The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - April 11, 2025

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/Learn more about the Data Center Coalition at: https://www.centerofyourdigitalworld.org/texasLearn more about The Beer Alliance at:https://beeralliance.com/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.Ken Paxton Launches U.S. Senate Campaign, Challenging Sen. John CornynTexas Officials, Foreign Countries React to Trump 'Liberation Day' TariffsTexas House Overwhelmingly Rejects Rep. Harrison’s Motion to Remove Speaker BurrowsBill Banning NDAs in Child Sexual Abuse Cases Passes Texas House Unanimously‘Budget Night’ in Texas House Set for $337 Billion Appropriations PackageTexas School Choice Test Vote Set with Amendment Ahead of Budget Night‘Texas DOGE,’ Mid-Term Sunset Review Bills Pass State HouseSen. Ted Cruz Letter Probes 'Future of Privacy Forum' Over AI Regulation AdvocacyTexas Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Deportation EffortsCPS Removals Fell by Over Half, Abuse-Induced Child Deaths Plummeted in Texas Since 2018Travis County Judge Awards Paxton Whistleblowers $6.67 Million Judgment in Revived LawsuitUT Austin Scraps 'Flag' Courses, Including 'Cultural Diversity' Requirementand MORE!

Howdy folks and welcome back to the weekly roundup. This is a big day in the Texas House recording Thursday morning at the, not the butt crack of dawn because it is certainly not, but for us if it comes to recording this podcast it's pretty darn early. Do we feel ready to talk? Do we feel like we need more caffeine? How are we doing? I'm doing good. This is probably my fourth. How many hours have you been awake at this point? I feel like I should have been up for more than four hours already. You got 90 minutes spinning this morning, watched a video as I was spinning about the

Trump tariffs. So coming in caffeinated, informed, ready to go caffeinated informed and ready to go Wow. Yeah Well, I had a Red Bull this morning and I'm Ready to roll she's ready to rumble. Yeah, Bradley on a scale of one to your normal level of grumpy Where are we at? So I guess one is not grumpy. I'm not grumpy at all. It's a glorious day. Holy day. It's one of Brad's favorite days. Oh yeah. Well there's budget day which will be fun as always but it's

also the first day of the Masters which I'm watching on this podcast right now. So Mike Weir just sunk a birdie putt. That's exciting for him. Scotty Scheffler tees off at 9.15. Your favorite person. Brad, we do have something we want to bestow to you on this podcast, on this episode. Mary-Lise and I are just concerned about this. I have no idea about this. About the aesthetic of your phone case. Oh my gosh.

As we previously discussed. Are we wasting time on this? We need to get over to the floor. about the aesthetic of your phone case. Oh my gosh. As we previously discussed. Are we wasting time on this? We need to get over to the floor. And if we have not talked about it publicly on the podcast, we're concerned about Brad's phone case and the aesthetic. It's like a mint green. It's a little.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. So beautiful, it's something we would buy. Yes, exactly. So Brad, we wanted to give you something that may hopefully match the aesthetic of a man a little bit more So please so happy Thursday Wooden phone case it says don't tread on me with an American flag in the background.

Very manly. We thought it might fit the aesthetic of Brad Johnson, you know a little bit more so we're just gonna set it here. You can just like let it you can just warm up to it over the course of this podcast. I'm glad we wasted five minutes on that. That was certainly not five minutes, but you're so welcome. Well, we do have a lot to get into today. Shocking. Hopefully someone had mentioned that.

Every time I laugh on the podcast, now I know Jayden is like, oh gosh, you're so loud. And I'm like, would you laugh? You have to be quiet. Yeah, to be quiet, for sure. But Brad, we have some big camp. I need you to focus. I am. I need you to focus. I need you to focus. I am ready to go. I've been ready to go since we started. And you decided to do some Tomfoolery.

Oh my gosh. Let's talk about the reason. We've been texting about this all week and we're pretty excited about it. It was clearly coordinated. It was, yes. Bradley, I really want you to talk about the US Senate race and I don't know why you're delaying. So let's get into this, let's talk about Ken Paxton announcing his, or launching his 2026 campaign. Well, Mackenzie, as the youth say, it is on like Donkey Kong. We don't say that. Oh. So, Ken Paxton announced on Laura Ingraham's Fox show on Tuesday night that he indeed would be running for US Senate and we were all expecting it just

a matter of when but he decided to get off the blocks a bit sooner than he had previously indicated he had that interview with Punchbowl News where he said if I can raise I'll get commitments of 20 million dollars raised in the next two months I will jump in but he jumped in early and or at least early compared to that and maybe it was to beat somebody else the punch hint hint wink wink Wesley Hunt um so anyway he told he said in a statement I'm running for US Senate to fight for President Trump's agenda and take a sledgehammer to the DC establishment John Cornyn has been in Washington for over two decades and he

has turned his back on President Trump and the America First agenda time after time. He added, Cornyn said President Trump's time has passed him by and called President Trump's border wall naive. Texans deserve far better than a senator who thinks it's naive to build a border wall and protect our citizens. It's crystal clear that it's time for a change. Messaging is clearly an attempt to drive a border wall and protect our citizens. It's crystal clear that it's time for a change. Messaging is clearly an attempt to drive a wedge between Cornyn and Trump. If that even needs to be done, Cornyn obviously has been, uh, since he announced,

I think we talked on the podcast this last week, since he announced his bid, it was very theme heavy on the, uh, you know, I'm an ally for Donald Trump in the Senate. Um, the first ad he released was consistent with that message. And so this race, I mean the biggest fight in this race is who gets the Trump endorsement. We've talked about that. So Cornyn is obviously, or Paxton is obviously making a distinction between he and Cornyn. We're going to see a lot of that. How did Cornyn respond?

