The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup 3.11.22

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses Beto O'Rourke being sued by an energy CEO and Gov. Greg Abbott donor, a major hospital opting against conducting sex-change drug treatments for minors, a congressman aiming to destroy ATF firearm records, the Texas House speaker’s effort to support some GOP incumbents, Abbott examining teacher shortages despite record high employment, the rising cost of oil and gas, a Democrat-turned-Republican winning reelection in South Texas, controversy with Harris County elections, a congressman looking to ban energy imports from Russia, finalized rules against police defunding, and new members of the State Board of Education. If you have questions for our team, email us at [e-mail] — we’d love to answer your questions on our podcast.

Howdy, howdy. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, the team discusses Beto being sued by an energy CEO and Abbott donor, a major hospital opting against conducting sex change drug treatments for minors, a congressman aiming to destroy ATF firearm records, the Texas House Speaker's effort to support some GOP incumbents, Abbott examining teacher shortages despite record high employment. The rising cost of oil and gas. A Democrat turned Republican winning re-election in South Texas. Controversy with Harris County elections. A congressman looking to ban energy imports from Russia. Finalized rules against police defunding and new members of the State Board of Education. If you have questions for our team, DM or email us at editor at the texan.news.

We'd love to answer your questions on our podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Brad Johnson, Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell, a couple of dogs in the office too. We're missing Hayden Sparks this week. Hayden, we miss you, but nice new headshot. It looks good. He posted it to Facebook and I liked it immediately.

I think I was his first like. That does not shock me one bit. It was a great photo. I have to support our Hayden. Gentlemen, y'all recovering post-primary? Everyone rested up? Yeah. No.

The silence makes me think that is not the case, that you guys are not rested. I'm pretty rested. Yeah, feeling good, Brad think that is not the case, that you guys are not rested. I'm pretty rested. Yeah? Feeling good? Brad? Yeah, for the most part. Although I wasn't the one troubleshooting the websites and the election tracker, so.

Oh, yeah. Well, it's less about that as it is more than I haven't stopped running since then. Yeah. With my personal project. Yes. Dude, Daniel, you didn't write hardly any articles, actually. I don't know what you're so tired about. Yeah, it's fair.

Completely fair. It's ridiculous. You know, in the grand scheme of things, we have an easy job compared to most other things. Most of the jobs? Foreshadowing for something. I was going to say, we'll get into that later. Yeah, that's right. We will absolutely get into that later.

Well, very good, gentlemen. Let's go ahead and jump into the news this week. Brad, the general election for Texas governor got off to a very fast start. The expected matchup is set Abbott versus Beto. And Beto has been sued by one of the state's top oil and gas tycoons. What are the details? Yeah, this was something I don't think anyone saw coming heading into this week. We saw Beto and Abbott release ads shortly after each one of their respective primaries attacking each other. But then this curveball got thrown this week,

and the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, Kelsey Warren, sued Beto O'Rourke for defamation over repeated comments the candidate has made about Warren's campaign contribution to Abbott after the blackouts. In the suit, Warren is asking the court to order O'Rourke to retract his statements and for Beto to pay over a million dollars in damages. Wow. The suit itself states that defendant O'Rourke intentionally, repeatedly, and widely disseminated his deliberate and defamatory falsehoods

through publicly released statements or messages on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites and during speaking engagements and interviews. It's a defamation lawsuit and that's the basic premise of it um but it's just filed this week so we'll see we don't know how quickly this is going to move or anything like that what exactly has beto accused warren of so in june of 2021

warren gave greg abbott obviously the incoming governor, a $1 million campaign donation. And that came after the legislature finalized the power industry reforms. The chief component of that was SB3. And that was obviously a response to everything that happened with the blackouts. And that was the legislature's chief response, although there were others um which also play a role into this such as the securitization bill bills that um that i've written on before um which was basically just government loans given to these companies that are in massive debt um and the purpose of that is so they can defray the cost of of repaying these debts over a longer period of time rather than sticking consumers with really high price increases in the short run.

So, O'Rourke has accused Abbott of taking bribes from the energy industry in order to not, quote, properly regulate them. Specifically, a lot of this has been aimed at natural gas producers who did not have to weatherize as quickly as generators did under SB3's reforms. Now, notably, Railroad Commission Chairman Wayne Christian said yesterday in a Senate committee hearing that a lot of these natural gas producers are weatherizing, even without the mandate from the government. But that mandate was explicitly there for generators, and those have been followed through on. 99% of them have properly weatherized, according to ERCOT.

So that's kind of the general topic of this, specifically about the allegations made. This is one of many different statements that o'rourke has said he said a gas company energy transfer partners says quote give us there's a tweet give us 22 million dollars or we cut the power for texans um that's extortion abba isn't stopping them because their ceo bought him off with a one million dollar check that's corrupt i will fix the grid and hold extortionists and corrupt officials to account pretty solid statements yeah i mean that's very specific um yeah this is not a vague claim about you know political accusation yes um he is not only is he making specific accusations about whatever crime is alleged but he's targeting

specific people and namely kelsey warren um now after the suit was filed o'rourke said that his campaign response was all i've done over the course of the campaign is share these facts we are not backing down he's now as in warren trying to shut us down in the courts through a frivolous lawsuit and he's linking war Warren and Abbott basically part and parcel the same. So, yeah, that's the general gist of it. What can we expect going forward? What do we usually see with these kinds of lawsuits happen? Where's this going?

Yeah. These kinds of suits are generally tossed out pretty quickly, especially due to anti-slap laws that are designed to prevent frivolous lawsuits aimed at silencing speech and specifically political speech. There's generally broad protections for especially when you're criticizing a politician about what you can say and can't say. But Kelsey Warren is the one being accused of crimes here and he's not a politician. And that's part of his argument that he is he's not public facing i think that's part of the interesting part of the suit right there's two there's two interesting aspects the fact that these accusations by o'rourke are so specific and to the fact that warren is basically a private citizen whose only engagement in the public sphere is the fact that he gave a candidate money and a lot of money, but money.

So does that does that necessarily mean that he's a public facing person now? That's something the court is going to consider. Texas does have an anti-slap law, but the fact that these allegations are not vague platitudes and he's identifying Warren specifically and alleging serious and specific crimes, I think this isn't going to be a regular run-of-the-mill situation of one of these slap lawsuits. So we'll see what happens. I'm not sure what the timeline is on these things. Courts obviously tend to take quite a long time, and especially now with it being so backed up from COVID because they were closed for so long. But we'll see. It is equally, I think, likely that the court just tosses this immediately

as they drag this out and fully consider the merits of the case. So we'll see what happens. We'll keep watching. Thank you, Bradley. Isaiah, Texas Children's Hospital in Houston just made a pretty big announcement, very topical considering what's going on in the state. What's going on? The hospital is stopping endocrine treatments, puberty blockers, sex hormones, and so forth for the purposes of child gender transition. So they're no longer going to administer these drugs to kids for the purposes of aiding a gender transition.

