses, judicial pay raises has been something the legislature has been trying to tackle for a very long time, because it's been a long time since there's been a pay raise. and the argument is to attract qualified folks into this, into these roles to serve as judges in Texas, you need to be able to at least

provide them with a salary that can kind of keep up with the rates at which inflation or salary increases are happening in the private sector. Are these salaries comparative to what these kinds of lawyers with this kind of experience could make in the private sector, not even close. But that's the argument, right? And there was very, very, very little conservative opposition to raising judicial salaries in this way. That was just not part of the equation because of all of this other context and how long it had been since this had been tackled. The people who did oppose basically just came down on, they shouldn't get any pay raise whatsoever because judges suck. That was really the summary of their position.

But yeah, I'm looking at the language right now and it did, like I described, anchor at 275K, the equation for pensions. But does that not raise the emoluments clause problem again? I don't know. I don't know. They have delinked it in a roundabout way but they they still provided 175k base salary replaced in the pension section of the code. So that's something a court's going to have to decide who the heck knows.

Someone in the black row that now makes at least $175,000 is going to have to decide that. Regardless, I was pretty confident they were going to come to a deal. What the heck that was, I don't know. But the clock was ticking. It literally was the last day of the session when this all got ironed out. They got it done. The speaker was over in the Senate negotiating with the Lieutenant Governor and senators. And you were watching folks come in and out between chambers. I was watching the Senate conferees walk into the House chamber multiple times, go to the back hallway where they then went and talked. One point I saw Joan Huffman walk in with, she had a conference committee report in her hand with

a green paper with signatures, half the signatures, all the senators. So they were bringing it over to get the house ones. And then I got sent a picture of them signing the conference committee report, all of the conferees from both sides tweeted it out. And then that was that. They adjourned Sine Die and everyone went about their business partying. Which is how this often goes on sign me die Okay, those are top five Let us know if what we missed if you disagree, but we were Pretty anxious talk about the two these top five moments And I think it spans the entire length of session to there were a lot of other moments

We talked about potentially delving into but these were our Creamy the crop. Yeah. You got any honorable mentions? Let's talk about some funny moments quickly. Maybe some more lighthearted moments that tend to happen during session. I loved watching Sinfonia Thompson misty a fixture of the Texas House and the legislature at large. Get up on the front mic, offer an amendment to I believe it was representative Ben Bumgarner's bill. Yeah, human trafficking and hotels,

something like that. Yeah, which he's passed legislation on massage part. Like this is human trafficking, something that Bumgarner certainly worked a lot on legislatively. But Miss T gets up on the mic and gives a rousing speech about how she's going after the pimps. And I'm not mincing words. That's exactly what she was saying. And

it was unreal. Like Twitter blew up. She put out a she put out a clip of herself talking about it. People were just it was just it was hilarious. And of of course the amendment passed and was tacked onto the bill, but it was a Rousing moment from miss T on the house floor talking about how she was going after the pimps. I Like it Pimps are down. Oh But this tees up are you? Arguably the best part of it all was

Cody Vassut was that the, it was on the speaker's dais at that point, um, overseeing the process and he goes, she, she moved adoption and Vassut goes, Ms. T sends up an adopt, sends up an amendment against the pimps. It was so funny. I was laughing so hard because he said it was a straight face and then the vote started and the bell rang and it was so funny. I was laughing so hard because he said it was a straight face and then the vote started and the bell rang and it was so funny. But truly a moment that I think will live in infamy.

Well, I will, I wouldn't say that's infamous. I would say, doesn't infamy have a negative connotation? It can, but there's also like to live in infamy. I think you need to look up the definition of infamy. Well, I know what it means but I feel like it's used. Well I'm going to use the suit as a conduit for my first honorable mention. Oh yeah it is totally. Yeah you miss editor. Well I knew that. Edit yourself. But I also think live in infamy can be used maybe not maybe. This is December 7th, 1941. Okay.

That was so nerdy. So the one I'm going to go with is hashtag Gavilegate, which was the Cody Caucus, Cody Vassut and Cody Harris, along with Brooks Landgraf, the speaker himself, and I think am I leaving anybody out? Anyone broke, anyone else broke gavels? Was it, did you mention Meyer? Wasn't he at the Dias when the- Meyer?

I don't think so. When it broke? No, that was Landgraf. That was Landgraf. Regardless, there was about four members, maybe there was one I'm not thinking of, who broke a ton of gavels because they bang the thing so hard you won't look over and look in the Senate they just like lightly tap it doink that's the noise it makes doink

meanwhile the house members are freaking ear splitting especially when I'm sitting in the bullpen and the press pen which I think tells you a lot about the difference in decorum in both chambers. Yes. That's really what it comes down to. Yeah. In the house, in order to be heard, you slam that thing down. Yeah.