Pretty punchy. His campaign spokes came out and said in part Ken Paxton is a fraud. He talks tough on crime and then lets crooked progressive Lena Hidalgo off the hook That's a reference to the office the Attorney General dropping the charges against Lena Hidalgo staffers Holly Hanson with us has covered that quite a bit. But that is gonna be probably a central theme to Gordon's messaging in this race against Paxton. He went on to say,

"'Paxton says his impeachment trial was a sham, "'but he didn't contest the facts and legal findings, "'which will cost the state millions. "'He says he's anti-woke, "'but he funnels millions of taxpayer dollars "'to lawyers who celebrate DEI And Ken claims to be a man of faith but uses fake uber accounts to meet his girlfriend and deceive his family This will be a spirited campaign and we're sure Texans. They will have a real choice when the race is over

spirited putting it lightly Right out of the gate both sides are just throwing haymakers at each other Right out of the gate both sides are just throwing haymakers at each other So there you go. There you go. That's the races on like Donkey Kong the races on absolutely Well, we'll keep like say it Donkey Kong. I was just I was I was trying to speed it up since you're so concerned about time Today, you know few extra words is Taking that in the first place. I'm glad you saved those extra three seconds by explaining yourself. I had to after I was berated. But Bradley, thank you for your amazing coverage. You got it. We should have Masters Day every day. Brad is in a great mood. Cameron, we're coming to you. Trump announced new tariffs. Tell us about this

plan and some of the reactions. Yeah, so this Liberation Day announcement came on April 2nd. He announced this in the Rose Garden saying that these tariffs will supercharge our domestic industrial base, break down foreign trade barriers, and ultimately more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers. So at the time of the announcement, there was a plan to do what he called reciprocal tariffs. It was more about proportionality rather than reciprocal, kind of a mix up in the words it seemed. But at the time there was a 10% global tariff,

there was additional tariffs levied on countries around the world. But since then there was some market volatility some some issues with the stock market bond market and this week there was actually announcement from the Trump administration that there would be a 90 day pause on these quote reciprocal tariffs and the 10% baseline tariff would remain. And a interest, there are some nuances to this. I'd encourage everyone to go check out the piece in high detail. Some of those nuances regarding the USMCA tariffs that will remain in place, the additional tariffs on China and the tariffs on top of tariffs that have gone onto China

since then. But what this piece is ultimately about is some of the reactions we saw in the days following the April 2nd announcement. Senator Ted Cruz took the opportunity on a few different podcasts to voice his opinion saying there are quote angels and demons on each of President Trump's shoulders and he went on to say that he's urging the president to come and make major deals make them quickly. Seems as though Cruz's words did land as it seems though somewhere between 75 or more countries have come to the Trump administration willing to make tariff deals. There's also been some reactions in the days following from someone here in Texas,

Sid Miller, who was really positive about some of these tariffs going in place saying that the American economy is having major surgery. So that's sort of playing on the theme of things that Trump has been saying on his truth social. Also Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, he was asked about tariffs before they were actually implemented during an interview saying that tariffs are quote a tool and that America has been robbed blind by tariffs on our products everywhere around the world.

So this is a very detailed piece. I'm not going to go through everything right now. I encourage everyone to go check it out. But as of right now, this is a developing situation and I'm sure there's going to be more information that comes out in the coming days and weeks. Lots of shifts, lots of reactions, lots of reactions to the reactions.

Yeah. Yeah, camera's got it all. Thank you, camera. We're gonna take a quick break and hear from our sponsor. Did you know data centers support 364,000 jobs in Texas and contribute $3.5 billion in state and local taxes. These critical facilities boost the state's economy and power essential services.

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visit center of your digital world.org slash Texas. And we're back. Bradley, let's talk about Wednesday being quite the show in the Texas House. Tell us what happened. So State Representative Brian Harrison filed a House Resolution 823 on Tuesday evening calling for the removal of Speaker Burroughs as the chair of the House. It was tabled overwhelmingly by 141 to 2 vote. Both parties and factions within both parties, almost all of them voted to table the resolution. Two members voted against the motion to table which was an effective vote for removal of boroughs at least in the context of this procedure.

Those were Harrison of course and Representative David Lowe, Republican from Fort Worth. Five members registered as present not voting. Those were John Bryant, Gina Hinojosa, Cristina Morales, Anna Maria Rodriguez, Ramos, and Mike Schofield. Four of those are progressive democrats. The other one, Schofield, is a Republican. That is an interesting twist. Harrison said, while laying this out, we have not passed one single legislative priority that the voters who elected the vast majority of this body just sent us to do. I don't even think we voted on a single one of those priorities. Y'all are aware of these problems and I think in your heart, most of you, especially if you're on my side of the aisle, you know that I'm right about this.

Um, as he was doing, talking about this, there were a lot of jeers and laughter at him at some of the comments he made, uh, specifically when he said, you know, this is not about Brian Harrison. This is about, you know, all the criticisms he has of the way the house is operating. this is about all the criticisms he has of the way the house is operating. And then, yeah, then it went down in flames, he only got two votes. And I think that's a pretty bad result for him, at least in terms of advancing the ball towards getting rid of Burroughs. There's a lot of talk about members on the right white lighting.

If the resolution itself came up, but on the motion to table, they voted, most of them voted with that. And white lighting meaning voting present, not voting. I'm here, but I'm not taking a stand. So you and I will talk about this a lot more in depth on Smoke-Filled Room, which comes out Monday. So, you know, we'll talk about this a lot more in depth on Smoke-Filled Room, which comes out Monday. So, you know, we'll talk about that then. I'll go through some of the statements briefly that were said.

Burroughs said in response, I think, the overwhelming majority of my colleagues who united to quickly dismiss of the spectacle today with that distraction behind us, the rest of the House continues with the real work of governing. Just as we have all session, David Lowe put out a statement, which I thought was, just as we have all session. David Lowe put out a statement, which I thought was pretty interesting and nuanced. He said, I do not intend,

in part, I do not intend to revisit the question of House leadership unless there are 76 members openly calling to vacate the chair. He said he did it because he doesn't like the direction of the House, but he does not have any bones to pick with the members of the right flank of the caucus who voted to table. And actually he was on Twitter Spaces last night, reiterating that, defending those members as well. Well, Tony Tinderholtz, which was interesting because I saw him essentially whipping votes

for this on the floor before the vote happened. He said in part, quote, there was no path to improving our chamber today. A coalition of conservative legislators stood together. Representative Harrison stood for himself. Using whipping votes for what outcome? Toward tabling the resolution. So it will talk about a lot more on SFR but it was quite the day. Yeah very split among that faction of the Republican Party on the House floor that day. Very interesting to watch that happen at this point in