And in their statement, they released a press. they say that this is directly due to Abbott's directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that we've covered recently. Yeah. So remind us what led up to this decision. Well, what's interesting is you recall that Abbott previously did the same thing, issued a similar directive to DFPS with regards to surgeries, genital surgeries specifically. And these do happen. I was present for testimony in the legislature where I heard from youths and young adults who said that they did undergo genital surgeries before the age of 18. So it does happen, but they're not nearly as common as the endocrine treatments, puberty blockers,

and so forth. So after Abbott issued that directive, all was kind of quiet afterwards. We didn't see big announcements like this. Ironically, what set Abbott on the path to this decision with the DFPS was a lawmaker who had filed a very different bill to ban these procedures. That was State Rep. Matt Krause. And his bill would have put enforcement in the hands of the Texas Medical Board instead of the DFPS. So some of the bills that we covered, and they'd also got a lot of other press elsewhere would have defined these

procedures and the surgeries that accompany them as child abuse and state law. And because of that, that would set in motion that would automatically trigger DFPS action on that part, you know, because they're, they're the agency that includes within them child protective services. They run the foster care system.

If they're, you know, the agents, they're the agency that removes kids from families to protect those kids from abuse or neglect or other maltreatment. That's, that's their gig. So by defining it as child abuse, that immediately puts enforcement in their hands. And Krause's bill is very different. It would have said that said that like there are already a lot of prohibited practices for doctors they can't do certain things and if they do those things then the texas medical board can take away their license yeah or hit them with fines and krause would have added uh administration of puberty blockers or performing of surgeries to age unit transition to the list of things that would authorize the medical board to take their licenses away so kraus issued after abbott told

dfps or it was phrased really as a question he told dfps like see if these genital surgeries already violate state law and dfps agreed and said they do. We're going to treat them as abuse. And so shortly after that, Krause said, you know, this directive while he supported it, uh, leaves out puberty blockers and these endocrine treatments, right. And also cosmetic surgeries like mastectomies that don't have anything to do, uh, like with genital surgeries. So he issued or submitted an official opinion request to the attorney general. And this is a process defined in state law. The attorney general has a deadline by which time he must respond to the submitted request. the request paxton had 180 days to digest it and come up with an opinion saying whether or not existing state law defines child abuse to include these procedures and then during that 180 day period recently i want to say it was in the beginning of december um abbott and paxton both

appeared on a radio show one right after the other and abbott told mark davis the radio host that um he had already prepared another dfps letter similar to the one he had already issued with regards to surgeries, but this one would include all of these other procedures as well. But he had to wait on Paxton's opinion before he did it. responded with that official opinion that immediately triggered like the day right after abbott's directive to dfps which as it turns out is having real world effects in the medical world in texas absolutely and we've seen this become a big campaign issue here in the state too in the republican primaries it'll be interesting to see how it sticks around if it does in the generals considering the party differences and the issues that the candidates will be battling back and forth on. But it's been very top of mind for candidates and voters in these campaigns. Thank you, Isaiah. Daniel, you've previously written on an exchange of letters between Representative Michael Cloud, congressman from Victoria, I think that's where he's from, and the ATF. And now Cloud

has filed legislation specifically related to that subject. What is this legislation? Well, I'm going to kind of bury the lead here and give you some background information instead of just telling you the story up front, because this is a podcast, not an article, so I can get away with that. So gun stores, if you're not familiar with it, they are federal firearm licensees. They are required by law to maintain records of firearm transfers. So every time they sell a gun to someone, they have to maintain a record of that. Instead of being kept in some central database, it's all kept by the gun stores themselves.

And then if there's like a criminal investigation or something where they're trying to figure out where this gun was purchased from, then they can go back to the gun store directly and figure out those records. Now, when a gun store goes out of business, this is when those gun stores are required to transfer all their records to the ATF. Now, the records that they have to maintain is up to a minimum of 20 years. So they have to maintain these records for 20 years. The ATF is actually pursuing a rule change where they would say you have to keep those records indefinitely. I'm not really sure what the status is of that rule change. They haven't provided any updates on it recently. But all that to say, once these records go to the ATF, then the ATF maintains these records. In this exchange of letters between the ATF and Cloud, the ATF disclosed that they have over 900 million records stored. A lot of these,

I think 800 and some million are maintained digitally. So there's just a ton of gun records there. Republicans like Michael Cloud and many others are concerned that this is, uh, potentially violating a, uh, the federal law prohibiting a gun registry, um, by having this, this kind of database of guns, uh, of gun purchases. And they're concerned that it could be used in the future, uh, for, for purposes of firearm confiscation or whatnot. So, uh, cloud's legislation that he filed this week, uh, would require the ATF to actually destroy all of those records. And then it would

also in the requirement, uh, for FFLs to transfer the files to the ATF. Uh, so it's a, it's a pretty big policy change, uh, but it is a nice short bill. That's only two pages. There you go. Now tell us whether there are other Republicans from Texas who have supported this bill and then what the prospects of this legislation passing would be. Yes. So there have been 50 Republicans in total across the country to co-sponsor this bill, six of them being from Texas. Those would be representatives Chip Roy, Jake Elsey, Randy Weber, Louie Gohmert, Ronnie Jackson, and Brian Babin. Wow.

I realize someone must have been trolling with me, or did I have a typo? There's not an Oxford comma here. That's terrifying. Daniel. Daniel. I'm sorry. You guys just witnessed that in real time. All that to say, those are the Texas Republicans who have co-sponsored that bill.

Now, this year, obviously, I can't imagine any world in which this legislation passes because Democrats control the House. So in order to even get this legislation through a committee, it would not be likely. This is not a bipartisan bill. There are no Democrats co-sponsoring it. Maybe there could be sometime down the road, but right now there's not. And specifically in the House, that's the whole other thing, right? Is the makeup of the House is not necessarily friendly to Republican legislation right now. Yes. So right now it's unlikely to pass, but it is interesting that this does have quite a bit of co-sponsors on it. You know, 50 is a pretty big number for the House. You know,

the House and the U.S. House is obviously a lot larger than the Texas House, but 50 members is still quite a bit. So I think that this could be kind of an early indication of this being one of Republicans' priorities going forward, certainly from more of the grassroots conservative wing of the party. I think this could be an issue at play in future legislatures, especially if Republicans retake the House and or the Senate in 2022 in November. So if that happens, we could see it definitely be pushed down the line further. But of course, there's obviously a lot of variables where this can go through a Republican controlled House It depends on how leadership views it, and there are a lot of other variables at play. But right now, probably not, but it is getting a lot of support from a bunch of Republicans. Yeah, and making waves. Thank you, Daniel. Let's move from the U.S. House to the Texas House. Brad, Speaker Dade Phelan just concluded his first primary in charge of the lower chamber,

during which he got involved on behalf of a number of GOP incumbents. Tell us more about his involvement. So Speaker Phelan announced after the primary that he spent over $2 million on text-led races during the election. He also said that he drove over 20,000 miles across the state stumping for GOP incumbents that were on the ballots. And in the article that we wrote, I list off each of the incumbents that received money and how much they got as of the latest filing. So that was the eight day filing. I'm sure that, well, to match the over two million amount that he said, there has to be more there in between then. But based on the records we have, the largest recipient of his donations or in-kind contributions was Stephanie Click, who was forced to a runoff.

