The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - April 19, 2024

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/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.This week, the team discusses:The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals denying a rehearing for the lawsuit over Texas’ READER ActThe U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the State of Texas, despite Attorney General Ken Paxton claiming a winA Texas congresswoman’s full-page ad calling on New York law enforcement to move to TexasA poll showing the leads Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have over Joe Biden and Colin Allred in TexasA Texas man’s lawsuit against the women he alleges provided his ex-wife with abortion pillsA Democratic redistricting organization’s plans for three Texas Supreme Court seatsThe 5th Circuit blocking an order that fined Texas $100,000 per day for foster care system violationsLt. Gov. Dan Patrick directing the TCEQ to halt a concrete kiln project in Dorchester$6.4 billion of federal dollars for a Samsung semiconductor facility in Texas

Cement kiln plant creates cement. I mean, put simply, it grinds up limestone in either clay or another rock that I cannot remember at the moment. This isn't the Roman cement, right? They haven't been able to figure out Roman cement. Yeah, just like Greek fire. I don't know what you guys are talking about. Two ancient world things that we don't know how to recreate. You guys are joking? No. This is real.

We have no idea how to recreate Roman cement or Greek fire. That's bull. Is that true? It's true. It's true. Greek fire. You just start a fire. No, no.

Greek fire. You want to talk about this in the fun section? Sure. Wait, wait, wait. Well, howdy, folks. It's Mackenzie here with Brad, Cameron, and Matthew. Matthew, hello. How are you? It's been a while since we've had John.

I'm doing really well. Yay! And you're out in Kerrville today. I am. How's the city in the aftermath of the eclipse? Well, we survived. We will rebuild. There wasn't much in the way of a disaster. But I did talk to a lot of business owners in the community

who were rather not pleased with the local officials declaring disasters because that scared away a lot of tourism and kept crowds from holding over, which is the economy doesn't benefit very well if you don't keep people in your community buying your stuff. So I'm sure they'll be having some community discussions about declaring disasters in the future. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you're there. I'm glad y'all will rebuild. That makes me glad. Bradley, you look like you have a smug comment to make. No, actually not.

For once. I was off. I know that is usually my go-to, but I'm blocking at the moment. But alas, it is not the case today. Yes. Are you going to make noisy Yeti sounds in front of your mic for the rest of the podcast? Hey, it's about marketing, right? I was turning my Yeti around so the Texan logo is showing on camera.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I see. Instead of my name. People do, yeah, that makes sense. For the brand. But you needed to turn your lid around and make squeaky noises in order to just take your Yeti and go like this? Well, I still want to drink out of it.

So, what am I supposed to drink out of the closed end? It doesn't make any sense. Oh, so you actually were doing it for the branding. Yes, I was. I thought he was joking. And if anyone's interested, you can get your Texan mug on the texan.news.com. .news.com. That doesn't make any sense.

Texan.news.com. Texan.news. Yeah. I should have ended there. How cute. Wes.com. Texas.news. Yeah. It should have ended there. I can't remember who told you this. Well, we can't tell it on the pod, but we did tell you the story about trying to get to.com, right, when we first launched.

Well, that's a conversation for after the pod. Yeah, that is a conversation. Okay. We'll have to get into that. And, Bradley, you are talking about the NBA in your Twittery section, right? Yes. Okay. There is a first time for everything including me talking about the nba

yeah that's true interesting it's not really his forte not the wmba they just had their draft right oh yeah they did yeah were you watching it no i watched a lot of highlights of it okay yeah was caitlin clark picked first overall she was you're gonna buy a WNBA season tickets absolutely not but I don't have season tickets to any sport so that's not necessarily but I did go actually I did I played basketball as a kid and my parents would take me to WNBA like Seattle Storm games because I was super into it like the Sue Board Lauren Jackson days so I am more of a card carrying member not recently but I have put in my time watching a lot of look i've been to a wmba game sacramento monarchs oh because they're they're really good well they're not there

anymore yeah but they were good they were good for a long time yeah i'm not sure where they went how many people were in that arena i'm just curious i i don't remember i was a little kid storm games actually were pretty well attended, like whenever I would go. Because we had huge, huge names. But Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson were, like, big in Seattle. Bradley, he's again restraining himself from making a snarky comment. But it was. It was a big deal.

It was a big deal to a little me who was, like, 5'8 at the age of 11. It felt very young. I'm sure you had a good time. Yeah the age of 11. I felt very young. I'm sure you had a good time. Yeah, it was awesome. I loved it. Okay, great. And they actually play actual basketball too. It's not just five one-on-one games going on like the actual NBA.

That's true. Which I can't stand. So here's why I don't watch it. I haven't watched much NBA since the Bibby days, the Sacramento Kings. That's when I was watching a lot of NBA. Interesting. Waddy Devo, Peja Stojakovic. Wow.

That was really fun. Don't get me started on the Sonics. Oh? They were stolen from us. Yes. Okay. Well, on that note, we should probably get into the news. And I'm going to make the transition this week instead of Brad, because last week Brad

very rudely made the transition for me That ticked me off, so I'm doing it myself Cameron you ready? I wouldn't dream of stepping on your toes. Yeah, you just dream of jumping on them Stomping on them. Yeah Okay, Brad, uh, Cameron, we're gonna start with you. Okay. New legal decision has dropped regarding the Reader Act. You've covered this for, what, a year and a half now, something like that? Yeah, it's been an ongoing thing. So tell us what happened.

What's the news? Yeah, so the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied a rehearing in this case involving bookstores and publishers who actually sued the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the State Board of Education and the Texas Education Agency. This has been an ongoing legal dispute, and the appeals court had previously sided with the bookstores, halting one portion of the law that would have prevented book vendors from selling, quote, explicit materials to public schools. And in this decision to deny a rehearing, a poll was conducted of the judges to determine if a rehearing should occur. Eight voted in favor of rehearing the case, while nine voted against. What is an important aspect of this entire case is one library oversight measure will remain in effect

and is set with TSLAC standards where they were created in response to HB 900 going into effect. And this was adopted by the State Board of Education back in December. And for those who are asking, what the heck is HB 900? It's the Reader Act, and that bill was aimed at preventing children from accessing certain materials in public school libraries by prohibiting library vendors from selling library material rated quote sexually explicit in that term sexually explicit has been um adjudicated back and forth in court and the bill did end up becoming effective on September 1st 2023 which set in motion this legal battle that we just had this new decision that dropped and so again I'll reiterate an important aspect of this is the library vendors will not be

required to impose the rating system on the books but the State Board of Education has adopted t-slack standards that were a part of HB 900. And so libraries will have these new standards going into effect as they were adopted in December of last year. Yeah, absolutely. We'll definitely keep an eye on it. Thank you, Cameron. You're welcome. Matthew, coming to you. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision allowing a Texas farmer to sue the state and seek just compensation for flooding his farm. And despite what seemed to be a victory for the plaintiff, there's been a lot of discussion on social media about who won, what the deal is. The Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, has sparked criticism for declaring the ruling a victory for the state.