session. Bradley thank you for your coverage. Mary-Lise we're coming to you. The House just passed its first unanimous piece of legislation this session. Tell us about it. Yes. So Representative Jeff Leach's House Bill 748, which is also known as Trey's Law, unanimously passed the House just a couple of days ago. It received all 149 present votes in the House chamber. So what this bill does, and I believe we've covered it here before, but, and we wrote a piece about the committee hearing it had, uh, it was maybe a week or two ago. I definitely recommend reading that

because it goes into detail of all the testimonies, but this bill essentially bans the use of non-disclosure agreements, NDAs, in cases of child sexual abuse. And so this was clearly something that everybody could get behind, support both parties. Leach introduced it on the house floor. He said that this legislation explicitly prohibits these types of agreements and civil settlement agreements, rendering them void and unenforceable under Texas law. And he said that by allowing these types of agreements, often horrific and systemic abuses hidden from the public eye

resulting in few consequences for the perpetrators and often allowing for more people to be harmed. He introduced one amendment on the floor. He said it was related to concerns over retroactivity. He said it sets forth a very clear process by which any existing NDA could never be enforced to silence victims in the future. And he said, hopefully after this bill passes, that would never happen again. And it was a pretty powerful moment. He told the members, he said, today, you either stand with the victims or with their perpetrators. And the bill, they moved to a vote and there was only green seen on the voter board. And then when it was announced that it had passed, everyone started cheering, which was pretty cool moment. No white lighting there. Yeah.

Representative Mitch Little spoke on his experience with litigating child sexual abuse cases and he endorsed the bill and he said that Texas should send the message that silence is no longer for sale in the state of Texas because he said silence is, these NDAs are often used to silence children in these horrific cases and Leach said, no more NDAs to silence victims of child sexual abuse, no more protecting predators. Today we stand with survivors.

And so this is, I mentioned at the beginning, this is called Trey's Law, and it's named after Trey Carlock, who died by suicide in 2019 after he settled his civil lawsuit, which included an NDA with Canna Cook Camps, which is this global network of Christian camps that are based in Missouri, and his suit against them alleged repeated sexual abuse and negligence by a specific camp counselor, Pete Newman. And Trey's sister, I mentioned we did a piece about the committee hearing. Trey's sister Elizabeth Carlock Phillips provided a testimony, and it was extremely emotional, but it was

it was very good to watch I would recommend reading her testimony she just she talked about how she felt that her brother was silenced to the grave through this NDA that he that he signed and then afterwards she said that this was an army of bipartisan House members standing for an army of child sexual abuse survivors who've been silenced by NDA's powerful statement on the House floor. Today you have helped set captives free. So definitely a uniting moment for the House unlike what we were just covering. So I definitely recommend reading the piece and then the one about

the hearing because it provides all the testimonies. Oh, and there's one other witness I'd like to mention that testified in support of this bill, it was Cindy Clemmenshire. And her story got a lot of national attention a couple of weeks ago, because her alleged abuser was Robert Morris, who's a pastor at Gateway Church in Oklahoma.

And so she supported supported the bill offered her experience and yeah that is House Bill 748 by representative Jeff Leach. Mary Lee has great coverage make sure to go read all about it it's a very interesting committee hearings too that were very insightful here. Thank you for your coverage. Okay today's budget night in the house and we're all excited. We have a lot of anticipation that comes in with a day like this in the legislature and of course budget night in the house. Specifically not so much the Senate. It's far more of a spectacle typically. So

Brad, walk us through a preview of what to expect today. So the Senate passed a $336 billion budget. The House is mostly the same but slightly different in a few places including it has more money for public school finance. They raised the basic allotment higher in the House version than the Senate version and so the difference is about $1.3 billion in total, more in the House version versus the Senate. So members will, you know, they'll get to the floor. Chairman Bonin will lay it out and then they'll have the chairman of each subcommittee for a number of articles explain the details of those articles.

You'll have questions. members will make their speeches about what is good or bad, I'm sure who all is going to talk. But a lot of attempts to amend the budget, there's almost 400 amendments filed. I imagine a lot of those are going to go down on points of order because a lot of them... 300 really? That's crazy. 393 is the number yeah wow and a lot of them were straightening through them are vulnerable to points of order on making general law you know that when you you can only move appropriations in these budgets you can't do anything that

would require statutory change or that would create statutory change. You're just moving money. And so a lot of these will go down on points of order on both sides of this from Democrats and Republicans. You'll have a lot of debate. Eventually they'll vote and they'll probably pass it out on third reading as well. They'll suspend the rules. This is the one thing that unless you're up against a deadline for something, usually they'll just suspend the rules because

they all want to be done with it. They'll get their, the fanfare done, they'll argue about it for hours and then they'll be like, all right, let's just get this off our plate and send it, send it back. So that'll happen. Question is, how long does this run? I'm hearing we'll be done by dinner time, which Mackenzie's very sad about. Like depressed. She might crawl into a cave and start hibernating because she's just so upset about it.

Yeah. So, yeah, there you go. There's budget night. We'll see what happens. Should be fun. Yeah, I truly am. I think also I look back at the last few sessions and I think about, you know, when we launched the Texan, since then we really have not had a middle of the night budget night. No. Which is depressing as heck, in my opinion. Because we missed budget night

when we were launched because we launched after budget night. By probably a couple. Yeah, and I think that was, I think that was that was pretty lengthy right I believe so yeah yes and here we are still waiting for coverage at the Texan late night budget night well we'll have some late nights a session we always do but this is supposed to be the one you can bank on yeah so frustrating well one of the reasons that they have done this they've expedited it is because they just end up throwing everything. They debate for a long time, then everything that's left, they just throw into Article 11, which is the graveyard.

Todd Hunter called it the hope for article. I think it's more accurate. I think that's a far more optimistic name for that article. So they'll do that to some degree. The question is when are there any deals that are struck? Is property tax relief increased? There's mulling, there's rumblings about a deal being struck to throw most of the article or the most of the riders into article 11 in exchange for

some boost in property tax relief. Will that happen? I don't know, but by the time that that will know whether it happened or not. So, well, and I do hope that at some point during the day when y'all are on the floor, we'll be able to insert into the pod a little update from you guys. So if we were able to record that, this is where that will be. Hey y'all, this is Brad coming to you live from the Texas house floor on budget day. We've been here for quite a while. It's 2 37 PM at the moment.