She received $134,600 as of the eight-day filing. In all, as of the latest filing, 25 GOP incumbents received financial support from the Speaker. That number may change depending on the new filings between the hate day and the election day. But that's the numbers we have right now. And the contributions range from specific donations, just like here's some cash, or in-kind contributions paying for media buys or polling. So that's kind of the range of expenditures. Got it. so that's kind of the the range of expenditures got it now the day after the election phelan congratulated these gop incumbents right who won their primary or secured the combination

outright except for one who was left out so not really a shock brian slayton was the only gop incumbent who won their primary that was not uh congratulated by Phelan, at least publicly. Like I said, it's not a surprise as Slayton was one of only two Republicans who did not vote for Phelan's speakership last year. The other one was Representative Jeff Kasin, who is not running for re-election after the GOP-led redistricting bill made his district a Democratic district. So, yeah yeah it wasn't really a surprise that that slayton was left out uh he did respond he said i'm sure it was just a clerical error but i survived re-election also i look forward to working with you speaker feeling and my colleagues

to ban gender modification of minors and all the other rpt priorities there that issue comes again and stephanie click who you mentioned earlier was the biggest recipient of donations from the speaker her primary stemmed in large part due to her you know uh seemingly slow walking that that exact um ban on child gender modification yeah that's definitely the biggest theme in that race um and like you said that's why she got what was it four i think primary challengers? I believe so. And she was facing a runoff. So we'll see how that goes.

But, you know, Phelan's involvement is like any speaker. You know, they all get involved in these. You know, they have the platform to do so. They can raise quite a bit of money. They can support multiple candidates. But it's an effort to shore up his support for reappointment to the chair come next session in 2023. And for the policy agenda, he hopes to advance when the legislature reconvenes. But yeah, so we'll see how much he spends in these runoffs. And then his attention will likely turn

to the general. And there's at least a handful of seats that are, according to the Texas Partisan Index, relatively up for grabs. And there are a couple that Republicans could take. There are a couple that Republicans would like to hold on to. Right. And so I have a feeling he'll be involved in those somewhat substantially, but probably not limited to those come November. Yeah, certainly. Well, thank you for that. And just like Dan Patrick in the Senate is trying to shore up support with his endorsements and his support of his Senate candidates, particularly in some of these open seats, right? The speaker's doing the exact same thing. So

thank you for that, Bradley. Isaiah, we're going to come to you. Abbott recently called for the Texas Education Agency to create a new task about. Specifically, the task force should investigate the challenges teacher vacancies are causing for school districts and balance recruitment efforts with ensuring teacher quality. It would be composed of stakeholders and experts. Got it. That common term. Yes. And recommend policy changes for the agency. Got it.

Okay. Now, what does the data say about the availability of teachers in Texas? It's kind of complicated. It's more complicated than it seems. Anyway, but even before COVID-19 started hitting and closing down schools in the spring of 2020, Texas had informed the federal government of a shortage of teachers in certain subjects. So special ed, math, especially bilingual teachers, Texas had, there was the position of the state that we needed more teachers in those particular subjects. However, there was a lot of coverage during the pandemic that suggested or sometimes outright said that teachers were leaving, leaving public schools in droves because of,

of pandemic policies and statewide data just does not bear that out actually. So fortunately the, the TA releases attrition reports every year. That's just how many teachers have left the workforce. And fortunately attrition was actually remarkably low in the, the school year that ended in 2021. So the 2020-2021 school year. That's where all the statewide data is available right now.

Which is kind of surprising that attrition was that low. It was remarkably low. It was higher, I want to say, in the past four or five years. We've got all this specific data linked in the article. And we've written on this exact topic recently on how, overall, I'm kind of bearing the lead here. We ended the school year in 2021. The 2020-21 school year ended with more teachers than Texas has ever had before. Wow.

More teachers and administrators than Texas has ever had before. And on top of that, we have more non-teachers than teachers in schools. We hit about a one-to-one ratio in about 2016. And the gap has widened since then. Wow. schools we hit about a one-to-one ratio in about 2016 and the gap has widened since then wow where we have have been hiring 19 non-teach excuse me hiring non-teachers at a greater rate than teachers across the state texas administrators etc administrators are a piece of that and there are teachers aides and other staff as well but this is a lot of professional staff this isn't custodians and so forth there are a lot lot of people in the white-collar jobs in schools that take up a greater share of the state budget than teachers do. And obviously, budgets are complicated with schools.

With local property taxes as well. But additionally, a huge, huge, huge part of this data is that Texas public schools had fewer students than last year. This is actually also a nationwide phenomenon. It's pretty freaky how remarkably close the data mirrors national data, like from Texas to national. For both, overall, schools experienced about a 3% drop in student enrollment. And that's overall like K through 12. And the lower down you get, the higher the percentage of lost enrollment tends to be. So I want to say in Texas, in either kindergarten or third grade, again, all this data is specifically linked to actual TEA official data

in the article. But I want to say that kindergarten or some of the lower grades had up to 20% enrollment loss in in those grades but overall a three percent loss of enrollment so we've got three percent fewer students in texas public schools compared to last year wow normally that would mean less funding concurrently right because the funding that schools get from the state not their local funding but the funding that they get from the state is tied to average daily attendance and so if if you've got fewer students coming to school, that would normally mean, you know, you're not, if you're teaching fewer students, the state's position is that the school should get less money for that. It's like per student. But because of the difficulties of the

pandemic and the extraordinary circumstances that the pandemic presented, Abbott and the TEA held schools harmless and kept schools at the same level of funding throughout the 2020-2021 school year. So despite the drop in enrollment, there was not a drop in funding from the state level. And all of that is on top of the billions in federal relief debt that they got. So overall, teacher growth continued over last year, even though it was the first year in, I want to say since measurement began that texas public schools had fewer students than the year before because our population has just been growing and growing every year but um the 2020 2020 school year was the first year um and as far back as the data will take me where we had fewer students than the year before so this is all data that i think

is being ignored yeah and other coverage of, oh, there's a teacher shortage. And I mean, the shortages are very targeted and with very particular subjects. But this is actually a really good year in terms of how many teachers leave the job. Yeah. Which is surprising in many ways. And I think anecdotally, we're hearing a lot. I mean, I was just talking to a friend yesterday who was talking about how many she works at a local school here in Austin. And she was talking about how many teachers had left her school in the last few months, which is, I mean, contractually, that's interesting with teachers anyways, due to their like they have to finish out a school year.