Run us through the whole debacle here and what is so confusing about this for people. So this has been an extraordinary case to follow and the grand finale on this interlocutory appeal was interesting to say the least. Both sides are saying they won after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas farmer Richie DeVillier may sue the state of Texas in federal court under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment. To help our audience better understand the issue and who won, let me walk you through a recap of what happened in this case. So Richie DeVillier owns a fifth generation family farm down by Winnie, Texas, close to the coast. And TxDOT was working on a project to revamp I-10, and they built a dam that was going to block where water naturally drains off of this property. They warned TxDOT, if you built this dam, we're going to flood. TxDOT builds it anyway.

A storm comes along. The family farm is essentially turned into a lake. Cattle drowned. His orchard is ruined. His house is flooded. Horrible. So DeVillier filed a lawsuit in state district court under both the Texas Constitution's just compensation clause and the U.S. Fifth Amendment's just compensation clause that basically says the government cannot take your property without paying you what it's worth. And there's kind of two theories on that. There is we want to take your property. In order to do that, you have to pay it what it's worth. But there's also the you broke it, you bought it principle. And that's kind of what De Villiers was operating under is they broke his farm. Now they owe him for it. So the Texas Attorney General's office that represents the state of Texas came along and

they said, well, because Mr. DeVillier's neighbors are also suing in district courts and state district courts aren't equipped well jurisdictionally to handle all these plaintiffs, we want to remove the case to the U.S. Southern District Court of Texas because federal district courts encompass large areas and could accommodate the jurisdiction for where all the plaintiffs were. And they said, fine, we'll sue you here, we'll sue you there, we'll sue you anywhere. So the case goes to the U.S. District Court, and as soon as it goes in there, Texas throws up a motion to dismiss the case, saying that you cannot sue the state of Texas under the Fifth Amendment in federal court, that your only cause of Villiers may sue Texas in federal court directly under the U.S. Fifth Amendment. The state of Texas appealed to that, to the U.S. Fifth

Circuit, who in a very brief ruling said that reversed, shot down basically the trial court's decision and said, no, the Fifth Amendment's not self-executing. There's no way de Villiers can sue the state and federal court. You've got to go back to a state trial court. So de Villiers appealed that to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court took up the case. Now, the question before the court was whether or not the Fifth Amendment is self-executing, meaning neither Congress nor the Texas legislature has to pass a cause of action that allows you to sue under it. So basically, envision a statute that says, if we do this, you may sue us sort of thing.

And that waives sovereign immunity. And there's two types of sovereign immunity. There's immunity from being sued. So the ability to file a lawsuit and there's immunity from liability, which envision the circumstance in which you can file the case, but it's the court's ability to say, hold somebody accountable and say, you now owe them money. Because Texas invited the case into the federal court, that constituted a waiver of sovereign immunity for being sued. So now the prong fell to, can the federal courts make Texas pay? And there's kind of, all the way through this, whenever the Texas filed their formal written briefs with the federal courts, they maintained there's no cause of action allowing them to sue us in federal court under the Fifth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment's not self-executing. Well, it gets up to oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Texas

Solicitor General makes an about-face pivot on their arguments. Nowhere in their briefs did they cite this, but they make a concession and say that Texas common law allows citizens to sue under the Fifth Amendment as a cause of action. So fast forward to this week, unanimous decision authored by Justice Clarence Thomas comes out and he holds Texas to that verbal concession made before them at oral arguments, saying that there is a common law cause of action to sue under the Fifth Amendment. Now, ordinarily, whenever the court can reach the conclusion, they don't have to go further and address other issues. So envision, if you will, somebody asking the court to say, I want to get on this train, and there's two doors to do it, door A, door B. Door A is a cause of action. Door B is the Fifth Amendment being self-executing. Because the Supreme Court was able to say, you can get on the Fifth Amendment train through door A,

we don't have to resolve the question of whether or not you can get on the train via door B. So they left that question pending as far as making a final determination on it. Now, the key part of it is, though, that at the very end of the ruling, they vacated Texas's win at the Fifth Circuit. And that leaves the plaintiff's victory at the trial court in place, which says you may sue through door A and door B, the cause of action and the U.S. Fifth Amendment being self-executing. So at the end of the day, DeVillier now gets to go back to the trial court, proceed with a trial saying Texas owes us just compensation for flooding our farm. And this is what this was all about. The decision comes out. And the

interesting thing on social media is that both sides immediately declare victory. Texas, the Texas Attorney General's office puts out a statement saying that they achieved a 9-0 victory at the Supreme Court with the judges citing on their argument that they must sue through the state common law cause of action and basically considered it a victory and that the court did not affirm that the Fifth Amendment was self-executing, but they stopped short of mentioning that the Fifth Circuit was vacated and that the district court recognizes a direct self-executing nature of the Fifth Amendment. For the attorneys that represent DeVillier, they provided several comments for our story where they took note of the attorney general's comments. We highly suggest you go read the story and see what the attorneys who litigated the case had to say.

But at the end of the day, the attorneys who are going to be suing the state of Texas at trial court are now armed with two tools to sue the state of Texas with. And that is, one, a common law cause of action through Texas law and the U.S. Fifth Amendment under the Bill of Rights. There's a lot going on is what I'm hearing. Well, I think the train analogy is really good. Both with the Supreme Court, essentially what they said is both those doors are open now. Well, they said that the door A is open. They don't have to address whether or not door B is open. But a lower court said door B is open and they vacated a ruling from the intermediate court that said door B is closed.

So it's a very interesting process. It's very interesting for the Texas to come out saying, we won, we won, we won when, by the way, you're getting sued. So that was a great breakdown of the entire process. If there was one thing someone listening should take away from your entire explanation there, what should they take away? That's a good question. I think the most basic way to boil this down is that Texas won at the Fifth Circuit and SCOTUS vacated that win entirely.