They gaveled in at nine and first they went to the third reading calendar for the bills that were adopted yesterday on Wednesday passed on second reading so then we eventually moved to SB 1 and Then we sat around for a while there was a lot of huddling on the floor and meetings going on in the back hallway trying to negotiate how to expedite the process and which bill, which amendments to the budget to send into the budget itself without debate or vote. I think my rough count was between you know 175 and 200 of the 393 amendments were put on a suspense list and sent into the budget without debate. Most of those went into Article 11 which as we talked about on

the pod probably before this is basically the graveyard, the trash bin. Most of those are not going to go anywhere. And so we waited for a while. It took a long time and everyone was milling about. Then the Speaker Burroughs came up and gaveled in. We started the process. Chairman Bonin ran through the budget, the highlights, then each of his subcommittee chairmen ran through the highlights of their individual articles in the subcommittees. And then we got to amendments. The first amendment we saw, I think was from Bonin, that was adopted.

Then we saw one from Mary Gonzalez that nobody really knew anything about. It seemed kind of nondescript and it passed with a lot of Republican support and all the Democratic support. It turns out it was quite an intelligent political move, chess move. What it did was it zeroed out the budget for the governor's trustee program, office of trustee programs, and also the Texas lottery. The reason that's important is that when members are making these amendments there's the put-and-take rule you have to you can't just throw new money in if you're gonna increase in appropriation somewhere you have to

decrease an equal amount of appropriation elsewhere. So that's how the process goes and most of the reform member amendments were pulling money from, or at least a lot of them were pulling money from the trustee programs in the governor's office or the lottery commission. And so nobody really knew what the Gonzales thing happened until later when Mitch Little pulled up an amendment that would have given OHE employees a 6% raise. Aaron Zwiener, or maybe it was Gonzales, one of the two, raised a point of order. They started debating and then all the Republicans started realizing what the heck happened,

that they had gotten outmaneuvered on this. And so because there was no more money to pull from the trustee program or the Lawyer Commission, all of these amendments were now invalid because there's no more money to pull. As I'm speaking, Brent Money just called a point of order against a Democratic amendment from Hubert Vaux Or at the point we're starting to see a lot of tit-for-tat happening

Republicans got one the wool pulled over their eyes on the first one and now they've had they've called to Shelley Luther had another one This is we're gonna see that a lot of this I think But also there's a lot of talk about things ending fairly early I am not yet confident that'll happen but I guess we'll see the term will be done by dinner time has been thrown around quite a bit which would be very early for the house on budget day but overall it's been pretty calm particularly in the lull period and we'll see what what changes are made as always you know most of the stuff will end up stripped in conference so a lot

of this is you know just for show or the old college try it's not really gonna affect much but occasionally you do get one tech down there that stays in and members are gonna fight hard to try and keep whatever it is they want in there or strip whatever they want out. So there you go, update from the house floor. Think I'll throw it over to Mary Elise next, but fun day in the Texas house.

but fun day in the Texas house. We are five hours into our budget debate, although there were two hours there where we were recessed and I think there was a lot of conversation going on behind the scenes, just not on the house floor. One thing that I'll be following closely is the amendment related to the Thriving Texas Families program, which used to be the Abortion Alternatives, Alternatives to Abortion program, excuse me. And Tom Oliverson, Representative Oliverson has designated, he's seeking to give 40 million

for the biennium for the Thriving Texas Families program. Texas Right to Life and other pro-life groups are backing this up and Texas Right to Life said that they would like to see $210 million per year. So we'll see how that unfolds. That's yet to be brought to the house floor. We've had multiple points of orders called, so very fascinating, a very lively atmosphere on the house floor right now and we'll see where it goes. We're five hours in. Who knows how many we have left. And if not, it didn't happen. But that was our intent at the very beginning. But it'll be fun and exciting.

And Cameron, speaking of one amendment that would caught a lot of attention this week. They kind of had a little bit of a change of situation, of circumstance here. Had to do with the future of school choice in Texas, obviously a huge pinnacle of legislative effort this session. Tell us what happened. So Representative Donna Howard filed an amendment that would block additional appropriations of funds outside of the one billion already set aside this biennium to be spent on any type of school choice program that includes education savings accounts, private school choice, homeschool choice and this it seemed at the time sort of a similar

move as during the last budget night fight with the Herrero amendment. But Donna Howard has come out and said she did not intend for this amendment to be a school choice test vote and has since pulled it from consideration. So that was actually the only school choice focused amendment that I could find. Um, so it, it appears the, uh, budget night fight over school choice or test vote over school choice will not be occurring. Um, and they'll just fight it out when the bill gets to the floor.

Yeah. It's exciting. That was another exciting, uh, potential for the budget that got, my hopes got dashed for a fight over that one. So, you know, whatever these legislators really should just consider the entertainment value that they're providing over above the state's interest. And remember that I really want to be entertained on budget night or their political strategy, which is why that was pulled down.

Yes. I just want to be entertained on budget night. Or their political strategy, which is why that was pulled down. Yes. I just want some fireworks. I think also after last session we were so unfortunately in many ways spoiled with how much craziness was happening behind the scenes and otherwise and this session we're like, okay. You gotta come back to Earth. Well, it's it yeah, I'll just make one comment. It's interesting though that you're talking about the entertainment factor of Some of these amendments and the fights. I'm joking people for the record. Well, it's incredibly important though that these fights occur out in the open during this budget night

But it is very insider e politics for sure For sure. For just the average person, they don't know these fights are occurring. No. They really don't care, usually. They might come across a clip maybe on X, but that's only if they follow Texas politics, or even if they just follow an individual member. Most people, they just see the budget is passed.