Typically, that's kind of how it works. But and so there certainly is something something's happening. We're hearing a lot about it. But what the numbers tell us is something us is something entirely entirely different yeah there are particular districts that are undeniably undergoing shortages like i've seen real good coverage from the san antonio report on san antonio isd and other districts in san antonio and around it um that are and i've seen coverage that is comprised of actual data showing that you know they've got hundreds of vacancies and that's well i'm thinking about texas tribune's coverage of houston ist actually um where they had an article talking about how houston ist had 700 vacancies and that was unusual even for the state's biggest school district but um so you can see that in particular subjects in particular districts but across the whole state

um teachers did not leave the workforce in droves, at least in a way that there were scabs. They were replaced, right? I mean, to use a 20s term. But overall, we ended the year with more teachers. And that's just a fact. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's important to look at all this data. And shockingly, there's nuance to these stories, right?

It's more complex than what a headline might tell you. But Isaiah, thanks for breaking that down for us. Bradley, let's talk about something that is affecting most Texans and their pocketbooks. As inflation runs rampant, the prices of oil and gas have recently shot to levels we haven't seen in quite a while. Where do they currently stand? So as of today, Thursday, the average price of gas in Texas just eclipsed $4, which is, we haven't hit that in a long time. And this is just anecdotally, I know my dad told me that back in like the 08 collapse, $4 was when he really started to adjust his driving habits. And so, you know, I'm sure there are people that wouldn't

affect their driving habits, but I think we're reaching a point where it's going to the supply chain for, uh, creating gasoline for your car. Um, it's, it's, uh, near to $130 earlier this week. Uh, just barely, um, didn't hit that. And right now that was a 52 week high right now it's back down to, 114 roughly um but overall you know the price of gasoline is up 38 percent over the last 12 months that's from the bureau of labor statistics it's unadjusted so after adjustment it'll probably drop like eight to ten percentage points but still that's a sharp increase um especially compared to what we were seeing um you know think we were below two bucks for a while early on in the pandemic. And even some parts of Texas had low dollar one dollar gas. So maybe not quite that low, but regardless, we've seen a sharp increase and it's definitely being felt.

Got it. Now tell us some of the causes of this increase. Break it down for us. Yeah. So first the market is still adjusting to the recuperated levels of travel. So, you know, if, if supply is only set at an X per an X level level and then the demand for that supply jumps disproportionately to this uh supply then you're going to have a higher price uh just simple economics on that respect um through most of 2021 texas had produced 1.5 billion barrels of oil um so far lower than the 1.8 billion barrels they produced in 2019. Uh, the only month left, uh, for that total is December. So we'll see how much, um, how much we have produced at that point, but, uh, slightly behind and, um, added to that, you know, uh, more people driving and, and, um, and, uh, moving about than they were earlier on in the pandemic so

um you know that that right there is is one aspect the second the turmoil in europe whether it's the russian invasion of ukraine uh which has ripple effects on especially the natural gas international market because russia provides natural gas to much of europe yeah um then uh whether it's that or just the overall larger uh market problem of europe's crisis with natural gas uh just rising rapidly during the winter um you know that's affecting te Texas. And we're seeing a lot of push for things like the Jones Act to get at least temporarily pushed out of the way so that Texas can supply LNG to Europe, kind of fill this void where it was once filled by Russia. You know, certain people have been arguing that for a long time, but now we're seeing a lot more support for it because of what's happening in Ukraine. And third, the Biden administration's objective to move the country away from fossil fuel reliance is having a ripple effect on the industry, whether it's through just the predictions of future policies that may come down the line affecting projections for the oil and gas industry and how they're going to plan for the road ahead. That has an effect.

And also add actual policies that have been implemented so far, such as the Keystone XL pipeline that was canceled by the Biden administration. The permit itself, the prohibition on new or renewed federal land drilling leases and then proposed and currently beginning to be implemented emissions rules are all having an effect, sending a signal to the nation's oil and gas industry. And it's causing issues. You know, it's causing it's it's sending unpredictability into the market, which always causes prices to go up because these companies want to try and protect against market volatility. Now, Biden rejected the idea that this is his fault or his administration's policy's fault, instead laying the blame at Russia's feet. He said, Russia's war is affecting us all, but it's no time for profiteering or price gouging. It's simply not true that my administration's policies are holding back domestic oil production. Now, like I said, the war in Ukraine is absolutely affecting the larger markets,

but that's not the only thing. And, you know, in these economic situations, there's no one cause and some may have a bigger effect than others, but there's always a multitude of causes for this. And, um, these, these policies are absolutely part of that. Um, now you'll have people say that it's justified, uh, to move away from oil and gas for whatever reason they say, but, uh, to say that it is not having an effect on, on what we're seeing at the gas pump right now is just not true. Um, and also because of how delayed the oil and gas industry is to market effects, this price increase is likely to continue for some time as the market tries to adjust to the current level of demand and all the other aspects that flow into the price that we see at the gas pump. So too long, didn't read. You're saying that it's not just the Biden administration that is guilty for this. And you're saying it's not

just the Russia-Ukraine conflict that it's responsible. There's a multitude of issues. Nuance. Problems. Yes. Again. Yes. There's more to it.

But, you know, as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, politicians will try to make things as one dimensional as possible. And that is what we're seeing. I thought you'd go for the three guarantees in life life but you really mixed it up this time yes i'm trying to throw some variety into my your vernacular yes i like it well thank you bradley daniel one republican incumbent who won re-election was ryan guion to the texas house but what's notable about his victory specifically he is notable because i think he might be the newest Republican in the Texas Statehouse, unless Representative Lujan's election was before. Representative Guillen changed parties. He was formerly a Democrat for many years, but last fall in

November, he announced that he was switching to the Republican Party. This came after redistricting when his district was redrawn from a Democrat-leaning district to a Republican-leaning district. His district is in South Texas where the political winds are kind of changing and Republicans are getting a lot more traction down there. So his change of affiliation is kind of a signal of that continuing too. He's not the first lawmaker from South Texas to change his party affiliation, uh, either. So, uh, his reelection victory was the first one that he actually won as a Republican, uh, in a Republican, in a Republican primary. Um, he had two Republican opponents, um, but walked away with, um, about, I think 56% of the vote. I'll have to go back and double check the numbers, but I was above 50%. whereas his two opponents did not get enough to pull him into a runoff.

Yeah. So, yeah, he will go on to the general election. There is one Democrat on the ballot who he will run against in November. But it is a Republican-leaning district. And as a longtime incumbent, the odds are kind of in his favor. But that is noteworthy and it is interesting specifically that this foreseeably was a new batch of voters who are seeing him on their ballots republican primary voters right they've never seen the name ryan gian on their

republican primary ballot and the general absolutely they see his name for however many years he's been in office but these are a whole different batch of voters. It's just interesting that he was still able to come out with multiple opponents and not make it into a runoff. So thank you for that, Daniel. Isaiah, let's talk through some Harris County drama. Holly Hansen has been covering this extensively. Make sure to go to the texan.news and read all of her coverage. You're going to summarize it for us.

So let's just start with the most recent development. What's going on down there? So Isabel Longoria, the Harris County Elections Administrator, resigned on Tuesday after a few issues popped up. And as you note, I'm standing on Holly's mighty shoulders for this one. This is all her reporting. So I'll just name a few of these issues, which are entertaining. Before the election, which was on March 1st, election judges had already found that supplies were not available for pickup at the appointed time. So that's one deal. After the election began, Longoria notified the state that her department would not be able to count the votes by 7 p.m. on Wednesday.