Okay. So that's where we're at right now. That's where we're at. And they left the district court's decision that is a total win for the plaintiffs in place. And I think a great way to summarize it is an attorney with the Institute of Justice who argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court provided us a comment in our story. And he said, basically, when your win at the Fifth Circuit is vacated, that's called losing. Wow. Well, that's a lot and came with good questions. Those were helpful explanations. Matt, thank you so much for breaking this down and helping me and us and our readers understand this.

Because I can get lost in the weeds through this entire process. And social media clouds a lot of it too, trying to figure out what, you know, which way is up and what actually happened. And the court system by design is complicated in that sometimes it's not a ruling just on a case, it's a ruling on a previous ruling and that gets so confusing. One thing that I thought was hilarious was as I was tweeting out an explanation of all this, somebody on Twitter took my thread, dropped it into chat GPT with the instructions of, can you explain this so that a fourth grader can understand? And then he tweeted chat GPT's response back at me. It's helpful. It truly is helpful.

But regardless. Well, Matt, thank you. Well, with that, and arguably the biggest news story of the week, we'll just move on to other things here. Cameron, we're coming to you. Beth Van Dyne, a congresswoman from Texas, posted a full-page ad in the New York Post. Interesting. Tell us why she did such a thing. Yeah, I came across

a story this week. I thought it was very interesting because the headline said, escape New York and move to Texas. So essentially this was an effort to recruit law enforcement from New York City, telling them to come to Texas and that we want you here is was her main message i'll read a part of the ad here where she says quote sadly the corrupt and crumbling empire state is so purposefully anti-law and order that you should no longer put your careers and lives in the hands of politicians who couldn't care less about you or your families. That's part of the advertisement there. She also identified New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Latita James, and the DA Alvin Bragg saying that they're essentially using law enforcement for photo ops

and then not passing or enforcing proper policies in the state. So very pointed, very interesting to see a Texas legislator putting an ad in New York City. She did an interview with Fox Digital where she said, quote, it feels like they've been abused, undermined, sold out by the politicians, the representatives who take the side of criminals over the police, and quite honestly, over the citizens. So Van Dyne has gone on a bit of a tear here. But New York City Mayor Eric Adams rebutted Van Dyne's call to bring law enforcement from New York to Texas. He pointed out that Dallas has a higher homicide rate than New York City during a press conference. And he said, quote, she should

be telling some of her officers to go to Dallas to deal with the violence there. And so I pulled some of the statistics from Dallas to see what the crime rate and murder rate is. And so at the end of 2023, violent crime in Dallas overall was down 8% and aggravated assault was down 19%. The Dallas murder rate, however, was up 15% in 2023 with a total of 246 homicides last year. So just some interesting context there. But just interesting, we are seeing Texas legislators going after blue cities and blue states and really pointing out what they see are failed policies in some of these cities. And we've seen it from Governor Greg Abbott. He's bused illegal immigrants to some of these blue states like Illinois and New York. So Texas going after other states, you know, kind of par for the course now.

An interesting move too from an individual elected official to do such a thing. It's very, very interesting. I'm fascinated by it. I was curious, I looked up US state population, Texas is second behind California in terms of population with 29 million, about 30 million, this is a 2020 number um new york as of 2020 had 20 million so it's only 9 million behind considering the geographical area we're dealing with that's pretty interesting but new york city as of 2022 has 8.3 million so almost half of the state's population is just in new york city yeah well and you see that in a lot of urban centers um doesn't just have to be in new y, but across the country where you're going to see higher crime.

It's just more densely populated. It's the nature of the gig. Yeah. And L.A. is 3.8, so New York is over twice the size of Los Angeles in terms of population. I did not realize the Delta was that wide, but interesting. Also, before Matt, Matt, you are heading out here in a second, but I do want to give you a quick shout out. We're so excited for you. You finally decided, hey, I'm going to law school at this place. Tell us where you're going to law school.

Congratulations. Let's give you a quick shout out here. Well, thank you, Mackenzie. It's been a multi-year work in progress, but studied the LSAT, took the LSAT, threw out some applications and got some answers back. And finally, I felt like I was led to one in particular. So I accepted an offer of admission to Oklahoma City School of Law for the upcoming fall semester. So I'll be starting that three-year endeavor to become a future attorney here pretty soon. Oh, we're so excited for you. You worked so hard to get to this point. It's just exciting. We're really excited for you. And of course, this eventually means less involvement here at the Texan, but we're just excited for you and you put so much work. This has really been something you've talked about ever since. I mean,

we've known you. So it's exciting to see it come to fruition. Well, I appreciate that. And for those of those interested, I'm still going to be here at the Texan. I will write as I have bandwidth. A lot of my attorney friends tell me that I will have very little bandwidth during the first year, but I'm always kind of ambitious. So we'll see. I'm sure there will be things come along that I can't resist writing about. So I'll try to talk as frequently as I can. Well, we'll take you when we can get you.

But before you head it out, we just wanted to shout you out real quick. This is exciting. So Matt, lawyer to be. I'm excited. Matt Stringer Esquire. That's going to be really, we'll have to get him like a little nameplate for his inevitable desk he'll have

wherever he's practicing law. Great. I'll still respond to Matt or hey you or whatever. Right. But I think you should just be called Matt Stringer Esquire from now. It's kind of pretentious, isn't it? Yes, and that's why I like it. Yeah, because Matt's just not a pretentious guy.

So it's a very, I like the dichotomy of the contrast, you know? Don't hate on my fun, Bradley. That's what I do. Anyways, Matt, congratulations. We'll let you you go but wanted to quickly talk about that appreciate you there's a little bit of delay today it's so bad yeah um okay well let's move on here bradley a new poll was released this week showing an interesting dynamic at the top of the ticket here in Texas. What did it show? The poll released by the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation found Donald Trump up 12 points on Joe Biden in Texas. That's not that surprising, I'd say. That's actually right on with the Texas Partisan Index R56% rating. So that all tracks.

Interestingly, though, he's also leading among Hispanics by four points, which Hispanics are now, I think, the plurality demographic in the state by race. I think they just became that in a Census Bureau estimate this year. Yeah, I think we wrote about that in December last year. Yeah, it was December. So that's an interesting development, and Trump is performing very well. We've seen that bear out, especially with the shift in South Texas um in these traditionally very very blue counties not turning red but getting significantly more closer to red than they have ever been really so uh you know trump continues that is there a reason for that do you think like why are they shifting i mean I think the border is probably an issue related to it.