They might not even see that. They're just interacting with these Texas government institutions, and they just want them funded. So the insider-y sort of politics stuff is very interesting to people who work in the industry, people who work in ledge offices, but for the average person they're just like when I

go try and renew my license is the office open. Yeah, totally. Is this gonna work? Am I gonna get what I need? Get in, get out, whatever it is. Yeah, is the pothole on my street gonna be fixed? Oh sorry, I thought I had a sneeze. Cameron, thank you. Brad, let's go to you. One of the first Texas house priority bills to pass is the team, the chambers doge bill. Give us the rundown. Senate bill 14 by state Senator Phil King passed the Texas Senate on March 26 with only five votes against it for Democrats and one Republican. That Republican was Robert Nichols under the bill. Uh,

it would create this new office that would review agencies, their procedures, and the rules by which they abide with the aim of reducing inefficiency. And so that's kind of the whole doge craze going on, reducing waste and inefficiency in government. After two failed attempts to levy points of order against the bill by Democrats and a few amendments, which also none of which passed, SB 14 passed on second reading, 97 to 51. I think the third reading vote was about the same. Twelve Democrats voted for the bill with only one Republican, State Representative Brian

Harrison, voting against it. Capri Leon said in part part as we've seen on the federal level sometimes you have to hire a small group of experts to be able to go and make drastic changes in government. This entity would be self-operational. It doesn't, from what I understand doesn't have a sunset provision so it would just be in existence. And so also passed it was kind of doged down the floor another thing that passed was HP 12 by Keith Bell which adds the ability for certain limited midterm sunset reviews of

agencies. Sunset process you have every 12 years at the latest every 12 years agencies have to come up for review by the Sunset Commission basically should we continue this thing or not what changes should we make you get these really large bills, sunset bills and so that that passed as well that had no opposition that I saw and so that passed quite easily. Doge Day went for the most part pretty smoothly on the house floor. Yeah, absolutely. Also, wild I think about Doge meant something so different. So not that long ago and now it means department of government efficiency, cutting whatever

bureaucracy might be in the sights of you know government officials it's very interesting that it used to names become reality it really did and it's wild that it's a serious turn we throw around now considering the origin of it but probably thank you for your coverage there wait no we still have more talk about yeah Harrison Levy criticism about this bill. Tell us more. Thank you for that very smooth transition. Yeah, so Harrison, not shockingly, criticized the bill. The main point of contention was a section in the bill that he says codifies Chevron deference, which Chevron deference was this long-standing legal precedent set by the Supreme Court

I think in the 70s that basically courts were encouraged if not halfheartedly directed to defer to agencies and how they apply regulations. Defer to their judgment, basically. And this was something conservatives were trying to kill for decades. They finally got it. The Supreme Court nixed that as precedent. They overturned that ruling last year, in June, I think, 24.

And so, that was a big win for conservatives that had been trying to get that for years. So, Harrison said in this bill that language basically codified Chevron deference. Now his argument was there's language in there that says courts are not required to defer to agencies. and so it was kind of a passive directive that you know you don't have to just take an agency's decision at face value on how to apply something you can insert the court can insert itself now Harrison argued that it was not strong enough. Basically, it needed to say that courts should not, shall not give deference to agencies.

When debating about this beforehand, nobody really knew what, they didn't understand the point he was supposedly making there because I'm not going to hold legal theory on how you word things but they argued that it was doing it was not doing the exact opposite of what Harrison said it was doing it was not codifying Chevron deference it was actually opening it up so courts have a lane to run through when judging an agency's

decisions. So there's the kind of back and forth on that. Now I think it's important to note despite these criticisms Harrison did not offer an amendment to change the language. I think that tells you something. Now they wouldn't have passed regardless, so there's that. It would not have passed just because the votes were not there. He was the only one talking about this. So yeah, Dogeville passed and now we have, I'm sure we'll fight about the Chevron aspect of this for years to come, if anybody cares.

There you go. Thank you for your coverage. We're gonna take a quick break and hear from a sponsor. The Beer Alliance of Texas is proud to support its members who help deliver an annual economic impact of $35 billion and provide over 200,000 jobs to hard-working Texans. and provide over 200,000 jobs to hardworking Texans. From local tax revenue to direct economic investment to charitable contributions, their members are heavily invested in the success of our communities and our state. The Beer Alliance is dedicated to ensuring

the safe distribution of alcohol throughout Texas. For more information, visit BeerAlliance.com. We're back at it, Cameron. out Texas. For more information visit BeerAlliance.com. We're back at it Cameron. Senator Ted Cruz has issued a letter regarding some issues relating to AI and oversight. Tell me about it. So this letter from Senator Ted Cruz is requesting information regarding actions possibly taken by nonprofit organization that has advocated for certain safeguards to AI. This non-profit is future of privacy forum. This all comes back to an October 2023 executive order by the Biden administration to establish new standards for AI safety and

security. The order at the time aimed to address, quote, best practices for authenticating content and calls on Congress to pass, again, quote, bipartisan data privacy legislation. What's notable is President Donald Trump actually issued his own executive order during this second administration to rescind these measures. What's important though in the letter is Cruz is claiming that some of the government grants or alleged government grants that were used or appropriated to future privacy forum was done in such a way to advocate for what he is calling woke left AI policy and what's also important to mention is the Future of Privacy Forum has denied some of these claims regarding the grant funding or the

ideological positioning of their advocacy and this is important for the future of AI policy just regarding the differences of opinion on how oversight should be conducted, whether it be done through third party organizations or through a top-down government structure. So AI policy moving forward, this is going to be an ongoing discussion AI policy moving forward this is going to be an ongoing discussion as AI has many different layers all the way from the semiconductors to the models themselves So this is something I'll keep my eye on to see if there's going to be any fallout from it And interesting to watch the kind of the nexus of the federal perspective here from Senator Cruz and the mention of State