And that's a deadline set forth in the law. And that's not SB1. That law goes out to 1986 and makes it a misdemeanor to miss this deadline. On Saturday, Longoria announced that the department lost about 10,000 ballots. So in other words, these ballots were not included in the election night totals. The reconciliation measure that identified the missing ballots actually kicked in as part of SB1, the election law that passed last year after a lot of drama in Austin and D.C. The Harris County Republican Party is suing the Elections Department over the errors, which they include or allege in their lawsuit that the department printed a lot of ballots

on the wrong sized paper, which cut off a bunch of lower ballot races for judges and so forth. There are citizens that also told the texans they received ballots for precincts that they did not live in so those are a few of the things going on wow and i in holly's article she talks specifically i think this is notable you already spoke about it but i'm going to uh home in more on it here these ballots are supposed to be i believe uh on eight and a half by 14 inch pieces of paper i believe that was the measurement regardless it was a longer than normal sheet of paper and apparently at

some point they either ran out or just switched to other paper which was eight and a half by 11 yeah and then suddenly there were these severely um these races that were appeared to be severely undervoted in which it was just interesting that that happened and of course people are thinking okay well perhaps this is this happened specifically because these races weren't even printed on the ballot like that's the concern which is just insane that that would happen in a county as large as harris county with the budget they have and the infrastructure they've had to carry out elections in the past. Unbelievable.

So talk to us about what Harris County Judge Lena Hidalgo said about these problems. What did she have to say? Who did she, where did she lay blame? Hidalgo blamed SB1. And as I mentioned, this is the bill that, this is the big elections bill, omnibus election reform, that was passed by the legislature after the corn break over this bill. This is the one that it took three special sessions to pass. And there was a lot of trauma around it. So Hidalgo said, in her words, the election was thrown into chaos the moment SP1 passed the legislature.

Irrespective of the efforts of one party to throw into question the integrity of our electoral system, not just here in Texas, but all throughout the nation, we cannot afford to have unforced errors. So she said that she actually had expressed her desire to Longoria for a change in leadership. And so she encouraged Longoria to resign. Wow. So tell us real quickly, we've talked about this specifically last year when this bill was being made its way through the legislature, but give us a little background on SB1. It does a lot of things. It shores up protections for poll watchers. It requires ID for mail ballot applications.

It prohibits drive-thru voting and most uses of temporary structures in early voting. It clarifies that curbside voting is only permitted for disabled people. It also clarifies that voting can only happen between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., increasing the minimum amount of poll time by one hour, actually. And it bans unsolicited mail ballots. So you notice the use of the word clarified with some of these things. For some of these provisions, the law, as it stood before SB1, already generally prohibited these things. But SB1 was passed with regards to some of these things directly to address Harris County elections, which had, I mean, the word that's coming to mind is skirt of the law, but I don't want to say that. Yeah, leadership had very specifically kind of followed rules that the legislature was not okay with. They experimented. They experimented.

They experimented a little bit. And even pushed the boundaries of what was allowed according to election code. Right. And so we see this with other issues, too. Like I'm thinking of like with the education code in Houstonston isd there's still litigation going on that's like getting changed by new laws legislature pass that are meant to fix what they thought was already made explicit in the law but there's there's a wiggle room and things like that and so yes they experimented with 24-hour voting with drive-thru voting and things like that and so um the

legislature clarified in sp1 um to make it more explicit in the law that things like that. And so the legislature clarified in SB1 to make it more explicit in the law that things like 24-hour voting, drive-through voting, things like that, temporary structures of early voting are outlawed in election code. But anyway, Harris County also, I should note, created the elections office in Longoria's office in 2020 on a split vote between the three Democrats and the two Republicans on the commissioner's court. Notably before that time, like other counties, elections were previously run by the district clerk and the voter registrar who importantly are elected and Longoria was appointed. So some important details there on that department. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for covering that for us. Holly has been at the forefront of so much of that coverage in Harris County. So thank you, Holly. And make sure to go to the Texan and read all about it, folks. Daniel, this week, the U.S. House passed legislation from an Austin congressman, Lloyd Doggett, specifically. Well, you tell us what the bill was about. So this bill was very similar to the president's executive order this week that bans energy imports from Russia.

It goes into a little bit more detail than that. It also urges Russia's suspension from the World Trade Organization, which is unlikely to happen. But it also broadens presidential authority to sanction Putin's allies and supporters over in Russia under some existing legislation or an existing law. This bill passed with strong bipartisan support. There were 414 members of Congress in the House who voted for it. There were 17 who voted against it. Yeah, so talk us through the members who voted against it, specifically the Texas members. Yes, there were two Texas members who voted against it.

You had Representative Louie Gohmert, and then you also had Representative Chip Roy. Representative Louie Gohmert put out a statement last night. Both Republicans. Yes, both Republicans. All other Republicans and all the Democrats in the Texas delegation did support this bill. So they were the two exceptions. But they did kind of explain their reasoning for voting against the bill. In a statement last night that Representative Louie Gohmert put out, he said, quote,

There's no way I could vote to exchange getting oil from Putin for getting oil from some other tyrant or country that wants to destroy America, which makes this a cynical political ploy. And the criticism that they have is that since we will be kind of not importing gas from Russia, we need to bolster American production of oil and gas. And this bill does nothing to do that. That is kind of a broad criticism of this. And even from Republicans who supported the bill, they say, yes, we should be doing this, but we also need to be bolstering American production of oil and gas. So that has been kind of an interesting criticism from Republicans. Wow. That is, yeah, that is absolutely fascinating. Thanks for covering that for us and we'll continue to watch. I know we just saw on Twitter, was it 90 90 texas house members saying or calling on um divesting from any sort of like walk us through what you just saw there on twitter uh so representative rafael and chia is the one who just shared out a list um and i think there's been a similar one going around the senate um where

basically they're pushing the state to divest uh all their finances from the state of russia uh i know brad had covered uh this briefly last week um represent or what is what is the title of hagar i was gonna say commissioner and i'm like that's not right that's not right uh he announced that they were doing something similar to this and uh so lawmakers are continuing to push for uh further efforts to to essentially divest uh resources from the state from anything russia that's supporting russia it's happening in a lot of states yes all over the country and specifically interesting in texas considering our oil and gas industry here right i mean that's a huge part of everything that's

going on internationally and texas import export is just unbelievable so interesting uh that obviously federally there's a stake in all of this but at the state level there is as well which i mean ever you're like you said other states are doing this but texas is a lot more to uh give or take from this kind of conflict yeah and they have a lot to gain if texas energy can fill the void that is being uh caused by all these places pulling their money out of russia yeah um so we'll see yeah absolutely well brod we're gonna stick with you um governor abbott announced the finalization of the rules prohibiting cities from defunding police apartments what's the upshot of the rules so it applies to the top 11 most populous cities

those are the only ones that are that have more than 250 000 people so if by the next census there are more that fit that then more will be will apply to this this law but if found to be in violation of having defunded their police department the city risks having their property tax rate frozen at the no new revenue rate, losing out on grant money, being banned from annexing surrounding communities, and triggering a disannexation election for any community absorbed in the preceding 30 years. So it's a lot of potential punishment there, but it's all kind of up to the governor's public safety office, up to their discretion on what constitutes defunding.