Hispanics seem to be more traditionally conservative on some social issues. And I think we've seen the National Democratic Party move away from that, obviously. That has by no means is South Texas red yet. But we're starting to see it shift a bit. The largest shifts in the 2020 election, I think we saw, of the top ten counties in the entire country, nine were in South Texas, if I remember correctly. So it's a wild uh stat but um donald trump continues to pull well among that demographic in that that poll by um thpf rfk the third party candidates robert f kennedy was pulling at nine percent with eight percent undecided so that's interesting as well. It's a decent chunk. Yeah, yeah, certainly.

And so in the release of this poll, THPF CEO Jason Villalba, former state rep, Republican, I believe from DFW, right? He said, over the most recent election cycles, Texas Hispanics have shown a growing willingness to consider and ultimately vote for Republican candidates, especially at the presidential level. You know, we're also seeing the RNC specifically target South Texas. You know, there's those three congressional races. Last cycle, I think there's only two that are really getting attention this cycle. One is Monica de la Cruz's seat that's R52, and then the other one is Vicente Gonzalez's that's pretty heavily D. But Mayra Flores is back on the ballot there.

We're going to see a rematch in that third rematch, third matchup I think between them. No, second, because Gonzalez jumped seats. But anyway, so that's, there's a lot of different factors to why we're seeing that. But that's something Republicans are increasingly eyeing and hoping to make ground on. One more interesting note on this presidential lineup. Trump leads among all poll demographics except black voters and 18 to 44 year olds so texas is at least in that regard not close to turning blue

we'll see if biden can make it any closer of a contest but i think trump won what 54 percent in 2020 so that would be about an eight pointpoint win, if I'm doing math correctly. Yes, 8-point win, yeah. If that was the margin, which we should look up. Yeah, maybe it was closer. But regardless, this looks like Trump's going to run away with the state. So what did the poll show about the Senate race, if anything? So the Senate race is a different animal. The poll showed Senator Cruz up five points on Congressman Colin Allred.

That's a fairly tight margin. And Allred is up on Cruz by five points among Hispanic voters. So a reverse factor there from the presidential race. And I'm not sure what to make of that exactly other than Cruz, people know how they feel about Cruz. They either love him or they hate him, right? And when we're looking at these fave on faves, Cruz, Biden, Trump all have, in the poll, they all have like 1% unsure. So people know how they feel about it one way or the other. So that's something to watch.

However, a February poll from the Texas Politics Project showed Cruz up 14 on All Red. That's huge movement in just a couple months. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, I think. But still, this is not an easy race for Senator Cruz. And they're not taking it lightly. They're raising a lot of money. All Red also is raising a lot of money. They both posted in the most recent finance report almost $10 million raised. So it's going to be another expensive raise. Mark P. Jones said of this survey, while today a Trump victory over Biden in Texas looks to be a foregone conclusion, Cruz is facing a much more competitive challenge from Allred.

A race that is certain to garner more national attention as one of only two contests where Democrats have any hope of flipping a Republican held seat as they attempt to retain control of the U.S. Senate. In terms of fave-unfave, we saw in this poll Biden had a minus 25 point fave-unfave rating. Trump was plus one. Cruz was minus three. Allred was plus 24, though there were 40% of respondents who didn't know enough to pick a side on him. So if I can wager a guess at the strategy for Cruz, it's going to be a lot of obviously hitting all red, trying to move that 40% into the negative, into the unfave category against All Red. Have you seen sort of negative advertisements work in moving the direction of favorability? I mean, there's a reason negative campaigns go negative.

It works. You may hate it, it may be distasteful, you may stretch the truth on things a lot, but it works, and that's why campaigns do negative. It works. You may hate it. It may be distasteful. You may stretch the truth on things a lot, but it works, and that's why campaigns do it. It doesn't always work, right? But that is the strategy. Trump won 52% in 2020. What did Biden win?

Biden won 46.5. 46, okay. So, yeah, just some. Five, six points. Yeah. 46, okay. So, yeah, just some... Five, six points. Yeah, it's exactly. Exactly, 5.5 basically. Okay. Well, thank you, Bradley.

Fascinating. And the Senate race is shaping up to be even more interesting than we anticipated. Cameron, coming to you. A Texas man has filed a civil suit against a group of women that he alleges aided his ex-wife

in obtaining abortion-inducing drugs. Give us the details. Yeah, that's right. This is a pretty lengthy ordeal here, so I'll give some details. The man, Marcus Silva, he sued a group of women after, like you said, he alleges they assisted Silva's ex-wife in obtaining a self-managed abortion. A three-judge panel in the 14th Court of Appeals actually has now cited that with a previous trial court decision that would have required the production of evidence via a subpoena would violate the Fifth Amendment's self-incriminating privileges of the ex-wife and thus will be blocked from releasing those documents. State Rep. Briscoe Cain and former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell are the attorneys

representing Silva on this case. I thought that was an interesting detail. And so I reached out to Briscoe Cain for some details and he told me, quote, she faces no criminal liability. This is the ex-wife. She faces no criminal liability under either Texas or federal law. Moreover, her lawyers never produced a privilege log, as is required by the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. I am confident that the Texas Supreme Court will correct the appellate court's mistake. And Cain told us here at the Texan that. And some details about what the arguments Cain was making there in that statement is under Texas pre-row statutes, a woman is to be regarded as the victim, not the perpetrator in the event of an abortion.

This was the argument presented in the Dobbs v. Jackson case where there was some arguments added that said that, quote, Texas courts had determined that the statutes against abortion did not apply to conduct committed by the mother, whether that conduct involved soliciting and hiring an abortionist to perform the abortion or whether she did it herself. So I think that's important context to add when we see issues surrounding lawsuits in regard to abortion. The woman involved in the abortion process is not going to be criminally charged if she is involved in a legal trial. So another extra detail is as I was going through the lawsuit, it included quite a bit of exhibits. And some of those exhibits show text message exchange between the women involved and the ex-wife with links to telehealth services and links for, quote,

safe abortion or miscarriage treatment. Mentions of the two pills used in chemical abortion, misopristol and mifepristone, are detailed in these messages. And so this long trial is there was attempts to get evidence of these text messages and additional evidence through the subpoena process, and there was motions filed, counter motions filed. There was even a countersuit that was filed by the three women involved in this case, and they were actually being represented by Rusty Hardin. And if people

are familiar with Texas politics, they'll remember Rusty Hardin was involved in the Attorney General Kempak's impeachment. And so I thought that was just a little interesting detail to include. But I'll add one more thing that I heard from Briscoe Cain about is he said, quote, abortion activists have tried to alienate Mr. Silva and his friends. Briscoe Cain continues here saying, quote, he's been confronted in public. He's had people throw baby dolls in his yard and he is constantly attacked online and on social media. Their goal is obvious, make him quit and give up the fight for his murdered child. And so there is a trial date set in state court for May 13th. And this is an ongoing ordeal and could be monumental in terms of how abortion litigation is handled here in the

state. Interesting to you that Hardin and Cain, you know, Briscoe was on the, Briscoe Cain was on the board of managers for the impeachment. And so he was at the forefront of the decision to, with other members, which to hire the lawyers that were presenting the House's case before the Texas Senate to impeach the attorney general to remove him from office permanently. And they chose Hardin as one of those lawyers that they wanted presenting their case to the Senate. Now they're on opposite sides. Well, for those who are following the impeachment trial, we constantly see both lawyers from either side having a sort of a back and forth relationship during the entire trial because they've been in