In the Senate, you can hear a pin drop. Yep. So, um, Gavilegate was, I think it was up to like 25 or so gavels broken. Somewhere around there. So many. By just hitting the thing and the head flying off and almost hitting clerks in the head, land graph on what night? Was that budget night? Or was that?

No, I think that was deadline night. No. It was earlier? It was earlier. When the head came off of the gavel and shattered the glass on the desk and brought things to a close for a bit when they had to, cause they had to replace it and clean up shattered glass.

Yep. So I'm going to go with the gavel gate. Which also leads to questions about the quality of gavels. Has the quality decreased or have members just gotten so much stronger? It also opens up the discussion about who it is that's making these gavels and yeah prisoners at a prison down in I think actually the suits district or near that I think I heard that mentioned they had to bring in a bunch of new gavels at one point because they kept breaking them.

So it's true. I'm gonna go with gavel gate. Anything else? I'll just mention quickly. Three several days is Easter moment where he went into the grave. Do we know it's a he? Well, in the English you see in the English language, when we don't know the gender, the sex of someone we

Say he you really am schooling me on the English language. Yeah, I know you know you should you should know yeah Yeah, it's true. At least that is how it's been done throughout most of English history. I'm sure I Just wondering if you were dropping any hints as to who you think it might be No, I don't have a theory And I'm not gonna pause it one on the podcast I was just wondering if you were dropping any hints as to who you think it might be. No, I don't have a theory. And I'm not gonna posit one on the podcast. So through several days said, I'm going away, I can't do this anymore. Basically, it's too much.

And he disappeared. And then all of a sudden he rose from the grave, came back and is's now still tweeting I assume we'll tweet out this podcast when he or she hears that we mentioned him or her on the podcast and Welcome back Sev's welcome back. Welcome back Sev's we appreciate the Sevvies and the listening and It's just the general joy you bring to Twitter. Oh, yeah yeah we didn't mention in the top moments that both of us won a Sevvy. Kind of a big deal but I think that means next session we probably

won't get one. Yeah that's probably true. Yeah so we'll just um relish the moment for now. Yeah. Okay let's talk quickly we're over an hour already but let's talk through the potential of a special session. Bill reform. I don't think it'll be better bill reform. Not on the table. It seems. I don't think so.

No. Um, unless Abbott gets a wild hair and feels like he can twist some more arms to get the couple of votes he needs, but I don't see that happening. Um, a lot of buzz about one topic in particular on the special session this summer, redistricting. I kind of hinted at it a couple weeks ago on the weekly roundup in talking about the El Paso case. But from what I'm hearing, the talk is a congressional map special session. And so not dealing with state legislative districts, right?

Just congressional. Now, obviously all of this is subject to change until the governor actually puts out a call if he does, right? But there's a lot of pressure for Republicans to try and keep Congress next year after the midterms, which is already shaping up to be a difficult election cycle for them. First of all, just because of the natural ebb and flow of whoever's in the White House gets a bit of a recoil in the midterm, right?

That just typically happens. Republicans already have a very slim majority. I think, was it right now one vote with some retirements that have happened or appointments that then went south and are no longer in Congress. So that's a lot of the talk there. The question is though, how do you keep Democrats in town? Because if you just put congressional maps on this on the call, why would Democrats show up? What's the incentive for them to do that? It would be malpractice for them not to break quorum in that case. So what are they going to get in exchange?

I think the only obvious thing that I can think of right now is the assay and where the was it 11 or 12 billion dollars in border reimbursement from Congress, where that gets appropriated. Why do Democrats need to be in town? Because you need to have 100 votes for a quorum and Republicans only have 88 members in the House. Not an issue in the Senate, in the House it is. Which reminds us of several years ago when Democrats did break quorum and head to DC in opposition of and you know a very contentious GOP priority at the

time which was election integrity related legislation. And whenever I this has been mentioned or just yeah because there's been a lot of talk about redistricting this session anyway it kind of died down and obviously they didn't do anything with it yet and haven't, but the question that I heard a lot was, wait a second we already did that, I thought you can only do that once every 10 years. No, you can redistrict at any point. It's just usually not worth the fight politically to do it midterm, mid-decade. Sometimes it is though, back in 03 when Republicans took the state legislature, they redistricted the congressional maps