You can apply for an exemption under certain circumstances. Yeah, so they're the ones that are going to handle this. But this is largely a response to the city of Austin in Texas, at least. Now, there are other cities across the country that made massive cuts to their police department. But Austin was the largest was the biggest example in Texas when they cut and redirected one hundred and fifty million dollars from the police department budget. They restored a lot of that in order to comply with this, but they didn't restore the funding for positions. So like patrol staffing levels. So there's a lot that's going to have to be worked out on a case by case basis in this. But that's generally the gist of it.

And it was that this was passed by the legislature pretty. I think it was on partisan lines, but it passed relatively easily. And the governor signed it. And, you know, we'll see how the enforcement of this unfolds. If anyone even comes close to running afoul of it, you know, if the city of Austin is not going to is going to immediately correct itself. Yeah, I think there's going to be examples of cities violating this law are going to be few and far between.

But, you know, we shall see. I think there is some more rulemaking or specificity that will be dealt with at certain points too right i mean there's certainly this is a move um a big move by the legislature and the governor but at the same time there's there's still specificity that could be added and it'll be interesting to see how cities and counties who or cities rather that don't necessarily agree with this approach how far they're able to take it yeah and how do they kind of find little loopholes around it or now that there's a base a baseline here like you said the legislature will will probably tweak it going forward when you know these these examples of of cities kind of finding exceptions or skirting it a little bit

pop up. You know, I'm sure there will be a response from the legislature. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Bradley. Isaiah, our last topic of the day. Let's talk about the State Board of Education. Very important body here in Texas that is often overlooked. Surely our most exciting topic.

Surely our most exciting topic. And actually, it is a little spicy here. It is a little spicy. But how much do the primaries shake up the existing makeup of the SBOE? Quite a bit. There are going to be six new members, at least, that start on the next term when it convenes in November. So it's got a November meeting, I think, that starts on the 15th after the elections, the

general elections then. And there are definitely going to be six new members. Two incumbents lost in the primaries, and both were Republicans. Daniel and I looked up the election schedule, the SPOE, and part of this might have to do with its funky election schedule. You know, like not every seat is up all the time. And so redistricting has a lot to do with that. But the new board is going to look very different from the old board, which generally, so I'll just tell you, like, for context, the board had four freshmen at the start of 2021, which is kind of a lot. It had two freshmen at the beginning of 2019 and two freshmen at the beginning of 2017.

So six is kind of a lot of new members for the board. Yeah, certainly. Now, what issues seem to be clear drivers in the primaries? In District 1, what's interesting about that one was that the incumbent, Georgina Perez, that was one of the voluntary departures, of which there were three. And she was probably the most ardent opponent of charter school expansion on the SPOE. She will likely pass the baton to the candidate that she endorsed in the primary, Melissa Ortega. Ortega won the primary, but Phil Schaaf a majority with 46% of the vote, and is going to face Laura Marquez in a runoff election. And I anticipate that they're going to have a difficult time distinguishing themselves, and it's going to come down to their experience rather than their stances on the issues.

There was a third candidate in the race, Omar Yanar, who actually runs a charter school. He's a superintendent of a charter school and had previously taught in a more traditional public school, a regular ISD. And so I got the chance to talk to him on the phone. I reached out to the other candidates, but didn't receive a response. And he says that, you know, part of one of the millstones for him is that he is, in his words, the charter guy in the race. I was curious in that race to see, with that perception of his candidacy and the other two candidates who are very opposed to charter school expansion, it seemed a little bit like a referendum on charter schools in District 1, which is based in El Paso. Yonar was the only one of the three candidates.

Yonar didn't make the runoff. He was the only one of the three candidates rihanna didn't make the runoff right he was the only one left behind and so that seems to me to um send to offer a strong statement of what the democratic primary voters in district one you know they still feel like they're going with they want to go with more of georgina perez who they had for a long time and they want kind of more of the same deal at least with regards to charters, which is interesting. In the Republican primaries, the primaries seemed to award in several races, candidates that oppose CRT vocally. So I mentioned that there are two incumbents who lost to the primaries and both were Republicans.

Jay Johnson in District 15 was a freshman member of the SPOE and he lost his primary to challenger Aaron Kinsey, who was one of the strongest fundraisers. It's a good name. Erin Kinsey? Kinsey, yeah, it's a good name. You mean like a good ballot name? You know, because that has a lot to do with it in the primary. I think she's referring to himself.

I am. Oh. Sorry. Well, I didn't. I missed it because, for one, I'm an idiot. It's spelled totally different. And two, it's spelled totally differently. Totally differently.

So I'll just brush past this failure. Speaking of charter schools, Johnson voted to veto four of the seven charter schools that they considered at the one meeting that he's been present for since he's a freshman where they've considered new charters. And so he vetoed a majority. One of the ones that he approved has been facing swirling accusations of like, oh, they're associated with even Mexican D and CRT and all this stuff. And so that put him in hot water with a lot of Republican voters um and so aaron kinsey also nabbed a lot of really big endorsements like dan patrick endorsed him take his right to life charles perry who's a state senator for the area endorsed him and um so he won that primary pretty handily um sue melton malone in district 14 was the other incumbent who lost.

Evelyn Brooks was her opponent, or competitor, I should say, in the primary. And Brooks ended the night with a solid nine-point lead over Melton Malone with 57% of the vote. And in both of these races, or both these candidates, I should say, Evelyn Brooks and Aaron Kinsey, they are both very outspoken opponents of these cultural issues like critical race theory. And the incumbents that they were facing in the primary, Johnson and Milton Malone, were very much quieter, more business as usual candidates. The word common sense showed up a lot in their campaign literature, right? And so, you know, they're just that kind of candidate, more business as usual. And the primary really punished them for that. And so those two are obviously the most significant because those are incumbents who are booted out in the primary.

There was another race that I believe it's for District 2. Yes, that is the most competitive district. There's a 52% chance of remaining remaining democratic according to our texas partisan index i say ours it's daniels um so that's the most competitive scene the spoe and so um that is currently held by cortez in district two he's another voluntary departure a democrat and uh in the republican primary we've got um on one hand it, kind of the same dichotomy as with the incumbents that I mentioned earlier. We've got former teacher LJ Francis, who has been a very vocal and outspoken opponent of CRT and these other, you know, big hot button issues. And he was facing Hildegard de Chazot,

kind of a longstanding education professional in the primary, who again, was a lot quieter on those topics. And he beat her out for the Republican in the Republican primary for was a lot quieter on those topics and um he beat her out for the republican in the republican primary for the seat as i said that's currently held by a democrat but it's the likeliest to sway right so um you know we'll see how that goes lj might have a shot at it but we'll see what happens in the general right well thank you for that isaiah certainly important okay gentlemen let's pivot to twitter let's talk about notable tweets from the week daniel we're going to start with you. What did you see that caught your eye?