Texas for so long trying cases against each other, they have a relationship, you know, and they're going to find each other on the same side of things and on the opposite side of things. So it's just interesting when you're involved, Matt knows this and he's going to find out once he becomes a lawyer. But, you know, you can be on opposite sides of an argument in one case, on the same side, on the other. It's just how it goes. Yeah, just how it goes. That's exactly right, Cameron. Thank you. Bradley, a national democratic group is eyeing the Texas Supreme Court of all things. Give us the details. Well, the fight over the next redistricting, next decade, is already beginning.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee is targeting the three Texas Supreme Court races on this year's ballot. The NDRC is led by Eric Holder, former AG under President Obama. In announcing that they were going to put money, an undisclosed amount of money, we'll see how much it is, behind Democratic challengers to the three current Republican Texas Supreme Court justices. Holder said in a release, from maintaining or putting in place egregiously gerrymandered maps to ballot measures that infringe on the right to vote and more generally rolling back fundamental and once assumed rights today's republican party has embraced mega extremism its political fate is

dependent upon voter suppression to maintain power including through partisan and racial gerrymandering so he hit all the the highlights basically of the democrat side of messaging on redistricting. And redistricting is just, you know, it's a political process through and through. There's no getting it out. Go to a state like Illinois, and you see Democrats wielding redistricting to tremendous effect. And so Republicans are doing that here. Both parties have gotten quite good in the places that they hold drawing districts and maintaining their power. a friendlier Supreme Court that could basically nix or invalidate whatever districts are drawn by the presumably Republican-led legislature next decade. And so they have an uphill battle. They haven't won a statewide seat, Democrats haven't in 30 years, but they're kind of hoping that the more obscure race,

like a Texas Supreme Court race, Democrats would have a higher chance of winning. Now, we've seen that play called before with the Railroad Commission race, and that has not ended up as they had hoped. So odds are probably slim that they win these seats, but they're trying to advance the ball down the field on that. The group's PAC spent $17,000 in the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race that Democrat Janet Protasiewicz One, securing a Democratic majority in the court. So they have done this before with success, Wisconsin being the foremost example of that. But this is among 10 Texas, the Texas Supreme Court is among 10 priorities for them. Some are state legislatures, some are other Supreme Courts in other states.

I'm not sure how much money they're going to actually put behind this, but it'll be interesting to see. Do they focus on one race? You know, the name a lot of people have talked about is John Devine. Is it Devine or Devine? Devine. Devine. Democrats see him as the more vulnerable of the candidates.

I think Jimmy Blacklock and Jane Bland are the other two. Who knows if that's the case, but that's kind of the premise from which they're operating. And Barack Obama tweeted about this, making a fundraising pitch, essentially. So they're going to choose their cards, where to play them, how much money they devote to the Arizona State Legislature versus the Texas Supreme Court. But them getting involved shows at least a concerted strategy well in advance of the next redistricting cycle.

I have two things. Bring it on. I have one thing, too, but it's tangentially related. So you should go first. Do you think they're looking at the all red crews battle and seeing that as encouraging for Democrats where they're saying, oh, if all reds gaining ground in a Senate race, we might be able to gain some ground in more local races? Yeah, I mean, certainly. They're seeing the same polling that we are. They think there's an opportunity.

Cruz is kind of an anomaly in this regard. The last time he was on the ballot statewide was the Beto race that he very narrowly won. So like I was saying about people either love or they hate Cruz, well, there's a lot of people that hate Cruz and that are motivated to vote him out, right? So that doesn't necessarily relay into other races, though they might see an opportunity for that. And, you know, if you have people, the presidential race will drive a lot of voters out. It wouldn't come out in 22 in the midterm, right? Same with on-the-fence voters who hate Cruz seeing an opportunity to take Cruz out. The bet here is that that trickles down.

But that hasn't happened. Well, the second thing I wanted to touch on was how we've seen recently Democrat messaging focus on this term MAGA extremism. I'm trying to think, has there been polling to see if that term MAGA extremism plays well with the Democratic base in sort of energizing people to either donate or vote or whatever it is? Because we saw it with, I was listening into a web press conference with Gilberto Hinojosa, and he used MAGA extremism comments and then I saw there was a Newsweek this is going back a few months there was a Newsweek article back in October 2023 that talked about the FBI was going to start identifying MAGA extremists and and so I don't know if this

term is something they've worked on and identified as energizing a Democratic base to donate. It's just interesting. We're seeing this term pop up more and more, not just in the media talking heads, political pundits using that term, but now. Candidates. Candidates. And campaigns. Well, it certainly plays well with the Democratic base and their donors, right? It's kind of the inverse of the woke left that the Republicans use, right?

Right. That mobilizes the devoted Democrats or the devoted Republicans. I don't know if it pulls well among moderates, though. Because it's one thing to get the dedicated base to go out and vote, it's another thing to get those who might be more in the middle. So, like, using these more extremist, MAGA extremist terminology to identify the other side, is that convincing for the average voter to get them out to vote?

It depends on who the average voter is you're talking about. Are they someone that's persuadable, that's on the fence? Are they, you know, a conservative Democrat? I don't know. Like, it depends. I just thought it was an interesting thing that they're using this term more commonly now. Yeah. In my mind, it probably is used in this to drum up fundraising because that is what that's the language that

persuades or that it motivates uh the devotees of this kind of ideology right just like the woke left will motivate those on the on the right right so um right now they're in the fundraising stage they're not in the uh let's persuade voters stage. Yeah, and I think by associating, because Democrats, they do not like Trump. And Trump is, he's identified with the term MAGA. So if they can associate other Republicans with that term. With an adjective that is easy to use. But they'll also say Trump Republicans.