Representative Giovanni Cabriglione too on all of this. Yeah, I'll mention that here as well because in the letter Senator Ted Cruz mentions Cabriglione's AI legislation here in Texas for the reason that Future Policy Forum and Cabriglione have had previous interactions regarding this piece of legislation. But Cabriglione has been doing a number of different press conferences and talks on this piece of legislation he is proposing, saying that his goal is, quote, to protect the constituents of Texas, and that his AI legislation is not going to protect those associations or lobbyists,

but rather the goal is to protect constituents, protect their liberties, protect their safety, and protect their ability to go their safety, and protect their ability to go and have businesses and grow the economy. So, Capriglione sort of positioning his legislation as something that is pro, pro Texas Constitution, pro US Constitution, by protecting those sort of free speech, freedom of association

type of amendments, you know, the foundations that America was built on here, whereas Ted Cruz was positioning FPF and Future Policy Forum as being constricting some of those liberties. So we haven't heard from Cabriglione on this. We did reach out. So we'll see if there's any future adjustments made. There has been committee substitutes or there has been some previous iterations to Cabriglione's bill. So AI policy, it's something that everyone who is looking at the future of the economy

should be paying attention to as it is an exploding industry. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you. We're gonna stick with you here. A Texas judge has issued an order that could have sweeping effects on deportations. Tell us about it. So this is a story coming out of the US Southern District of Texas, where a judge has issued a temporary restraining order to block president Donald Trump from deporting alleged illegal alien Mexican gang members. And this was an emergency lawsuit that was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. They are claiming that the use of the Aliens Enemies Act is not proper in this case.

What's important is there's lots of nuance to this discussion. I won't be able to get into all of it right now, but really just the top line is placing a temporary pause on the ability to remove these alleged Mexican gang members. And there's been lots of proceeding legal maneuvers that have occurred, lots of maneuvers not just by organizations such as the ACLU, but movements on behalf of the Trump administration. I think everyone is familiar now with those midnight flights that occurred, uh, taking these alleged gang members to a prison in El Salvador, it's directly related to those sorts of moves. So, um, if people want to get into the nuance of the legal proceedings in this

case, they should go check out the piece. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you. Um, oh my gosh, we're sticking with you again. legal proceedings in this case, they should go check out the piece. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you. Um, Oh my gosh, we're sticking with you again. Third time's a charm. A number of students at some of Texas's largest universities have had their visas revoked, kind of sitting on the same vein here as far as topics go. Tell us about it.

Well, this is an, another story that story that requires a deeper dive into the different intricacies of executive orders, policies, precedent. I detail all that in the piece but for the top line for people here, Texas A&M confirmed to us here at the Texan that the US government has terminated the records of 15 students with the student and exchange visitor information system. This was done as of Tuesday. They provided a statement to us. They can, listeners can go read that on the site. UT Austin as well, they were able to confirm that the visa status of quote multiple international students has unexpectedly, unexpectedly changed

in recent days. So two major Texas universities having shakeups with their international students here. Again, I won't be able to detail all of it here, but this is in response. These moves are in response to different executive orders, not just issued during the second Trump administration, but during the first Trump administration. There's been some high-profile cases regarding the revoking of student visas, most notably Mamou Khalil, that's a activist and student at Columbia University. People might be aware of his case bringing in a lot of issues regarding the Immigration and Nationality Act. And so again this will require a much longer segment to

explain this but I detail that in the piece if people want to go check that out. It's up on thetexas.news. There you go. Are we sticking with you still? No, actually three stories in a row is enough. Cameron, thanks for hitting three back to back. Mary Lee is coming to you. CPS removals dropped significantly over the past few years.

Tell us about it. Yes. over the past few years. Tell us about it. Yes, so removals by Child Protective Services, CPS, in Texas went down by 55% from 2018 to 2024. And they also reported that at the same time, 2018 to 2024, the number of children dying from abuse or neglect also decreased by 53%. So this is just this is a huge decrease. And this so Texas removed 20,000 children from their parents in 2018 and then that went all the way down to 9,226 years later. So from 2018 to 2024 it went from 20,000 to around 9,000. And the total of children in Texas foster care

also dropped by 47%. So the amount of Texas children they're in foster homes down almost 50% in the same time period. And the number of children that are awaiting a home through adoption went down 43%. So this is, they said the state's lowest ever six month and one year recidivism rates. The family freedom project sent out a release about this detailing it.

So there was some legislation passed by Senator Brian Hughes and Representative James Frank in their respective chambers. And that was during the 87th legislative session and it essentially it reformed the CPS in some pretty big ways especially through adding more due process rights for parents. It amended the Texas family, excuse me, the Texas Family Code's definition of neglect which meant an act or failure to act by a person responsible for child's care, custody or welfare, evidencing the person's blatant disregard for the consequences of the act or failure to act that results in harm to the child or creates an

immediate danger to the child's physical health or safety. So that was a big change in definition of neglect there. Bless you. Thank you. Can I just ask one question? I know. Yes. Was there a reason provided for why the number of children in foster care has dropped? So that's a great question. So obviously there's a big, there's some big jumps with numbers here, but there's not an explanation as to why we can obviously draw, um, we can draw some conclusions, but we don't know. And I wouldn't be surprised if, if more will come out soon from the CPS about, Oh,

this is maybe how we're looking at numbers differently. This might've been the thing that caused this, this huge shift because these because these are significant numbers. Yeah, but no explanation there. Okay, I was just wondering. Yeah, so this was, so Hughes and Frank had this legislation that reformed the CPS, changed the way that they defined neglect, and then they've also teamed up this session to pass some legislation that would increase protections for parents, which is Senate Joint Resolution 34.

And that's an interesting piece of legislation. It uses strict scrutiny to protect parents' rights to raise their child. And this is something we talked about a bit in the office. But it would amend the Texas Constitution to add that a parent has the inherent right to exercise care, custody, and control of their child and make decisions for the upbringing of their child. And some people have raised concerns that, oh, this is giving the government additional controls over children. And then the supporters of this are saying strict scrutiny is the strongest protection available under Texas' law.

So that's their argument in support of it. And so if that resolution does pass a language, we'll go to the voters in the November 4 election, and then they'll decide to approve it. So we'll see if more comes out from CPS about these numbers, but huge jump. For sure. Makes me feel very old that I remember

when this bill, when the CPS reform legislation was making its way through the legislature in like 2017. It was like the biggest thing in the world at that time. And very interesting to kind of see the legislative fallout from this. Yeah. Very, very interesting, the results of the legislation. Mary Lee, thanks for your coverage. Yeah. Broadly, there's some breaking news that came out last Friday, but we haven't been able to touch on it in the podcast. Since then, let's talk about the whistleblower lawsuit relating to Attorney General Ken Paxton.