I'm just glad that we don't have to talk about TikTok. I was on Twitter and I saw a tweet about an article about TikTok. Wow. It said, here's five TikTok dances you can do to help Ukraine fight Russia. Are you serious? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Did you learn them? so cringy do you guys know how many legislators like texas state house members who are on twitter

there are a lot jasmine crockett has a very sorry on yes they're all on twitter almost all of them but tick tock yeah jasmine crockett has a very strong twitter fall art why get all you saying twitter tiktok following what are the odds daniel that that article is just chai com agate prop for the russians um since you know tiktok is basically owned by the chinese communist party there are a lot of abbreviations there that i don't understand there are like a lot of it wasn't even it don't understand. There are like a lot of, it wasn't even a brief, it was like half words. Yeah. Put together to form full words.

We're literally using the term tick talk. You're right. It's not even spelled with a C. It reminds me of a Kesha song. That wouldn't be true. At least the Kesha song had a C in it. I think. Anyways.

Basically, my question was how much of tick tock is Chinese communist party's propaganda. You know who else is on tick tock?iscoe kane during the corn break every day that the democrats were gone i think he posted a tiktok or at least many days of a sign that he put on his office door that said i recall it's been this many days and he tweeted it too but i believe he also made tiktoks which was so funny to see briscoe kane on tiktok it was he also made TikToks, which was so funny to see Briscoe Cain on TikTok. He also made that cartoon rabbit trap with the box. I do remember that. And then he put a six-pack of Miller Lite on it. Oh, man. Those corn brick days.

Those were the days. Legislators didn't have much to do. They were starting TikTok accounts. They were very much out of each other. Unlike something that i'm transitioning to that was well done unlike uh three congressmen who uh flew on air force one together uh with president biden to fort worth uh for his visit to texas this week uh let me actually pull up the tweet so that i can actually say the correct congressman instead of winging it and getting the wrong ones. So you had Representative Mark Vesey and as well as

Representative Colin Allred, both from the Dallas area, and then Representative Jake Elsey, who I don't think his district currently goes into Dallas, but it is going to go into Dallas. I think it has a little bit of Dallasallas county um but maybe not the city right county is what i was referring to got it um so these three congressmen flew to texas together uh for the president's visit um you also had something interesting happen when president biden was here uh he actually according to a poll report uh he did make a comment about the Republican congressman in the crowd, Jake Elsey. The other two were Democrats. But he said, reportedly, quote, you can smile, Jake. Adding, Jake's a Republican, but I like the hell out of him.

Wow. So some interesting things that happened there in Fort Worth this week. What are the chances that shows up on a campaign mailer the next cycle if LZ is challenged in the primary? A lot. Yeah. Totally. Or the chances are high. Yes. That's the accurate framing. 100%. Well, very interesting, Daniel. Isaiah, let's go to you. What did you see that caught your eye? Well, we've been discussing as a little behind the scenes thing, an article that we're going to put out on the second anniversary of the beginning of the COVID disaster declaration from the governor's office. The second anniversary of the beginning. Okay, I got it.

A lot of of's, I'm sorry. I wrapped my brain around it. Yeah, too many prepositions. But Briscoe Cain, speaking of, told out, as a reminder, section 28 of the Bill of Rights of the Texas Constitution says, in quotes, no power of suspending laws in the state should be exercised except by the legislature and then he puts a little citation and um i saw this and i thought this immediately reminded me of the bills that were filed and didn't didn't really go anywhere for the most part to rest the power that abbott exercised in his disaster declarations away from the executive

and back into the legislative branch man that seems like forever ago but that was like the big issue of the of the session at the start big issue and there are democrats and republicans filing it nathan johnson filed it you know i mean like on the democrat side of the senate and um yeah it was a bipartisan issue and just didn't, a lot of those ambitions weren't really fulfilled. Especially once the blackouts happened, that took a lot of the oxygen out of the room for it. Right. It may have otherwise been used to pass this stuff. That's so true.

And that was a month and a half into session. If you subscribe to the political capital theory. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so below, an account named Huffines for Governor, whose political leanings we can only speculate, said Greg Abbott forgot about this part in spring of 2020. And Briscoe Cain responded directly to this commenter and said, actually, it was the 1975 Texas legislature that violated this provision. The chief executive's job is to execute the laws passed by the legislature and so on the one hand briscoe kane tosses out this tweet that it seemed to me at least to be directed at abbott or at least you know covid measures yeah right like suspending laws emergency suspension of laws and then when somebody

points that out explicitly briscoe kane says like the governor doesn't have anything to do with that that was the tda right that's what he's referencing right past the 75 disaster act that was the year this passed yeah and so he's talking about the tda um and putting the blame back on the legislature to um to kind of to prevent abbott from doing what he is not at fault for doing under briscoe's argument yeah but yeah this is a very strange and duplicitous conversation on i don't understand it um if he's not referring to covet i mean maybe this is just like a rorschach and i'm seeing covet in the inkblot or whatever he could be talking about something else entirely but it is interesting that conservative lawmakers i mean the leader of their parties the just as the

president is at the federal level is their governor right governor abbott is the leader of the republican party in texas and many in like at least symbolically at the very least they agree on everything but he's absolutely the leader he is the the head of state for the republican party in many ways the chairman certainly directs the party administratively but in terms of the discussion who has power what policies are talked about a lot of it rests with the governor and so if you're a republican state rep and you have a conservative outlook as you know kane does in a lot of way i mean he's ranked as one of the top conservatives uh in terms of voting record in the house every session all the time yeah um and so he's pointing out things that many conservatives do have concerns with specifically the texas disaster act but it's interesting in

that he also is um you know the leader of his party is abbott and so there's kind of this yeah it's very interesting to watch there's tension and it's it's like that with a lot of legislators right i mean it's even if certain republicans weren't critical of how abbott responded to covid that was a huge reason why he got primary challengers right and that's kind of where a lot of that stemmed from so and i think he's probably pointing out the original sin of the tda and the legislature originally granting the governor this power and then they came back and revised it and gave local governments more power um which is what we saw them you know kind of run away with yeah during the the um the pandemic um so you know the the legislature did originally approve of this stuff yes and uh just and just

because the the legislature now is is different like made up of different people than back then it's still the legislature and so they still did what they did um but i think that's what he's pointing out uh in that specific response um but yeah well i'm not saying this is specifically what kane is doing here but to your point isaiah we saw many legislators during the session even criticize the texas disaster act and say okay we need to revise this we need to revise this but not criticize at the same time the governor's response which a lot of i know a lot of voters said like had discontent about right it's like no this is what caused the governor or gave the governor this ability to be able to do what he

did or the localities to be able to do what they did but they but legislators a lot of them stopped short of criticizing the governor's actual actions and instead criticized the tda and that's where a lot of discontent came from which is interesting to watch that kind of political tightrope you walked and it remains in effect and hasn't been revised at all we'll see if i mean if it didn't get revised after that you know i can't imagine that a more you know uh important or i don't know uh i understand i I mean, I said, yeah, yeah. Like the motivation was there with COVID.