They'll say that. But I think MAGA extremism pushes the point home. Yeah, trying to push all Republicans into this one group of MAGA extremists, sort of trying to associate everyone who votes Republican with that term. Yeah, but it's done across, like, you know, this is campaign tactics. This is fundraising. This is how this works. Yeah, it's just interesting to identify those tactics.

Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Well, my thing I might save for Tweeter-y because it's not that important. Oh. Totally just about the Great Lakes states. That's literally what it's about. So I'm going to move on. I have a question for Bradley about that.

Cameron, we're coming to you. We have an update in a long running case involving the state's foster care system. Tell us what happened. Yeah. So a federal appeals court stayed in order that would have fined the state of Texas $100,000 a day for violating orders related to its foster care system. And this was in response to a 427-page order that I did my best to go through, where Judge Graham Jack of the Corpus Christi Division of the Southern District of Texas found the state in contempt for violating previous orders related to the state's foster care system. The ruling has since been blocked, like I mentioned, by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and thus the fines will not continue to accrue for the state. At multiple points in the order that would have had Texas

paying this $100,000 in fines, Jack detailed the inability of the provider investigations program as part of the foster care program to comply with previous remedial orders, which the order asserts, quote, hardly demonstrates good faith. And in this order as well, he highlighted the history of psychotropic drug use in the Texas foster care system, caseworker caseloads, continuing safety concerns, and the placement crisis. And the order includes descriptions of testimonies and investigations into the handling of the Texas foster care system. And Jack's order notes as well that they had failed to establish and substantially complied or made a good faith effort to comply. So I just thought this was an interesting development in this long-running case involving the foster care system and this most recent development.

You know, you see Texas is going to have to pay $100,000 a day for being in contempt. But with this state order, those fines will no longer be accruing. Yeah. I want to say it was the 85th session when foster care and CPS reform was at the forefront of the legislative discussion. And there's been several sessions since that's been the case. And it seems so long ago, but it really was not. But it has been several sessions since this was talked about, at least in terms of a big issue tackled by the legislature. I think there's a little reform that's done every session. There are always CPS and foster care bills, but it'll

be interesting to see if this sparks any discussion with legislators. Yeah. And I'll mention this is the third time the state's foster care agency has been found in contempt. It was detailed in the order that the first two times were also in 2019 and 2020. So like you mentioned, it's been an ongoing issue. And the reason why this order was 427 pages is because it included all the testimonies and interviews, not with just the people who work in the foster care system, but the children who were involved in suing the state. And so, yeah, it was interesting to go through because even without understanding, first knowing what was going on here, you know, you always hear on the periphery about how the foster care system is sort of broken

and horror stories that do come out of it. So at least, like you mentioned, the legislature is trying to deal with it, and it's being adjudicated in court trying to find remedies to the problem. So complicated. It is very complicated. There's no quick fix. There's no band-aid solution. And I think this kind of policy will always be evolving to try and address issues as best as possible.

Totally. Thank you, Cameron. Bradley, coming to you. Governor Patrick made a stop in Dorchester this week for a town hall. What was that about? Citizens in Grayson County are upset about a potential cement kiln plant, the owners of which have asked the TCEQ to approve an operating permit.

Cement kiln plant creates cement. I mean, put simply, it grinds up limestone in either clay or another rock that I cannot remember at the moment.

This isn't the Roman cement, right? They haven't been able to figure out Roman cement. Yeah, just like Greek fire. I don't know what you guys are talking about. Two ancient world things that we don't know how to recreate. You guys are joking? This is real. We have no idea how to recreate Roman cement or Greek fire.

That's bull. Is that true? It's true. It's true. Fire. You cement or Greek fire. That's bull. Is that true? It's true. You just start a fire. Greek fire. You want to talk about this in the fun section? Wait, wait, wait. I have so many questions for you guys today.

We're not pulling your leg. Well, you understand where I would be suspicious. Sure. If you didn't know what Greek fire is, I understand why he would be suspicious i'm gonna learn about this i don't know about greek fire oh okay all right we'll talk about it so the the plant itself it's a giant they grind up this these rocks create dust um heat it at very high temperatures for a while, and then it somehow creates this mixture that they turn into cement. That's as best as I can tell you, but it comes with the typical concerns from environmentalists about emissions, first of all,

but also less ideological, I'd say, opposition on the environment side in terms of like dust, you know, blowing this into the environment around, you know, into people's backyards and things like that. So those are the kind of the two prongs of the opposition along with those who just don't want this massive plant in the middle of this hundred or two hundred person community basically it's Dorchester yeah and so there's a lot of opposition to this they citizens have been fighting this for a while. They showed up to the TCEQ hearing and testified against it in large number.

Eventually got the lieutenant governor's attention. And he came for a town hall. And so this plant is proposed by Black Mountain Cement, which applied for an operating permit with the TCEQ a few years ago. And since then, this opposition has built up. And so a few years ago, the EPA stepped in, kind of halted it. But then it got revived by the TCEQ, said that their analysis found we haven't seen any. We don't anticipate any environmental air quality concerns, risks associated with this. You know, there are cement kilns all over the state. Why did they choose this location?

Has the land. It's a 600-acre facility, and it's going to be the plants alongside a quarry. Oh, okay. So it's a big operation. There has to be the raw materials there, right? That too. Yeah. Yep.

So there's that, and also just the space, the cheap enough land so they can make money on this, which is what every business wants to do. Is there arguments being made that this is going to employ people in this in this town like sure yeah i mean all with all this economic development stuff yes absolutely um also i'm gonna have to speed us up here because we have another story and twitter and we're nearing if not over 50 minutes. I want to know about this. I know. This opposition happened. Dan Patrick came to town to field concerns. Afterwards, he wrote a letter to the TCEQ saying,

based on everything I've reviewed in my time with the local community, I'm firmly opposed to the granting of this permit. There's simply too much at risk to this county and its citizens. This may limit future expansion in the area if the cement kiln is built. Talking about other companies saying we came here under the understanding this wasn't happening and now this is possibly happening so we're gonna have to reconsider this. One of the single criticisms of the TCEQ's analysis about the air quality is that they used Denton County estimates and not Grayson County estimates on the environment. So there's that.

Ultimately, Patrick, in this letter, wrote to the TCEQ, said they should not act on this permit. They should hit pause until the legislature has the ability to act on it in 2025, next year. And he said similarly for any other similar permit across the state. So we'll see what the legislature does. Overall, it's another example of growing pains from population economic growth that I've tried to talk about a lot. And this is just another example of that. There you go.