What happened? Yeah, so late on Friday evening, I was actually with some friends at a local watering hole, we'll say. And... And... So what they're calling it these days. That is what the youths are calling it these days. with some friends at a local watering hole, we'll say. And... Is that what they're calling it these days? That is what the youths are calling it these days.

So many references to youths. But the Travis County judge who had been considering this long-running whistleblower lawsuit, of course, this is a lawsuit from four former employees of the Office of the Attorney General, who went to the FBI with accusations about corruption, bribery, abusive office by Attorney General Ken Paxton involving businessman Nate Paul. I'm going to go into all the details and I think we've beat that horse to death. But this had, the Supreme Court had declined to take it up and also they dismissed the attempt by the whistleblowers to have depositions, to force depositions in this case.

So it just went back to the trial court to be hashed out and for the judge to make a ruling while we finally got a ruling on Friday, late Friday. We love these news dumps on Friday, the courts do. Tends to happen, yeah. And so the judge awarded $6.67 million to the four whistleblowers. That is double effectively what the settlement was that was struck in 23 that ultimately turned into the impeachment

effort by the house, which then obviously from which Kent Paxson was fully acquitted by the Senate in the trial. So the dollar award is 6.67 million. Most of that is just like lost salary And the reason this is a whistleblower lawsuits because they were fired fired, right? And they say wrongfully fired Paxton says they were rogue employees, you know, they're fighting about it for years All the same lines. Yes. There's really nothing new under the sun in this except for a new dollar figure So it's six point six seven million plus seven point five percent interest

along the period that it takes to pay off so like if the House the legislature takes To biennium to pay this off They will accrue interest a Lot of question whether the legislature's even gonna do it A couple staffers that I talked to are like yeah it's probably probably not gonna happen at all you know like I just don't see this ever happening frankly. But so there's that. I have state full statements in the

piece. The judge ruled specifically plaintiffs made their reports to law enforcement in good faith and the OHE terminated each of the plaintiffs because of their reports to law enforcement in violation of the Texas Whistleblower Act, which is of course why they're called whistleblowers here. They're suing under a specific law. Let's see. Council for Blake Brickman and David Maxwell, two of the plaintiffs, told me late Friday afternoon after a trial in the state district court, our clients were awarded a judgment confirming that the OHE violated the Texas Whistleblower Act.

It should shock all Texans that their chief law enforcement officer Ken Paxton admitted to violating the law, but that is exactly what happened in this case. Paxton told me right after this, on Friday, quote, the sham impeachment orchestrated by the disgraced former speaker of the Texas House, State Phelan, inclusion with Joe Biden's corrupt DOJ has already cost taxpayers over $5 million. The Texas Senate rejected their witch hunt after the allegations were proven to be false, with no evidence to support them. Same song and dance from both sides. I mean, the positions have not changed whatsoever. The rhetoric has not changed. But the only thing that's kind of new, other than the dollar figure, is that the Associated Press reported last week that the Biden administration declined press charges against Paxton in the multi-year federal corruption probe that we we've covered. There's a lot of rumblings about some sort of indictment

coming down. Never did. Never did. And a lot of debate about why that is. The Biden administration's time was coming to a close. Trump administration is clearly going to not pursue charges in this if nothing was already filed and they might've just dismissed it if it had been filed. So that's probably the likeliest explanation for that. But this will be appealed. It'll go to the 15th court of appeals

and this song and dance will go on again for another couple of years while appeals court considers this. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe we'll get back up to the Supreme Court, probably will. Who knows? Here we go. Bradley, thank you. We have two more stories to hit. Let's do it really quick, Brad and Cameron. UT Austin, Cameron has removed some controversial graduation requirements. Tell us about it. Yeah, so UT Austin previously required students to take courses or flags that they call them for graduation.

They have since removed this flag requirement. One of these flags in these six flag areas was the cultural diversity in the United States. We actually reported on a story a few weeks ago now that came out of the Goldwater Institute that sort of highlighted these DEI related graduation requirements not just at UT Austin but a number of Texas universities. This is just really the first large public announcement that there has been a removal of these DEI concepts in the graduation requirements being removed. So just an update for people there. There's some other stuff surrounding this that I do detail in the piece, but if people are interested,

they can go read it on the website. Well done done Cameron. Bradley, would ERCOT adjust their load forecast too? You know what that means? I really only do because I've been reading your pieces now for like six years. So last year ERCOT updated their electricity load forecast, the amount of supply they need, the amount of demand they expect to be on in Texas, pulling from the power grid from 110,000 megawatts

to 148,000 megawatts. And the biggest reason for the growth was large loads like data centers. And so there's, that happened. Well, they updated it again this year and it has another massive Jump from 148,000 megawatts to 208,000 megawatts that's massive and the largest reason for that is through data center growth, so the

This comes amidst a fight over SP6, how the power grid deals and copes with this large load growth. But this is a, you know, they might be estimating on the conservative side, meaning estimating more than might actually come to fruition. But even so, that's just an insane amount of power that they're gonna need in five years. Yeah, well, this is the downstream effects of the developing economy related to AI. They need the power, they have to build these data centers to hold all this data that are generated from the AI and they have to power

those data centers. You know Texas dealing with being this hub of technological innovation, wanting to bring new companies here, they got to deal with it on the back end. Yeah, like I've been saying on this, all this stuff, the water thing, all this, you know, this economic growth comes at a cost. You gotta prep for it. You have to be able to support it. And that's something that's a big topic

among the legislature right now, and especially now, even more so after this. Pablo Vegas, your CEO, was just testifying before we started this podcast in Senate Business and Commerce. before we started this podcast in Senate Business and Commerce. You know, the power grid has been a topic, obviously, since 21 for obvious reasons. And it's been a huge theme each session since it's remaining one during this session. So there you go.