to basically flip it from a Democratic majority congressional delegation to a significant Republican majority congressional delegation because the state politically had moved that much right so they did it and both chambers broke quorum Democrats in both chambers broke quorum eventually they passed the maps though so you got to learn lessons from the past for the people that are either thinking about doing this or doing it, you got to figure out a way to keep Democrats in town, at least enough of them. And there are as eight or so, maybe, maybe eight to 12 Democrats in Trump districts, and I'm talking state house, who, most of whom are along the southern border, who have a big incentive to get something

back for their communities to compensate for all the stuff they've had to deal with over the last six years or whatever. It's the only thing I can think of that would keep anybody in town and that might not even do it. I was going to say that's not even necessarily enough to hit quorum. Right. That's like probably... And that's what if every Republican is there. Like five or six still below. That that itself will be tough to ensure happen just because you have 150 moving part or for Republicans

88 moving parts. Yeah so I think that's the only way. And then you have to like assure them that you're not going to screw up their districts too. You're not going to also redistrict the state house. Right. A lot of political game on this. As I say all the time when I talk redistricting, there is no taking the politics out of the most political thing we do. And a nonpartisan redistricting commission ain't it.

I can tell you they did that in Ohio and it turned out just as contentious and poorly. They still got sued into oblivion over those maps. So yeah, it's whoever is directing this to Abbott, which obviously will come down to Abbott to call it special. Him, the speaker, the lieutenant governor, if they're gonna go about this they're gonna have to figure out a way, get pretty clever, how to ensure that enough bodies stay in that room to actually get a map through. When you say learn from the past, would you also say that there's nothing new under the sun?

I might also say that, yeah. You know, the other thing is they're gonna wanna see the result of this lawsuit in El Paso. And who knows which way that's gonna go. Regardless of which way that goes, it's gonna get appealed. Whoever loses, that's gonna appeal. But that'll at least give them a baseline judgment

to use, to operate from, to either ignore outright or to use strategically whenever they decide, if they decide to do this, to pull the trigger on this so TBD TBD and there's two the reason Texas is probably a big Target for this from the White House or congressional Republicans, whoever it is because there's two very On the edge Democratic held congressional districts in South Texas. Cuellar in 28, Gonzalez in 34. When you're going into a midterm with the Republican in the White House and you want

to at least aim to maintain a majority in the U.S. House, you'll look at all ways in which to get that done. And I would not be surprised if Texas is not the only one Where this is being considered? Yep, and I can tell you it's not the only one words being considered We'll see who pulls the trigger though. Absolutely including Texas. Okay. Well, let's quickly delve into these last two points We want to make you were talking about how things have not slowed down since the end of the legislative session What do you mean by that? So I'm gonna hit the one I have

of the legislative session. What do you mean by that? So I'm going to hit the one I have listed last on this first, because I think it'll be a bit quicker and then we'll hit the other one. Um, so on Sine Die, the Senate nominates and elects a new speaker, not speaker, president pro tem of the Senate that lasts every, basically from one, from the end of one session to through the next session, regular session. It was Brandon Creighton. And so, you know, a couple of times last year when both the Lieutenant Governor and the

Governor out of state, Brandon Creighton was the acting governor. So that's kind of the importance of this position. Other than that, it's ceremonial, right? Senator Charles Perry was named the pro tem this time and they get up and they do these nominating speeches, talk about how great the person is, yada, yada, yada. Then the person gets them and gives their own speech. Well, I was watching the speech and I hear Perry up on the dais and he says, my speech is going to be a little, um, unconventional. And it might makes a few of you very upset with me,

but here's what I'm going to say. And he went on a long thing. It's very like institutionalist minded speech about, you know, maintaining the integrity of the Senate and being a deliberative body and all that stuff Well one line stuck out to me and he was very Coy about this he didn't name names He didn't come right out and say what he was talking about but if you know what he's talking about You know what's about what it's about

What I saw this session beginning to come up a little higher level of tender in tone that has not been there in the past but continually creeps out will ruin what we are as the Texas Senate. From my understanding he's talking about the effect of outside scorecards on how senators vote in the chamber. This has always been a thing. Ever since I've been here, this has been a thing in the House. You know, not just the Mark Jones ratings, but Texans for Fiscal Responsibility,

just Texas Values have one, Young Conservatives of Texas, all those groups. We have a couple other bill rating groups. And there's a bunch on the Democratic side too. There's a bunch on the Democratic side. That's been a, it's been a really big thing to be the most conservative member of the Texas House or the most liberal member of the Texas House. It's still a thing in the Senate in terms of the Mark P. Jones ratings, rankings, but it's just less pronounced, or it has been. Well, I mean, I've, I've heard throughout the session,