Cameron, coming to you. Bradley, thank you. Thanks for being so speedy. Yeah, you're welcome. Cameron, the Biden administration has released $6.4 billion for Samsung to bolster the production of semiconductors in Texas. Give us the details. So this multibillion-dollar investment is part of a larger $40 billion federal funding agreement

as part of the CHIPS and Science Act. And the White House put out a press release where it stated the investment aims to, quote, cement Central Texas's role as a state-of-the-art semiconductor ecosystem. Unreal. They say it's going to create at least 2,100 jobs and leverage up to $40 million in CHIPS funding to train and develop the local workforce. The investment going on here, the investment would be used at both the research and development facilities in Taylor and expansion of a fabrication factory in Austin. The announcement of the investment in Taylor was attended by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Congressman Michael McCaul, and Austin Mayor Kirk Watson.

Ted Cruz commented on it. He applauded the investment, saying it confirms Texas remains Texas Semiconductor Innovation Consortium and Fund. And Governor Greg Abbott said it will, quote, bolster our position nationally and internationally when it comes to semiconductors. enjoy writing about these semiconductor, or I wouldn't necessarily say enjoy, but I think it's important to write about these semiconductor stories just because of the growing concerns over geopolitical conflicts with China, with Taiwan, because of what's called the silicone shield, where many of the semiconductor production is occurring there. And so if Texas is taking action in trying to establish a semiconductor industry domestically

that can help bolster not only our economy, but our technological advancement here in the United States, it can give insight into how America is reacting to certain geopolitical issues. So I just think it provides insight into that. It certainly does. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you. That was almost your redacted this week, too. It was almost. Well, I wanted to talk about lithium and cobalt. And we're like, maybe next time or maybe a little later. I was like, Karen, you can do either. And you really had a tough time deciding. I know. I know. I think I talked about it on the pod last week. I just think those things going on behind the scenes, what people might not be.

The broader context. Yeah. Seriously. What people might be focusing on. You know, they see the billion dollars happening, but where are these raw materials coming from, you know? And so if you don't know, you know, maybe tune in to Redacted. In the next couple weeks, I'll write about where lithium and cobalt comes from and what that means for geopolitical conflicts in the future. We can hit that on your Twittery section that we're talking about.

Oh, yeah. That's true. We'll move on to the Twittery section then. Bradley. Actually, no. Should we start with Cameron? Yeah, let's start with Cameron. Start with Cameron.

Okay. So I came across a tweet just as we were sitting down, actually. This is from Sawyer Merritt. Sawyer Merritt is the co-founder of Twin Birch USA Sustainable Lifestyle Apparel. He's a Tesla investor. He said, he linked to an article here, and he comments saying, a landmark event occurred in the U.S. on Tuesday night when battery storage became, for the first time, the largest source of supply in the California grid, which delivers electricity to the world's

fifth biggest economy. So I wanted to bring this up to Brad to get his reaction, because you're our energy guy here. So does that mean anything for the Texas grid? It's using this California example as, you know, their battery supply of energy is working. Does that mean anything for Texas? Well, we are seeing an increasing number of battery storage projects coming online in the state. We always talk about the ERCOT grid because that's the single entity within the state. There's a couple other grids that are tied to other states. So it's easier to just boil it down to ERCOT. And also that's the one that's had the problems, right?

So there's a lot of battery storage projects coming online. Those that are really bullish on it are very hopeful about that. It certainly serves some utility, especially when wind drops down significantly during the hot summer afternoons. Battery storage can help replace that some. It can also help replace the sun, solar power when the sun goes down. So it's kind of a good bridge. But the simple fact is that a lot of the people pushing this

have grandiose plans about what they call a sustainable future, an economy powered on wind and solar power, right? That's just not doable. First of all, you'd have to have the amount of raw materials you'd have to mine in order to power that with battery storage because you have to have that as a backup. It's just I don't even know if it exists in any measurable quantity on the earth, right? Then you throw in the fact, the conflicts of how do you get this stuff? How costly is it?

You know, who are you getting it from? Is it from Chinese-owned strip mines in Africa? Like, yeah, I mean, that's some of it. You know, there's some mines in Texas or at least potential deposits under a lake. So. Well, so I'll add some context. Sure. Because this tweet linked to a separate story on Renew Economy. And in this article, it says the milestone was noted by a bunch of energy analysts.

And it says the note here that the output of battery storage in the evening peak went above six gigawatts for the first time that allowed battery storage to overtake gas hydro nuclear and renewables as the biggest source of supply for a period of about two hours in the evening peak so i sort of think that speaks to what you said is they can work together. They're not going to overtake completely. Okay. Yeah. Six gigawatts, you said? Yeah.

That's not that much, I don't think. I mean, it's a sizable amount for battery storage, absolutely. But Texas, at any given moment, it's 60 to 80 gigawatts of power needed. That is a long way from being able to actually bear the load. And so you have to have dispatchable power sources backing that up, whether it's natural gas, coal, nuclear. And so it says here, according to a data tracker, grid status, the peak output of 6,177 megawatts from battery storage at 8.10 p.m.

Local time was nearly 10% higher than California's previous peak of 5,625 megawatts reached at 7.50 p.m. local time on February 15th this year. Does that add anything to your analysis there? The peak output of 6,177 megawatts from battery storage at 8.10 p.m. local time. But they're saying it outpaced all other forms of generation? For a two-hour period. Yeah. Two things happened on the California grid last night. How low was the total? The battery storage discharge went over six gigawatts

for the first time and batteries were the largest source of supply how much load was on on the system how much electricity was being used at this time kind of got to know that. Let me see here. So the CEC, so I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, California Energy Commission, I'm guessing, estimates that the stage needs about 52 gigawatts of battery storage to meet its, oh, that's future projections there. Yeah, I haven't dug into this story enough. Just from how big California is, I have a hard time believing that that is correct, that it was the largest single source of electricity providing service. You know what would be amazing is a fourth reading edition you analyzing the story and seeing how it could

play into um or how it relates to the texas energy grid and legislation that could be proposed or legislation that has been has been proposed you're always looking for more fodder absolutely that's right well good good good guys i really enjoyed that conversation i did actually it's not sarcastic but it is not well that's just roll back the tape it'll show your eyes glaze over me scrolling through twitter yeah throw the flag the challenge flag i'll send this to you hey send me some stuff yeah well send me some stuff well it gives us more of a chance to dig into the story. So I would have read the full story before. So when Brad's asking me questions, I have answers. I'm not like reading the story.