What else? Yeah. Cause COVID, I mean, to your point, um, when had the TDA been activated across the entire state before? Right.

Like, like it contemplated disasters like a hurricane or like the wildcat fire or stuff like, you know, and we saw that come into play with the, the loophole, the, the, um, uh, property tax loophole yeah i'm like this was passed the 2019 reforms were passed uh and there was a loophole in there with like a hurricane in mind but it didn't it didn't rule out a pandemic

and so when you uh declare a disaster declaration across the entire state any any locality can now raise property taxes up to eight percent when the legislature the year before just said no you can't do it uh unless you ask voters um up up to like 3.5 percent for localities so um yeah well speaking of political capital we'll see if they we you know legislators have much of this issue has any sort of momentum going into next session it's difficult when you have you're the party in power you have the majority in both the house and the senate you're the leader of your state is of your same party and yet what you're doing is deemed as criticizing his response to something it takes a lot of effort or momentum for that to be addressed

and i don't know that we'll have that this next session um yeah good one day okay i'm gonna go to we talked about brian slayton earlier i'm gonna point out two tweets from him this is again the legislator who has kind of gone to bat against a lot of the leaders of his party and been willing to vote against the speaker or be critical of the governor when a lot of other legislators of the same party of these republicans aren't willing to do so or at least not publicly um so brian slayton tweeted this week yesterday i urged governor abbott to call for a day of prayer for peace in the world today governor abbott did just that this sunday has been proclaimed a day of prayer i urge everyone to join me and the governor

in prayer beseeching god for his peace to reign among the nations interesting in that um you know one slayton is always kind of like i said at odds with some of the leadership of his party and he's making you know he's making the point here that hey i called for this who knows whether the governor did this on uh at the request or at the prodding of representative slayton interesting nonetheless and i will say as well on what day was this this was two days ago so it was on tuesday um today i sent a letter to governor abbott asking that all covid related emergency orders be rescinded and as we talked about earlier this sunday marks the two-year anniversary as you just said say of those that first disaster declaration

um and slayton continues and with the turmoil of the last two years and a war in europe i am urging him to call for a day yeah there's the call for a day of prayer. But again, interesting to see this lawmaker who did not receive the support of the speaker, again, willingly go to bat against the governor. Well, we wonder, like, is this collegial? Is he saying, well, we agree on this thing? Or is this just saying, like, actually, this was my idea, right? Yeah. It's hard to tell yes maybe just for

me i think there's a lot to be inferred there who knows about the motivation right i mean we can't get inside his head but it's interesting nonetheless to kind of see this happen particularly knowing the history of this representative and his willingness to come out in opposition to certain things that state leaders have done and again he was he was willing to vote against the speaker which is a big move for a republican in the house when um it's all but ensured that he will be elected it's a big move brad let's go to you we alluded to this earlier but talk through what you uh what you want to talk about as far as twitter fun goes so josh borrow um i think it's safe to say he's

of conservative leaning at least who is he with he's not really with anybody at least according to his twitter bio he has a his own newsletter and i'm sure it's a substack thing um but he uh put out a tweet that said i wrote about something that grinds my gears. Journalists talking about how hard it is to be a journalist these days. It's self-absorbed and alienating to readers who have their own problems. And he wrote a whole newsletter on this. It's very good and totally accurate. But struck a chord with me because since starting this job um it has been so clear especially with

the pandemic um how much journalists like to play the victim themselves about everything and they a like to make the story about them whether it has anything to do with them or not and b they like to uh play the tiny violin uh they they they want. They want sympathy points on everything. And, you know, this is not, you know, it's not an easy job, but it's not like we're out there digging ditches all day. I get to sit here in front of a computer and monitor stuff and, you know, go out and explore the states and talk to people. Like, that's fun.

And you wouldn't know that talking to most of these journalists who act like they, um, you know, following the news is so traumatic. Um, and it's just, it's quite annoying to see that,

uh, the self aggrandizing. Um, and you know, there are those that, that don't take that approach, but gosh, there are so many of the two.

Um, and it's kind of the attitude of many mainstream journalists these days like that's the the attitude we're seeing a lot of different newsrooms unionized too and that's largely in response to this argument right that there are either disparities or difficulties that reporters and journalists face that maybe others and other occupations may not yeah it also goes to something else that annoys me that this idea that things annoy you oh yes you know in case you didn't know that he usually keeps this kind of bottled up right i know he doesn't express his frustration ever yeah this idea that you know this generation has never had

it worse or no one has ever had it worse than this generation of people oh dude especially this this uh job or this um group of people as in journalists you know it's never been worse you know it's not like um you know we we're living in uh soviet controlled eastern germany where the stasi are are self-reporting on everybody and and journalists are actually getting jailed and and executed and all this stuff like come on people this is this is a great time uh you know warts and all this is a great time to be alive and it's a great time uh to do this job because it has never been easier i would say yeah in terms of the technological capabilities in front of us um but you wouldn't know that if you listen to the journo commentariat

about just whining about how you know they're they're victims and it's it's such a tough time it's like they're war correspondents or something. Yeah. And a lot of this stems from, you know, the Trump administration when he was, um, direct and, uh, you know, combative with the press. And, you know, a lot of people would say deservedly. So, um, I would say at least somewhat deservedly. So because of how the, the broader, uh, industry of journalism has acted, um, in terms of making things all about them. They deserve to be taken down a peg. And, you know, it's I don't know if this is ever going to if this is going to get remedied at all. But it's definitely something that journos themselves have to self-correct.

And as Josh Barrow points out, because the people who read our stuff are going through a lot of other problems. For example, you know, we all had jobs during the pandemic. How many people lost their jobs? Yeah. Right. Couldn't, had to struggle to find ways to put food on the table for their family. You know, that's entirely different. That's real life stuff right there yes absolutely and we were largely insulated from that but again you wouldn't know it if you were just listening to the the uh random journalists on twitter who just constantly beat the drum of their own um self-aggrandizing like if you think that this job is a noble service to provide, then why not treat it that way? And what makes it so noble?

You're providing facts to people, right? That is the genuinely good, with a capital G thing. When you do this job well, that's the good thing you're doing. But a lot of the same people will like just post a little clips of themselves saying, I asked this politician this question and think, okay, well,

where's the answer, right? That's what you're here for. That's the whole, the whole glory and glamor of your job comes from you getting answers to questions and not just acting like this kind of gadfly at press conferences and stuff like, you know,

back to making the story about themselves. Yeah. It's like, this is about me. I asked a question, you know, I I've done, yeah, look at me. And the answer, that's irrelevant. Yep. You know.

Absolutely. Well, gentlemen, that was a good rant. Well done. It was very therapeutic. Good. Daniel, you know, you and I, we had a lot to add to that conversation. You guys have not experienced having your air conditioning go out. I had that happen recently.

Hey, at least it was not July. Okay? At least it was not July. We are a team not having AC go out in July. That's what the team we are on. Well, folks, thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed this podcast and we'll catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening.

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