There you go. Let's move on to our Tweetery section here. Cameron, you're taking a page out of Brad's book this week. Uh, I just want to do it by having a phone case. Y'all don't like see how Cameron's phone case is just like entirely appropriate. This was specific. I had to do some searching for a phone case of this style

because when I go out to exercise outside, go for runs or whatever it is, I wanna take keys with me. And I don't like my house key. And I don't wanna put my house key in like, you know, sometimes running shorts have a little pocket. Well, I don't trust those little pockets. So with this phone case, it actually has a

little compartment in the back. You can slide open, put the key in there. That's fancy. It's actually fancy. Because usually those are for cards. Yeah. Well, the house key, you know, like an apartment or a house key is just the, just really flat. So just put it in there. Nice. And so I know it's always in my hand always, you don't have credit cards in there.

It's just, or your ID, it's just your, if I'm going for a particularly long run, you know, if I'm going to be out there for longer than 90 minutes or two hours or so, I will take my ID and a credit card just in case, you know, I need to stop and get a bottle of water or something, but most of the time I'm just taking my house key going out. That was a good digression, but yeah, I wanted to shout out, uh, cause the terror conversation has really dominated, um, everyone's, uh, time over the past week and a half.

Uh, so, uh, that's what I talked about in my newsletter this week. You know, obviously I'm just a reporter. I'm not an economist, but I do have a... You could have fooled me. I do have an interest in these topics and I explored more of the nuances regarding the strategic moves made by the Trump administration, possibly why they were implementing some of these tariffs, also digging into, you know, I have an interest in more the philosophical discussions regarding manufacturing and the broader discussions in the global economy. So I

explore some of those issues as well in the newsletter. So if people are interested, go check out redacted this week. Love it. Love that shameless self promotion. I have to do it. You have to take a page out of the book sometimes. Absolutely. Marylis, what do you got? Well, I was just going to mention I think Brad talked about it earlier, David Lowe's statement, Representative Lowe's statement about the motion to dismiss Burroughs. He made a, he put the statement on X, right, and he explained, like, why he supported Harrison, etc. and everything. But I thought it was really interesting. He got over 100 comments, and I'm just looking through them, and most of them are Calling him a coward or Rhino saying he should be primaried and everything

But I mentioned that because that is such a great example of the online world. It's no one's reading anything They're just not knowing but most of the people are just going on they're commenting Their perception of what's going on and not really reading through people's Statements and but he's been responding to all of these people did you read my letter did you read my letter classic online interactions always worthwhile yeah or very rarely worthwhile Bradley oh gosh this isn't all capital letters. Masters forward slash Scotty Scheffler. Indeed the greatest time of the year the Masters. We've noticed because your mood is markedly improved. Yes you know it's the greatest

time of the year because baseball's back we just came off March Madness and now it's the best golf tournament. So the sports holy trinity this month. Yes, you could say that. Yeah. Yeah. Although March Madness didn't go that well for you. We're not going to talk about that. Okay. That's my Twitter. So we will. So we have to give Holly her flowers. Scotty Scheffler just teed off at the Masters Scottie Scheffler just teed off at the Masters and he parred the first hole. Texan, which is why, you know, he's so notable. He went to UT, he's a Longhorn. He's also the best player in the world. Yeah, there you go. So he is the favorite, Anzon favorite for Vegas, if we could bet in this state, which we can't, of course.

I wouldn't do it anyway if we could but he is the favorite Vegas betting favorite to win the Masters this year followed by Rory McElroy Colin Morikawa who I met the other day who's awesome and he might be my second favorite. When did you meet him? There was an event in Austin that he was at and it was fun. Did you tell that to us? Or is that new information? No, I was keeping it from you. Because I know you don't care.

But there is like a mystique that surrounds the Masters, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's the one major in golf that has always played at the same course. All the others rotate. The open, the US Open and the PGA Championship are all rotating, but this is always at the cost of national. But also like the decorum at the Masters and like the legendary calls that have happened,

much different from something like the waste management. Yeah, which is just... The botry. The botry, yeah. Everyone's drunk. Here, it's also notable for the... and I put this test to the group, that the food is pretty cheap.

And they have a whole menu, and you can get a lot for 10 bucks. And so I asked everybody what they would get with 10 bucks at the Masters, and I forget all the answers but oh fun fact Colin Moor Calloway said the pimento cheese sandwich sucks well which is kind of legendary for the Masters but I think the chicken salad sounds better anyway but Scotty Scheffler's off. Off to the races.

Off to the races. Trying to win a second. No, this is a third. A third Masters in a row, I think. Yeah. What are his chances? Well, his chances are plus 450, whatever that means. So we shall see.

We shall see. Well, let's talk March Madness. We obviously have talked about on previous episodes the bracket that challenge, tournament challenge we had at the office. Brad made a group for us to all compete. I was wrong, by the way. It would be three out of the last four years

that Scheffler won. That's severely disappointing that you got that wrong I know okay and We have to give Holly Hansen her shout-out because She won and if the final two that were eligible for the win were Cameron and Holly Cameron How do you feel coming in second place? Devastated, heartbroken. There really aren't words to describe how I felt.

I'm kidding, I didn't watch a single game. And I thought that was playing into my favor. If I were to just tune into the championship game, maybe I would cast a bit of bad luck onto University of Houston, but turns out maybe I should have turned in, could have helped him out a little bit. Willed them to the finish.

Yeah, you know, that good energy. Yeah. Sending out, but I was only alerted of my loss via Slack on our channel, but Yeah, it would have been nice to win, but I'm happy for Holly. Yeah. Thank you Well, I know she spent a lot of time picking out her winner. So Maybe if you had watched Houston could have actually gotten a shot up in the last possession in the closing seconds

But it was a great game except for that last possession. What a shame for Kelvin Sampson. Very sad. You know who that is? No. The Houston coach. Come on. He's a life, he's a basketball lifer. Yeah, here's the thing. I had at one point in over 50% chance of winning in the final four rounds. I was looking real good. I was excited for that little pot of money. Did I get it? No. Was it was I more disappointed probably than Cameron? Yes. I think I ended up in third place so you know Cameron we can we can cry on the podium together.

Yeah. I'll shut it here. Well, on that note, folks, we have a lot to get to today, including these folks running over to the Capitol as soon as these microphones are off. So folks, thank you for tuning in and we'll catch you next week. Write and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics. And send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at thetexan.news. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup.

God bless you and God bless Texas.