I'm talking about it. That's right. Speaking of podcasts, Brad and my podcast, Smoke-Filled Room, had our second episode out this Monday. So go read it. Nope, listen to it. That's what you do with podcasts. Yes.

And we had a response. We did. From former state rep Jamesames white who we shout out and he texted me tuesday monday or tuesday morning and said i'm always listening yeah because we said on the pod that how he used to text us both individually um and we haven't heard from him in a while so it's good to hear from you. Shout out James White. That's right. Okay, Bradley, what did you see on Twitter this week? There was a gambling scandal in the NBA, and it's pretty wild.

Jonte Porter, this has happened, this has been playing out for like a month. Jonte Porter, he's like a juryman. I've never heard the guy's name until this, so he wasn't very good. know his brother's pretty good right what his brother's pretty good right who's his brother i think he's on the nuggets i don't know hold on you look that up while i talk um and so the nba but this week the big development was the nba issued a lifetime ban against jonte porter and if anyone's a baseball fan you know that pete rose has been banned for big development was the NBA issued a lifetime ban against Jontae Porter. And if anyone's a baseball fan, you know that Pete Rose has been banned for life for betting on baseball when he was a manager betting on other teams, never on his team. Well, Jontae Porter took it way much, far further, doing a parlay. I don't know how many rounds the parlay was,

but a parlay where you bet on X team to win or X player to hit a certain number of points. If people have seen Uncut Gems, that's what Adam Sandler's character is betting on at the end. But he did a parlay. It was like a four or five-part parlay betting the under on his the end. But he did a parlay. It was like four or five part parlay betting the under on his own stats. So like under, I don't know, two assists. Did you know this, Cameron?

Under ten points. I had no idea. And he bet $80,000 and the payout was like $1.1 million. $1.1 million, Cameron. If you hit it, you can make a lot of money. Yeah. But if one of them doesn't hit, then you lose all the money. All the money you bet.

So he bet on himself. And he bet against himself. Essentially. Well, him not to perform well. Yeah, but that's... That's what's in your control. You shouldn't bet on Michael Porter Jr. I didn't realize they were brothers.

That's his brother. He Yeah, you shouldn't bet on Michael Porter jr. Okay. I didn't realize they were brothers but That's his brother. Yeah. Yeah He sweet that's the one that you can like If you're betting yourself to hit the over at least you're betting on yourself to perform Well, and you still have to perform well, but this you can just tank it. Yeah, and he did Any 1 1.1 million. Oh, he won. Well, yeah, he hit it, I think. Oh, wow.

I don't know if he actually got the money, though. But I was going to say, I don't know if he gets to keep the money. I don't know if he does. But if he does, he better safeguard that pretty well because he will no longer be making money in the NBA. Is this the first lifetime ban for a player? Do you know? Because wasn't there a betting scandal?

In the NBA? Yeah, there was a betting scandal with a referee. Referee. Yeah, there's a Netflix episode on that series, and it's really good. Tim Donahue, I think his name is. Yeah. But other than Pete Rose, I've never heard of a lifetime ban in any sport. So maybe I'm wrong about that. That's hilarious. Other than Pete Rose, I've never heard of a lifetime ban in any sport.

So maybe I'm wrong about that. That's hilarious, the whole setup. Yeah. He bet on himself to perform horribly, and he did. He was making $415,000 on his two-week contract with the Raptors this season. He was the first active player or coach to be expelled from the NBA for gambling since Jack Malinas in 1954, which I think is the ref. I think that's the ref. I don't know.

Jack Malinas. Tim Donahue is the ref there. Oh, Jack Malinas is a player. Interesting. I thought, interesting. There you go. It's a wild story that's super very much so netflix has got their hands on the rights for this i already know it um i was going to ask bradley do the great lake states have are they rivals are they like comrades do they consider

each other like let's say on twitter people are going after Ohio. Would Wisconsin step up and say, leave us alone? Or the Great Lakes states? They all kind of trash each other, yeah. Okay, so it's more of a rivalry. Well, yeah. And, you know, sports there, just like anywhere, is ingrained in the culture. And Michigan hates Ohio. Totally.

But people in Michigan hate each other. But a lot of the industry, like a ton of the industry overlaps, right? Sure, yeah. I mean, I think if they were getting attacked by, like, the South or the West Coast or the East Coast, they would band together. Just like anyone would, right? Right. Like, leave the Pacific Northwest alone.

Leave the South alone. Leave Texas. Well, Texas is just Texas. It's like, I can make fun of my sister, but you can't make fun of my sister kind of thing. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay, that's a great way to explain it. That was the question I had.

Well, do either of you plan on seeing the new Civil War movie? No. No. It kind of looks interesting. I don't know. I've heard it's not great, but I don't know. I've seen mixed reviews. Yeah.

Who did it? A24. I don't know who the director is. I know that's the studio. What else have they made? A24? Yeah. Oh, Hereditary, Midsommar.

Midsommar. I hated that movie. I have not seen it. I never will. That was creepy. But I've seen the previews, and it freaks me out every time. Okay, Greek—we really need to go. But Greek Fire and Roman Cement cement, basically I looked it up.

Greek fire is a chemical weapon. So it's not just like fire made by Greeks. Right. I didn't understand that. I thought it was just like Greeks sitting around starting a campfire. It was like a flamethrower that they used against boats. Oh, that's like in Game of Thrones. You never seen Game of Thrones.

Never mind. But they've never. People will understand. They are listening and not me. We've never been able to recreate it, at least to my understanding. There's been a recent development. It's still a mystery how they did that. And imagine in ancient Greece, you're rowing your boat in some, you're rowing your trimene in some battle. And all of a sudden you see this liquid fire raining down on you.

It's probably pretty scary. Yeah. It probably would. This, you know, you Google a question or something like Greek fire and then it says people also ask, is Greek fire just napalm? Most modern scholars agree that Greek fire is based on either crude or refined petroleum comparable to modern napalm. Comparable, but apparently not identical. Not the same thing.

Yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. Folks, thank you for bearing with us on all of our tangents today. We had many. We'll catch you next week. Adios. Thank you for bearing with us on all of our tangents today. We had many. We'll catch you next week. Adios.

Catch you on the flippity flip. Why has, when we're on video, the sign-off becomes so much harder? I don't know. It's just. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate 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. 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.