there's a lot of umbrage within the upper chamber about how much onus is being placed on those scorecards in dictating how members vote on bills. And so rather than having a bill that you might normally have unified, you know, 31 to nothing, you know, how five, six, seven days. And it all goes back to how these things are scored where typically they don't score lopsided votes where it's all 31 to zero. And if they need, they feel like they need a boost in the conservative rating, they'll

vote against a bill that they would otherwise vote for. That's the, from what I've been told, that's the issue at hand. Now some people say, who cares, you know, fair. But that's clearly not Perry's position. And he took his, uses pro tem speech as an opportunity to specifically criticize this. Which is, it's interesting, like you said,

that there was some subtlety to it. There was no explicit naming of anything or anyone, but still very pointed, like you said, if you're part of those discussions or you know the temperature that the Senate might be at with those kinds of things. And it is, I think, historically far more prevalent in the House, more the gaming of votes and okay well you know members staff will ensure they know which votes mean something to which score cards that's like listed on their vote recommendation sheets and it's very normal yeah and some of that is also like just how it works right where you want to know okay actually i don't know anything about this issue where does this group that i align with politically stand on it that'll help me determine how to vote.

And sometimes it's just gaming the system. And it goes both ways. Where it's helpful to members who have an ideology and it's also gaming the system a little bit. But it happens on the Democratic side too. Another big group that does this is TCCRI. Fair life Yeah, you name it. I'm very aware of Different situations happening where members Call one of these scorecards and tell them that they need to change their vote rec Some of it's because they look at the grade and they think oh this group doesn't actually understand what the bill does and they explain To them and they're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, we'll change it other times. It's you know explain to them and they're like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Okay, we'll change it.

Other times it's, you know, it'll be more politically beneficial if you have it this way versus that way. We'll be some last session, Mark P. Jones changed how he scored votes and conservative rankings based on the local and consent calendar. Cut out local and consent. Yeah. And it totally changed how members were ranked from on the

liberal to conservative scale. changed, half members were ranked on the liberal conservative scale. So that's an interesting twist to the Senate. And I think you can't ignore the fact that the blockage of the top of the ticket is coming undone at these statewide levels, statewide offices where Paxton's running for Senate, Glenn Hager's on his way to A&M. Lieutenant Governor and the governor are both still running for reelection, but they're closer to the end of their careers

in those spots than the beginning, right? So things are starting to break, which means members that have been waiting for a while are A, getting restless. We had a whole NFL draft theme episode on this a year ago, but they're starting to prepare. And part of that is being the most conservative member of the Texas Senate that you possibly can be or the most liberal or whatever it is, or even, even you know moving it search to try and get a more conservative

rating I saw I saw a preliminary rating It wasn't one of these usual scorecards But they had Terry Canales ranked as a more conservative voting record than about 10 or 15 Republicans We've never seen that in a Mark Jones ranking. So we'll see what he comes out with but everyone has their own agenda on this stuff where they want to be placed whether they care or not and now it that was a very big a prevalent thing in the house and based on these comments seems like it's ruffling some feathers in the Senate. Certainly. Okay well speaking of ruffling feathers, let's talk last thing here quickly about all the scuttlebutt that's happened since 90 day.

So Texans for Lawsuit Reform is very much in under the spotlight at the moment. And I got a hold of an email that they sent out to, I think it was a pretty private list because I couldn't find a link online to it anywhere. It was just an email. Well, in it, they were very, very pointed with, they were giving like a good, a recap of session. They had a good session section, which was pretty short, and then a bad session section, which was very long, so much so that I couldn't capture it all in just four screenshots.

But in that, they were very pointed with Speaker Dustin Burroughs and one member in particular, more than anybody else, Mark LaHood, freshman. The reason LaHood was under scrutiny here by TLR was he was seen as the swing vote in the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee through which TLR's Pet tort reform bills went through. SB 30 the nuclear verdicts bill talked about how that got pared way down There was also the trucking bill and then we've talked about on the podcast how this became a fight on the airwaves on TV TV ads radio ads Digital ads all this stuff mill it literally millions of dollars were spent

Either lobbying for against this stuff and it's an extension of the long-running fight between the business community and TL are and the trial lawyers in TTLA. So TLR president Lee Parsley is providing this kind of post-mortem and they were, he was just, did not hold back from these two. He said, Speaker Burroughs appointed the members to both the JCJ committee and the House Conference Committee that ultimately killed the bills. In the end, our bills died, led by Speaker Burroughs, and assisted by Republican freshman members Mark

L'Hood, Andy Hopper, A.J. Latterback, yada yada, all went through. A whole list of them, and 55 Democrats. He has a whole section. They have a whole section in here about the hood accusing him of skipping votes or, uh, flee quote, fleeing the committee, um, because he didn't want the committee to take up the trucking bill and a public nuisance bill. Pretty pointed criticism and allegations, right?

Well, the hood came out with a response and you can see that email you have the whole email on Twitter you can see the response by the hood and he is just as scathing in his response I'll just pull one quote he said there was a path to getting something done this session to address bad actors in the legal and medical spaces Had it not been for TLR's duplicitous negotiations broken commitments and relentless disrespect for our elected servants We would have gotten there Talk about not pulling punches in either direction. Right and then Chairman Leach put out a statement kind of defending the hood

Not kind of explicitly defending theHood. Very notable. So this is just a fascinating fight. It was already a fascinating fight. This was going to be a huge issue, huge theme to watch in the election next year between TLR, who has always played in Republican politics, and trial lawyers who are increasingly playing in Republican politics I think we talked previously about One law firm one of the biggest in the state is

Putting up a ten million dollar pack to go play ball in these Republican primaries Specifically opposing TLR Candidates so specifically opposing TLR candidates. So there's this odd thread of the Republican Party becoming increasingly friendly to right-wing trial lawyers. It's just a thing. Hell, the speaker himself is a trial attorney. Now he's also previously been an ally of TLR

in past campaigns, but I don't think that's the case anymore with how scathing they were in that email. I can't imagine he's very happy with that. And also the email read like it wasn't meant to be publicized, you know, but I got my grubby hands on it and publicized it. Um, but the second time you said that today, it's actually the third. I said it in a text too, but this is going to be a bruising primary fight in the Republican primary next year. And lots of money to play with on both sides.

You know, another interesting thread of this is it dovetails with two things. First, the relative affinity for, or at least no longer opposition to trial lawyers writ large kind of dovetails in my mind with the added the increased populism in the Republican Party you know it used to be the Chamber of Commerce party it's not really that anymore and at least it not fully so and TLR represents that old guard. You have a lot of opposition now to that. So there's that. Also, Governor Abbott replaced many of the old guard chamber of commerce type Republicans who would normally just vote with TLR lockstep. And LaHood is one of them. Steve Allison lost to LaHood. LaHood was an Abbott-backed candidate because Steve Allison voted to strip ESAs from

the omnibus bill back in in 23. He got ousted. LaHood's in. Now you have a new problem for for TLR in their own priorities. They got the Abbott got the school choice vote from Lahood, but now there's a whole new set of issues for TLR in this case, because they did not get his support. And what's colloquially referred to as the business community. Business community. Yeah. Um, you know, additionally,

Lahood got, I think around like roughly $300,000 from TLR in his general campaign because he has a bit, it's not purple, but it's not super red, his district. I don't think he's going to get that again. In fact, I think he may get a TLR backed primary opponent, which is going to be quite the fight. So. Would you say you think this will be the story heading into the primaries? Quite the fight. So would you say you think this will be the story heading into the primaries? No, because I think it will still get lost underneath the whole Ken Paxton and John Cornyn fight There's a lot of ways to go on that whatever happens at the other statewide but I can tell you this is what I'm gonna be most interested in and

It has been the most interesting thing to me all session other than the speaker and his ability to navigate the fishers in his in his chamber this has been the fight over these tort tort reform bills far and away which if you want background go read Brad's reporting it's phenomenal but so I'm sure we'll have more updates on this to come. Absolutely. Man, what a firestorm in just two days after session. And like you said, much more to come,

but we'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention it on this podcast. And I was on a, when I tweeted this out, I was on a boat in the middle of Lake Travis and I put it out there and it just blew my phone up so I did not get to relax much at all. And it's been blowing your phone up ever since. Yes people have a lot of thoughts in both directions. People have a lot of thoughts Brad Johnson. Well Bradley happy sign you die. Happy sign you die we hit

everything we need to. We did and more and we went long. Appropriate. There's a lot that we needed to download on this right? Yeah absolutely. Well folks we so appreciate you listening. If you have not subscribed to The Texan go to thetexan.news and do so. We so appreciate the support of our subscribers. It's how we do what we do. It's really what ensures we can come to work every day and make this happen. Pardon my use of our scheme. I'm asking you to subscribe. I'm sorry. I saw me. Okay. It always happens. You always see me with the most inopportune times. Folks, we appreciate you listening to another episode of Smoke Builder and we'll catch you next month. That was really good.

Drayden!